Chand chupa badal me...no, really. The moon is just shrinking away
While the latest research says that the moon is shrinking, it will take at least another 1500 billion years for it to vanish completely.
Saw the moon last evening? Or either of the past two evenings? Did you see a brighter and bigger moon? Let the present sight not fool you.
The latest research conducted by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) says that the Moon is shrinking as it becomes cooler from the inside.
The phenomenon isn’t new. Science establishes that the romantic’s muse has shrunk by almost 46 meters in the past millions of years.
So what happens when the moon shrinks?
Imagine a grape shrinking. When it shrinks, it wrinkles and shrivels to a raisin. Similarly, the moon wrinkles as it shrinks, and because the moon’s surface crust is brittle unlike the flexible skin on a grape, the surface breaks with the shrinking and “thrust faults” where one section of the crust is pushed up over a neighbouring part.
These thrust faults resemble small stair-step shaped cliffs when seen from the lunar surface — typically tens of meters high and extending for a few kilometres. The faults produce quakes and the intensities of the quakes range from two to five on the Richter scale, says Thomas Watters, a senior scientist in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
Moon, moon! Don't vanish away! (Photo: Reuters)
“Our analysis gives the first evidence that these faults are still active and likely producing moonquakes today as the moon continues to gradually cool and shrink,” he elaborates.
Watters is the lead author of a study that analysed data from four seismometers placed on the moon by the Apollo astronauts using an algorithm developed to pinpoint quake locations detected by a sparse seismic network. The algorithm gave a better estimate of moonquake locations.
The discovery has been met with a sense of trepidation by Christian evangelists who believe it is a prophetic sign of the end times. “The Bible says there shall be signs in the Sun and the Moon and the stars,” says doomsday preacher Paul Begley from West Lafayette in Indiana, US. He is referring to the supposed forewarnings of the end times outlined in Luke 21:25-28. “On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads because your redemption is drawing near,” he goes on to add.
The American evangelist is firm in his belief humanity is now living in the end time and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is approaching.
However, worry not. We are nowhere close to witnessing the moon’s vanishing. “The lunar shrinking is a powerful but incredibly drawn-out process,” says Watters.
If the lunar orb has shrunk by a mere 46 metres in 40 million years, our estimates say that for the orb of 1,737.1 km radius to shrink, it would take nearly 1500 billion years. To put it in perspective, the age of the earth and the moon is 4.53 billion years.
And the rate at which we have been ruining the health of the planet, the earth would have vanished way before the sun.
So carry on with your moon-gazing. You are nowhere close to losing sight of it.
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