@shallow-blue saidI also read in several places that it due to the moon having a thicker crust on the far side. Must have been in its early life though as it’s completely solid now isn’t it?
Not a mystery at all. The moon is tidally locked to the earth but hasn't always been. Thus, the near side still bears the scars of the time when there were still relatively big asteroids in our orbit to make nice big craters there, while on the far side they have been obliterated over time by a continuous barrage of smaller but more common bodies.
@divegeester
It has to do with temperature differences, the near side was hotter for longer, the far side cooler because of the tidal lock.
If the impact theory is right, a good part of Earth was molten and the blob that escaped flew off in an orbit we see today, so the Earth being red hot from major impact made the front side get more heating but the back side, being totally away from Earth, radiation cooled it faster than the heat of the impact.
So the two sides had way different thermal environments.
Not rocket science.
@sonhouse saidHow is the far side of the moon cooler because of tidal lock?
@divegeester
It has to do with temperature differences, the near side was hotter for longer, the far side cooler because of the tidal lock.
@sonhouse saidBut there is no evidence that the moon was tidal locked when the earth was still molten.
@divegeester
If the impact theory is right, a good part of Earth was molten and the blob that escaped flew off in an orbit we see today, so the Earth being red hot from major impact made the front side get more heating but the back side, being totally away from Earth, radiation cooled it faster than the heat of the impact.
So the two sides had way different thermal environments.
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@divegeester saidWrong, wrong, and wrong.
I also read in several places that it due to the moon having a thicker crust on the far side. Must have been in its early life though as it’s completely solid now isn’t it?
@shallow-blue saidThe weak anthropic principle is not a fallacy, but rather is not physically falsifiable by currently known scientific methods. "The universe appears suited to life because, if it were not, then we would not exist to observe it."
This is the fallacy known as the weak anthropic principle. If the moon hadn't been there, we'd have been asking the same question two hundred parsecs and ninety million years away.
Put in purely mathematical terms, without reference to a universe, it becomes a mere tautology.
@mihai saidThere is a potentially blinding bias that underlies remarking on certain coincidental phenomena in our environment without noting at least in equal measure all the trillions of phenomena we observe in the world which are not calibrated "just so."
@moonbus
The moon size coincidence looks like an intentional sign from a creator.
I knew someone once who attached great significance to the observation that life is carbon-based, and carbon atoms have 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons.* So: 666, the Sign of the Beast.
As to the moon, its orbit is elliptical, so often it is too small to fully eclipse the sun, or else larger than it needs to be. In fact the moon's apparent size in the sky waxes and wanes even as it cycles through its phases, so its ability to occasionally block the sun completely is a bit less improbable than it may seem, and in any case there are very many more "misses" than "hits." If a Creator meant for the moon to be a billboard for theistic thinking, It did a piss-poor job.
*Carbon-12 specifically, though carbon-13, which has 7 neutrons, is also stable.
@divegeester
Because Earth emits heat as well as the sun so that increases slightly the heat on the nearside but the backside has total darkness and direct light from the sun but that is slightly less heat than the combined heat from Earth and sun hitting Luna.
Not much heat for sure but it is a tiny bit more.
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@soothfast saidWhich is exactly why it's a fallacy to use it as an argument.
Put in purely mathematical terms, without reference to a universe, it becomes a mere tautology.
@sonhouse saidAs I pointed out; there is no evidence that the moon was tidal locked to the earth while the earth was still molten.
@divegeester
Because Earth emits heat as well as the sun so that increases slightly the heat on the nearside but the backside has total darkness and direct light from the sun but that is slightly less heat than the combined heat from Earth and sun hitting Luna.
Not much heat for sure but it is a tiny bit more.
Furthermore, even if the moon was tidal locked as it is now, the sun’s heat would still warm both sides of the moon as the moon orbits the earth.
You do realise that there is no “dark side” to the moon, don’t you?
@shallow-blue saidOh well, I guess your comment here disproves those theories.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
@divegeester
Of course there is no 'dark side' of the moon but because it is tidally locked to Earth, the backside gets slightly less energy in total since Earth does emit some energy which will reach the moon, a small part of it of course.
Look at Suzianne's post, nice piece about that subject.
why would folks double thumb her down? It's just an article and may even be wrong so why the TD?