Mesec, Mars, Tesla, razna ludila...

[zakk]

THE collision that formed our moon may have defined the length of our planet's day and set the direction in which it spins.

The moon is widely thought to have formed after an object roughly the size of Mars crashed into the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, throwing up a cloud of debris that eventually coalesced into a rocky sphere. Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, wanted to find out if this process was influenced by the spin of the Earth at the time - something previous models of the moon's formation did not take into account.

Canup built a computer model that used as many as 120,000 pieces of virtual rock to simulate the two colliding bodies. Her model showed that the Earth's rotation beforehand may have been very different to what it is today (Icarus, DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2008.03.011). Prior to the impact, the Earth's axis of rotation may have been steeply tilted, and the planet would have spun much faster, with a day lasting as little as 4 hours. The model also showed that the direction in which the Earth spins could have been reversed by the impact.

If the Earth had previously rotated in this way, its current spin and that of the moon can be accounted for, Canup says. What's more, if the Earth had once spun faster, enough material would have been thrown up by the impact to make the moon the size it is.

http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19826525.500

Formation

Several mechanisms have been suggested for the Moon's formation. The formation of the Moon is believed to have occurred 4.527 ± 0.010 billion years ago, about 30–50 million years after the origin of the Solar System.[36]

Fission theory  
   Early speculation proposed that the Moon broke off from the Earth's crust because of centrifugal forces, leaving a basin – presumed to be the Pacific Ocean – behind as a scar.[37] This idea, however, would require too great an initial spin of the Earth; and, even had this been possible, the process should have resulted in the Moon's orbit following Earth's equatorial plane. This is not the case.

Capture theory  
   Other speculation has centered on the Moon being formed elsewhere and subsequently being captured by Earth's gravity.[38] However, the conditions believed necessary for such a mechanism to work, such as an extended atmosphere of the Earth in order to dissipate the energy of the passing Moon, are improbable.

Co-formation theory
   The co-formation hypothesis proposes that the Earth and the Moon formed together at the same time and place from the primordial accretion disk. The Moon would have formed from material surrounding the proto-Earth, similar to the formation of the planets around the Sun. Some suggest that this hypothesis fails adequately to explain the depletion of metallic iron in the Moon.

A major deficiency in all these hypotheses is that they cannot readily account for the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system.[39]

Giant Impact theory
   The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact. A Mars-sized body (labelled "Theia") is believed to have hit the proto-Earth, blasting sufficient material into orbit around the proto-Earth to form the Moon through accretion.[6] As accretion is the process by which all planetary bodies are believed to have formed, giant impacts are thought to have affected most if not all planets. Computer simulations modelling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, as well as the small size of the lunar core.[40] Unresolved questions regarding this theory concern the determination of the relative sizes of the proto-Earth and Theia and of how much material from these two bodies formed the Moon.

Lunar magma ocean

As a result of the large amount of energy liberated during both the giant impact event and the subsequent reaccretion of material in Earth orbit, it is commonly believed that a large portion of the Moon was once initially molten. The molten outer portion of the Moon at this time is referred to as a magma ocean, and estimates for its depth range from about 500 km to the entire radius of the Moon.[12]

As the magma ocean cooled, it fractionally crystallised and differentiated, giving rise to a geochemically distinct crust and mantle. The mantle is inferred to have formed largely by the precipitation and sinking of the minerals olivine, clinopyroxene, and orthopyroxene. After about three-quarters of magma ocean crystallisation was complete, the mineral anorthite is inferred to have precipitated and floated to the surface because of its low density, forming the crust.[12]

The final liquids to crystallise from the magma ocean would have been initially sandwiched between the crust and mantle, and would have contained a high abundance of incompatible and heat-producing elements. This geochemical component is referred to by the acronym KREEP, for potassium (K), rare earth elements (REE), and phosphorus (P), and appears to be concentrated within the Procellarum KREEP Terrane, which is a small geologic province that encompasses most of Oceanus Procellarum and Mare Imbrium on the near side of the Moon.[1]

hmm.... takođe:

The popular idea that Mars was populated by intelligent Martians exploded in the late 19th century. Schiaparelli's "canali" observations combined with Percival Lowell's books on the subject put forward the standard notion of a planet that was a drying, cooling, dying world with ancient civilizations constructing irrigation works.[97]

Many other observations and proclamations by notable personalities added to what has been termed "Mars Fever".[98] In 1899 while investigating atmospheric radio noise using his receivers in his Colorado Springs lab, inventor Nikola Tesla observed repetitive signals that he later surmised might have been radio communications coming from another planet, possibly Mars. In a 1901 interview Tesla said:
"    It was some time afterward when the thought flashed upon my mind that the disturbances I had observed might be due to an intelligent control. Although I could not decipher their meaning, it was impossible for me to think of them as having been entirely accidental. The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.[99]    "

Tesla's theories gained support from Lord Kelvin who, while visiting the United States in 1902, was reported to have said that he thought Tesla had picked up Martian signals being sent to the United States.[100] However, Kelvin "emphatically" denied this report shortly before departing America: "What I really said was that the inhabitants of Mars, if there are any, were doubtless able to see New York, particularly the glare of the electricity."[101]

In a New York Times article in 1901, Edward Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, said that they had received a telegram from Lowell Observatory in Arizona that seemed to confirm that Mars was trying to communicate with the Earth.[102]
"    Early in December of 1900, we received from Lowell Observatory in Arizona a telegram that a shaft of light had been seen to project from Mars (the Lowell observatory makes a specialty of Mars) lasting seventy minutes. I wired these facts to Europe and sent out neostyle copies through. The observer there is a careful, reliable man and there is no reason to doubt that the light existed. It was given as from a well-known geographical point on Mars. That was all. Now the story has gone the world over. In Europe it is stated that I have been in communication with Mars, and all sorts of exaggerations have spring up. Whatever the light was, we have no means of knowing. Whether it had intelligence or not, no one can say. It is absolutely inexplicable.[102]    "

Pickering later proposed creating a set of mirrors in Texas with the intention of signaling Martians.

kul

HA! :

Some researchers have suggested that the character of Nyarlathotep in H P Lovecraft's 1920 short story of the same name was inspired by Tesla.

(Will Murray, "Behind the Mask of Nyarlathotep", Lovecraft Studies No. 25 (Fall 1991); cited in Robert M. Price, The Nyarlathotep Cycle, p. 9.)

"Tajna Nikole Tesle" (aka "Tesla","The Secret Life of Nikola Tesla","The Secret of Nikola Tesla") (1980) a Yugoslavian movie, notable for its inclusion of Orson Welles as robber baron J.P. Morgan, touches on Tesla's psychic powers and lost vision of the future.

[zakk]

Did Earth once have multiple moons?

The ancient catastrophe that gave birth to the Moon may have produced additional satellites that lingered in Earth's skies for tens of millions of years.

A new model suggests moonlets may have once occupied the two Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, regions in space where the gravitational tug of the Earth and the Moon exactly cancel each other out. Objects trapped in these points are called Trojans and can remain stationary forever if left undisturbed.

Scientists think the Moon was created when Earth was struck by a Mars-sized object some 4.5 billion years ago.

"The giant impact that likely led to the formation of the Moon launched a lot of material into Earth orbit, and some could well have been caught in the Lagrangian points," says study team member Jack Lissauer of NASA Ames Research Center in California, US.

Once captured, the Trojan satellites likely remained in their orbits for up to 100 million years, Lissauer and co-author John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington say. Then, gravitational tugs from the planets would have triggered changes in the Earth's orbit, ultimately causing the moons to become unmoored and drift away or crash into the Moon or Earth.

"The perturbations from the other planets are very, very tiny," Lissauer said. But they change the shape of Earth's orbit, which changes the effect that the Sun's gravity has on the moons. "[That] is what ultimately destabilises the Trojans," Lissauer told New Scientist.

Separate modelling work by Matija Cuk, an astrophysicist at the University of British Columbia in Canada, suggests small, asteroid-sized objects a few tens of kilometres across would have lasted the longest as Trojan satellites. Cuk estimates these 'lost moons' might have circled Earth for a billion years or more after the Moon's formation.

"They would have looked more like Jupiter or Venus in the sky than a satellite," Cuk told New Scientist. "They would have resembled very bright stars."

Journal reference: Icarus (vol 195, p 16)

kul! i onda je jedan od tih pobio dinosuruse

[zakk]

If you were looking for a new way to make semiconducting diamond, you might not have thought of starting with tequila. But the potent spirit turns out to be excellent raw material.

Diamond is normally an electrical insulator, but becomes a semiconductor when doped with the right impurities. Diamond film is tougher than silicon, so it could be useful for devices that must operate at high temperatures or under other harsh conditions.

However, diamond films are expensive and difficult to make. They are produced by vaporising organic material, and then controlling how the carbon atoms crystallise onto a surface. The process works best if the material contains carbon and oxygen in roughly equal parts, as well as some hydrogen.

Now a team of researchers led by Javier Morales of the University of Nueva Leon near Monterrey in Mexico have shown that ordinary tequila does the job nicely. They injected the heated vapour from 80-proof "tequila blanco" into a low-pressure chamber. Measurements confirmed that the carbon deposited on test surfaces had a diamond structure (www.arxiv.org/abs/0806.1485). "Some kinds of tequila seem naturally to have the right mix of atoms," says Morales. Other forms of alcohol have also worked, although it's not clear if this is faster or more reliable than using common precursors such as acetone.

"The result is certainly funny, but the process seems reasonable," says physicist Rudolf Pfeiffer of the University of Vienna in Austria. "I don't know of any previous attempts to make diamonds from drinks."