This is an archive of past discussions about Moon. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The Picture of the Moon and it's Phases looks Great! This is the first time I have ever see a picture this clear! Good Job! C-ritah (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Article Should Be in Miles as well as Kilometers
300 million people in the US use miles, it's rude and arrogant to use the article to force the metric system on readers. Placing kilometer and mile measurements next to each other is the polite way to include and respect everyone, rather than using Wikipedia as a soapbox.
My apologies for having a differing opinion. However, this is a scientific article and the metric system is the universally accepted standard. Possibly some of the broad measurements such as the diameter could be offered in miles somehwhere in the article; though. Nevertheless labeling the lacking of imperial units as arrogant is unnecessary and unwarranted. --Xession (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
There is no reason this article can't be like many other articles and use both US and metric units by using convert templates. For example: 1 mile (1.6 km)Asher196 (talk) 01:58, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
Actually, there have been regular discussions about this and the consensus is to use only metric in the astronomy articles. --Ckatzchatspy04:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
There are also still large numbers of people in the UK who only ever think of (long) distances in miles. I would like to see conversions to miles given in the article. 86.181.205.25 (talk) 14:23, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
I too am an American who is far more comfortable with miles than with the metric system, but my comfort isn't the issue. I may be able to better estimate distances in terms of football fields, but that shouldn't be listed in an encyclopedic article. It's a scientific subject and metric is the scientific standard. There are articles on the conversion ratio if people need to use them (like me).
This is not a scientific paper. It is a general-interest encyclopedia article for ordinary readers. As long as significant numbers of those ordinary readers think in miles, Wikipedia articles should give conversions. 86.181.171.26 (talk) 14:34, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Multi-impact model of Moon origin
The multi-impact model was presented in article "Gorkavyi, N.N. The New Model of the Origin of the Moon. 2004"
[1]
Could find only this publicly accessible page:
[2]
This model beats all the previous ones, looks consistent, doesn't have any visible flaws, thus is worth a separate paragraph in Formation subject!
As all astronomers know, maps of the moon are usually oriented for northern hemisphere viewers.
Fair enough.
However, this does affect the position of the 'Quarters' as seen from the southern hemisphere.
So though the "First Quatrter" still logically follows the New Moon, as seen from the south, the quarter of the Moon that is shaded will appear to be on the opposite side. Right rather than Left. Manie Maxx [Remember we down south stand on our heads when viewing the Moon]
One should NOT say the Moon appearance is reversed, for the same features will still be in shade/light as when viewed fromthe north. (suma rongi)
Suma rongi (talk) 21:53, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
I think that's a reasonable caption. It's important to recognize differences in Northern & Southern perspectives, even if the Northern view is the most commonly cited (and thus arguably the default). The Cap'n (talk) 17:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
Reflectance
The lead says "It is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun, although its surface is actually very dark, with a similar reflectance to coal." As the Moon's reflectance varies very noticeably over its surface, it would be good to clarify which parts are supposed to be similar in reflectance to coal. Is it the dark parts? 86.181.205.25 (talk) 14:20, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
Diagram of phases
I cannot make head nor tail of the "New Moon" insets in the diagram of the Moon's phases in the "Appearance from Earth" section. What are they showing? What is the ring of red dots, and what are the various mutky murky dots and circles? 86.181.205.25 (talk) 14:42, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
The ring of red dots represents the spot in the (day) sky where you can't see the New Moon, and I guess the dots and circles represent lens flare because you're looking near the Sun. —Tamfang (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
Oh! Thanks. I think this needs explaining in the caption, or, better still, the insets need replacing by something more recognisable. To me it looks like a system of about four planets/moons with a dotted path showing an orbit or something. 86.176.209.219 (talk) 13:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
Goof
{{editprotect}}
The first note in the note section isn;t correctly formatted and leaves a large area of nothing between the "The" and the next thought. I can see words in the note here on the article template when I click edit, but I cannot fix the problem cuz the article is locked. 75.19.69.26 (talk) 11:21, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
I have seen nothing in this or associated articles which appears to give the direction of the Moon's Axis of Rotation with respect to the Celestial Sphere (which I suppose to be at least close to constant) - the Right Ascension and Declination, which are given in the top right box in the articles on the planets.
There is a figure for tilt, but it's not clear to me in which direction the tilt is, or how to use it.
It would also be nice to see expressions for the RA & Dec of the perpendicular to the Moon's orbit - the angular momentum vector of the Earth-Moon system - as a function of time (period 18.6 years). Or the mean RA and Dec, and the radius in degrees of its presumably circular motion, and the phase of that motion from a given position as a function of time.
The albedo figure seems a little bit too high, and the reference's abstract talks about a broadband albedo, which presumably includes near infrared. From the article Bond albedo the geometric albedo is 0.123, and from geometrical considerations and the apparent magnitudes of Sun and Moon it should be , where is the radius of the Moon and is the distance of the Moon from the Earth. Icek (talk) 05:46, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
Etymology
The current etymology section is rather disappointing. If we're going to discuss the entymology of 'moon', we should at least go back a little further where things get interesting and we find out that 'moon' is related to the words 'month' and 'menses'. Anyone have an account at oed.com? Kaldari (talk) 18:14, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
This post is not to criticize any information relating to the Earth's Moon, except one point that is not addressed. Earth has other orbiting satellites, none particularly large, but that doesn't mean they are not of interest. I came to seek information regarding them and was disappointed, and it is unlike Wikipedia to disappoint on any topic regardless of how obscure or questionable. Surely there is someonewho has access to this information ? I currently do not, or I would not have come seeking it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.45.60.45 (talk) 01:08, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
As a point of clarification it may be valuable to mention Earth's NEOs, and why they aren't considered to be satellites of Earth. I believe the public has been misinformed about objects like Cruithne being satellites of Earth.
This is not relevant: Even if the Apollonid NEOs were satellites of the Earth i.e. the earth permanently occupied one focus of their elliptical orbits, they have no place here because they are not The Moon. (Valhalan (talk) 04:59, 11 March 2011 (UTC))
In Culture
I'm a little surprised to see that this section has not been expanded more fully. For example the effect of the moon upon human reproduction has long been studied; indeed as reported the same Indo-European root for "moon" has led, through Latin, to the word "menstrual". Studies of very many females has led to the conclusion that the average human menstrual cycle is exactly one lunar month and the gestation, from conception to birth, is exactly 9 lunar months. Further, the onset of menstruation tends to cluster around the New Moon, with almost 30 per cent of menstruations commencing at this time. See: Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica: The Regulation of Menstrual Cycle and its Relationship to the Moon, 1986, Vol. 65, No. 1 , Pages 45-48 or at http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00016348609158228
Yet further, the effect of the Moon on human romance, poetry and art is vast and yet has barely been touched upon in the Article. In history, the outcome of battles and military campaigns which have changed history's course has been determined by the light afforded by the moon; for example at the Alamo during the process of freeing Texas from Mexico in 1836, the Mexican casualties were far higher due to the near-full moon than they would have been at New Moon, and this is turn decided the subsequent outcome at San Jacinto when Texas was finally won by the Rebels, who found themselves with far fewer Mexicans to fight. If we are to speak of spacecraft visiting the Moon in this article, let us not forget that if history had been different, then no spacecraft might yet have been there. The Alamo precipitated a war in which America won not only Texas (eventually) but also most of the South-west; had this gone the other way modern America might not have been economically powerful enough for Apollo. Calendars, tidal power generation, ... even the feeding patterns of sharks and the catch yields of fishermen and anglers varies according to lunar cycles. Much room for expansion!!
(Valhalan (talk) 04:38, 11 March 2011 (UTC))
The word "menstrual" is derived from the Greek word for "month"; it has nothing specifically to do with menstruation. As to the rest, that's all good, but it needs sources. I agree that that section needs to be expanded, perhaps even into its own article, but it's not something that can be corrected in one go. Serendipodous08:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Volume of the Moon
{{editsemiprotect}}
There seems to be a typo in the value of the Moon's volume. It is given as 2.1958 × 1010km3, but if one computes it from the equatorial and polar radii (1,738.14 km and 1,735.97 km respectively), one gets 2.19685 × 1010km3 (which rounds up to 2.1969 × 1010km3). Could someone fix this? 129.206.34.51 (talk) 15:21, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Treating the Moon as an oblate spheroid does indeed give, with the dimensions given above, a volume of 2.19685 × 1010km3. Global Earth Physics: A Handbook of Physical Constants has a volumetric radius corresponding to a volume of 2.19728 × 1010km3, closer to our calculated value. Saros136 (talk) 17:53, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
The IAU's 2011 recommended value for the equatorial radius is lower than the Wikipedia one, 1737.4 km, and gives (using the same flattening) the lowest value of all, 2.1940 × 1010km3. But with the uncertainties in the measurements, any one of our figures could be the best. Saros136 (talk) 18:25, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I'd leave it as it is: the given figure could be very accurate. It is less than your figure by about 11 million cubic kilometers. However if we start with your figure, and then subtract the below-ground volume of all the craters, we get an estimated figure very close to the Article's figure. For example, the below-ground volume of Copernicus is 25,500 cubic kilometers, Clavius another 139,000, Tycho 26,600, Archimedes 11,400, Plato 9,300... So how much for the lot? 11 million sound about right? You've worked out the volume of a smooth oblate spheroid -- and forgot about all the craters. (204.112.68.51 (talk) 00:14, 12 March 2011 (UTC))
204.112.68.51 had some good ideas. However, do we have any "official" sources which say either answer? In about a week from now, the moon will be the closest to earth that it's come for 18 years or so -- perhaps someone will do some sort of experiment and give us a more precise figure for the moon's mass (and thus its likely volume based on what we know of its composition). In the meantime, in the absence of another source, I'm inclined to just leave the volume listed. If there is a more scientific source that says one way or the other, please put the edit requested template back up. If you'd like any further help, contact me on my user talk page. You might instead want to put a {{help me}} template up on your own user talk, or put the {{edit semi-protected}} template back up on this page and either way someone will be along to help you. :) Banaticus (talk) 06:21, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
The biggest problem here is listing figures to a greater number of places than the uncertainty warrants. I'd go with 2.2 for the sigfigs. Saros136 (talk) 18:46, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
I put back this section, adding more qualifications as to "speculative" and "support in literature". The simple fact that it is discussed in the popular literature means that it should be mentioned. If people think it is bogus, then reasons should be added -- are there any papers that reject it? (I do recall when the idea that a meteor killed the dinosaurs was considered very unlikely.) Tuntable (talk) 00:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
"An alternative speculative proposal for the formation of the moon is that it was blasted into space by a massive nuclear reaction near the core of the early earth (when fisile material was more prevalent).[1] However, this proposal is not widely supported in the literature."
Ok. Let me go through your statement.
No papers on this hypothesis (it is not yet a theory) have been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. They have been put on the preprint server arXiv. This is not a peer reviewed forum: an author should have an affiliation with a scientific institution in some manner, but that is all that is checked. It's a good place to put a speculative idea.
Mention in the popular literature is not the same as mention in the scientific literature. There are many things on Wikipedia that are in the popular literature, to the encyclopedia's benefit. The scientific discussion in this article is not the appropriate place for adding ideas that do not have significant amounts of evidence behind them. The collision theory has a great deal of evidence behind it at this stage: the burden on a new hypothesis is to explain all that evidence and work in situations where the collision theory does not. The pop-sci magazine article you have provided does not suggest this is the case.
A quick whip around ADS does not show any discussion of such a theory. This might have something to do with it not being published... Iridia (talk) 04:44, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I think you miss the point. The simple fact that it appears in popular literature means that the theory is notable. Certainly not necessarily sound, but notable. Therefor I note it. People will be curious to know if the theory is widely supported, as I was. So I have put it back with your additions about not published, which is important, and I did not realize that it was completely unpublished.
If it was well known by the scientific community that that the theory was nonsence, then it would be even more important to state that. Precicely because it is published elsewhere.
As to notability, below are some references that come up on the first page of Google.
Any theory on the Moon formation (which does not sound ridiculous to a layman) would be picked up by some popular websites/publishers - this did happen in the past for other theories, and the media can not be held responsible for propagating unreliable information. However, for inclusion to a core article like this, a theory should either be accepted by science community, or have really impressive notability, which is not seen in this case. Materialscientist (talk) 00:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I would refer you to Notability guidelines do not limit content within an article. Wikipedia should be a source of knowledge to the unwashed masses as well as to experts in field. The list of references above clearly makes it sufficiently notable for a couple of sentenses. Probably not a new section, but certainly just a couple of sentenses. And yes, that might mean in general that some small proportion of artilces are to address unsupported theories just because they are talked about elsewhere. That is OK, indeed, it is one of the reasons to have wikipedia.
I actually came to the Moon article to find out whether the blast theory was credible, and found the hole. Stating that it has not had coverage in the scientific literature addresses my question. So Iridia comments were useful to me. But they should be in the article, not the Talk.
It is not the goal of wikipedia to only be pure. It should address practical needs for information. Sure, we don't want too much noise, but that is hardly the case here.
I also tidied up the huge initial sentense about formation, and put it after the main theory where it probably belongs. There was a trailing sentense about explaining the angular momentum, which was unclear. I have made it "Some of these hypotheses"... But if someone could clarify which ones that would be helpful. (It was not at all clear in the original.)Tuntable (talk) 00:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Look, Tuntable, you seem to be confused about the definition of a reliable source. If you're going to start quoting policy, then please go and read the reliable source policy, in depth. Those are not reliable sources that could provide notability for this situation. This is not an article where brand-new scientific theories can be thrown in, without them having had discussion in the peer reviewed literature, which this hypothesis (not a theory!) does not have.
Please do not continue adding the material until there is consensus. As it is, both Materialscientist and myself disagree with you.
If you found the formation section unclear, I'll have a look and see if I can reword. (Bear in mind that is the text that was approved by many editors at the article's review). Iridia (talk) 03:04, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Add me in too as objecting to inclusiom, that is abosultely a fringe theory, the source itself says "outlandish new hypothesis". And the hypothesis posits a D-double-prime layer as existing at the time of the Moon's formation, where's the backing for that? And from what I've read about D-double-prime, it's a phase transition, not a change in mineral concentration. What I would propose is a sister site: trivia-en.wikipedia.org, where this sort of material could be collected. It has indeed appeared in popular media and I'd be fine with seeing it reflected somewhere within the grand wiki-scheme. But certainly not within a serious and important article. Sorry Turntable, not sufficiently significant for inclusion here. Franamax (talk) 09:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Oops, I'm wrong on one aspect, a crystal phase transition could certainly cause preferential conecntration of one or more elements, and yes that could cause a criticality problem in unique circumstances. That's likely the whole basis of the proponents argument, but of course it's quite hard to evaluate without seeing some actual peer-reviewed numbers. The rest of my comment stands as written. Franamax (talk) 09:51, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Light seconds
The one thing I dont see in the article is the time it takes for light to reflect from the moon to the Earth. Granted there are difficulties in giving a precise number due to changes in orbital distance, sphericity of both bodies, etc. And its not difficult to figure it out based on the average orbit distance of 350 600 km - somewhere around 1.169475721 light seconds. Still it should be mentioned somewhere in the article. -161
How are you deriving that number? The closest the moon gets is about 356,400 km, given the figures currently in the article. If we subtract the equitorial radius of Earth and the radius of the moon, the closest distance between a point on Earth and a point on the moon is 352,343 km. Dividing this by the speed of light, we get 1.1783 seconds, somewhat longer than your figure. At the other extremed, the moon could be as far as 406,700 km, and someone viewing the limb of the moon at moonrise or moonset would be viewing the maximum distance (radii adjustments are not needed). In this case, we have 1.3566 seconds. To that, we'd have to add the slowing due to the atmosphere. All things considered, 1.2-1.4 seconds should about cover it. I can recall back when the astronauts were on the moon, that on the news they talked about a 2-3 second delay in communications. Victor Engel (talk) 17:05, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Distance to the moon to scale
I notice that there's nothing on this page that gives a good visual impression of the distance from Earth to the Moon. The closest is a "not to scale" picture labelled with the distance.
A common misconception is that the moon sits somewhere around a moon diameter to an earth diameter from Earth, I reckon this misconception should be corrected somewhere near the top of the page.
I shan't "be bold" and fix it myself as I don't have the time to do it properly.
I've never heard of such a misconception either. In fact, one can simply go outside and look at the moon to verify it isn't so. I find such a notion preposterous. Victor Engel (talk) 21:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
There's a diagram somewhere showing the sizes and distances to scale, with an animated bar representing a light-beam to illustrate the speed-of-light delay. Now where did I see that ...? —Tamfang (talk) 17:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I have used the simple arithmetic mean, from 1600-2400 using Solex. Usually, mean perigees and apogees are not given in books, but it is the most accurate was to describe the typical distances. And to five significant figures the average will be the same on smaller (say two centuries) or many larger time scales. Saros136 (talk) 23:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Scientists Detect Earth-Equivalent Amount of Water Within the Moon
I don't know if I'll have time over the next couple days to add this but I will check back and do it if no one else has. Anyway, Science is reporting here some cool new findings regarding moon water. Noformation (talk) 02:42, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Here's a quote from the primary abstract (and it's just awesome) "The lunar melt inclusions contain 615 to 1410 ppm water, and high correlated amounts of fluorine (50 to 78 ppm), sulfur (612 to 877 ppm) and chlorine (1.5 to 3.0 ppm). These volatile contents are very similar to primitive terrestrial mid-ocean ridge basalts and indicate that some parts of the lunar interior contain as much water as Earth's upper mantle."
The heading on this section in the talk page is deceptive. It makes it seem like there are vast quantities of water on the moon. According to your quote, it's Earth's upper mantle that's comparable. How much water is in Earth's upper mantle? Victor Engel (talk) 15:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The article contains an alleged picture of the moon and a star. In actuality, the picture is of the moon and the planet Venus. I don't know enough about the symbolism to know if this is relevant or not. If it's OK to show a planet, there should probably be text to that effect. If planets are not associated with the symbolism, a different image should be used. Victor Engel (talk) 15:42, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The image is of a moon and star. It is older than modern understanding of space. Bear in mind that for quite some time people thought the far away stars were fixed in place, with only the near ones moving. That was less than 1000 years ago, if I recall. So, yeah, keep that in mind. 74.132.249.206 (talk) 08:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Magnetosphere
I think it might be interesting to include something in this article about what happens when the Moon passes through the tail of the Earth's magnetosphere.[3] Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 15:47, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
The Moon In Cultures
To Add a confirmation about The Moon In Culture:
Totally agree with this article. Old civilizations were obsessed with fertility because of the need for manpower. The more children you have and mostly males, the more regarded you are as fertile man. The female was regarded as the goddess when she makes more children. Examples of this are Venus, Ishtar and Aphrodite. the Sumerian God Sinn had a symbol of wheat shaft and therefore his emblem was Sin Hubal Hayat or Sin the Giver of Life. In Arabic the wheat shaft is Sunbulah, which recalls the same emblem. The moon culture as you said is ancient. Babylonian tablets signs of the crescent and the star were illustrated as the symbol of Divinity which proves the King is a Godly Choice. This symbol is not an Islamic invention; it goes back centuries before Islam. Smithsonian Magazine in its issue of September 2008 illustrates findings in Afghanistan under the title: Lost and Found http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lost-and-found-afghan.html# published the picture of a Gilded silver disc, a ceremonial plaque depicting Cybele (Ai Khanum, Temple with niches), beginning of the 3rd century BC among other Greek culture findings related to Alexander the Great (last picture in the album and note the angel depiction). This is part of the Shakinah cult, in other words called the Venus Cult which dominated the pre-Christian era in the Middle East. Briefly, the Middle East cultures pivoted around Venus and the Moon sighting together when they are aligned like the (thought) Muslim symbol. The Shakinah is the heart of the Moslem Mystery Stories just like it is the heart of the Free Masonry. It was kept secret because of certain tell-tales about seeing the Future. It happens at the end of the Lunar month when the crescent starts rising in the East. And when the crescent rises in alignment with Venus and Mercury, the cult says that a heavenly trans happens to the sighter, allowing him to experience prophecy, or so they said. The Shakinah cult is at the heart of the City of Cairo's founding in the year 969 AD. The pentagram comes from the five locations of the Venus-Crescent sightings in time and in orbit around the sun. It happens every 121.5 years average. It has nothing to do with fertility.
Respectfully,Noureddine (talk) 19:03, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
Largest moon in comparison to its primary except for Charon
Was mentioned in the lead, but is probably incorrect with all those binary asteroids (eg. 90 Antiope) and KBOs (1998 WW31). Should probably change it to refer to only planets (the way it was before), with a disclaimer for Charon. 220.255.1.116 (talk) 15:15, 23 July 2011 (UTC)
Second moon theory
Maybe this should be added in to the theories for the rugged surface on the far side of the moon plus more?
Recent tests have called into question the date of the origin of the moon (http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2011/2010.8/moon-younger-than-we-thought/), and therefore likely the discussed mechanisms by which it formed. I am not an astrophysicist so I am not sure if the old theories could still apply. I also don't know how reliable the new test are and whether it is best to wait for confirmation. I post this merely to bring attention to them so that someone more knowledgeable can change the page as required.Drunkenduncan (talk) 00:28, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
Actually, it doesn't. It gets closer and farther in a somewhat chaotic periodic fashion by tens of thousands of kilometers. I noticed that on the new Terra Nova TV show, a reference was made the the moon's large size being the result of the moon's having receeded 1.5 cm per year for 80 million years. If that rate had been constant over the period, the moon would have been about 3000 km closer than it is now. The moon's orbit varies by more than that during a full moon cycle, so it wouldn't have looked significantly larger.Victor Engel (talk) 16:46, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
Only known?
The intro says "The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite". Can we lose the weasel word "known" from this sentence?
(The moon and the sun are seen in similar size but in fact they are not so.The moon is very small in comparison to the sun.Because the moon is very close to the earth than the sunand that the sunis far from earth than moon.The surface of moon is made up of rocks.Its diameter is about 3476 km.The mean distance between the moon is about 386000km.It revolves around the earth in its own orbit.The time taken by moon to complete one turn around the earth is 27.33 days) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.119.32.21 (talk) 09:10, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Given the close observation of the moon and local space for the last 3,000-4,000 years, especially with the technology of the last few decades, it seems like we can be pretty confident that this truly is the only moon near Earth. Including this word is not only pointless, but inaccurate -- it implies that there might be another one, we just haven't studied enough to find it. That's wrong; scientific opinion is quite resolved that there is no other moon around Earth. We should not imply that this is an open question. 67.220.9.132 (talk) 03:45, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
Follow the links on that page. The point is not that those objects are moons of Earth so much as their relatively recent discovery. Also, I think it's fair to consider that the line dividing whether something is a planetary moon or not is a blurry line. Victor Engel (talk) 15:32, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
Irregardless of whether there are other possible celestial objects which may or may not qualify as a natural satellites of the Earth, the article's lede is reserved for major summation points of the entire article. Speculations on other possible 'unknown' Moons of the Earth does not belong in the lede, and it has been rephrased not to refer to it. Best: HarryZilber (talk) 17:38, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Formation section needs a bit of thought.
As currently drafted, the formation section deals with outdated hypotheses before giving the currently generally accepted model. The order should be reversed so that the giant impact hypothesis appears first followed by previous hypotheses.Leor klier (talk) 12:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Could you please sandbox it here first? This section is particularly prone to attracting change every time a new paper is published, so it helps with the article stability & accuracy to keep it succinct. Iridia (talk) 02:32, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
I have no intentions of changing the text (aside from minor edits shown in italics) - I just think that it would be clearer if the order of the first 2 paragraphs was reversed, so it reads ...
The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact: a Mars-sized body hit the nearly formed proto-Earth, blasting material into orbit around the proto-Earth, which accreted to form the Moon.[16] Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System. Computer simulations modelling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system, and the small size of the lunar core; they also show that most of the Moon came from the impactor, not from the proto-Earth.[17] However, meteorites show that other inner Solar System bodies such as Mars and Vesta have very different oxygen and tungsten isotopic compositions to the Earth, while the Earth and Moon have near-identical isotopic compositions. Post-impact mixing of the vaporized material between the forming Earth and Moon could have equalized their isotopic compositions,[18] although this is debated.
Previously, several mechanisms had been proposed for the Moon's formation 4.527 ± 0.010 billion years ago,[nb 6] some 30–50 million years after the origin of the Solar System.[11] These include the fission of the Moon from the Earth's crust through centrifugal forces,[12] which would require too great an initial spin of the Earth,[13] the gravitational capture of a pre-formed Moon,[14] which would require an unfeasibly extended atmosphere of the Earth to dissipate the energy of the passing Moon,[13] and the co-formation of the Earth and the Moon together in the primordial accretion disk, which does not explain the depletion of metallic iron in the Moon.[13] These hypotheses also cannot account for the high angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system.[15]
There are given figures -2.5 to -12.9, and a note to explain that. However, in that note is only told how the brightness of earthshine is calculated. Only the figures which are used in the calculations are given. In my calculations, I got the 12.9 magnitude only when putting the mean brightness to 407,000 km which is the maximum distance. When using the 378,000 figure, I get 12.82 as the maximum brightness. It is explained the 378,000 figure would be used for mean brightness, but seems it is not.
About the minimum brightness, there reads: The brightness of the earthshine is ((formula)) relative to the direct solar illumination that occurs for a full Moon. Relative to the direct illumination? How do they relate? Is that known? Apparently, because the brightness has been be calculated. 85.217.44.72 (talk) 04:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
Misuse of sources
This article has been edited by a user who is known to have misused sources to unduly promote certain views (see WP:Jagged 85 cleanup). Examination of the sources used by this editor often reveals that the sources have been selectively interpreted or blatantly misrepresented, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent.
The current main picture on this article is nice, but there is a newer picture here: File:FullMoon2010.jpg
This picture is of a completely full moon and of higher resolution (and possibly higher technical quality too). Is there any reason why this newer picture should not be the main picture on this page? -- Borb (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
"Humans have landed"
In my opinion the following sentence: "The Moon is the only celestial body on which humans have landed." could be interpreted by some to imply that humans have not sent landing spacecraft to any other celestial bodies. As it is, any misinterpretation should be clarified by the remainder of the paragraph, but the article should also be clear to readers who skim it.
These are some possible amendments to avoid this:
"humans have landed in person" (it was suggested by one editor that this is redundant; perhaps, but it is clearer).
"people have landed" (it was suggested by one editor that this is just a less formal word for "humans", again maybe, but it probably depends on context, I think it gives a more "in-the-flesh" connotation here...).
"humans have set foot" (clear, but not my preference, since people could land in a spacecraft, but not step outside)
There is nothing in your above statements about "humans" that it not equally true about "people"; "people" is less formal but no more "in-the-flesh" as they are synonyms. Would you prefer "humans have travelled to (and landed upon)"? --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:40, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
The main issue here is not really about the terms "People" and "Humans" (I agree that they are basically synonyms, but do think they can have different connotations depending on the context). The main issue is, given that unmanned spacecraft have landed on other celestial objects, the first sentence of the para could be misinterpreted by readers skimming the article. and although it is common knowledge that people have landed in person on the moon and sent only unmanned spacecraft to other celestial objects, an encyclopedia perhaps shouldn't assume the reader has so much common knowledge?
It is precise language as it stands. Omit "lands", and it loses the clarity of difference between 'orbits' and 'lands on the surface of'. I agree that "people" is insufficiently formal. Recall that this sentence doesn't need in itself to explain the entirety of the excellent efforts of the spacecraft teams around the world who are running 40+ Solar System missions for us. It's the lead, and it has to be succinct. The article does contain a big Exploration section. Iridia (talk) 05:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
True, omitting "lands" does have that problem... perhaps using "set foot" is even better than "landed" for the same reason: i.e., people didn't merely land a spacecraft there, they got out and walked around. And yes, it shouldn't explain the entirety of solar exploration, but it should be resilient to misinterpretation... The article indeed contains enough further information to clarify any potential misunderstanding, but, perhaps it doesn't hurt to make it clearer to readers who skim it and read just the first sentence of this paragraph... perhaps not... perhaps. :-)
Suggest adding some information on the pattern for moon rise and setting times:
On average, the moon rises and sets roughly 50 minutes later each night, depending on latitude, and variations in the plane of it's orbit. Other variations of lesser significance are due to factors like the eccentricity of the moon's orbit (it orbits in an ellipse, not a circle) and its angular speed (which is greater when it is closer to the earth).
The following sites offer tools to calculate times of moon rise and setting per date and location:
Date below picture of Buzz taken by Neil Armstrong suggest's Buzz was walking on the Moon a day earlier than the recorded landing date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.238.236 (talk) 00:30, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Only Celestial Body
"The Moon is the only celestial body on which humans have set foot."
"The distance between the Moon and the Earth varies from around 356,400 km to 406,700 km"
To those of us who do not think in kilometers it would be really helpful to have such distances in miles (interest in the Moon is not restricted to advanced astronomers who may have academically preferred units of measurements). Ridinghunter (talk) 09:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly with ridinghunter. Why not have km and miles?? Why have AU's on this? Everybody knows the moon revolves around the earth, so AU's aren't very needed here. Msjayhawk (talk) 04:46, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
No, JorisvS, I am not forgetting those who prefer kilometers because, as Msjayhawk suggests, both could be given (as on most of the other pages I consult). Whether miles or kilometers are more useful is a matter of opinion (and debate elsewhere). Ridinghunter (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Using km is correct as this is the SI standard. Using AU is also relevant and correct as, in solar system astronomy, AU is the standard and convenient unit of distance. The majority of the world is familiar with kilometres, and it is a simple act of conversion if you want to try and conceptualise the distance in miles (how exactly one conceptualises such vast distances at all is beyond me). If we are to cater for those who prefer things in a non-SI unit like miles, should we also cater for those who prefer to think in furlongs or any other out-dated units?86.0.198.250 (talk) 13:44, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
This is a work for general readers. It is not a scientific paper. Very significant numbers of people in English-speaking countries continue to measure and visualise distances in miles. As long as this remains the case, conversions to miles should be given. 86.160.82.205 (talk) 00:44, 10 May 2012 (UTC)
Early Moon
I looked at this article because I remembered that the early Moon was very close to the Earth, raising massive tides, and I wanted to know how close, but I cannot find any discussion of the Moon's effect on the Earth in the distant past. I think this topic is important and should be covered. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:27, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
clarify template added
The article says:
However, the inner core of the Moon is small, with a radius of about 350 km or less; this is only ~20% the size of the Moon, in contrast to the ~50% of most other terrestrial bodies.
What this appears to mean is that the radius of the core is only about 20% of the radius of the Moon. But "size" (which means volume, not radius; it's an unambiguous error to refer to radius as "size") is proportional to the cube of the radius, so if the radius were 20%, then the size would be 0.8%.
If this were the only problem, I might have just calculated the actual ratio and substituted it, but then we have the "in contrast to the ~50%" part. What does that mean? The inner core of the Earth, for example, certainly does not have anything close to 50% of the radius of the Earth.
So I thought I'd better raise the issue here and see if anyone knows what this passage is trying to say, before I go in and try to fix it. --Trovatore (talk) 18:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
Add link to the Alumina article on the chemical composition table
On the chemical composition table, all the compound except alumina are linked to their articles in wikipedia. There is an article about Alumina (common name for Aluminium Oxide) here. Please link it. Jorgeng87 (talk) 01:49, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
Miniwikiatlas
Map data has been added for the Moon in the miniwikiatlas for displaying geolocation data. I'm not sure how to add it or configure it, but I think that it would make a good addition to the page. More information on the Miniwikiatlas. Autocorr (talk) 03:45, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Just terrible
The introduction states (on Oct 13,2012)
<quote>
It is the largest natural satellite of a planet in the Solar System relative to the size of its primary,[e] having 27% the diameter and 60% the density of Earth, resulting in 1⁄81 its mass. The Moon is the second densest satellite after Io, a satellite of Jupiter.
<unquote>
I propose the following:
In proportion to the size of its primary, the Moon is the largest satellite of a major planet in the Solar System,[e] having 27% the diameter and 1⁄81 the mass of Earth. The Moon is the second densest satellite known (Io, a satellite of Jupiter, is denser)."
I claim that its density being 60% of Earth's is NOT relevant in an introduction. I fail to see any reason to continue to repeat that it is a natural satellite, consideration of artifical satellites changes none of this, does it? (density?)173.189.78.140 (talk) 23:46, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
New Hypothesis on Moon Formation
A new model for how the Earth and Moon were created was developed by Robin M. Canup. During research, funded by NASA, scientist have hypothesized that the Moon and the Earth were created together instead of separately like the Giant Impact hypothesis suggests. This new hypothesis suggests that the Moon and the Earth were created as a part of a big collision of two planetary bodies, five times the size of Mars, which produced two similarly sized planetary bodies. These two planetary bodies then re-collided which then produced what we now call Earth. This impact caused the Earth’s rotation to increase by 2 to 2.5 times faster. After the re-collision the Earth was surrounded by a disk of material, which then combined to form our Moon.
Prior works focused on the Moon being impacted by another target creating a disk and then forming into our Moon. This idea would have sufficed because any left over material from Earth from the initial impact would explain the similar composition of the Earth and Moon but this also means that the Moon would also have material from the impactor’s mantle, which our Moon does not. This new hypothesis, developed by Canup, explains what the Giant Impact hypothesis and other suggestions could not, which is why the Earth and the Moon have such similar compositions.
Research done by scientist Cuk and Stewart explain why the Earth’s rotation has slowed down after the collision. The rapid rotation of the Earth is what allowed for the production of a massive disk to form and later create the Moon. After the creation of the Moon, the evection resonance between the early Moon and Sun caused the angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system to decrease. This means that the due to the rotation and orbit between the early Moon and Sun, the rotation of the Earth decreased into the current rotation of the Earth today.
Research on a new gravitational map of the Moon (GRAIL) by NASA has shown that the average thickness of the Moon's crust is "between 21 and 27 miles (34 and 43 kilometers), which is about 6 to 12 miles (10 to 20 kilometers) thinner than previously thought." 22:53 PST (UTC-8) 12/05/12. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.87.38.79 (talk) 06:54, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
New moon's brightness
There reads: The minimum value (for a distant new moon) is based on a similar scaling using the maximum Earth–Moon distance of 407 000 km (given in the factsheet) and by calculating the brightness of the earthshine onto such a new moon. The brightness of the earthshine is [ Earth albedo × (Earth radius / Radius of Moon's orbit)2 ] relative to the direct solar illumination that occurs for a full moon. (Earth albedo = 0.367; Earth radius = (polar radius × equatorial radius)½ = 6 367 km.)
However, there is no source for this. I consider this original research. I calculated with these values and assumed direct solar illumination as 1, and get -2.62 as new moon brightness. What _is_ the actual formula used to get the -2.5 magnitude? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.217.34.68 (talk) 05:50, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Latin name
Why is the Latin name, specifically, included in the first sentence of the article? What relevance is it that the name for the moon in Latin is luna? It seems entirely arbitrary to choose the Latin name over, say, the Greek name or any other name in any other language for that matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.7.173.97 (talk) 07:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I kinda think this is a fair point. Anyone want to defend luna placed so prominently? It's true that readers might want to know why we call things "lunar this and that", but maybe not in the first sentence. --Trovatore (talk) 07:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Since "moon" can mean any natural satellite, some people have adopted "Luna" as the name of our moon, just as "Sol" is our sun, and "Terra" our planet. Largely used in sci-fi, but not exclusively. — kwami (talk) 07:39, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Is that usage really widespread enough to justify using the third and fourth words of the article? I'm not saying the word luna shouldn't appear at all, but I'm not convinced it should appear as a common synonym. --Trovatore (talk) 08:32, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, giving its Latin name doesn't tell readers that it's an alt English name anyway. I removed the alt from the lede and added 'Luna' and 'Selene' to the info box as alt names – how's that? — kwami (talk) 10:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I've removed it from the infobox as it (incorrectly) suggests a more official alternate name than is appropriate. If anything, it should be in the "Name" or "Culture" sections. (This is in line with past discussions about the use of "Luna".) --Ckatzchatspy18:26, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
How does it suggest it's official? And how is it different from including 'Terra' & 'Gaia' at Earth?
On a different topic, what happened to the background color highlighting the section divisions? Earth has it, the Moon, Mars, & Venus do not. — kwami (talk) 19:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Commenting late, and because it wasn't mentioned: Latin or Greek names have a historical presence in literature on astronomy, biology and medicine, and other sciences (no doubt dating back to their initial discoveries). It doesn't seem any more out of place to use the (often original) name early in an article on astronomical bodies than it does to use the Latin names for the various biological classifications in articles on biology, many of which have English (and other) names as well. —[AlanM1(talk)]—14:33, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
"Luna" is almost exclusively the name given to the moon in English-language novels that use a name at all. As this is an English-language article, I don't see why it shouldn't stay in. If another language uses a different name, it can be used in that language's article.RHBridges (talk) 16:41, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Only in Science Fiction novels. When the stories they depict become reality, and people are living on planets that have other moons, it will be time to use a distinguishing name. We don't know yet whether that name will be "Luna", "Sol 3-1" or some other nomenclature. We've had the same argument about calling the Sun "Sol". How often do you call Earth "Terra"? Robert A. Heinlein seems to have popularised the use of "Luna" as a name in English SF. The Latin name "Luna" is mentioned several times in the culture section, and this seems about right to me. Dbfirs20:30, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
Edit request on 10 December 2012
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From the article, emphasis mine: "Since the Earth spins about 27 times faster than the Moon moves around it, the bulges are dragged along with the Earth's surface faster than the Moon moves, rotating around the Earth once a day as it spins on its axis." Is the point not that the bulges remain almost stationary and that the Earth rotates beneath them? The expected effect if the bulges are dragged along with the Earth's surface is for there to be no tides. I had a quick look at the supplied reference, but it's not clear what in the 50 pages is being referred to. Xnn (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
I think ”In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, accelerating it, which lifts the Moon into a higher orbit with a longer period” should be changed to ”In turn, angular momentum is added to the Moon's orbit, acting as an accelerating force on it, which lift the Moon into a higher orbit with longer period and lower orbital velocity”, because ”accelerating it” might be interpreted as if the orbital velocity of the Moon is increasing not decreasing. It's rather elementary astrophysics that a celestial body in orbit around another celestial body both get longer period of revolution and lower orbital velocity if the distance between them increases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.225.42.80 (talk) 20:37, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
Miles
Can we please stop it with people removing distances in miles? For many readers, miles are the only intuitive unit. --Trovatore (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually, they were added without discussion; there is a long-standing convention with respect to astronomy articles that we do not use miles and other such units. --Ckatzchatspy19:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
OK, one thing is articles about the seventeenth largest asteroid or some such, but this is the Moon. I don't think internal conventions decided by the astronomy project should prevent being friendly to American readers (and not a small number of English ones as well, I think). --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Isn't there a template that will convert km to miles and display both? (And for the record, I also support giving distances in miles along with km—while I realize Metric is superior to Standard, as an American, kilometers are simply harder to visualize and mentally compare than miles.)—Kelvinsong (talk) 21:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Those three articles are not of interest just to astronomers. I don't think a decision made for astronomy articles in general should be controlling in the case of such wide-interest articles. (I also think it's the wrong decision for astronomy articles, but that's not a fight I care enough about to have.) --Trovatore (talk) 22:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
This is "English Wikipedia". Since the USA is the largest English speaking Country in the world, showing measurements in Kilometers only is absolutely absurd since we don't use that measurement system. Ckatz, I've seen you argue this point to death all over the place over the years relentlessly; and every time I see you delete the miles from articles about our planets, I've silently totally disagreed with you, and whom ever else came up with the notion of using Kilometers only. In summery, if there is ever a vote on the subject, count me in on the MILES side.
Actually, India is the country with the largest number of English speakers. Whether it also has the greatest number of users of English Wikipedia, I don't know.
Count me on the metric side. "English" units, which are nowadays decreasingly used in England, are archaic and confusing. Here in Canada, car makers still sometimes quote fuel economy figures in miles per gallon. It's pure bafflegab. What's a mile? We haven't used them since the 1970s, except that *nautical* miles are still sometimes used by sailors and airmen. What's a gallon? A U.S. gallon, or the "Imperial" one in which gasoline was measured here in Canada until we went metric.
I think that Yanks should simply take a few minutes and learn the metric system, and quit trying to dictate to the rest of us.
There is no serious proposal to remove metric units. The proposal is that miles should be used in addition. This simply accommodates a large number of readers to whom the other units are not intuitive. --Trovatore (talk) 03:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually, you are mistaken. India is number two: http://www.indiatribune.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9705:india-worlds-second-largest-english-speaking-country&catid=107:coverpage&Itemid=471. I know most of the world is converting to the metric system, including one of the last holdouts: NASA. However, since so many in the USA don't have a clue when they see Kilometers used for distances between planets, I don't understand why Both can't be displayed. We are supposed to be communicating and educating our readers. Your desire to force Americans ("Yanks", as the "Limey" I'm replying to called us) to understand the metric system immediately if not sooner, is a Pipe Dream. We get Miles to the Gallon here, Miles per Hour here, Miles on our Maps here, yet when we come to Wikipedia, the policy is to snub what we've been taught since childhood. Ridiculous. Also, and I know this logic will be too simple for you to accept, but when we see both measurements together, it is the 1st step in learning the difference between the two systems. My Corvette has Miles on the speedodmeter, and if I push a button, it coverts it to Kilometers. When I bought this car, it was the first time that I realized that 100 Kilometers per hour, was 60 Miles per hour. We can educate here the same way, just by having the two measurements beside each other in our planetary distances. Pocketthis (talk) 04:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
The last time I was in Ireland, distance signs on the roads were in kilometres, but speed limits were in miles per hour. Did this help people to get a feel for metric units? I have no idea.
Most countries that have converted from "imperial" to metric units have found that the best way to do it is suddenly, cold turkey. Some, e.g. Australia, actually made the use of imperial units illegal for a while after the switch, to force people to make the change. Here in Canada, we didn't go to that extreme, but there was a date, in the 1970s, when road signs, speed limits, etc., were suddenly switched. I took the speedometer out of my car and put metric markings on it. The old markings became useless.
Converting is a hassle, no doubt about it. But, integrated over a long time, it is a smaller hassle than continuing to use imperial.
Wikipedia is not here to reform people. We are neutral on whether our readers should use metric units, or Imperial or US customary units, or for that matter cubits. Not enough of our readers want to know the distance in cubits to make it worth the space in the article, but it is reasonably predictable that enough do want to know it in miles. --Trovatore (talk) 04:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I totally agree with you Travatore. Mr. Williams wants us Yanks to stop dictating how the rest of the world operates; yet here, he wants to dictate to us that we should "Suddenly" switch to metric. Sadly, he fails to realize that so many in our Country are close to being illiterate, and have problems understanding even the simplest of articles. We are here to INFORM. If we had to use hieroglyphics or sign language to get the information absorbed........We should. As usual, Wikipedia ego maniac admins and editors, are using this site to pursue and advance personal agendas. Sometimes the human being forgets where he is, and why he is there. Too bad.... Pocketthis (talk) 04:58, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Look, I'm not a populist, and I don't want to "dumb down" anything. But you know, there's nothing inherently dumb about miles. They're a perfectly fine unit. Any unit is fine, as long as it's well-defined (that leaves out leagues, I suppose). The metric system has some minor advantages for mental arithmetic in very simple situations, but they don't amount to much when you get beyond trivial stuff.
Obviously we're not going to report quantities in all possible systems of measurement, but I object to leaving out a very major one that is the most intuitive to a large number of readers. --Trovatore (talk) 11:26, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
This what I find most strange about not showing both measurements on Planetary measurements. The folks who taught us practically all we know about space: NASA, still uses miles as well as Kilometers to measure planetary distances. I went to the NASA website, and posed the following question: "What is the distance from the Earth to the Moon"? Here is a C&P of their answer:.................................................................
Distance to Earth: 238,900 miles (384,400 km).............................................................................................. Gravity: 1.622 m/s²........................................................................................................................ Orbital period: 27 days.................................................................................................................... Age: 4.527 billion years................................................................................................................... Declination: 28° 0.000'...................................................................................................................... Orbits: Earth. It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to see that our Wikipedia Policy should be changed immediately to reflect both measurements. Not only does NASA give both measurements, it gives Miles "First"; and puts Kilometers in ( ) Pocketthis (talk) 16:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I seem to have been cast as the big, bad bogeyman here. Okay. I don't care. But I will point out that I have not said that miles (or lengths of football fields, or widths of human hair) should be deleted from Wikipedia articles. I do think, however, that all measurements should be shown in metric units, alongside whatever others, and they should be given at least equal priority and visibility.
I have also not urged that the U.S. should suddenly switch to metric. I have said that countries that have switched have found that doing it suddenly works better than trying to do it slowly.
NASA uses different formats for its press releases than for its internal workings. Miles are used in press releases (sometimes with bizarre conversion errors, which fortunately have no effects on anything important).
Incidentally (trying to return to some relevance to this "Talk:Moon" page), the statement that the Moon orbits the Earth deserves some qualification. The Sun's gravity is stronger at the Moon thsn the Earth's. When the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, its path is concave toward the Sun, and (in a heliocentric frame of reference) curves away from the Earth. Only in an Earth-centred frame of reference does the Moon appear to circle the Earth. I think (not sure about this) that this makes the Moon unique among natural satellites of planets in our solar system. All others are affected by their planets' gravity more than by the Sun's.
Also, just to be clear about this...NASA caters primarily to US English speakers. The English Wikipedia caters to all English speakers in the world, of which only a little more than a fifth are from the US. This has been discussed multiple times and the consensus among editors, up to this point in time, has been to keep all articles that are scientific in nature in metric units since those are the units used world-wide for science, including scientists in the US. Also, all students in the US are taught the metric system in school...at least I was 30+ years ago...and I assume that is still the case. In college science courses in the US, metric units are used almost exclusively. However, I acknowledge that these statements don't mean that the general population in the US is comfortable with the system. As to whether the consensus among editors is going to change...that is another question.PhySusie (talk) 16:55, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
If you look at first-language speakers, the US accounts for more than 60%. How to count second-language speakers is tricky, because you don't know how to weight them. For example I have arguably three second languages: I'm pretty good in Italian, have high-school quality French and German, and a smattering of Spanish. How should I be counted for those languages?
The articles in question are not purely science articles, though they have a strong scientific aspect to them. Sure, I agree that when we're reporting the Bohr radius of the hydrogen atom, there's no sense in giving it in inches. But here we're talking about everyday objects that any person can see — the Earth, the Moon, the Sun. For those articles, while the scientific aspects of the article are important, there are other things to consider. --Trovatore (talk) 19:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I can understand using metric only measurements in other scientific articles. However, leaving miles out of "Planetary" articles is just plain ridiculous for all the reasons posted by the editors above. Thanks Pocketthis (talk) 17:08, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
In reply to DOwen: Glad to hear that you are not opposed to both measurements being displayed. In your comment about the moon's orbiting the earth: If you are referring to the NASA stats answer to the question I asked them, I only C&P'd their answer. You will have to argue with NASA about their response...not me. (would love to read that conversation). As far as you being the Boogie Man here, that is your own assessment; probably after re-reading your first post here. :) Also, a non measurement related thought; and only replying to your comment about us "Yanks dictating to the World"...."It's too bad that the World see's the US folks as World Police and Dictators, attributed almost 100% to the Presidency of the War Monger G.W. Bush. Obama has begun to undue some of the reputation damage left behind from that moron, but there is plenty of work ahead of us that must be done to repair the aftermath of his Presidency". Pocketthis (talk) 18:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm... As far as I recall, Kennedy was the president when the U.S. attempted to overthrow the Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs, in 1960 (or so). Nixon was the president when the U.S. incited the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Chile, in 1973, installing the fascist Pinochet dictatorship. Bush-the-father was president when the U.S. invaded Iraq, using trumped-up intelligence, in about 1990. Truman was president when the U.S. dropped atom bombs on Japan, which was then, according to many historians, just about to surrender at the end of WW2. Several presidents have coerced other countries into joining the failed "war on drugs", which has messed up many economies and cost many lives.
I'm not trying to pretend that Bush(minor) is innocent, but he is certainly not the only U.S. president, in my own living memory, to have harmed the reputation of the U.S. by bullying other countries.
I might agree with you on all the Presidents you mentioned except Kennedy. I lived through those times as a teenager, and I truly believe his back was against the wall with Cuba having Nuclear Missiles in our back yard. But enough on politics....it could get messy, and this isn't the place for it.Pocketthis (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I wasn't thinking of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, which Kennedy and Khrushchev managed to avert, but of the Bay of Pigs invasion, about 18 months earlier, when a group of Cuban renegades and U.S. forces invaded the south coast of Cuba with the intention of overthrowing the government, but were fought off. This was the source of much of the anti-US hatred that exists in Cuba until today. I've been there many times, and have seen the collections of captured US military equipment that are still proudly displayed.
Kind of funny....I watched a documentary on TV a few years ago about the CIA and all their failed attempts to kill Castro. There were over 60 attempts made to assassinate him, including poison, bombs, bullets, kidnapping, crashing into his convoy car, and every other kill tactic one might imagine to eliminate someone; short of dropping a Piano on his head. The guy walked away still breathing from all of them. :) Pocketthis (talk) 03:37, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
Before this discussion degenerates into a political battle, I just want to state that in the US, metric is almost nonexistent. In school the only time we ever use metric is if the ruler has a centimeter side, and the lab packet says to write in metric. Outside of that, nearly everything larger than an eighth of an inch and heavier than an ounce is described in US-Standard, and Us-Standard alone (though things smaller than that do take metric out of lack of an alternative American unit). The only exception I can think are nutrition labels nobody reads, which use both systems.—Kelvinsong (talk) 21:01, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I was waiting for a student like yourself to follow the post about learning the metric system in school. It's been quite a few years since I was a student; so I couldn't argue the point. I'm glad you showed up to clarify that Kelvinsong. I only know that living in this Country my entire life, I have never personally seen anything even remotely resembling the metric system; except using a micrometer to measure watch parts, and seeing millimeters on the other side of a ruler. I've been driving over 50 years, and have never seen a speed limit sign in Kilometers. There appears to be no efforts at all to change to metrics anywhere in this Country. If Wikipedia is trying to punish us for that by not allowing distance in miles to be displayed, it has no effect other than to add perplexity to the articles. Pocketthis (talk) 22:09, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
The metric (aka SI) system is actually the standard in all technical and scientific fields, even in the US. The American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) won't even accept papers submitted to its journals that make use of US Customary units (feet, pounds, etc.), and NASA uses SI units pretty much exclusively-- I noticed here at JPL that the speed limit signs are given in kph first and then mph in parentheses. Of course, the values are based on California law, so the mph numbers are multiples of 5 whereas the kph aren't, but so it goes. All this aside-- I can't fathom why there would be any reason not to include BOTH sets of units in these infoboxes, with SI units first. It doesn't take up much room, and there are autoconversion templates to make it a trivial task. This entire discussion seems to be a waste of time. siafu (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your post and opinion. As to this entire discussion being a waste of time....you'd be right if miles were included along with Kilometers in Planetary articles; however, unfortunately, as illogical as it may be......they're not. Pocketthis (talk) 23:33, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
They certainly can be if we want them to be. "It's a convention on astronomy articles" is not a valid reason against including distances in miles if there's a consensus to have it be that way on this page. We don't actually need to be consistent with the entirety of astronomical works on wikipedia, and this is a perfect example of what IAR is for-- when a convention interferes with the improvement or improved readability or understandability of an article, it should be ignored. While it's perfectly reasonable to have only SI units on less visited astronomical pages (e.g. those on smaller solar system bodies, extrasolar objects, etc.), but in this case, a reasonable chunk of the some 300+ million Americans (~30+ million of which are, like my mother, over the age of 60 and are not about to learn metric units any time soon) who won't intuitively understand kilometers are likely to visit the article on the Moon. There's no need to prove that this represents some large proportion of the total-- the sheer number of them should be enough to merit such a small change. It's an easy change, and it won't interfere with the existing preference for SI units. We can, of course, hold an RfC to see what the community thinks, but this should really be a no-brainer. siafu (talk) 23:50, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
I love your confidence sir; and I hope we do see a positive change toward the logical decision to include miles in Planetary Articles.
Thanks, and I guess we'll see what happens. If I can be of any assistance to you in accomplishing our goal, please feel free to contact me on my talk page. Pocketthis (talk) 02:28, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
After being told, some time ago, that miles were not allowed in the Sun article because of some unspecified policy, I support your campaign to include these units for those of us (not just Americans) who think more clearly in Imperial. Dbfirs23:34, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
I believe I do remember that miles/meters issue you refer to in the Sun article. If it was the incident I remember, you persisted, and even went back in and changed it after the Admin pulled it. Of course you weren't going to win the debate with that Admin. It may have been the same Admin that pulled the miles from here, though my memory may be playing tricks on me. I agreed with you during that debate, but I was too new and too green to get involved in the conversation; which if I remember correctly, took place in the "editing comments" only. If it wasn't you ....I hope you enjoyed my story anyway...:) Glad to have you on our consensus team. One of these days, one of us should go into the Moon article, put some miles along side those meters, and see if our consensus means squat! In the "Appearance from Earth section", here is what's there now: "The distance between the Moon and the Earth varies from around 356,400 km to 406,700 km at the extreme perigees (closest) and apogees (farthest)". Then of course there are the charts that all leave out miles. I'm getting tired even thinking about this edit. I nominate: Dbfirs for the task. You have the science knowledge, as well as the Cahoonahs to get the job done. I've got your back..:) Thanks Pocketthis (talk) 01:59, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
It's really silly to try to use familiar units to express unfamiliar quantities. You may know what a distance of 5 miles feels like. You know how long you would take to walk it, drive it in a car, and so on. You can compare it with similar distances with which you are familiar. But if you say that the Moon is (roughly) a quarter of a million miles from Earth, what does that really mean? All you can tell from that number is that it's a long way. You can do some arithmetic with it, comparing it with other astronomical distances, but you can do that equally well with kilometres, even if you don't use them in everyday life. Putting miles into astronomical articles is just a waste of space. DOwenWilliams (talk) 02:26, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
David, I know how long it takes me to drive 250 miles, and I can multiply by a thousand, but I could do that more easily if time were metric. Have you any plans? Dbfirs09:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. When do you plan to start replacing all sexagesimal and other time units with kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds and teraseconds? Dbfirs07:41, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
That's done already. In SI, the second is the base unit of time. Minutes, hours, etc., are tolerated, but they're not official. I'vr never seen a hexadecimal clock, but I suppose computers use binary. DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:21, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
No, it's not done already! This article alone mentions minutes twice, hours twice and days at least a dozen times without giving the metric SI equivalent. Why can't we mention a quarter of a million miles just once? Clocks don't use base 16, but my clocks indicate 60 seconds in one minute and 60 minutes in one hour. That's sexagesimal. Dbfirs17:19, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
There are decimal units of time, and angles, etc., but unfortunately they's not used much. For example, a kilometre is the distance on the Earth's surface that subtends an angle of one centigrade at its centre. A centigrade is a hundredth of a grade, which is a hundredth of a right-angle. The temperature scale is Celsius. DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
David, that doesn't surprise me considering you grew up using metrics, however, you are flip-flopping. Here is your last comment about the issue here: "I do think, however, that all measurements should be shown in metric units, alongside whatever others, and they should be given at least equal priority and visibility". Have you been hanging around with Mitt Romney again?? :) Pocketthis (talk) 02:57, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
When I was a kid in England, the Imperial System (e.g. 2240 lbs to a ton, 20 fluid ounces to a pint) was the one by which I was surrounded. Money was expressed in pounds, shillings and pence, and we wasted huge amounts of time in math classes learning how to do arithmetic in these units, carrying a shilling when the number of pence exceeded 12, and a pound when the number of shillings exceeded 20. It was all very silly. My parents took me on trips to continental Europe, where money was decimal, e.g. 100 centimes to a franc, and other things were measured in the metric system. It was obviously so much better than the British system, that even at the age of about 8, I wondered why we didn't switch over. Eventually, when I was in my 20s, the government announced plans to decimalize the money. The plan was to do it gradually, so people would have time to get used to it. The new coins would be introduced, but for quite a long time, people would be able to use whichever they wished. Some stores would use decimal, and others would use the old money. This was even sillier than the old money on its own. The great British public said "to hell with that", and almost instantly threw away the old money (took it to banks to change) and started using the decimal coins. Instead of months or years, the changeover was done in a few days, and worked just fine. Similarly, countries that have fairly painlessly converted to metric have found that doing it suddenly is much better than dragging it out.
I said that metric units should be given at least as much prominence as others. Having no others fits the bill.
David, your recollection is inaccurate. The switch was made on Decimal Day (February 15th 1971) when all prices were displayed in decimal currency. Very few retailers allowed use of decimal currency before that, and it was not generally available to the public except for the ten shilling, florin and shilling equivalents that carried the "new pence" marking. The old currency (1d and 3d) disappeared quickly because all change was given in decimal coins, but it remained legal tender for six months just to allow people to get rid of it in multiples of 6d. The sixpence, shilling and florin remained legal tender and in circulation until 1980, 1990 and 1992 respectively because they had exact decimal equivalents. The florin had been introduced in 1849 as a first step towards decimalisation. Dbfirs09:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
Yes. I read the Wikipedia piece about "Decimal day", and it agrees with what you say. But it strongly disagrees with my direct memory of events. So which should I believe, Wikipedia or my own memory? Interesting question...
Incidentally, here in Canada, we are now in the process of getting rid of the penny (one-cent coin). They're still legal tender, and we can spend them in stores, but they are no longer given in change or issued by banks. We can write cheques or do electronic transactions in exact numbers of cents, but cash transactions are rounded to the nearest five cents.
There were a lot of starts made in Britain toward decimalization. Many of the differences betweek the Imperial and United States systems of units originated from changes made to make the Imperial system more like the metric one. For example, the mass of one Imperial fluid ounce of water is one ounce. A gallon of water is ten pounds.
The use of furlongs was encouraged for a while. An acre is one tenth of a square furlong. Ten furlongs are very close to two kilometres. It was hoped that this would ease the transition to metrication. This worked, here in Ontario, but much later. Lord Simcoe had the province surveyed on a grid with ten-furlong squares, and major roads were laid out on this grid. When we went metric, in the 1970s, the major roads were two kilometres apart, as if by magic!
Perhaps things were different where you lived (near Wales?), but the article matches my recollection fairly accurately. I did obtain some decimal coins prior to "D-day" and exchanged them for old currency at a youth club where I helped. A local ice-cream vendor allowed the children to buy his product with decimal coins before "D-day" at a slight discount, so they were keen to use the new coins. Other than these exceptional arrangements (along with pre-printed prices), I seem to recollect that all prices were changed to decimal on a single day. Perhaps some shops in your locality ignored Government instructions? I agree that attempts have been made to introduce metric units ever since 1849. I'm happy with both metric and imperial for most measurements, but certainly prefer miles because kilometres are seldom used in the UK. Dbfirs16:30, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
At that time, I was living in the Bayswater district of London, right across the road from Kensington Palace. But sure, I accept that my memories may have changed over the years. I sometimes talk with my sister about events in our childhoods. It's like we lived on different planets. Of course, I'm sure I'm right and she is wrong. She is equally sure...
But the important fact is that the decimal changeover happened fast, in less than a week. That's the way to make changes.
Yes, the actual changeover went very smoothly and quickly, but the preparation had been long and detailed, with the first decimal coins coming into use nearly five years earlier (or 124 years earlier if you count the deci-pound or florin). (Apologies for guessing your location from your name.) Dbfirs20:10, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
The next time President Obama asks me to find him someone that will talk the entire population of my Country into using the Metric system in a just a few days.....Darn it...I'm going to give him your name and contact info! Thanks Pal :) Pocketthis (talk) 03:48, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
Probably the only way to do it would be for the US to declare war against somewhere like Sweden. When the Swedes win, they will occupy the States for a while, and impose the metric system. (They'll probably also impose some other aspects of civilized Scandinavian life.) The occupation will probably only last a few years, and afterwards, things will be a lot better. ;-) DOwenWilliams (talk) 19:46, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
True story David: I talked with Obama yesterday, and told him of your plan of how to switch over to the metric system, 'and' "only in a few days". His reply was: "Metric system? we're not ever going to switch over to that Mumbo Jumbo....and besides, even if we were, Williams is the last guy I would ever ask to help me with anything. He hates Americans". sorry David, but your reputation precedes you.
Don't be paranoid. I don't hate you. I think Obama would avoid the expression "mumbo jumbo". Some people might think that it indicates that he was born in Kenya.DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
On my side of the Pond, it just refers to anything so scrambled it makes no sense. Perfect for how the metric system looks to those who have never used it. That may be the most outrageous statement I've ever seen you post. Goodbye David.Pocketthis (talk) 04:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
Goodbye, again. Let me know when you regain your sense of humour.
Incidentally: According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary:
Mumbo Jumbo is a noun and is the name of a grotesque idol said to have been worshipped by some tribes. In its figurative sense, Mumbo Jumbo is an object of senseless veneration or a meaningless ritual.
The reflectance of moon surface is very poor similar to coal / black body. By improving the reflectance of moon surface, the natural illuminations during nights on earth can be enhanced more than the full moon light. The outer surface of moon is covered by sand similar to beach sands on earth and also moon does not possess atmospheric winds. If we can create white pigment from the sand, etc available on the moon surface with solar energy and this white pigment is sprayed aerially on the moon surface which is near side of moon from the earth, the pigment remains undisturbed (except by meteor impacts) forever. Thus moon can serve mankind better by reducing artificial lighting & heating energy needed on the earth during nights. Comment please.124.123.220.131 (talk) 06:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
It's an interesting idea, but I can't imagine that the authorities responsible for street lighting would be willing to pay the costs. The system would be useless at new moon, and not very effective on cloudy nights (that's most nights where I live). I don't think the heating effect would be significant. Dbfirs06:58, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
This question shouldn't be here, as Wikipedia is not a forum or discussion board, but I will answer it anyway. Your idea is to somehow turn lunar soil, dark as coal, into a bright white pigment? How exactly? And even if it was possible it would be far, far easier to leave the lights/heating on rather than to terraform the entire moon. It is very questionable if adding more light pollution would be beneficial to mankind but it would certainly be devastating to nocturnal species and possibly much of earth's ecology at that. Also, even if the heating effect were somehow significant it would be the opposite of what we want, given that firstly, earth's temperatures are already rising and this is not beneficial, and secondly, equatorial regions don't need more heat, but this would be be catastrophic to cold-adapted wildlife in colder regions. Reatlas(talk)10:21, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
It may not be true that faster global warming would result with the use of moon for enhanced moonlit nights on earth. During summers in tropical regions (such as North Africa, Middle east & Indian subcontinent), these regions are receiving huge solar incidence /energy during day time but unable to reflect the received energy back to outer space in the form of infrared radiation. This is due to presence high altitude cirrus clouds laden with minute ice crystals which reflect the infrared /long wave radiation back to earth but passes the short wavelength to earth surface from the sun during day time. Refer http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/135641main_clouds_trifold21.pdf "The importance of understanding clouds"
The net effect is accumulation of solar energy on earth surface which is the reason for the very high minimum daily temperatures of 36 deg C and also high maximum daily of 45 deg C . These high ambient temperatures are also causing frequent dust storms and tornadoes in the region to transfer the accumulated solar energy in the form of mass transfer by creating low pressure / Hadley cells. If these cirrus clouds are subjected to enhanced long wave radiation from the moon, they would dissipate faster (ice crystals are melted to super cooled water in the cirrus clouds) facilitating earth to radiate its accumulated energy to outer space. Thus these tropical regions would be saved from abnormal high day and night time temperatures / tornados/dust storms.
Instead of coating large area of moon with long wave radiation reflecting pigment, it would be better economical preposition to send geo stationary satellites to moon with solar reflector sail to reflect need based moon light on to the big cities (Delhi, Karachi, Cairo, etc) which are suffering from high ambient temperatures.Kwdt2 (talk) 18:13, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree that decreasing night-time cloud and increasing day-time cloud cover will result in lowering the average temperature of the earth, but I fail to see how increasing the total radiation on the earth could result in cooling. The earth does indeed radiate heat faster during the day as a result of cloud dissipation, but the net effect of daytime insolation is heating. Why would this be different at night? I don't think your proposition is either economic or economical. I think it would be an economic and environmental disaster. Dbfirs21:34, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
The Moon is in radiative equilibrium. The energy it receives from the Sun is exactly balanced by the energy it sends back into space, either by reflecting sunlight or by thermal radiation from the lunar surface. Increasing the energy it reflects, mostly at short (e.g. visible) wavelengths, must cause it to radiate less at long wavelengths. So painting the Moon white would decrease the amount of long-wavelength, cloud-melting radiation it sends to the Earth.
There's another effect, too. The lunar surface is fairly retro-reflective, tending to reflect light back in the direction from which it came. Averaged over time, this means that sunlight tends to be reflected roughly in the plane of the ecliptic, which, seen from the Moon, includes the Earth. If the Moon were painted matt white, more radiation would be reflected away from the Earth, and less toward it.
Why in the world does himanshu redirect to here? Assuming there even is a good reason, it should be a disambig page at the least seeing as how many Himanshu's there are ErdoS (talk) 21:51, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I cannot comprehend how this has still not been addressed. There are tens of famous people named himanshu and yet it redirects here with not even a suggestion of a disambiguation. Fix this!? ErdoS (talk) 00:58, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Yes, 'Himanshu' page should list articles starting with name 'Himanshu'. Moon is known as 'Chaand' in hindi, not 'Himanshu'. You may create article. I don't think anybody will object. neo (talk) 06:21, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
Axial Tilt with respect to The Ecliptic
VERY BAD: the page lists two different value of the Moon's axial tilt with respect to the Ecliptic. The correct value is 1.5424 degrees. Different authors can be confused about this, but the HORIZONS Solar System navigation system at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory uses 1.5424 degrees. If that value were wrong all of our lunar spacecraft would enter the wrong orbits and eventually crash; it's the other value that's wrong. (If you want to test this, go to the HORIZONS interface: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi and enter Sun [Sol] 10 for the Target Body, enter @301 ( 0°00'00.0E, 90°00'00.0N, 1 km ) for the Observer at the Moon's North Pole, and QUANTITIES=1,4,9 for the Table Settings and you will see that the Sun never gets more than about 1.5 degrees from the horizon, hence defining the Ecliptic. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THIS? THIS IS A MAJOR ERROR. The science of the lunar poles cannot be understood with the erroneous value as it stands. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.131.137.189 (talk) 11:40, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
It seems you did not look at the wikipedia page on the Moon very hard. In the side box it says "Axial tilt: 1.5424° (to ecliptic)" but in the section under Seasons it says "The Moon's axial tilt with respect to the ecliptic is only 5.14°." Both of these cannot be true simultaneously; only the first one is the true value. Indeed it is the wikipedia page that is confusing orbital inclination and axial tilt w.r.t. the Ecliptic. If you need an authoritative source to fix this, you could consult Paul Spudis: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Dec96/IceonMoon.html or you perform the exercise suggested above which proves it beyond any question of orbital inclination. Or you could just leave it as is, with a glaring error that will confuse everybody. By the way, the figure immediately below the error in the Seasons section lists 5.14 degrees as the orbital inclination not the axial tilt, so that should be another really big clue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.59.171.178 (talk) 20:27, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Isn't the Hubble Space Telescope prevented from aiming at the Sun, Moon, and Earth? (Sorry, no cite that I could find.) If so, the caption for the second photograph is wrong.
69.180.177.223 (talk) 21:29, 4 June 2013 (UTC)
No. The Hubble is forbidden from aiming within 30 degrees of the Sun, which means it can't look at the Sun or Mercury. But it can look at the Moon or the Earth. DOwenWilliams (talk) 01:39, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
Edit Request June 21, 2013
Is there a good reason why I can't find ANYWHERE in the article the distance from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the Moon. I can tell you definitively that a LOT of people ask that question (or related q's) on Yahoo!Answers. Not talking center to center distance. What is the minimum and maximum distance (from say sea level) to the (average) surface? Thanks216.96.76.236 (talk) 13:09, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
Subtract the radius of both the Earth and Moon from the distance from the center to center between each. Note: The Earth's radius varies at difference locations, and the average distance between the Earth and Moon might vary. - Sidelight12Talk13:18, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
That will give you the distance to the point on the Moon's surface which appears as the centre of its disk, assuming you are at the point on the Earth where the Moon is directly overhead. About six hours later, when the Moon is about to set, the distance to the centre of its disk will be greater by about the radius of the Earth. If you look at the edge of the disk, the distance is greater than to the centre by the radius of the Moon. Over a period of a month, the distance varies by about 11 percent.
So it's a simple-sounding question with a rather complicated answer.
the Moon is not 5th largest satellite because the 8 planets are also satellites (of the Sun).
it is the 5th largest satellite of a planet.
the opening paragraph consistently confuses satellite of a planet with a satellite in general, which would include the 8 planets.
the opening paragraph should also say that the Moon is the 14th largest object in our solar system.
19:21, 2 July 2013 (UTC) Michael Christian
It is, because the definition of (natural) satellite is that it is in orbit around a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body, not a body that orbits another body. --JorisvS (talk) 19:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)
To avoid misunderstanding, I've inserted the word "planetary" before satellite. Does this solve the perceived problem? The fact about it being the 14th largest object in the solar system (slightly smaller and lighter than Io) could go in a later paragraph. We could also mention that it rises to 11th in order of surface gravity (being much denser than Ganymede, Titan and Callisto). I'm not sure how much value this would add to the article. Dbfirs15:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
That's meaningless. It is the 5th-largest object in the Solar System not in direct orbit around the Sun (i.e. "natural satellite"). It simply is not necessary to further qualify it. --JorisvS (talk) 21:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
No, it's not meaningless, though I agree that if anyone clicks the link to natural satellite they will see that we mean planetary satellite. Unfortunately, we have some readers who take terminology literally, and think that satellite means any body that orbits another. We know that this is not the usual meaning, but that definition is still given in some dictionaries. Dbfirs07:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Maybe phrase it like my description above, "It is the 5th-largest object in the Solar System not in direct orbit around the Sun (natural satellite)"? --JorisvS (talk) 13:02, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Note that it's not just the largest satellite of any planet in the Solar System, but also of those of any minor planet. --JorisvS (talk) 13:04, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
No, that phrasing is just more wordy and could even be harder to understand for your average reader. I don't really see any need to change the phrasing; there isn't evidence that a significant number of people don't know the proper definition of satellite since it's a fairly common term, and if we change it here we'd have to change it on every other satellite page. Reatlas(talk)13:37, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Sorry, I tried JorisvS's phrasing while you were making your comment above. The problem is in the varying definition of satellite, depending on which dictionary you read. You will see that Satellite (disambiguation) includes planets as satellites of the sun. Dbfirs13:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the disambiguation page needs to be corrected so it doesn't contradict the actual natural satellite page it links then. Well. Yet another (edit conflict). Never mind that then. Anyway, if confusion arises from the term "satellite", when sans "natural", perhaps we rephrase to "the fifth largest moon in the Solar System."? Reatlas(talk)14:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I almost suggested "moon" myself. Thanks JorisvS for removing the inconsistency, and Reatlas for simplifying the article. Dbfirs06:58, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
The Kona, Hawaii Conference of 1984, and the process of science
pages 166-167: " . . . Early in 1983, Bill Hartmann, Roger Phillips (director of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston), and Jeff Taylor (a geologist at the University of Hawaii) decided to organize a conference devoted to the origin of the Moon. It would be held in the resort town of Kona. More than a decade had passed since the last Moon landing, and it was high time to face the biggest mystery left from the Apollo years. They sent out a challenge to their fellow researchers: You have eighteen months. Go back to your Apollo data, go back to your computer, do whatever you have to, but make up your mind. Don’t come to our conference unless you have something to say about the Moon’s birth.
"Hartmann says he never thought that the giant impact model would come out on top in the debate, only that it would get some attention. But in the summer of 1984, he and Taylor got together to read the abstracts that other scientists were sending in, one- to two-page digests of the talks they were planning to give. It was like getting the first exit polls from an election. Hartmann and Taylor could tell then that a big upset was brewing, but no one else knew it until October. . . "
pages 167-68: " . . . Before the conference, there were partisans of the three “traditional” theories, plus a few people who were starting to take the giant impact seriously, and there was a huge apathetic middle who didn’t think the debate would ever be resolved. Afterward there were essentially only two groups: the giant impact camp and the agnostics.
"For the most part, the change in attitude came about not because of a single revelation, but because so many of the speakers, when forced to commit themselves, had concluded that the giant impact looked better than any of the alternatives. And they had done so independently. . . "
I think it is well worth integrating some of this into our Formation section where we talk about the giant impact hypothesis. This also helps to illustrate some of the human, real-world process of science. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 13:49, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
about the "Presence of water" part
for duration of last 35~40 years man was thinking water or hydroxil molecules found in moon rocks are any mistake or mixing of air vapor .recently or works show that solar wind can be able to produce water , ammonia and methane (A suitable solution for finding transposition phase of exchanging solar wind ions to. chemical molecules ,H2O,NH3,CH4. AkbarMohammadzade. ), west scientists do agree with our theory and write in their articles and some news as:(Some researchers believe there's water on the Moon in reach of human explorers.)[nasa web site ]
now we are researching about :either the solar wind ions combine with their kinetic energy coming from its blowing speed ,or its containing ions and atoms do tunneling for jump to combination step .
we will publish it as soon as we got results .--Akbarmohammadzade (talk) 03:50, 10 September 2013 (UTC)
An email is going around claiming that a supermoon is 14% "bigger" than ordinary. That sounded a bit high to me, so I came looking for actual figures on diameter and distances. But it turns out this article lists two different sets of distance figures, and when I look it up elsewhere I find a surprising amount of variance:
I don't see anything about it in Eric Weisstein. It has to be there; I just can't find it, I'm sure. Still, it seems we oughta be able to agree at least within a single Wiki article.
I haven't changed it because I don't yet have what I regard as authoritative figures. But surely they exist? And back to the 14% "larger" claim; it ought to specify diameter (I'll change that myself), and if the top table is right that's only 11.8%, not 14%.
RHBridges (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:12, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that the Moon's path is not a simple ellipse with the Earth at a focus. It is distorted, by thousands of kilometres, mainly by the tidal component of the Sun's gravitational field. The result is that some perigees are closer to the Earth than others, and the same with apogees. So what distance gets quoted as the perigee distance? The absolute closest distance, perhaps, or the average perigee distance, or whatever? Really, the concept that there is a perigee distance is an over-simplification. DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:29, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
If coal were totally black, you wouldn't be able to see the individual pieces in a pile of coal. During the Apollo missions, the cameras were adjusted to make the lunar surface easily visible in the images. Wide apertures were used, so the surface looked fairly bright. The spacesuits also looked bright, not very different. DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:15, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Looking at the picture I linked, the moon dust that is stuck on the wheel of the rover really doesn't look coal black when compared to the black tire. Also in this picture the lunar soil looks dark brownish gray, not black like coal dust is. PahaOlo (talk) 16:11, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The parts of the suit that point straight up (just like the surface of the moon) are actually overexposed, so we don't know how bright they are, but they have exceeded the range of the film/scan. The moon surface has a brightness of between .38 and .4, meaning that it has less than half the brightness of the suit. Also keep in mind that the lower range of the image may have been brightened to show the detail in the otherwise very dark shadow areas, for example the side of the suit facing the camera. Also, the suit is covered with a small amount of the very fine moon dust, making it grey. — Julian H.✈ (talk) 16:16, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The albedo article says bare soil has albedo of about 0.17 which is much closer to the albedo of the moon. Also in the picture of lunar soil I linked, the lunar soil indeed looks just slightly darker than the soil on earth. I'll remove the comparison to coal from the moon article. PahaOlo (talk) 16:32, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
The albedo article says worn asphalt has albedo of 0.12. Then the moon would be slightly brighter than worn asphalt. So it's gray, exactly as it looks in the pictures. PahaOlo (talk) 17:06, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Request for geologic history of the moon section
I was hoping to find some information concerning the geologic history of the moon. I am interested in major events. The article mentions formation about 4.5 billion years ago. I am also interested in (approximately) when the moon cooled to have a solid crust, and (approximately) when it became tidally locked to the earth.
I'm inclined to agree that the moon may be younger than the over-precise age given in the one reference text. I've added a (less authoritative) reference which suggests a slightly later formation. Can anyone find the original paper to replace my web link? Dbfirs21:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the improvement. I'll add your ref. These can be replaced by the paper when it is published. Dbfirs19:40, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Challenging the age of the moon
I do not think that the moon could be so old. There's not enough dust, and it's too close, so why do people believe that. I will be removing that claim if no one responds to this.Njaohnt (talk) 16:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
The age of the Moon has been verified by radioactive dating. Engaging in such disruptive behaviour as removing sourced material because it doesn't coincide with your views is a fast track to getting blocked. Serendipodous17:13, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I can show you multiple places where radioactive dating didn't work. Decay rates change, and so does the amount of radioactive elements. Njaohnt (talk) 18:43, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
If you want to challenge the referenced information in the article, either find a good reference for your opinion, or get your theory published in a respected scientific journal (then we can use your published theory as a reference). Under no circumstances should you just remove a referenced claim because you disagree with it. That is not the way Wikipedia works. Dbfirs17:41, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
This ICR article quotes a calculation by Lord Kelvin about the age of the Earth and moon based upon an initial molton Earth. Kelvin's calculations on the age of the Earth were humongously wrong because Kelvin was unaware of radioactivity, and radioactive heating in the core of the Earth. The article you are quoting was written by Thomas G. Barnes, whose ideas are regarded as WP:FRINGE science, and his doctorate was honourary one.Martin45122:30, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I will remake the section, but only include the distance from the earth part. No one ever finds anything wrong with that one. Njaohnt (talk) 14:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The reason ICR is not a reliable source is because it is not a scientific site. Science starts with a hypothesis, tests the hypothesis, and then discards the hypothesis if the test contradicts it. Creationism starts with a hypothesis, looks for evidence to support that hypothesis, and then discards any evidence that contradicts it. Serendipodous09:08, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
No. That site seems pretty scientific. They started with their hypothesis, found the evidence, and even removed the part about moon dust, because it was not true. It is scientifically accurate to say that the moon should be farther out. I've never seen any scientific evidence that the moon is billions of years old. The age of the moon is all based on the assumption that the earth is billions of years old. Njaohnt (talk) 14:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
No it's not; it's based on the fact that moon rocks have been directly radioactively dated to be billions of years old. No scientist would make such an assumption as you claim; there's no reason whatsoever to assume that the Moon is billions of years old simply because the Earth is. ICR is the Institute for Creation Research. It is very much a creationist site, and creationist sites are not allowed as sources on Wikipedia. Serendipodous14:16, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Look at http://www.atenizo.org/evolution-c14-kar.htm K-Ar dating doesn't work. Where does it say that creationist sites aren't allowed as sources? If that's the truth, I think Wikipedia is very closed minded. If I were an atheist, I would never believe the moon is billions of years old. The other thing is that it is my claim against yours, even if K-Ar dating does work, why is K-Ar dating better than more physical evidence? I'd bet they just K-Ar dated the moon just to have evidence that the moon is billions of years old. Njaohnt (talk) 20:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Potassium-argon dating measures the time since rocks were last molten, which is commonly called the "age" of the rocks. The fact that rocks from the Sea of Tranquillity, and other places on the Moon that have certainly been molten since its formation, have been dated at about 4.5 billion years old means that the Moon, as a body, has existed for at least that long. DOwenWilliams (talk) 15:43, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
Creationist websites again are not valid sources for Wikipedia. If you're going to declare radioactive dating invalid than you might as well declare every geological article on this site invalid. It's general policy on this site to value the combined opinions of every geological scientist on Earth over the opinions of one man currently serving a 10-year jail sentence for tax fraud. Perhaps you'd be better off at Conservapedia or CreationWiki. Serendipodous20:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The problem with that above is that it disproves science by quoting Hovind's young Earth interpretation of the bible. Hovind has declared that the Earth is of the order 10,000 years old, and uses that declaration to disprove carbon dating, and justify his beliefs, his methods have very little scientific method. wrt. K-Ar dating, there will be anomalies, in fact it would be suspect if there were none. Living mollusc shell dated as 2000 years old, perhaps that's because they take in sources of carbon from limestone.Martin45122:26, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
If the dates are unreliable then the dates are unreliable, no matter what the cause. But you're assuming his claims are true. I know there are complexities in C14 dating, to the extent that you even need to specify that dates are C14 dates, and further whether they're calibrated. We'd need to see what the KAr folks have to say about problems in their field, but of course such things are taken into account when giving these dates. — kwami (talk) 07:08, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
Earth-Moon distance
This describes what is wrong with the idea that the Earth-Moon system is no older that 1.4 billion years. The moon is currently receding at 3.8cm a year. Young when he calculated the maximum age as 1.4 billion years assumed that the rate of recession was slowing as the moon receded (1/X^6) but scientific data show that it the rate is increasing (or is higher than the average for the last 650 million years).Martin45122:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth and the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. Owing to its synchronous rotation around Earth, the Moon always shows the same face: its near side, which is marked by dark volcanic maria as well as the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. Here, the Moon was near its greatest northern ecliptic latitude, so the southern craters are especially prominent.Photo: Gregory H. Revera
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In the paragraph starting with "China has pursued...", the Chang'e 1 probe (launched in November of 2007) is said to have crashed on 1 March 2008, but the very next sentence says the mission lasted for sixteen months, and even the cited source (footnote #158) correctly says the mission ended on March 1 of 2009, not 2008.
"its surface is actually dark, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt"
Any picture of the moon shows that its colour varies widely over its surface. Pictures of moon rocks also typically show fairly pale minerals, nothing at all the colour of worn asphalt.
So is this "worn asphalt" thing an average, with some parts lighter and others darker?
This has been an issue for years. I wish someone with the requisite knowledge could sort it out. Just inserting the word "average", if that is what is meant, would do the job. 86.176.208.253 (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if this helps, but in every picture I've seen with both the moon and earth in the same frame, with the earth exposed to look like it would look to the human eye, the moon looks either a dull grey or brown. You can see it in the color Earthrise image as well as in other satellite images that show the moon and earth in the same frame. — TimL • talk09:42, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that does help. There's also the issue of how worn the asphalt is, and of course that direct unfiltered sunlight might make things look brighter than on the surface of the Earth. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
It's a more of an optical illusion. When you compare the moon to the absolute darkness of space, it appears much brighter than it really is. This is known as a contrast illusion.
I've replaced the derived perigee and apogee values with the true ones. The previous one were strictly derived from the semimajor and eccentricity values. People who have been using the values either think the distance is constant, or that the given distances were averages.
Problem is, those are not averages. Those calculations assume an elliptical orbit, which is a fairly good approximation, but less so than most cases. The averages I included (and first entered in the Orbit of the Moon article) are based on the real values. To the nearest km, it would depend on exactly which time frame is used. But these entries do not claim such accuracy.
Saros136 (talk) 08:59, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Here is a spreadsheet of mine with perigees, apogees, averages, and extremes from 1900-2099. Only one part of my last change-the statement that the minimum apogees are 404,000 km-is not supported within this time frame. The extreme is 404,051 km
Regarding the recent back-and-forth on "brightness", there is a related problem — actually, an internal contradiction, as the text stands. The article currently claims, in the second paragraph
It is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun,....
and later on
...it is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun.
Technically, I expect the second statement is correct, as the brightest object in the sky after the Sun is probably Venus. You see much less light from Venus than you do from the Moon, but it is more concentrated, and thus "brighter". Of course this is not an extremely intuitive use of the word "bright" to the casual reader.
Not sure what the best solution is here. Maybe use the layman's sense of "bright", and then qualify it with explanatory footnotes? --Trovatore (talk) 22:11, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
I've been struggling with this. It's turning out to be more meddlesome than I expected. Brightness as laypeople (like me) seemingly use it is differently than how astronomers use it. Wikipedia's own article on Brightness is quite scant. There is the total luminosity of an object, and most people would say a larger CFL bulb (one with more surface area) is brighter than a smaller one even if it has the same luminance (which is what our article defines as brightness) because it would produce a greater luminous flux. So the luminance of the full moon is always the same, but its luminous flux is greater when it has a greater angular diameter and hence I think most people would consider it "brighter". Put another way, A full moon at perigee makes objects on the ground 14% brighter (taking into the logarithmic perception of brightness as mentioned in the article) than the a full moon at apogee. I can't think of a "clean and simple" way to write this. Essentially the moon is not "brighter", but it's angular diameter (from the perspective of the earth) is greater thus emitting more light and making everything on the earth it shines on brighter. — TimL • talk00:28, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Right, and it gets complicated because that's all fine as long as you can resolve the object as a disk. When you get past the limit where you can resolve it as a disk, then optically, the image can't get smaller (it's already as small as it can get), so the reduction in light can only be perceived as a reduction in brightness.
Is it possible to resolve Venus as a disk? According to phases of Venus, yes, just barely, under ideal conditions for people with exceptional eyesight. So I would expect Venus to be brighter than the Moon, assuming comparable albedo, because it's closer to the Sun. But there's a lot of details I haven't taken into consideration. --Trovatore (talk) 02:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Regarding Venus, all naked eye visible planets are resolvable as a disk otherwise they would twinkle. That is how I was tough to tell if I was looking at a planet or a star. So even Mercury is resolved as a disk, Venus easily so. But, back to your point about stars, brightness is much simpler, since a star resolves as a point of light, it's brightness depends both on what I tend to call "intrinsic brightness" (luminosity per unit surface area), and it's overall surface area. As you say with "disks" like the moon the terminology seems confusing. — TimL • talk03:06, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think you can make the logical step from "doesn't twinkle" to "resolvable as a disk". If your eyes get worse, fewer things will be resolvable as a disk, but that won't make them twinkle. It might be true that if it doesn't twinkle then that means there's some optical system that can resolve it, but not necessarily the human eye. --Trovatore (talk) 06:13, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
Take a look at Twinkling. By "resolved as a disk" generally it is meant that a disk shape is projected onto the retina, (rather than a stream of individual photons as in the case of a star) even though it may be to small for us to tell that we are seeing a disk. Even a tiny planet then, instead of twinkling, blurs out a little, what astronomer refer to as "seeing". — TimL • talk05:08, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Mercury also has a higher surface brightness. Its albedo is about the same as that of the Moon, but it is much more brightly illuminated, being much closer to the Sun. DOwenWilliams (talk) 19:17, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
I haven't completely digested the "surface brightness" article, but I'm concerned that just using that phrase, and a link, makes it sound as though it's just about something you would observe near the surface of those planets. What I'm talking about is explicitly what you observe from Earth, but restricted to the disk of the objects. If they have "disks", which still seems to be somewhat unclear. --Trovatore (talk) 19:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC)
I propose a statement such as "Although the surface brightness of the full moon stays the same, due to its increased angular diameter at perigee, it's total brightness is 14% greater than the when at apogee." Thoughts? (as far as the whole contradiction regarding Venus I have as of yet nothing to say) — TimL • talk05:04, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't know why either line needs to be in the article, especially if it is this hard to explain. What value does relative brightness of the moon to other sky objects to an earth observer add to the article?--Asher196 (talk) 16:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
"Brightness" has two meanings, so we need to make clear which sense we are using. I suggest adding a footnote to the claim about "brightest object after the Sun" (in the second paragraph of the lead). Venus certainly looks "brighter" to my eyes, using an everyday sense of "brightness", but it's not as bright in the other sense because it appears much smaller. A simple measurement could be made with two identical telescopes (of good magnification). The view of Venus (and Mercury) would look brighter. Dbfirs17:08, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
I think in the case you specify it would be best to avoid the term brightness altogether and instead say "the moon is the second most luminous object in the sky after the sun". — TimL • talk20:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)
Yes, I think that would reduce the ambiguity, though because of the astronomical meaning of luminosity, we would have to add "as seen from Earth". Dbfirs14:16, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
Well I think the phrase "in the sky" us sufficient to imply "from the earth" for the second paragraph. — TimL • talk23:27, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
"...it is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun." This appears to be a typo. Based on the note appended to it I'm pretty sure what was meant is that it is the brightest object in the sky after the sun (again though, most luminous, every star visible to the naked eye has a higher surface brightness, I did not remove the term brightness in this case for now). — TimL • talk23:49, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Yesterday, someone put a nice image of the Moon, with major features labelled, into the article down near the bottom. I decided it would be useful near the lead, so I moved it there, in place of a plain image of the Moon (NOT "Luna") that was there. Someone has undone my edit, saying that "to him" the image looks too detailed.
It's in a panel that is full of detailed information, with parameters of the Moon's orbit, size, etc., all stated with great precision. The labelled image fits in just fine. It is immensely more informative than the plain image it replaces, which is really useless to anyone who has ever looked at the Moon.
I've reverted the article back to the way I left it yesterday. If anyone changes it again, I won't fight it. This is only Wikipedia, after all.
What about the theory that the moon was captured in the Earth's gravity when it was struck by an asteroid while passing by? The asteroid strike slowed it enough for capture (instead of the extended atmosphere slow-down theory), and left severe scaring on the moon's surface, and an imbalance which forced it into a synchronous orbit. --172.243.214.193 (talk) 05:10, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
Not done Ha ha, no. If you want a serious answer: a fictional feature film is not a reliable source, whether it is made with real actors or stop-motion puppets.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds19:29, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 17 October 2014
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"It is the most luminous object in the sky after the Sun." (second sentence of the second paragraph.)
Please change most luminous to brightest in this sentence since Moon is not a luminous object. This is confusing.
There was a long discussion about this some time ago, and the link to luminosity was a compromise. Most stars are "brighter" than the moon (in one sense of brightness). The problem is that the words mean different things to different people. Can anyone suggest a phrasing that is valid for all meanings of the words used? Dbfirs17:36, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
@Tomruen: Thanks for your link to Astronomical objects, but these can include occasional objects of greater illuminance (the everyday meaning of brightness). I've tried to cover all pedantic objections to make the statement as true as we can make it, by excluding comets, meteorites and supernovae. Dbfirs09:43, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
Rotation and Synchronization
I noticed there is no chart for rotation and synchronization, I took the time to make one however. Lots of people are confused at how the moon works, if you google earth the moon's rotation, you will get a lot of incorrect answers. Here is a
chart to work upon in the near future. When you have space agency sites like nasa and space.com not knowing which way the moon rotates you have to start wondering where exactly you are in science. Don't take this as a punishment but a room to improve upon. I hope every one using the internet can consider this, because false information tends to lead to a state of stupidity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mvdc1980 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
I don't understand what you mean by "no lunar rotation" on your chart. I trust that you haven't found any false information in the Wikipedia article. My version of Google doesn't seem to give incorrect answers but I haven't checked all links. Could you explain where you think space.com get it wrong? Dbfirs09:56, 18 October 2014 (UTC)
The Age of the Moon has no citations.
The article suggests that the moon is 4.5 Billion years old but cites no off site information to back this claim up.
Furthermore, when talking about how the structure of the moon was developed, the article cited [38] suggest the arge of the moon is 4 to 6 Million years old.
I'm not sure what to make of your statements when the abstract of the article cited [38] starts out by saying "The Moon is thought to have formed through the consolidation of debris from the collision of a Mars-sized body with the Earth more than 4,500 million years ago". (And that's obviously a thousands separator.) Reference [17] further gives the age as 4.40–4.45 billion years. Therefore I see no need to change this, as there are obviously citations backing it up (just not in the lede, which is allowed as everything in the lede is backed up later in the article). Double sharp (talk) 05:33, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Pleonasms in the Moon article
I have found two erroneous pleonasms in the article about the Moon:
After Jupiter's satellite Io, it is the second densest satellite among those whose densities are known.
Actually, the Moon is the second densest satellite overall in the solar system. If we write that it is the second after Io, so it's the third.I think we should write:
After Jupiter's satellite Io, it is the first densest satellite among those whose densities are known.
It is the second-brightest regularly-visible celestial object in Earth's sky, after the Sun.
This is the same kind of problem. I think we should write:
It is the first-brightest regularly-visible celestial object in Earth's sky, after the Sun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.192.206.227 (talk) 11:27, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Your first example arguably needed something (I have tackled it). It is after all the densest when not including Io. However, the point here is to say that it is the second-densest and to provide the densest as a corollary (which could be left out without much loss of relevant information). However, your second example is how to actually implement that properly: "It is the second-brightest regularly-visible celestial object in Earth's sky" by itself is already correct (except for the hyphen in "regularly-visible"; which I have corrected, too). --JorisvS (talk) 11:49, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you for your answer. Yes, indeed "It is the second-brightest regularly-visible celestial object in Earth's sky" by itself is already correct but the sentence continues with "AFTER the Sun" which changes the meaning of the rank. So I repeat that the second after the Sun is thus the third overal if you count (the second after the first=2+1=3=the third). Then my question is: which object is, between the Sun and the Moon, the second-brightest celestial object in Earth's sky? It's the same thing for the sentence "It is the second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known, after Jupiter's satellite Io." Wether you write "It is the FIRST-densest satellite among those whose densities are known, AFTER Jupiter's satellite Io", wether you write "It is the SECOND-densest satellite among those whose densities are known" and, in another sentence you add "The densest is Jupiter's satellite Io"? But if you write "the second" + "after the first (Sun or Io)", the meaning of the sentence is distorted. Do you understand what is a pleonasm? Kewin. 21:04, 2nd November 2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.155.152.130 (talk) 20:09, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
As I've said, it is the second one, which is told by saying "It is the second-brightest regularly-visible celestial object in Earth's sky". Now, one can go and wonder about the first one, which is the Sun. This is mentioned by adding a non-restrictive phrase ", after the Sun.", which does not change the overall rank, but only mentions the first in the rank. --JorisvS (talk) 20:32, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
To avoid any possible misunderstanding, I suggest we avoid "second after" and make the last part of each sentence parenthetical. I'll do that to see if it meets with approval. Dbfirs20:45, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
Parentheses are already quite sufficient to remove any possible misunderstanding. Because these are corollaries anyway, a parenthetical remark seems appropriate. I've implemented the simplest change. --JorisvS (talk) 20:53, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
I don't know why you are so insistent on keeping the word "after". I think my phrasing was clearer, but it's not worth arguing over. Dbfirs21:01, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
An ordinal 'first' is said to be 'before' an ordinal second. It's the shortest I can think of, and shorter is generally preferred. Can you be more specific as to why you think your version is clearer (in case I've missed something)? --JorisvS (talk) 21:17, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
I was trying to avoid confusion like that of anon editor 92.155.152.130. Possibly no-one else found it confusing. Positions such as "second before" and "second after" can be ambiguous, possibly meaning two positions away, perhaps depending on the background and native language of the reader. As I said, I've no axe to grind on this: I was just trying to help improve the article. Dbfirs00:05, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
I'm only trying to see if I've missed something, to improve the article. True that "second after" could be construed like that, but it is not phrased as such. The 'after ...' is between parentheses. --JorisvS (talk) 09:24, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Yes, the parentheses probably serve to avoid the confusion for most people, so I'll let you have it your way. We're only arguing about the style of English, not about facts. Dbfirs09:38, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
Put the "the" back in "the Moon"
We clearly call the Moon "the Moon," not Moon. So I really hate to say this, and I know it's unlikely we'll reach a consensus, but the name of the article should be changed to "The Moon." Sometimes a proper name includes the "the" such as "The New York Times" and so it must always include the definite pronoun, even when the name stands alone as in an encyclopaedia article. "Moon" should redirect to the article Natural satellite, or vice-versa, as moon and natural satellite are synonymous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaywilson (talk • contribs)
@Jaywilson, I understand what you are saying, but let me suggest that changing the title of the article in this way is not as high a priority as keeping the article itself in a good state (including getting consistent usage). As for the "the" in front of various astronomical objects (the Earth, the Moon, the Sun … oh, we capitalized "Jupiter", but we don't say "the Jupiter) is not easily standardized, if only because English speakers don't have a universally agreed-upon "standard". That is the way language is. The thing I push for is just consistent usage within a given article. This one on the Moon looks like it has consistency, but this might be checked by other editors. The article on the Earth is not presently consistent, as others have noted. Anyway, I'm not going to belabor this anymore than I already have. Looking after things, Grandma (talk) 23:11, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
Also, note that we might say "the newly formed Moon" but not "newly formed the Moon". Indeed, this demonstrates that "the" is not actually part of the proper name of the "Moon" but is, instead, part of sentence structure. Or, so I would suggest. Again, all the best, Grandma (talk) 23:20, 20 November 2014 (UTC)
It's a Wikipedia style convention. We don't use definite articles unless they're in titles of artistic works, like The Tempest or The Dark Side Of The Moon. Serendipodous00:11, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
Please direct me to this style convention. The exceptions are more than just titles of artistic works. For example, The New York Times article. But more fundamentally, sometimes you have to include the article to distinguish the meaning. What if we wanted to call the article titled Natural Satellite something else such as... Moon? or what if we wanted to call the article Star something else, like Sun? Then it becomes obvious that the article about the Sun and the Moon should be called The Sun and The Moon respectively, so the article names Sun and Moon are freed up to refer to the generic sense. Jaywilson (talk) 22:15, 22 November 2014 (UTC)
From the Wikipedia Manual Of Style: Do not use A, An, or The as the first word (Economy of the Second Empire, not The economy of the Second Empire), unless it is an inseparable part of a name (The Hague) or it is part of the title of a work (A Clockwork Orange, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien).Serendipodous22:41, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
But there's already an easy solution to those issues. Pluralizing easily distinguishes the generic usage. Suns is a disambiguation page that points to both the Sun and stars in general, among other things. Moons redirects to Natural satellite. Also, here's the relevant section in the Manual of Style, and further specified in the naming conventions. Whether the 'the' is an inseparable part of the name is debatable, and I feel that the preference for using it most of the time is more of a quirk of English than part of the name. --Patteroast (talk) 03:05, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
@Patteroast, please have a look at the corresponding "the" discussion at Talk:Earth and note that some changes are already being made to Earth without, I think, consensus. Also, if this seems like much ado about nothing, I apologize for possibly adding too much stir to the issue. Still here, Grandma (talk) 03:28, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2014 In section 3.2.1. Titled 'Volcanic features
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In section 3.2.1. Titled 'Volcanic features' after reference 61 please add following text (this text is important for the readers and the material is taken from the peer reviewed articles published in different reputed journals):-
Just prior to this, evidences for younger (2-10 million yr) basaltic volcanism have been put forward inside Lowell crater[62][63] , Orientale basin, located in the transition zone of near-far side of the Moon. An initially hotter mantle condition and/or local enrichment of heat producing elements in the mantle could be possibly responsible for prolonged activities also on the far side in the Orientale basin[64][65].
Reference cited in the text:
[62] N. Srivastava, D.Kumar, R.P. Gupta, 2013. Young viscous flows in the Lowell crater of Orientale basin, Moon: Impact melts or volcanic eruptions? Planetary and Space Science, 87, 37-45.
[63] R.P. Gupta, N. Srivastava, R.K. Tiwari, 2014. Evidences of relatively new volcanic flows on the Moon, Curr. Sci., 107, 3, 454-460
[64] J. Whitten et al., 2011. Lunar mare deposits associated with the Orientale impact basin: New insights into mineralogy, history, mode of emplacement, and relation to Orientale Basin evolution from Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data from Chandrayaan-1. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, E00G09, doi: 10.1029/2010JE003736.
[65] Cho, Y., et al., 2012. Young mare volcanism in the Orientale region contemporary with the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (PKT) volcanism peak period 2 b. y. ago. Geophysical Research. Letters, 39, L11203.
It's not far off, but enough to affect the volume and surface area. The Polar radius is given as 1735.97 km (just a couple of km shorter than the equatorial radius). When the surface area is calculated, is it the area of the "lunoid" (equivalent to Earth's geoid at sea level) that is given, or the actual area of mountains and plains? Dbfirs17:59, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 24 June 2015
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Hi @Rmotta81: Great picture! Wikipedia uses free images whenever possible. If you'd like, you may upload your picture to the Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia's sister site that stores freely licensed media. If you upload your image there, you have to agree to select a license for your photo that allows anyone to use the image for any purpose (including commercial), while crediting you as the author. I recommend the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license, but there are a few to choose from. Ideally, you should also update the source your image (astrobin and others, if there are any) stating its new license. Once you've uploaded it, using it in the article may be discussed. ~SuperHamsterTalkContribs01:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)
Proposal for new section:Skylights
The July 7, 2015 announcement by NASA to fund Phase II studies for investigating a way to use a low orbiting satellite to study skylights prompted my question: "What the heck is a skylight?" (aside from the obvious). Turning to this wikipedia article, I find no mention of them. While arguably a minor geological feature, they are, imho, worthy of a mention and reference here, don't you all think?173.189.78.202 (talk) 13:57, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
Done I believe the IP had the perfect placement for it, so per WP:BOLD, I've gone ahead and added it per the edit request. Feel free to undo me if you feel it should be discussed instead. TrueCRaysball | #RaysUp19:03, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Move to "Moon of Earth"
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Strong Oppose (as above). Wikipedia uses common names for most articles. Please re-submit your suggestion in 200 years' time, when people are living on different moons. Dbfirs07:37, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Strong oppose. "Moon" (in uppercase) is the proper name the natural satellite (a.k.a. moon; in lowercase) of Earth. Moving it to "Moon of Earth" is fully analogous to moving, say Dysnomia (moon) to "Moon of Eris", from using the body's name to not using it. Who knows, in line with Dbfirs's suggestion, 200 years from now English-speaking people will have adopted "Luna" as its proper name and this article is moved there. In any case, neither is appropriate now. --JorisvS (talk) 09:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC)
Strong Oppose Although "moon" is an acceptable vernacular parlance for other natural satellites, it is the full English name of our Moon. Calling it anything else in the title of this article is asinine. --Kitch(Talk : Contrib)12:57, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Oppose and suggest close - Since we are seeing no support whatsoever, let's close this and move on. Thanks. Jusdafax06:40, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
Distance of Moon from Earth increasing? and if true, why exactly and by how much?
The article states twice that the distance of the Moon from the Earth is increasing. However, the change in amount per year in the article differs slightly from several other sources I've found online. If there really is a discrepancy, or a predicted-chart of the changes, that could be interesting to note.
In the article here:
"The Moon's linear distance from Earth is currently increasing at a rate of 3.82 ± 0.07 centimetres (1.504 ± 0.028 in) per year, but this rate is not constant."
"As a result, the distance between Earth and Moon is increasing, and Earth's spin slowing down.[133] Measurements from lunar ranging experiments with laser reflectors left during the Apollo missions have found that the Moon's distance to Earth increases by 38 mm (1.5 in) per year[134] (though this is only 0.10 ppb/year of the radius of the Moon's orbit)."
"Because the distance between the Moon and Earth is very slowly increasing over time,[131] the angular diameter of the Moon is decreasing."
VERSUS several other online sources that say 1.48"; though, these are not all (if any are) given dates, which, since it keeps changing, is bothersome.
WHY: The Whys could be in plain English, written so that a layperson might understand it easily.
Indeed. So tidal forces generate heat in the earth, and transfer angular momentum from the earth's rotation to the moon's revolution. It would be interesting to hear how much of the energy is transfered, and how much becomes heat, and how that heat quantity compares to radioactive decay heat. Tom Ruen (talk) 00:57, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
It's actually from the Old English weak masculine mōna. Mēnô was the rare feminine form when contrasted with sunna. Many Scandinavian and northern European languages have a similar word, which leads experts to conclude that there was a common root in Proto-Germanic: something like mǣnōn. Dbfirs19:49, 19 September 2015 (UTC)
Nitpicking
Reference 3 only give the apparent size of the Moon at opposition, it does not give an apparent size range, the size range can be worked out from the data so the range given in the infobox looks like original research... Stub Mandrel (talk) 16:47, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
Binary System argument
I believe we should at least give lip service to the argument that the Earth-Moon system is binary in nature. At the very least it could show up in the "In Culture" section, since Asimov was a large proponent of the idea.
It could also appear in the Relative Size section, where this point is already (slightly) addressed. It could be noted that among other considerations (relative effect of gravity, orbital path) the moon could be considered planetary.
It is not clear that the proposed addition would add value. It may promote a misnomer, intentionally or unintentionally. Earth is a planet. The moon is a natural satellite of Earth. The moon is a planetary body, but it is not a planet. JeanLucMargot (talk) 03:39, 23 September 2015 (UTC)
Briefly, the mean full moon magnitude is an underestimate because the published values ignore the opposition surge that kicks in for phase angles less than about 4 degrees. If we consider the opposition surge is about 40%, and the slope of the published phase function, and the fact that the moon should be brightest just outside of penumbral eclipse (phase angle 1-2 degrees), I'd estimate the moon can be about 0.18 magnitude brighter.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.75.201.73 (talk) 17:03, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Mass not using normalized notation
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Please change the listed mass (on the right under "Physical characteristics") from "0.07342×1024 kg" to "7.342×1022 kg".
The current form is technically correct use of scientific notation[3], but not normalized[4] as these figures usually are, such as on the Wikipedia pages of other astronomical bodies (compare with Triton's mass[5]).
It's like answering the question "How old is your daughter?" with "She's 0.012 millennia old." Mathematically correct, but poorly formatted; "She's 12 years old" is a more readable answer.
67.82.160.238 (talk) 14:15, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
The reason, I think, is that the NASA table gives the mass in that format, but it's a comparison table, and ours isn't, so Standard Form wins in my opinion. I've restored Standard Form. Dbfirs14:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
I think it is interesting to note somewhere that calculating the Moon's orbital period using just the mass of Earth results in the erroneous 27.45 d (a discrepancy of about 4 h!). Including the mass of the Moon itself, which is technically required, results in 27.28 d, much closer to the actual value of 27.32 d.
However, the 'small' remaining discrepancy cannot be explained by a discrepancy in the used masses or distance, nor uncertainty in G. It would require a rather significant change in the mass, distance, or G used. Any ideas how to explain this last part? --JorisvS (talk) 19:51, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
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Planning to add new info to the existing info regarding the moon orbital characteristics.
Description of edit request : Addition to moon orbital characteristics.
ratio of distance between moon and earth to moon diameter ~= approximately 108.
similar to ratio of distance between sun and earth to sun diameter ~= approximately 108.
Not done: I presume by Orbital Characteristic, you mean the infobox at the start of the article and to the right. This infobox is built by a template, and that template does not have a field for the characteristic you are proposing to add. -- ferret (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
We already record this fact in words: "The apparent size of the Moon is roughly the same as that of the Sun, with both being viewed at close to one-half a degree wide. The Sun is much larger than the Moon but it is the precise vastly greater distance that coincidentally gives it the same apparent size as the much closer and much smaller Moon from the perspective of Earth." I suppose we could add the numerical ratio of distances to that section. What does anyone else think? Dbfirs21:13, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Women's menstrual cycle is 28 days, the same as the lunar cycle. Many other Wikipedia articles state widely known and seemingly obvious facts, so why not this one? Smithfarm (talk) 10:37, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Because this is a featured article and featured articles' facts are cited to reliable sources. And the lunar cycle is 29.5 days, not 28. And plenty of other mammals have shorter or longer menstrual cycles. Serendipodous13:47, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Is the orbital period correct?
The article states the Moon's sidereal period is 27.321582 days but googling this number along with the synodic period shows other sources quoting the sidereal period as roughly 27.321661 days and taking 27.321582 days as the tropical period. At least a reference should be added to back it up. JensPetersen (talk) 10:09, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I think you've spotted an error here. Many websites do quote 27.321582 days, but our article Lunar month makes the distinction between the two. Which figure is more appropriate, or should we quote both? Dbfirs11:38, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
(Sorry there is actually a reference: through a journal paywall.)
I think Sidereal is most common for "Orbit Period", but maybe best to confirm with the template owner? Alternatively possibly 27.322 days is good enough (it would cover both). The Lunar Month article is nice: seems the Synodic period is a mean. JensPetersen (talk) 15:54, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Actually the Orbital Period link is clear that in Astronomy the default meaning is the siderial period (ie wrt the stars), so it should be changed to 27.321661 d. JensPetersen (talk) 15:46, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
The sentence "This matching of apparent visual size is a coincidence." in the third paragraph of the article needs a [citation needed] tag. A more appropriate wording would either stat it seems to be a coincidence, or literally that no explanation has been found for the match. It would be very reasonable to at least presume it is not a coincidence. 192.0.228.3 (talk) 02:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)William from Canada
There is absolutely no physical reason that could make this not a coincidence. Why this is a coincidence is actually described in the body of the article, where it is properly sourced. --JorisvS (talk) 10:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
That is implying you (we) know absolutely all physics. In fact it could very well be caused by the complex relation between Sun and Earth or be related to lighting and shadowing. It is called an apparent coincidence only because it cannot be explained yet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.47.187.114 (talk) 14:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
We know far enough to be able to know this. Just because certain details are not always fully understood does not mean that such basics aren't. Lighting and shadowing certainly cannot physically place the Moon at the necessary distance from Earth for it to have the same apparent size. --JorisvS (talk) 16:26, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The distance is constantly changing, of course. In the past, the moon looked bigger, and in the future the sun will look bigger. Rather than saying that the match is a coincidence, we could emphasise the fact that the match is only for a while. I suppose it's just possible that life developed only because of a particular proximity of the moon in the past, and therefore our observation of a match in size millions of years later would not be entirely coincidence, but I'm stretching theory a bit, and I've no refs for this. Dbfirs21:44, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Good point, there could be an anthropic principle underlying this, whether it's likely or not doesn't matter. It's not right to call it a coincidence without a proper source in the subsection 'Eclipses'. Gap9551 (talk) 21:56, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
The words "coincidence" and "coincidentally" don't really add anything to the article, so I've removed them. I understand why they were there, but, if they cause controversy, then they are better omitted. The surrounding text explains sufficiently that the phenomenon occurs only in our current aeon. Dbfirs23:40, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for pointing out the anthropic principle Gap9551, I indeed was thinking about such implications but lacked the vocabulary. 192.0.228.3 (talk) 00:18, 15 February 2016 (UTC)William from Canada
First line of article is incorrect
Article reads "The Moon (in Greek: σελήνη Selene, in Latin: Luna) is Earth's only natural satellite" but this is not true.
Perhaps it should read, "The Moon (in Greek: σελήνη Selene, in Latin: Luna) is Earth's only natural satellite which can be seen easily without a telescope"
See the article Claimed moons of Earth. Although there are other natural objects which have temporarily revolved in very distant orbits around the Earth, the Moon is the only permanent natural satellite of our planet. Extensive searches with telescopes, radar, etc. have failed to find any others. DOwenWilliams (talk) 21:41, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Correct convention in time?
at the upper right in a data box it says;
Orbital period
27.321661 d
(27 d 7 h 43.19 min 11.5 s[1])
Shouldn't time that includes second not include fractions of a minute?
It is perfectly possible that unknown permanent satellites of Earth may exist. If they are small, no more than a few tens of metres across, and very distant, much further away than the Moon, they may well have escaped detection. I read recently, but can't find it right now, that such an object was found earlier this year, orbiting between about 30 and 100 times as far from Earth as the Moon. Its orbit is stable for at least a few centuries. I'll try to re-find the article.... DOwenWilliams (talk) 22:19, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
I haven't yet found the article I saw earlier, but I have found this one, which people here may find interesting.
Prove to me that Earth has no permanent natural satellites besides the Moon. How are you certain that there are no rocks orbiting in the "Trojan" positions in the Moon's orbit, for example? Putting the word "known" in the article permits uncertainty. It allows that unknown satellites may, or may not, exist. Omitting the word asserts that no such satellites exist, which, in honesty, we cannot do. DOwenWilliams (talk) 20:49, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Are they going to be stable, given how small they would have to be and taking into account all perturbations, including the effects of solar radiation? Either choice implies some knowledge about the state of our knowledge that we here cannot determine for ourselves, given that it is the Earth–Moon system itself, and would be otherwise be OR. The question we have to answer is: Is it possible for stable bodies (staying in orbit for hundreds of millions to billions of years) to have escaped detection until now? --JorisvS (talk) 19:41, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
Given that we are not in a position to give a definite answer to this question, we should put the word "known" in that sentence. Omitting it implies that we know the answer to the question. DOwenWilliams (talk) 04:23, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
The same problem exists with inserting "known": that means that there exists room for undiscovered stable moons, which we are not in a position to answer definitively either! Except with reliable sources, of course. --JorisvS (talk) 19:21, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
No, it is not saying less. Saying "known" is done to indicate uncertainty in knowledge. We don't know if such uncertainty is justified here, just like we don't know if the certainty implied by leaving it out is justified. --JorisvS (talk) 20:26, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, but where the uncertainty is is different. It's meta-uncertainty, uncertainty about the uncertainty, and the uncertainty is specifically ours, of us Wikipedians, not part of the collective knowledge of all humankind. --JorisvS (talk) 18:50, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Are you certain, and if so how, that the collective knowledge pf humankind includes certainty about this? If so, you should be able to find something to cite, which in wikipedian terms, would settle the matter.DOwenWilliams (talk) 20:42, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
No, I'm not certain (how can I?). Even if there is no complete certainty, I can't imagine there isn't something quantitative about this out there. Your latter part is exactly where I wanted to get. I have some ideas about trying to dig something up, but any help would be welcome. --JorisvS (talk) 21:46, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
I know that searches have been done, using telescopes and radar, and no permanent natural satellites, other than the Moon, have been found. But of course this just puts an upper limit on the sizes of the satellites. It cannot exclude the existence of satellites smaller than the instruments could detect. Using more sensitive instruments might settle the question if any satellites are found, but if not the situation would be unchanged.
If there were some general thermodynamic calculation that could determine the long-term stability of the orbits of small satellites under the influence of sunlight, solar wind, etc., it might solve the problem, but I am not aware that any such calculation exists. The best that I have seen done is to simulate the motions of satellites over long periods of time, and see if they escape. But this approach has obvious limits.
For the purpose of this article, I think we should admit that there may be a theoretical possibility of the existence of permanent natural satellites of the Earth, other than the Moon. The fact that no such satellites are currently known means just that. The Moon is Earth's only known permanent natural satellite. That's what the article should say, no more, no less.
I think JorisvS makes a good point about: Are they going to be stable, given how small they would have to be and taking into account all perturbations, including the effects of solar radiation? Even the Moon isn't completely stable nor permanent (though the Sun will go red giant before the Moon gets too much farther away from Earth). It seems painfully obvious, at least to me, that if any natural satellite of Earth were large enough to be (for all intents and purposes) permanent and stable, then it would already be "known" by now. "The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural satellite," is all this article needs. Anything more IMHO, such as the word "known", would tend to confuse general readers, which would not be an improvement to this encyclopedia. Wikipedian Sign LanguagePaine20:29, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
No, because the sentence without, "besides Earth," implies that there are no humans on Earth. Earth is a celestial body. Not reverting immediately, though, because I agree that the phrasing is clunky and humans did not "visit" Earth. :) Can a better sentence be devised? LaughingVulcanGrok Page!12:34, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
On second thought, the whole second half of that sentence was a fairly recent addition. The content is obvious (for now,) and (hopefully) a temporary condition. Why does it need to be there at all? LaughingVulcanGrok Page!12:42, 21 September 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the removal: works well. I have to dispute your proposition, though, that humans have "visited" the Earth. Have humans "visited" the UK, Beijing, NYC? Tony(talk) 05:43, 22 September 2016 (UTC) PS, you might consider using a slightly darker yellow for the first word in your signature; on my monitor it's not readable. Tony(talk) 05:44, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, my own phrasing may have been clunky - don't know if we agree or not (and it probably doesn't matter either way.) I was saying that I agree that humans did not "visit" Earth. Though I suppose when I think about it, there well may have been a first human who set foot upon the UK, NYC, etc. Just not Earth, unless you buy into Douglas Adams' works as history. :D Anyway, good call yourself on removing the initial fly in this particular ointment. LaughingVulcanGrok Page!12:07, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 11 October 2016
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I would request that the moon be referred to as "The Moon (also known as Luna)...".
I would request that we keep to the English name, and avoid using the Latin name. The Moon is not commonly known as "Luna". Dbfirs07:37, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
"Crewed" replacing "manned"
I realise the former is politically correct nowadays, but come on. This is absolutely not the common term in use and I had never heard of it before this. Even posts supporting this new usage recognise that it is currently unrecognised by major dictionaries and there is not even agreement about the precise term that should replace the perfectly adequate "unmanned". This reminds me of the attempt at radon to replace "daughters" with "progeny", even though the latter term has not been used by any nuclear scientist I have ever encountered or read. Can we not use terms until they are firmly entrenched in the literature? What happened to Wikipedia not being the place to right great wrongs? Double sharp (talk) 14:26, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
I find it absolutely stunning that you would say "...I had never heard of it before this." Are you serious? And then you refer us to a blog post? Seriously? Your extension of daughters/progeny controversy is curious but is a stretch in this case. No one is attempting to right great wrongs by using the presently accepted terminology. If the word "manned" is used in a historical context, then use it. I challenge you to find one instance of the use "manned" etc. in the present day literature, in for example recent issues of Aviationweek.com, that uses it. I too, find the trimming of words from the vocabulary to be disturbing, but I will save my efforts for more important instances. Finally, the dictionaries you would be classed as useful but antique. Zedshort (talk) 14:47, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
The very fact that I was forced to refer to blog posts arises from the unfortunate fact that those were among the first hits on Google that actually explained the use of the term: this seems to show that the term is still at the stage of advocacy – also borne out by how these posts describe how much of this has been conducted on other "platforms for reasonable discussion" instead of officially. And yes, I am quite serious. I realise this does not accord well with how you think things ought to be, but evidently the term has not even come close to becoming standard yet. What else would you expect when 5-day-old reputable news articles fail to use it? So, what is our definition of antique now – more than five days old? Double sharp (talk) 14:53, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
I could not get past the paywall of some. I notice that these seem to be translations from foreign sources, hence the translations will use their terminology, and that translation is appropriate. This is the English Wikipedia and it will naturally have its own prefered lexicon. I somehow suspect this discussion is extraneous as it likely has been addressed before and a concensus has been reached on WP. Zedshort (talk) 15:12, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
I would argue that it has been addressed in the form of WP:COMMONNAME. In the absence of proof that the proposed new terminology has overtaken the traditional one in usage, it should not be changed. I would note incidentally that not all of the articles I linked to are translations, and even for those which are, Korean (the language of the original authors) does not actually have gender-specific nomenclature for professions. I do realise that languages are too big and complicated to be adequately summarised in a dictionary. Nevertheless, the fact remains that a neologism needs to be accepted widely before it can be called general usage, and this just isn't there yet. Double sharp (talk) 15:30, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
The Oxford English Dictionary on my shelf defines the verb “man”, in the sense it’s used in this article, as furnishing with “men”, the definition excludes women. Which would make the word “man” in this article simply incorrect when it refers to a practice that includes women. And the word “crew” in the same sense that it’s used in this article is found in a number of sources and dictionaries (including Wiktionary). See for example, the “Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English”, and “The Columbia Guide to Standard American English”. It’s also found in many other Wikipedia articles on space. The Wikipedia manual of style (MOS:GNL) recommends using gender-neutral language where it can be done with clarity and precision. NASA now uses the word “crewed” instead of “manned”, for example, here: [5]
To respond to User:Double sharp, regarding the first source that you linked to at the top of this section — I can’t find anywhere in that article that says that crewed “is currently unrecognised by major dictionaries”. Also, it’s not convincing to claim support from sources that disagree with you. DagSkaal (talk) 19:44, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Look harder. This is after all linked quite clearly in this article. And yes, I do think it ought to be convincing because the source itself, though supporting the term, acknowledges these problems with it. Double sharp (talk) 02:18, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
I don't think "furnish with men" really implies that they have to be male. In the past, it was understood that the word "man" sometimes implied male sex, and sometimes not. To me it's a pity that that understanding is in the process of being lost, a process that perhaps is mostly complete. Will future generations think that Thomas Paine's Rights of Man wasn't counting women? Does even the current generation think that?
That said, whether you think that this particular change is good or bad, it's probably irreversible at this point. "Crewed" sounds fine to me, not artificial at all. --Trovatore (talk) 20:00, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
When Thomas Paine wrote, women could own no property, could not vote, could keep no money of their own, and had no rights regarding their own children. In that environment nobody, but nobody, considered Thomas Paine's Rights of Man to include women. Thomas Paine is criticized for being completely silent on the rights of women. In fact, the year after Paine published The Rights of Man, Mary Wollstonecraft publish A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which is widely seen as pointedly going beyond Paine to include women. Wollstonecraft wrote: if only men would “snap our chains.” DagSkaal (talk) 20:33, 23 October 2016 (UTC)
Somehow, no one has been commenting on the sources I list, some very recent, that actually agree with me. This change is very far from "irreversible". It has perhaps been picked up in some places, but clearly it has not yet gained a secure foothold. Double sharp (talk) 02:22, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
I’m finding problems with your “sources”, Double sharp. I’ve already considered your first source which you link to at the top of this section, and which, as I said above, you appear to have misrepresented, and which it seems not to support your opinion anyway. I looked at your second link, and it also seems not to support your opinion: It says “NASA has shifted to using gender-neutral words to describe human space exploration” and “Why is this important? The words that we use to describe human endeavors matter …” etc. I looked at your source that you refer to as “5-day-old reputable news articles”, but that refers to a project that excludes women, so that seems to be a dubious source to support your anti-gender-neutral position. Your next source (you link it under the word “three”) is not really a source, it is an abstract that, who knows, might link to a source, and it is followed by a huge bibliographic list, which needs more explanation from you regarding the point of such a massive bibliographic dump. This would be a huge waste of a Wikipedia editor’s time to plow through all that. Your next source (you link it under the word “scholarly”) appears to be identical to the previous pointless source. I don’t know why you repeated that, perhaps it’s an error. Your next source (you link it under the word “articles”) is also not a source, it is an abstract that might, who knows, link to a source. Double sharp, you ask a lot of time and effort from any Wikipedia editor to chase down this stuff. DagSkaal (talk) 13:45, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
You have once again failed to appreciate my point, which is that even the sources that advocate the shifting to gender-neutral words note that there is not a consensus on using the new terms. Allow me to quote just one example: 'They insert the word ["unmanned"] because it's important to establish in the first line in as few words as possible that there were no people aboard the unfortunate spacecraft, and Chang's editors won't allow "uncrewed" because it's not in the dictionary.' You also don't seem to appreciate that if "uncrewed" were really a standard term and "unmanned" was not, it would be used to the total exclusion of the latter. When would "unmanned" be incorrect when "uncrewed" was correct?
Apparently you are also unable to comprehend the notion of paywalled sources, and the fact that not everything might be available online. You also seem unable to comprehend how URL references to scientific papers online tend to look unless you have access: for example, that huge bibliographical list is certainly not from me, but is rather the paper's list of references. The DOI of the papers are there, and if you perhaps asked at WP:REX (since I'm not supposed to recommend you pirate the papers, which would save you time indeed) you might be able to search through it and find recent references to general missions without crew being referred to as "unmanned". Or, even simpler, go search for keywords like "unmanned space mission" on Google Scholar, which should get you the relevant quotes from recent scholarly material. It took me a few seconds to find those papers and it should take you about as long.
Oh, and I take issue with your characterisation of my position as "anti-gender-neutral". It's not. It's only "anti-words-that-haven't-gained-acceptance-that-the-average-reader-will-be-confused-by". I have no problem with replacing words like "mankind" when the replacement has become standard, and would support that. I realise this may be hard to swallow for you. All I can say is, I cannot take too seriously the pronouncements of someone who fails repeatedly to appreciate the point I have been reiterating and doesn't seem familiar with scholarly journals. Double sharp (talk) 14:42, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
I think it is very clear from WP:COMMONNAME that it is appropriate to use "crewed." This subject has been addressed many places and at many times and the great mass and charge of this issue is moving in the gender neutral direction. I don't like to use the term "modern" or "contemporary", but at times it is an appropriate way to summarize our collective conclusions and this discussion here is just the tip of a massive iceburg. We should move in a gender neutral direction. Zedshort (talk) 14:24, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
You have not even shown, except through vehement reassertion, that "crewed" is the most common name. Indeed, the impression I get is that "manned" is by far the more common name even in the current literature, and that even the sources supporting "crewed" acknowledge the barriers faced into getting it accepted. It may be in the process of becoming the common name, but it is clearly not there yet. It is essentially a new word here and should be treated as such. Whether or not the word fits with the current Zeitgeist is not what I am disputing. I realise this may be difficult for you to believe, but I have no objections to common gender-neutral words. I only oppose the introduction of words that have not yet become common. I would only reconsider this when "crewed" becomes the dominant usage throughout all fields that discuss unmanned space missions. Double sharp (talk) 14:42, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Words become common by their application. I think you are mistaking the weight of the past with substance. There is no good reason to prefer the use of the word "manned" over "crewed", while the direction, the concensus (WP:COMMONNAME) is to move in a gender neutral direction. If we should accept your perspective there would never, ever be an instance of the use of a gender neutral wording over the gender that was "preferred" in the past and the gender neutral use would never, ever have gotten started. Most of those past applications were the result of a habitual use of a certain gender, and when that bias was pointed out, most of us acknowledged that it was silly, pointless, and trivializing of others. You claim to "have no objections to common gender-neutral words", but from this long-winded discussion of a circular sort, I am beginning to think you simply want to have a good stimulating argument. Gender neutrality should be applied here. Zedshort (talk) 14:55, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Believe it or not, I did not come in here for an argument, and neither did I come in here to complain without reason, have motives attributed to me, or have being-hit-on-the-head lessons (although I daresay I need some of the last ones now). Contrary to popular belief, I do not think this sort of social change is a bad thing. However, and I cannot stress this enough, Wikipedia is emphatically not the place to lead in it. We are supposed to follow what the majority of reliable sources use, even today, even if they fail to be gender-neutral enough, socially conscious enough, or anything else enough for the zeitgeist today. But given that I have been repeating this point several times, only to have it completely overlooked and myself painted as some sort of reactionary, I'm taking this off my watchlist. Let consensus decide the way to go on this. (I'll kindly inform you as I step out that I am not alone on this side. After all, I did get thanked by Necessary Evil for my initial revert.) Have a good day! Double sharp (talk) 15:00, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
You make the case for the gender neutral point with your very words: "We are supposed to follow what the majority of reliable sources use". You were asked to provide contemporary sources that back up your contention and utterly failed to do so, but directed us to some odd collage of unreliable sources that did not back up your point, as a result, you have no point on which to stand. Zedshort (talk) 15:11, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
All references referring to the space program should be non-gender specific (e.g. human, piloted, un-piloted, robotic). The exception to the rule is when referring to the Manned Spacecraft Center, the predecessor to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, or any other official program name or title that included "manned" (e.g. Associate Administrator for Manned Spaceflight)." That's the official NASA history style guide. It doesn't say "crewed", but is pretty clear that "manned" is no longer the term. --GRuban (talk) 20:57, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
The sources overwhelmingly use the term "manned" - unless that changes so should we. Our job is to follow the sources not lead them. I find no authoritative linguistic sources which suggest 'manned" is a gendered term and no sources provided to support the claim. Instead I see arguments based on personal preference, citing Thomas Paine and claiming dictionary definitions are antiquated and irrelevant. These have no basis in policy.
Has there been consensus for the change from manned to crewed anywhere on the site? My search of the archives shows several discussion but none with consensus for change:
Er, James? Right above, the post you responded to? NASA. Source. In the context of space exploration in general and voyages to the moon in particular, NASA is the definitive source. Clearly says "manned" (1) is gendered and (2) should not be used but for rare specific exceptions. Direct quote provided. --GRuban (talk) 02:10, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
The concensus on WP is WP:COMMONNAME which was discussed long ago and no doubt in great depth by many people. The dead hand of the past need not weigh us down. When literally quoting from a source, the gender specific form would be appropriate, otherwise the writing for this encyclopedia should be gender neutral. Zedshort (talk) 16:40, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
I think this discussion has been reasonable, it has included various thoughts and opinions, and I think, based on all of that, it can be concluded, and that the article can be edited to use the word “crewed” instead of “manned”, which would conform with Wikipedia’s Manual of Style that says, “Use gender-neutral language where this can be done with clarity and precision.” And which also conforms with the terminology that is being used by NASA and other sources. DagSkaal (talk) 17:05, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Paineu/c00:00, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 13 November 2016
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About the etymology of the "Moon" you can very easily find that ultimately is originated by the also ancient greek word "μήνη" (Liddel & Scott, etc.), as well as the word "month".
Not done:μήνη is actually well-covered at Wiktionary – μήνη. It's an ancient and obscure word used by several cultures and is ultimately and indirectly covered in the etymology of this article by Σελήνη, the Ancient Greek script for Selene (also a favorite Greek goddess who personifies the Moon). And it does not seem to be clear whether "moon" comes from "month" or "month" comes from "moon". They are both very ancient terms. Thank you for your input! Paineu/c17:11, 13 November 2016 (UTC)
Your facts are incorrect. The Super Moon larger than it has been since 1948, and won't be this large again until 2034, is happening right now.Pocketthis (talk) 19:13, 14 November 2016 (UTC)
That are not my facts, but "facts" of wikipedia. Apparently since my question someone changed the article to say On 14 November 2016 (instead of 2014). --Xerces8 (talk) 18:07, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
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{ I concur, the first paragraph should be as so: " The Moon, typically thought and known as "our Moon" seen from earth is the fifth largest discovered moon in Earth's surrounding solar system. Many call the Earth's Moon a Natural a satellite, and so be it as it does provide many natural guides for our plant Earth. These guides include: the size (from new to full moon), which can determine how light or dark it is at night time, and the influence the Moon has on Earth's Ocean's tides. The ocean tides are very important track to follow for anyone on the Earth"s coast and Moon gazers all around the world. "}}
[1][2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hkbee1984 (talk • contribs) 08:06, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. The opening sentence already says that. RudolfRed (talk) 01:06, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 21 March 2017
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Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — IVORKDiscuss10:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 10 April 2017
In the section ==Tidal Effects=, there needs a change:
That depends on your viewpoint on the use of the subjunctive. I've no objection to the change, but I won't be making it, or reverting it if someone else makes it. It's just a style preference. Do we have a policy? Dbfirs15:53, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Not sure about policy, nor how 'subjunctive' enters into it.
(The Earth is NOT a world without continents, i.e. - the Earth DOES have continents. e.g. The "no continents" statement is conditional.)
(Long ago, I was 'burned' on the issue by a university prof and I have ever since been sensitized to the point.)
See subjunctive. Some university professors are particularly fussy about preserving the older usage. Were I a linguist, I might be too, but I accept that it is gradually dying out in Modern English, so I am happy with both forms. I'm surprised that no-one else has yet put forward their view or linked to a policy. Do you mean "counterfactual" rather than "conditional"? Dbfirs21:11, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Done. Trivial correction and the requester is correct (even if not for exactly the right reasons, as not all conditionals require a subjunctive). No sense in beating it to death, or at least not here. --Trovatore (talk) 21:18, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
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This article is already linked in the See Also section, which I think is the appropriate amount of reference. I would not be opposed to adding a sentence or two about quasi-satellites of Earth in the text if a suitable location (not the lead or independent level 2 heading) can be found. A2soup (talk) 22:29, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. deactivating the template as there does not appear to be consensus for the change at this time, feel free to continue to discuss Cannolis (talk) 21:22, 1 May 2017 (UTC)
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I am not particularly surprised to find that the primary voice in favour of the former in that earlier discussion (Talk:Moon/Archive_15#.22Crewed.22_replacing_.22manned.22) has been found to be a sockpuppet. Nevertheless, it appears that we are continuing to use "crewed", evidently with political correctness and submission to the zeitgeist triumphant over what policy dictates we follow: the usage of the vast majority of reliable sources. And on rereading the original discussion, which I took off my watchlist halfway through it, I am quite amazed to discover that the discussion can be closed by an involved party, with an impressive "conclusion" that consists of reiterating one's own points without engaging any from the opposing side. But that doesn't seem to matter: all hail the revolution, and let's overlook anything that doesn't conform to the desired reality! Double sharp (talk) 15:23, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Except that this has not happened yet for this case. We're an encyclopaedia and we don't lead in such matters; we follow. You're welcome. Double sharp (talk) 01:24, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
Don't welcome me yet, because I haven't thank you. "Crewed" is an entirely accurate descriptor. Given that it's accurate, there's no need to repress its occasional usage in Wikipedia. Doing so is needlessly anal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 18:39, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
There are many words that are entirely accurate and are not used on Wikipedia because they are not in common usage. For example, I doubt anyone would want to replace "fifth-last" with "propreantepenultimate". While "crewed" might be entirely accurate, it is absolutely not the dominant usage in the field yet: about a year ago, the number of recent papers in spaceflight using "crewed" was utterly insignificant besides the number using "manned". When and if that changes, only then should we follow.
Also, I have to wonder how you would react to replacing things the other way, because it is then still just as accurate, notwithstanding all those who seem to have forgotten that there are two non-synonymous words both spelt man. Double sharp (talk) 23:36, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
[1]- I challenge you to demonstrate that you, of all people, know what the dominant usage is throughout the total population. I doubt that you've done an unbiased survey. This is a delusion I often notice among Wikipedians; namely that you think your provincial experience speaks for everyone. There are niches within Society, each with its own specialized jargon. When I visit the Mathematics Department of my school I find the mathematicians using nomenclature in ways which vary from the manner which physicists at the same school use words that are phonetically similar and etymologically related. Both departments use words in ways which police officers, politicians, chefs, trash collectors, artists, and so on, would initially find puzzling. I don't think you or any other devoted Wikipedians really know what the distribution of usages are for all sorts of words across the Population. All you know is that you've done a subject-specific search for sources. The act itself of narrowing your search criteria selects for some usages and against others. You don't have a whole-population-representative sample.
[2]- The word "crewed" certainly isn't a recent innovation. I know from my own experience that it's been in use since at least the late 1990s. This isn't a question of Wikipedia championing a fad. It's at least two decades old.
[3]- Earlier in this discussion you derided this word as an example of Political Correctness. Political Correctness is when I bully you into submission; into adopting my language against your own sensibilities. I'm not here bullying you into personally adopting the word "crewed". I'm here to remind you that arbitrarily editing someone else's use of that word constitutes a form of unwarrented CORRECTNESS. It's unwarrented because the word "crewed" tends to be used in contexts wherein its meaning is evident. It doesn't hinder the reader's comprehension of the subject matter.
(1) I hardly think that a subject-specific search is irrelevant when the article is clearly about the Moon and manned missions to it: a specific subject. (2) While the use of "crewed" in other contexts is not a fad, its use in the context of spaceflight is very recent, not more than a few years old. (3) As you state so clearly yourself, different fields often use different terminology for the exact same thing, and using a different field's terminology really does sound weird and hinder comprehension if you are not familiar with that field. That is why we stick to the common usage of the field we are writing about. Double sharp (talk) 02:41, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Its use in context with spaceflight isn't recent. It's that exact context wherein I started noticing it way back when. I'm not an outsider to the aerospace community. It sounds weird to you, not to everyone else. If you say that its use hinders comprehension, could I please see your random-sampled survey of THAT? Of course you can't show me any such thing. You're fooling yourself into thinking that you know more than you do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 12:45, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Try all the previous discussions: one, two, three, four, five, six. In no case was there consensus for the change to "crewed". And even if you read (recent) commentaries about the change trying to trickle its way into the mainstream media, such as this one and this other one, the confusing sound of "crewed" (homophonous with "crude") has been cited as a concern even by those supportive of the term, and so has the fact that "uncrewed" is not in the dictionary and hence has some way to go before being standard. And furthermore, a little Google Scholar search reveals 7280 hits for "manned mission" compared to 1040 for "crewed mission"; closer than before, but still no comparison. Only when "crewed" surpasses "manned" in popularity do I think a change on Wikipedia would be warranted. Double sharp (talk) 16:31, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
1040 = 12% of the total (1040 + 7280 = 8320) yielded by your search, which exceeds the 10% criterion mentioned and not refuted by you on this very thread. My point isn't that every instance of "manned" must with all due haste be transformed to the word "crewed". If you still think that's what I'm after, then you're not paying attention very well. My point is that "crewed" needn't be disposed of with prejudice. Incidentally, you really ought to know by now that search engines don't deliver reliably representative results. By their nature, engine searches aren't randomized. I know for an empirical fact that Google Scholar doesn't even cough up some old papers which I know exist and have read with my own eyes. Furthermore, all you've quoted from that search are grand totals. You haven't even tried to track a time-functional trend for the change in relative frequencies of the two words. Since "manned" was used nearly exclusively for several decades, and since journal papers during those decades are quite voluminous, a search as of today asking for grand totals is bound to return more hits for "manned" than for "crewed" even if, hypothetically, the modern convention leaned more toward "crewed". YOU. DON'T. KNOW. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 19:52, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
If you think it was me mentioning the 10% figure, then you must not be paying very much attention either. And I find it speaks volumes that you have nothing to say about those summaries of the state of affairs from 2015 or 2016. Double sharp (talk) 02:52, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
I didn't say it was mentioned by you. I said it was mention and not refuted by you. I was pointing out that you implicitly agreed with the 10% criterion. I didn't comment on the summaries because I didn't read them. I don't need to read what others have said on this topic. I'm here to say what I think about it. I am confident that neither you nor any other devout Wikipedian is equipped to plausibly know what the true distribution of usages is for all sorts of words within all sorts of demographics. All you know is how things intuitively 'seem' to you; but your intuition is ONLY intuition; you are not an innocent observer of "how things really are"; your brain is a Bias Engine. That's why scientists go to so much trouble to rigorously employ methods of fair sampling, statistical analysis, layered blind studies, and so on. You have no rigorous empirical evidence; and yet here you all are presuming to have your finger on the pulse of the Nation. I have now said everything I intend to say to you on this topic. Anything more will be redundant.
It is truly amazing and hilarious that you can say that my intuition is only intuition, and then glibly proceed to claim that you don't need to read what others have said on this topic, and admit that you are only saying what you think. I am hardly an innocent observer, indeed; I may try to be one, but in the end I am certainly coloured by my own preferences, or even by trying to deny them. But I find it astonishing that you do not realise that by the same token, neither are you. Double sharp (talk) 14:24, 19 August 2017 (UTC)
I understand this as meaning that in situations where at least of 90% of reliable sources use generic male language, Wikipedia should follow the sources and use generic male language, not gender-neutral language. Any corrections?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:53, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
If there is such a clear consensus, as there is in this case, I surely agree. We are not here to champion a cause by ourselves, because WP is not a soapbox. When the figure skews far away from 100%, then we can follow. Double sharp (talk) 16:18, 8 June 2017 (UTC)
Name of the Moon
Earth's moon is named Luna and should be the title of the page.
Thank you for your opinion, but the consensus is that "Luna" is not an official or even a particularly common name in either British English or American English. By the way, there is no such template as "Standard English". Dbfirs17:29, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
The word "luna" seems to be in Latin and is not normally used in English.
Just because a derivative of the Latin word has been assimilated into English does not mean that the original Latin word has also become English. The use of terms like solar and lunar in English do not suddenly mean that Sol and Luna are actually used in English as proper names for the Sun and the Moon. Double sharp (talk) 08:54, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
I don't speak Greek but I believe the name of the element selenium means "metal found on the moon". We don't however call our satellite Selene. In science fiction novels, our star is frequently referred to as "Sol". 81.155.222.51 (talk) 05:47, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Selenium comes from Σελήνη indeed, but it was not named because it is found on the Moon (it doubtless is, but Berzelius could not have known that). Rather it was named after the Moon in analogy to its congener tellurium, named after the Earth. (It would have been nice if the trilogy had been completed by an element named after the Sun, but unfortunately helium is nowhere near these on the periodic table, and the next chalcogen is polonium, named after Poland.) As for science fiction novels, this is hardly a usage that has gained much of a following outside its niche. Double sharp (talk) 05:59, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
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In April 2013, I discovered the World's largest impact crater. The Moon, was formed in the very same event.
Everyone has seen the popular coffee ads of the droplet raising out of the cup of coffee and forming a sphere (this is known as a coalescence cascade) and is precisely how the Moon was formed.
By the way, the craters on the Moon are not formed from impacts, but are the remnants of effervescent bubbles frozen in time.
One day this will be common knowledge.
Cheers Steven Jeffs. Steven Jeffs (talk) 07:17, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not the place for original research, but if you have published your discoveries in reputable peer-reviewed journals, then these could be cited in Wikipedia. Dbfirs07:23, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 4 October 2017. Is more specific.
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Please change "because the Moon's distance from Earth is slowly increasing" to "because the Moon's distance from Earth is slowly increasing at approximately 1.6 inches per year [1]".
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the moon isn't 400x closer than the sun its 390x, that's why we get the flames around the moon during a solar eclipse Harry=boi (talk) 09:36, 8 October 2017 (UTC)
Light aircraft are inaccurately named since they are not any brighter than other aircraft.
That claim that the name is "inaccurate" is itself inaccurate, because the word "light" has multiple meanings, and "light" as used in such terms as light aircraft, light cruiser, or lightweight boxer is referring to size or weight, not brightness or luminosity.
Similarly, the word "dark" has meanings other than the lack of brightness or luminosity: "hidden, secret, obscure" (Wiktionary) / "hidden, secret" (Dictionary.com) / "not clear to the understanding, not known or explored because of remoteness" (Merriam-Webster)
Merriam-Webster even gives the example "darkest reaches of the continent", a common phrase which does not mean that those areas of the continent do not receive light from the sun, but that those areas are unexplored.
Now, this article previously had the sentence:
The far side is often inaccurately called the "dark side", but it is in fact illuminated as often as the near side: once per lunar day, during the new moon phase we observe on Earth when the near side is dark.
That description of the name as "inaccurate" is similarly inaccurate, because "dark" is etymologically derived from and referring to the other meaning. [6][7][8][9] This is why I have clarified the text as follows:
The far side is often called the "dark side", but that name is in reference to its lack of visibility from Earth, not its lack of illumination. The far side is in fact illuminated as often as the near side: once per lunar day, during the new moon phase we observe on Earth when the near side is dark.
The references you provide are neither notable nor convincing. One is a press release where "dark side" is used incorrectly. The other is a blog entry that attempts to justify the error in the press release. Another one is a blog entry which contradicts your argument:
Most of the 19th-century examples, however, are from articles about eclipses and other astronomical events, and the writers use the term “dark side” properly.
This reference indicates, as does the original wikipedia text, that there is a proper and improper (i.e., inaccurate) use of the term "dark side".
The final reference quickly adopts the correct terminology "far side of the Moon".
Even in your own proposed wording, "dark" is used correctly:
The far side is in fact illuminated as often as the near side: once per lunar day, during the new moon phase we observe on Earth when the near side is dark.
and yet in the previous sentence you attempt to redefine the prevailing meaning of the word "dark". If you have used "dark side" incorrectly in the past, simply acknowledge the mistake and move on. There is no need to distort a wikipedia entry. I will revert once again. Please do not reintroduce the confusion unless you establish consensus. Thank you.
WP:RS states that blogs "may be acceptable as sources if the writers are professional journalists or professionals in the field on which they write". Steinn Sigurdsson is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Penn State. [10]Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman are language experts who have published multiple books on grammar and language use. And at least I have provided sources, which you have not.
Regarding your claim "Even in your own proposed wording, "dark" is used correctly [...] and yet in the previous sentence you attempt to redefine the prevailing meaning of the word 'dark'": okay, I can see how the use of a different meaning of the word "dark" in the second sentence compared to be the first sentence could be potentially confusing, so to avoid that, this would be my new suggested wording:
The far side is often called the "dark side", but that name is in reference to its lack of visibility from Earth, not its lack of illumination. The far side is in fact illuminated as often as the near side: once per lunar day, during the new moon phase we observe on Earth when the near side is unlit.
The rest of your argument, however, doesn't hold water as it wrongly supposes that the word "dark" has only one meaning. You are denying, despite attestations by multiple dictionaries, that there are definitions for the word "dark" referring to meanings other than brightness or luminosity.
By your argument, which supposes that words can only have one definition that is correct, the terms light aircraft and light cruiser would be "inaccurate" since those vehicles are not particularly bright or shining. That is not so because the same word can have a different meaning in different contexts.
That your position is the default, with no burden of proof, is simply false, as your position is making a significant claim: that a term in common use is "inaccurate". —Lowellian (reply) 17:52, 23 September 2017 (UTC)
I'd be a bit amazed to learn that any living person really says "dark side" in the sense 'unknown'; the far side hasn't been unknown since 1959. Among people who believe that the Moon has a permanently unlit side, what (if anything) do they believe about that side? Do they equate it with the far side, or believe that the Moon keeps one face to the Sun rather than to the Earth?
The appropriate place to address the "dark side" question, in my humble opinion, would be a subsection on phases. —Tamfang (talk) 20:03, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
Japanese found a 50km tunnel on the moon
JAXA issued a statement today (18th October 2017) claiming that their scans have revealed an underground tunnel, or cavern, stretching over 50km, at a press conference.
Please add this fact to the article without delay.126.209.0.225 (talk) 10:22, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Article Discrepancy
Under section "Internal Structure" it says:
The Moon has a solid iron-rich inner core with a radius of 240 km (150 mi)
Further down the same section it says:
The Moon is the second-densest satellite in the Solar System, after Io.[45] However, the inner core of the Moon is small, with a radius of about 350 km (220 mi) or less
Thank you for spotting that. I've rephrased the first version to avoid an obvious contradiction, pending a correction by someone who has access to appropriate sources. Dbfirs23:56, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
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Where are the references in the introductory paragraph?
I'm sure there is a normal explanation for this, but I am wondering if anyone knows where I might learn more about some of the statements made in the opening paragraph. Usually I find a source for every statement, but there are very few in the opening paragraph and I wonder why. Some statements that I feel should have references are:
• Following Jupiter's satellite Io, the Moon is the second-densest satellite among those whose densities are known.
• The Moon is thought to have formed about 4.51 billion years ago, not long after Earth. The most widely accepted explanation is that the Moon formed from the debris left over after a giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized body called Theia.
• Its surface is actually dark, although compared to the night sky it appears very bright, with a reflectance just slightly higher than that of worn asphalt. Its gravitational influence produces the ocean tides, body tides, and the slight lengthening of the day.
• [The] matching of apparent visual size [between The Moon and The Sun] will not continue in the far future, because the Moon's distance from Earth is slowly increasing.
I did not see in the article mention of which approximate direction the Moon goes around the earth (E-W, W-E, N-S, S-N, etc.). Misty MH (talk) 20:48, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
There was recently a discussion on "Moon" vs. "the Moon" on the Lunar-List server (where lunar scientists discuss things) and the consensus was that "The Moon" is the correct proper name for the Moon, not simply "Moon". As a result of that discussion, NASA stated they would change their style guide to reflect that "The Moon" is the name, not "Moon".
There are many other proper names that include the article "the". Sometimes the word "the" is capitalized and sometimes it is not except when name is at the beginning of a sentence. Even when it is not capitalized, the word "the" is part of the proper name, not simply an article in front of the name. Examples in Wikipedia:
You could say, "I am flying to Earth" or "I am flying to the Earth" -- either way is correct per modern usage -- but you would never say "I am flying to Moon." You would always say "I am flying to the Moon."
The Wikipedia project page on this topic tells when to include "The" in article titles. Per the Convention, condition #1, this article needs to be renamed "The Moon". The condition states that if a word has a different meaning when "the" is omitted, then "The" should be include in the title. The project page gives the example of "crown" versus "The Crown". You would never say the proper name of the government authority as "a Crown" or just "Crown". Similarly "moon" without "the" refers to any satellite in the solar system but "the Moon" is Earth's moon. You can even say "the crown on the table" or "the moon of Saturn" with "the", but these are not proper names. "The Moon" as a proper name is never spoken without "the" just as "the Crown" for the government is never spoken without "the". These cases are exactly the same. Therefore, we are required to rename this article "The Moon."
All of the examples you gave are proper nouns where "The" is officially part of the name. While NASA does use the term "the Moon" and "the Sun", the title of the article doesn't have to be exactly grammatically correct as long as it follows WP:MOS. Codyorb (talk) 18:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Hello, I need some help with this phrase: “… thus always shows the same side to earth …”. This seems to suggest that the moon orbits the Earth with a face always pointing at the earth. The lit side of the moon always faces the sun but is not always visible from the earth. Would it be better to say “… the moon’s synchronous orbit means that one face always points at the sun and it is that face that is visible from the earth when the orbit allows …”. Petersoar57 (talk) 00:43, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
Replying to myself here. Having done more reading, I see that I have been mistaken for decades. I was misled by the old term for the “dark” side of the moon. So the same face does always point at Earth ... it is just not illuminated permanently. Likewise the far side of the moon isn’t always dark. Glad to have got my head around this (finally). Petersoar57 (talk) 13:50, 19 May 2018 (UTC)
@Rod57: The data was already there, but the parameter name in the infobox was wrong, so that it didn't show up before. I've now corrected it and it's showing up now. Double sharp (talk) 12:10, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
Density relative to Io grammar
"The Moon is after Jupiter's satellite Io the second-densest satellite in the Solar System among those whose densities are known."
I think that should read: "The Moon is, after Jupiter's satellite Io, the second-densest satellite in the Solar System among those whose densities are known."
Editors from IP addresses are welcome to make edits here. I would reverse the sentence and write: "Amongst those satellites in the Solar System whose densities are known, the Moon is the second densest, after Jupiter's satellite, Io. Dbfirs05:39, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
... but the moon doesn't know which season we are having here on earth. I've changed the sentence to say "northern winter" which I assume was what was intended. Would it be better to specify the month? Dbfirs08:10, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
No, it is highest in each hemisphere's winter. The moon appears to take a different path in the sky depending on latitude. As for the direction, you will of course see it looking south in the northern hemisphere and looking north in the southern hemisphere, just like the Sun. Double sharp (talk) 23:56, 19 July 2018 (UTC)
I was struggling to understand the geometry of your claim, but I now realise that it is true of the full moon when it is opposite the sun which is when we observe it most often, so I now partially agree with the original statement. May we add "full moon"? Dbfirs06:36, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
The Moon is not moving nearer the sun because of its greater mass, you have gotten incorrect information from your media, so no worries. But your solution idea is quite interesting. Randy Kryn (talk) 10:34, 16 August 2018 (UTC)
Are the calculations correct in the sidebar for Surface area, Volume, and Mass compared with Earth? Looks like less than 1% vs. the Moon being about 27% of the size of the Earth. Misty MH (talk) 20:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes, for the surface area (proportional to radius squared), 0.273 multiplied by 0.273 is 0.0745 so the surface area looks correct. For volume (proportional to radius cubed), 0.273 multiplied by 0.273 multiplied by 0.273 is 0.0203, and for mass one needs to take into account the lower density. Dbfirs21:20, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Scale model of the Earth–Moon system: Sizes and distances are to scale.
I notice that an editor-created image has been restored to the article with the description "Scale model of the Earth–Moon system: Sizes and distances are to scale." I have removed this image once before on the grounds that it is original research. How is the general reader supposed to verify that the claim is true?
It seems a good image and to scale, as does a duplicate image used on this page. As an over 13-year long-term image, keeping it until someone proves that it's inaccurate seems a reasonable way to go. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:21, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
The same image File:Earth-Moon.png (2006) is a 2014 Wikipedia featured picture, so it had to have some vetting and thoughts of deleting it should take that into consideration. Are the two photographs the same scale? Randy Kryn (talk) 14:32, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't think it is correct to think of the image as a photograph. My understanding is that it is a composite of two photographs with size and distance adjusted by an editor to show scale.
The featured picture discussion seems to be mainly concerned with aesthetics. A couple of interesting quotes: "Be sure to include that that is the mean distance wherever the picture is shown." and "if the image shows relative sizes and the distance of Earth and Moon correctly, ..." The featured picture is not a duplicate of the image used in this article. The relative sizes appear to match but the distance does not. TwoTwoHello (talk) 10:01, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
An interesting topic, worth a page if someone wants to write it. Then, at a minimum, it can be linked in the "See also" section of List of artificial objects on the Moon. The topic could also be listed on the Apollo mission page. I personally have never thought of this before, and it certainly wasn't in any of the movies or television series about the Apollo missions, at least that I recall. Any NASA images of the bags or whatever they left there? How far from the Lunar Modules did they leave them, and did this happen on all six missions? Thanks for bringing it up, I'd be interested to know more. Randy Kryn (talk) 02:18, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. The source (if it is a source) said that Apollo 11 left 96 bags of waste. Don't know what that means or how it's broken down. Maybe they stopped after Apollo 11? Randy Kryn (talk) 20:08, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
I suspected the waste was from all the moon missions and not just the one. Here is a list of all the items left on the moon that I think we can rely on. So Peter on Wait! Wait! did misinterpret, as I assumed he had.
As for the recent source, I'm not all that confident about whether we can use it. It looks quite detailed and my only concern would be is this a real source?
Good finds. Your first link says "bags of urine" but I was unable to read more because of advertising overload. It's a good source and that initial mention holds up then it could at least be added to the "left on Moon" page. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:37, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
Just "bags of human waste" might surfice. So it was on each trip, interesting. Will check out that source later, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:48, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
Probably worth its own article Human waste on the Moon, or, the topic being larger (includes other space missions who've vented waste, and did they pack it up on the longer Space Shuttle and early or later Space Stations?) that the name falls together quite well: Human waste in space. Vchimpanzee, if you don't want to start an article I can put up a stub and have it open for editors. Maybe both pages would be good, because the Moon topic seems a stand alone. Randy Kryn (talk) 20:54, 11 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see that as a stand-alone article. I only found a few sources and they didn't really have much. Once there is a mission to retrieve the waste, maybe that's the time. I see no one has had a problem with this even though there don't seem to be details about the mission yet.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:24, 12 April 2019 (UTC)
The fact that few have "had a problem with it" is both incidental, and exactly what the organization leaving the waste would want. We at Wikipedia do not expect General Motors to report the negative or adverse-to-GM information about the EV1; but Wikipedia is place for all sides of a story to be told, without espousing any one particular point-of-view and without undue attention to either side. Same here with NASA. Of course NASA public relations in 1969-72 did not choose to publicize all the waste that they chose to leave there; just as NASA Public Relations directorate in 2019 putting out stories about the positive value of Planetary protection protocols on Mars missions would want to publicize their own failure previously to meet the very standard they are advocating for.
None of that is especially relevant to Wikipedia. We expect people or entities on one side of an issue to make the argument that favors their side of the discussion. But if the topic meets the general notability guideline, we would ordinarily tell both sides of the story, representing fairly both the rationale for the entity that left the objects (the US government through their bureau of NASA) and also the story on the other side. Just like Wikipedia does for the EV1. Cheers. N2e (talk) 19:30, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 20 May 2019
This edit request to Moon has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The image of the Earth and Moon (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth-Moon.PNG) incorrectly labels the Moon's axial tilt. The Moon's axial tilt is measured relative to the Moon's orbit (the solid red line) rather than the Earth's orbit (the solid blue line). The SVG version of the image (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth-Moon.svg) is correctly labeled. The definition of the axial tilt (also called "obliquity") is provided by NASA Goddard [1] (the source included with the image) and the measurement of the Moon's axial tilt is also provided by NASA [2]. To fix the image, the existing PNG can either be updated or the SVG could be saved off as a PNG to replace the incorrect image. ADC7 (talk) 18:47, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
I'm doing research for itsnameisthemoon.com and I notice this claim in the first sentence, which was added a couple of weeks ago. I'm worried that the way it's phrased, people might easily be led to think that Luna is an actual name of the Moon, which I don't think was the intention. Should it be clarified or reverted? Cosmologicon (talk) 19:39, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Agree I agree, this should be clarified — while the moon is "lunar" from the Latin form, this is the English Wikipedia. Additionally, I've never heard it referred to in English as Luna, assuming that this naming isn't a local or regional form. Matt.syl (talk) 22:07, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
We've discussed this before and agreed that the name occurs only in science fiction. Thanks for pointing out the unjustified addition and for the removal. @SaltySemanticSchmuck: Please do not add this again. Dbfirs06:45, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. Hazard-SJ ㋡ 06:47, 19 February 2012 (UTC)
Not done: please be more specific about what needs to be changed. RudolfRed (talk) 23:50, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Done I corrected it. Thanks for pointing out. neo (talk) 21:08, 2 June 2013 (UTC)
Not done: - for reasons as stated above - Arjayay (talk) 19:02, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
Done — TimL • talk 07:30, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
Not done Ha ha, no. If you want a serious answer: a fictional feature film is not a reliable source, whether it is made with real actors or stop-motion puppets.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 19:29, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
Done. Indeed so. I've also copyedited it a bit further. --JorisvS (talk) 13:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
chart to work upon in the near future. When you have space agency sites like nasa and space.com not knowing which way the moon rotates you have to start wondering where exactly you are in science. Don't take this as a punishment but a room to improve upon. I hope every one using the internet can consider this, because false information tends to lead to a state of stupidity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mvdc1980 (talk • contribs) 22:11, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
Not done: I presume by Orbital Characteristic, you mean the infobox at the start of the article and to the right. This infobox is built by a template, and that template does not have a field for the characteristic you are proposing to add. -- ferret (talk) 20:59, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.
Scale model of the Earth–Moon system: Sizes and distances are to scale.
Agree I agree, this should be clarified — while the moon is "lunar" from the Latin form, this is the English Wikipedia. Additionally, I've never heard it referred to in English as Luna, assuming that this naming isn't a local or regional form. Matt.syl (talk) 22:07, 16 May 2019 (UTC)
