Re: The MOON is closer than Neptune. Any increase in the sun will show there IMMEDIATELY.

z wrote:
On May 16, 2:02 am, Kirk Gordon <k...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If a bunch of machinists can't muster enough of those skills to have
a civil, productive discussion about physics, then how on Earth can we
possibly be any good at our jobs?


That being the case, it's hard to imagine how a good machinist could
for one second imagine that "the cooling rate is
proportional (as most cooling mechanisms are) to the heat
differential" implies that "it might just remain at a constant temp
even if the sun got hotter and brighter"


Being a good machinist, I like to deal with facts. Here are some of the facts I used to "imagine" the things I posted earlier:

The Moon is about 2.6 times farther from the Sun than Mercury is. (150,000,000 Km compared to 58,000,000 Km)

The brightness of light varies as the inverse square of the distance from the source. That is, when one body is twice as far away, the light is only 1/4 as bright. This means that the Mercury gets about 6.76 times more light than the moon does (2.6^2 = 6.76).

Mercury and the Moon are very similar in composition, in the fact that they have no atmospheres, etc.

If the cooling rates of the two bodies were identical, and if Mercury receives 6.76 times more solar radiation, then you'd expect Mercury's mean surface temperature to be 6.76 times the surface temperature of the moon. In fact, it's not even close. Mercury's mean surface temp is around 430 degrees Kelvin. The Moon is about 253. So Mercury is only about 1.7 times hotter than the Moon, not 6.76 times hotter.

Mercury is larger in diameter than the Moon (4,879 Km Dia. vs. 3,475), so it has a significantly lower ratio of surface area to volume and mass. Since cooling happens at the surface, Mercury should be less efficient at cooling itself (radiating heat into space) than the Moon is. (This may be mitigated by the fact that the heating occurs at the surface; but whatever heat is absorbed by the bodies' interiors would still dissipate more slowly in the larger body.)

Departing from just facts; but using facts to draw conclusions:

If Mercury receives 6.76 times more sunlight than the Moon, and is more likely to retain heat because of its larger volume to surface ratio, but is only only 1.7 times hotter than the moon instead of 6.76 times hotter, then...

...Mercury must cool itself at a significantly higher rate than the Moon, despite so many other things about the two bodies that are essentially identical.

One possible explanation for the difference in cooling rates is the fact that heat dissipation in many cooling mechanisms is proportional to the temperature differential between the body under consideration and its surroundings.

If this is the case, and if Mercury, recieving so much more sunlight, can cool itself at a much higher rate than the Moon does, then it's possible that the Moon, if it recieved increased sunlight, might also increase it's cooling rate. It's temperature might not remain literally constant; but might increase only very slightly in response to relatively large changes in solar brightness.

Which brings us back to where we started - in TWO different areas:

1. The Moon might not increase significantly in temperature just because it receives a bit more sunlight.

2. Good machinists have the discipline and objectivity to deal with facts. Even if I've chosen the wrong facts for this case, and even if there might be better and more accurate conclusions than the ones I've drawn, I still attempted to say things that made sense, and was willing to explain why I thought them sensible. I didn't think that it was a good idea just to spit my personal opinion at the group as if it was itself an irrefutable fact, or to ridicule someone else just because I was too lazy to think about what I'd read, or to explain why I saw things differently.

Like I said, I long for the good old days when people knew how to say "I disagree with you, and here are some reasons why." Even better, people used to know how to do that politely, and in ways that PROMOTED communication and learning, rather than attempting to throttle those things.

KG

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Nefertitis lovely elongated head
    ... came from Robert, inside the moon. ... their assertions, they just hide the facts, and fudge the data. ... Roughly 2500 kilometers in diameter and 13 kilometers deep" ... And the second missile didn't go off.http://www.spaceheroes.org/reports/Apollo_20_Censored.html ...
    (sci.archaeology)
  • Re: did man walk on the moon...and creationism.
    ... crazed fanatics who think there's a conspiracy to hide the fact man ... never walked on the moon. ... the parallels with creationism are striking: ... not ones that explain facts and makes predictions. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • A Four Planet Morning (And Bonus!)
    ... Because Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury were going to be estremely close this ... Jupiter just a fraction over .17, Jupiter to Mars just over .58 and Mercury ... After this I turned to the Moon. ...
    (sci.astro.amateur)
  • Re: Are there any civil anti-relativists?
    ... evidence to the contrary constitutes religious faith. ... the orbit of Mercury. ... seconds in 100 Earth orbits or 415 Mercury obits. ... If you use GR to calculate the time on Earth vs the time on the Moon ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Are there any civil anti-relativists?
    ... the orbit of Mercury. ... I've told you before, those are not scientists. ... seconds in 100 Earth orbits or 415 Mercury obits. ... If you use GR to calculate the time on Earth vs the time on the Moon ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)