Wobbling moon

[Souptime]

I just saw something on twitter about a wobbly moon causing world wide floods, and i didnt think it was real, but it is. https://www.google.com/search?q=wobbly+moon+2021&rlz=1CAPPDO_enUS897&oq=wobbly+moon+2021&aqs=chrome..69i57.6817j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

You have a few factors in the hype of this moon wobble. 

1.  a very low possibility of significant sea level rise, that if it did happen would be economically challenging (but people like to think will be sudden, scary and dramatic if it happens). 

2. a multi-year cycle affecting the moon, which is something very few people understand (which makes it scary), that if it combined with 1. above, would make 1. above mildly more interesting, but its easier to just make it scary than actually look into what's going on,

3. stupid people

4. a global press that makes money off of stupid people by selling shock, horror and controversy

Edited July 15, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[SunlitZelkova]

21 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

But it floods the special limited places. Never heard of a Moon-caused tsunami. Just incomparable amounts of water get moved at once.

The friction stops the water faster than the Moon can accelerate it.

While an underwater earthquake moves up a lot of water at once.

I don't think anyone- at least the actual scientists who deduced this, not the media hyping it up- is suggesting there will be Moon caused tsunamis. It is just that flooding in places where flooding already happens will be worse.

On 7/22/2021 at 10:49 AM, MKI said:

I recently learned a few things that actually blew my brain about climate change.

Namely around the idea that if the ocean gets just a little warmer... that's incredibly bad. 

The idea that the ocean gets .5 degrees warmer sounds like nothing, except as water warms, it expands thus it increases sea levels, I don't remember if there was an answer on how much it would rise based on overall temperature however. It could be only a few inches, but it is something to keep in mind even when all the glaciers melt.

Another aspect of water is that it can hold a lot of energy. This is why it takes a while to boil a pot of water. So imagine how much water is in the ocean, and how much energy it now holds if all of it rose by .5 degrees. I forget exact numbers, but even a tiny change in average ocean temperature is like directly exploding thousands of nuclear bombs directly into the ocean. 

A .5 degree change is very small in other terms, like if my coffee got .5 degrees warmer I probably wouldn't notice. However, there's a difference between temperature and heat. My coffee can be 100 degrees hotter, but it doesn't generate hurricanes because it holds very little heat. The oceans of the world on other hands are holding incredible amounts of heat energy, which in turn ends up what generates hurricanes, even though temperature wise it has hardly risen.

Each of these properties are verifiable through known science, and practical experiments (water expansion is due to the molecules moving around more from heat, core science knowledge) so even a tiny change results in progressively worse outcomes. 

 

I consider myself to be an extremely harsh skeptic of all things. Its hard to get me to believe anything, its also very hard for me to deny anything outright. In today's day and age you don't have to go far to find information, but its vastly harder to navigate such information. Its way easier to follow some source and consider that the "truth" and be done with it as you "know". Its way harder, but much wiser, to be skeptical. Its much more work to question your respected sources, to question authority, to question others, and most importantly to question your own self.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard P Feynman

"It is just as intellectually lazy to believe everything you see, as it is to deny everything you see." - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Be skeptical, keep being skeptical and follow those that continue to seek the truth, and be weary of those that say they find it. 

 

 

So going back to the moon wobble, I assume flooding will get worse in a few years, then slowly go "back to normal" as its a gradual change right? Would it be fair to assume in 4-5 years flooding will get slightly more worse/common than what it is right now? 

It should- the Moon isn't going to wobble forever- but simultaneously, climate change will continue, so it will go "back to normal"- but (just to use a fictional example) if the wobble starts in 2031, and ends in 2036, 2037 will be "normal"- but it will be 2037 normal, not 2030 normal.

[sevenperforce]

On 7/22/2021 at 11:52 PM, kerbiloid said:

But it floods the special limited places. Never heard of a Moon-caused tsunami. Just incomparable amounts of water get moved at once.

The friction stops the water faster than the Moon can accelerate it.

Friction has nothing to do with it. The moon is responsible for the intensity of the tides. No one is claiming that the moon is causing tsunamis.

10 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

It should- the Moon isn't going to wobble forever- but simultaneously, climate change will continue, so it will go "back to normal"- but (just to use a fictional example) if the wobble starts in 2031, and ends in 2036, 2037 will be "normal"- but it will be 2037 normal, not 2030 normal.

It is like slowly filling up a swimming pool while people are already constantly climbing in or out of it. If you are constantly adding water to a pool while a bunch of people are climbing out, the water level won’t rise very quickly, or maybe even at all. But if all those people then climb back in at once, the water level will rise very very quickly.

[mikegarrison]

9 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

No one is claiming that the moon is causing tsunamis.

... unless the moon triggers earthquakes. Which is not impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_triggering_of_earthquakes

Edited July 24, 2021 by mikegarrison

[Souptime]

oh boy what have i done

[Souptime]

i just wanted to comment on the wobbly moon how did it end up like this

On another note, how would the wobbly moon effect lunar missions, like artemis and the sort?

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 minutes ago, Souptime said:

i just wanted to comment on the wobbly moon how did it end up like this

On another note, how would the wobbly moon effect lunar missions, like artemis and the sort?

It won't.  The 'wobble' is measured in decades.  It's part of a cycle that we've been aware of for a looong time.  

Most people don't think in terms of decades.  So when they say 'sea level rise could happen' and if it did 'it would be bad' and if sea level rise happened while the moon was in a certain position on it's eternal wobble... 'the tides would be bigger' --- then the fun thing to do is freak people out by saying 'if all the terrestrial ice melted in a matter of moments at the same time the moon was in position to make the highest tides the highest... it would be calamitous!!!!"

 

But - remember... all the land locked ice won't melt in a matter of moments.

Edited July 27, 2021 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[sevenperforce]

Just now, Souptime said:

i just wanted to comment on the wobbly moon how did it end up like this

GOOD QUESTION!

So, originally a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia slammed into proto-Earth

KABOOM

Chunks of rock went flying off of the crust as the cores of Theia and proto-Earth merged

LOADS AND LOADS OF FIRE AND LAVA

The chunks of rock that were flung off the crust formed rings which were basically aligned around Earth's equator.

Those rocks all eventually collided and coalesced into our moon. Our moon was massively larger than any other moon in the solar system (relative to its primary). Its massive tidal interactions with Earth (and Earth's tidal interactions with it) caused it to recede and become tidally locked. 

BILLIONS OF YEARS PASS

Over time, our moon moved farther and farther away and became more and more affected by the gravity of the sun. Fairly early in the process, our moon became far enough away that it no longer "circled" the Earth at all; it was more affected by the gravity of the sun than the gravity of the Earth. The impact of the sun's gravity tugged the moon away from its original orbit around Earth's equator into an orbit that was closer to a flat orbit around the sun.

But it's not quite there yet, so for the time being, there is an 18.6-year "wobble" in the lunar cycle from where it aligns with the Earth's equator to where it doesn't.

Just now, Souptime said:

On another note, how would the wobbly moon effect lunar missions, like artemis and the sort?

Due to the inclination of the moon's orbit, there are only certain times of the month when you can do a minimal-energy Trans-Lunar Injection burn. You can do it at other times of the month but it costs more propellant.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

7 minutes ago, Souptime said:

i just wanted to comment on the wobbly moon how did it end up like this

Oh - and as to this: the article you linked was a sensationalist piece... and people are emotional about this

For my part - the only conspiracy I believe is that Climate Change is actually desired by those Sneaky Canadians and Greedy Russians... because once all the permafrost melts, they're the new 'breadbasket of the world'.

[Jacke]

9 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

So, originally a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia slammed into proto-Earth

While that is the hypothesis with the best match to the data (giant-impact hypothesis) and is almost certainly true in a broad sense, there's a lot of details still being worked out.   Wikipedia covers a lot of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant-impact_hypothesis

 

10 hours ago, Souptime said:

i just wanted to comment on the wobbly moon how did it end up like this

On another note, how would the wobbly moon effect lunar missions, like artemis and the sort?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

Like most large satellites, the Moon is tidally locked to its primary.  The Moon is special and different among planetary satellites, especially large satellites:

1. Its mass is closest to that of its primary, Earth (1.23% or 1/81.3), when the primary is a planet.  Expanding to dwarf planets, Charon is larger with respect to Pluto (12.2% or 1/8.20).
2. Its relatively farther away from its primary, such that its orbit with respect to the Sun is always convex towards the Sun; this is likely due to #1 and tidal effects slowing the Earth's rotation and increasing the size of the Moon's orbit around Earth.
3. Its orbit around Earth is tilted at a constant value, 5.1°, with respect to the ecliptic, the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.  Almost all other large satellites orbit in the plane of their primary's equator, with retrograde Triton around Neptune being the large satellite exception.
4. The Moon axis of rotation is almost upright with respect to the Sun, 1.5°.

With all this and the gravity, including tidal forces, from the Earth and the Sun, the Moon's orbit is under regular changes, including 3 different precessions.  With the precession of the Earth's poles, this means the orbit as seen from the Earth goes through many cycles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Orbit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_theory

Along with changes in the Moon's orbit over geologic time, there are connected changes in the Earth's rotation.

Analysis of a Precambrian resonance-stabilized day length
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GL068912

Quote

 

 

Edited July 27, 2021 by Jacke

[Vanamonde]

A lengthy and only vaguely related argument has been moved from this thread and over here.