"The moon has been shrinking, suggest scientists who spotted relatively young geological features that form when a planetary body cools and contracts."
Courtesy of NatGeo
After reading this article, I was a bit confused.. after all I am a natural blonde and I am certainly not an astrophysicist. However, with the recent headlines from the NOAA stating that
"Global Warming is Undeniable", I am having trouble understanding all of this.
According to National Geographic the moon has shrunk some 600 ft in its time around, which in comparison to how old the moon actually is (APPX 4.5 billion years old)- may seem like a small change, but it was big enough for NASA to notice. If the sun has been hotter than normal in the last couple years, wouldn't the moon be doing the opposite? Expanding instead of shrinking? Does the moon even absorb heat.. or does it simply reflect it? I haven't found a reliable answer via the net like I usually do- Maybe some lonely astrophysicist will stumble upon this page and provide an answer for me, it would certainly be appreciated. Now I know that heat doesn't travel in space the way it does on Earth, and if you didn't.. now you do. There is no "conduction" or "covection" in space the way there is on Earth, so heat is forced to travel only by radiation. However, average temperatures on the moon range from −247° to 212° Fahrenheit- which gives me the impression that at times, radiation heat from the sun is sufficient to heat it well above the temperatures Earth reaches.
On another note, maybe the shrinking of the moon has nothing to do with the moons normal absorption of the sun's regular radiation, and more as a repercussion of the sun's current
CME's (solar flares), which isn't even set to hit its peak until 2012-2015.
What will the moon do next?
Personally I'd like to see it get bigger instead of smaller, but only Hollywood could provide an ending as pleasing as Sci Fi's "Impact".
xoxo disaster girl
