Mystery of Moon's Surface Gravity Solved

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA's GRAIL Mission Solves Mystery of Moon's Surface Gravity

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has uncovered the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon's gravity uneven, a phenomenon that affects the operations of lunar-orbiting spacecraft.

Because of GRAIL's findings, spacecraft on missions to other celestial bodies can navigate with greater precision in the future.

GRAIL's twin spacecraft studied the internal structure and composition of the moon in unprecedented detail for nine months. They pinpointed the locations of large, dense regions called mass concentrations, or mascons, which are characterized by strong gravitational pull. Mascons lurk beneath the lunar surface and cannot be seen by normal optical cameras.

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[shrooma]

suppose it's like mountains on earth really, most people don't realise they have their own gravitational attraction.

I don't mean like they're dragging the fork out of your hand while you're trying to eat your tin of beans & sausages, but it IS there, and if I remember rightly (?) didn't someone use a mountain to fine-tune the figure (or maybe confirm?) for the strength of gravity?

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(ps, that's ANOTHER fine acronym NASA's got there! who comes up with these things?? do they have a special little guy in a back room somewhere that thinks of them all?!

nice work if you can get it I suppose....)

[Waspie_Dwarf]

didn't someone use a mountain to fine-tune the figure (or maybe confirm?) for the strength of gravity?

I think you are getting confused with the fact that the further away from the centre of the Earth you go to the lower the gravitational attraction. Hence if you weigh an object at sea level and then again at the top of Everest you will get a lower result at the top of the mountain. This has nothing to do with the gravitational attraction of the mountain itself.

[shrooma]

this is what I had in mind waspie-

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http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/history.asp?page=bigghis

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(which also has a little piece on the great (unknown!) john mitchell, who's house is at the back of mine!)

:-)

[Waspie_Dwarf]

this is what I had in mind waspie-

Interesting. I didn't know of that experiment. Thanks shrooma.

[Merc14]

This should be a great aid to all the future missions being planned in the coming century.

Edited June 1, 2013 by Merc14

[NatureBoff]

The thread title is misleading as GRAVITY itself hasn't been "solved". The pictures are the same as I've seen years ago. Why no information on the possible inner core??

Edited June 1, 2013 by RingFenceTheCity

[DONTEATUS]

Gee ? Or as its put "G" Gravity such a fickle thing we know only a bit about it !

[lightly]

pretty interesting though.... gravity may not have been 'solved' .. but it apparently has something to do with mass? I wonder if the question is.. what is it specifically about mass that causes attraction? Maybe that is understood?

[NatureBoff]

pretty interesting though.... gravity may not have been 'solved' .. but it apparently has something to do with mass? I wonder if the question is.. what is it specifically about mass that causes attraction? Maybe that is understood?

Err, no, that isn't understood at all. There's no official mechanism for gravity due to the accepted theory being based on 400 year old non-sensical mathematical speculation.

[Lex540]

gravity is it really the strongest force there is i think not

[Waspie_Dwarf]

gravity is it really the strongest force there is i think not

Actually of the 4 forces of the standard theory, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and gravity, gravity is the weakest.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The thread title is misleading as GRAVITY itself hasn't been "solved".

No one said it had. The title specifically refers to SURFACE gravity.

The surface gravity, g, of an astronomical or other object is the gravitational acceleration experienced at its surface. The surface gravity may be thought of as the acceleration due to gravity experienced by a hypothetical test particle which is very close to the object's surface and which, in order not to disturb the system, has negligible mass.

Source: wikipedia

The title is accurate, it's your understanding of it that doesn't seem to be.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Waspie_Dwarf