Once in a while, my “poll” questions leave me puzzled by the results.
I asked people “How long is a day on the moon?”. The question is pretty transparent especially in context of other polls – that the notion of a “day” is very Earth-centric and would be a strange way for the Creator of the Universe to measure time.
http://streamingradioguide.com/show-poll.php?pollnum=1493
The top answer is that there is no day and night on the moon. Anyone who read the Dick Tracy cartoons knows that the moon has one day/night cycle about every 28 earth days – 14 days of intense heat followed by 14 days of darkness. The cartoon theory about life on the moon in the 1960s was that beings could only survive if they migrated around the moon staying in the zone between light and dark.
Can anyone explain how it is possible people think there is no night and day on the moon? With the moon and Earth being tidally locked, the phases of the moon make this selF evident.
Slow down, Art. Perhaps the general populace interpreted the question as it relates to the lunar surface “day” being illuminated by earthlight- analogous to the earth’s day being illuminated by the sun, each being the heavenly body around with it orbits.
Reread the question again, “How long is a day on the moon?” and notice there is no reference to a definition of “day” or light source outside the heavenly body orbiting and the heavenly body being orbited.
This video documentary should clear things up for everyone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMxPhl4WWcI
The amount of light reflected by the earth toward the moon does not change during the rotation of the Earth in 24 hours.
You’re correct in one aspect – the question blurs “a day” with “daylight”. Other questions around the same topic ask how long a day is on the North pole and how you know it is the Sabbath…
A “day” is the amount of time it takes a celestial object to rotate on its axis. This becomes apparent as you look outward as the stars in the sky making one complete cycle – of course the stars are not moving, the planet, moon, star, etc is spinning.
Another question asks how long a day is on the sun. The earth centric view is that’s a nonsensical question. When sunlight no longer reaches you, it’s night time. If you were theoretically standing on the sun, it is never night time. But the sun does spin on its axis about every 26 days. This gets to be important if the Sun is erupting and the energy spewing out is going to point toward earth.
Mars spins at a different speed than Earth. If you’re working with the rovers on Mars, sunrise and sunset are entirely independent of days on the earth, so scientists have to measure time in mars days.
If you were in a ship traveling to Mars, you have no frame of time reference at all. The sun and all the stars are fixed in a constant position. There is no day and night. The only thing changing is the sun gets smaller and weaker. A colony on Mars would not measure time in Earth days.
The YouTube link didn’t work.
24 hours? Isn’t the length of our day 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds?
Art, Does this one work? 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
I didn’t want to push the discussion into sidereal days for exactly this reason. Confusing people with the notion that one day a year of the sunrise / sunset is due to orbiting the sun and not the earth spinning apparently could make heads explode.
The overall big picture point which should be fairly obvious is that measurement of time is a creation of man based on the frame of reference of the Earth. Time is now defined based by scientists on the oscillation of atomic particles – but even there you are ultimately equating measurement of time to how fast the Earth rotates.
The other day, I heard a voice on the radio assert that he believes God created the entire universe solely for the purpose of creating humans on the Earth. I would have a hard time having a useful conversation with that person unless we were talking about the prospects for the Alabama crimson tide football team next year.
Make mine a Venti …. and it’s Ole Miss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nd_Bs5wS-I
“How long is a day on the moon?” The -literal- answer is 1 day… a lunar day.
“How long is a day on the moon, in earth days?” eliminates the ambiguity
A day on Mars is one ‘martian day’ (1 day and 40 minutes in earth days).
Semantics aside, the general populace seems quite ignorant of astronomy. Many can’t identify a single constellation or even name the 7 continents of Earth, for that matter.
Ask someone if the moon is waxing, waning, and/or gibbous? Deer in the headlights.
As for why people think there is no day/night… it might explain why many are duped by ‘man-made global warming’ or ‘climate change’ alarmists. i.e. Science by consensus.
“As for why people think there is no day/night… it might explain why many are duped by ‘man-made global warming’ or ‘climate change’ alarmists. i.e. Science by consensus.”
Respectfully disagree. Al Gore’s business to create global warming credits and sell them to anyone that turns carbon into carbon dioxide is no more science that the snake oil salesman were scientists in the olden days. It is more analagous to the fact that everyone knew God’s plant marijuana was dangerous, or that Germans were the Master Race.
If you can teach your kids only one thing in for them to understand the work, teach them to”follow the money” – it’s the yellowbrick road leading to the man behind the curtains.
Actually, that was my point: ‘Science by consensus’ is not science based on fact… it is driven by opinion, agenda, and committees. i.e. Grant$ and credit$ for the true believers.
It’s why the whacky (former) president of the AMS opined that any meteorologist who did not tow the line on Anthropogenic Global Warming “should be stripped of their certification.”
We are regressing to the days of Galileo, Columbus, etal… they were seen as heretics and lunatics by the ‘consensus scientists’.
The man behind the curtain is, himself, a tactic of misdirection.
Truth in science is not determined by holding a convention and conducting a vote. Most of the social sciences have no connection with the scientific method.
George Soros would describe it as “Reflexivity”. He wrote a book a few years about saying that contrary to common belief, financial markets are not in a state of equilibrium but a state of “reflexivity”. It got my attention and it makes sense to me. George Soros is many things, but a financially poor man is not one of those things.
Science, like markets, are Reflexivity driven as well, according the the theory of CC 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_%28social_theory%29
While not exactly parallel, one of Art’s axioms about the stock market is – if you convince enough people that something is true, it becomes true. If you create an observation that if the national league team wins the world series, the market will go up the next day and get enough people to believe it, the market will go up.
Yes – that is the correct answer (and not one of the answers ;))
Just like when you study alternate numbering systems. The value of 10 is always the reference number the system is based on. It seemed like we were taught nonsense in school until I had to learn hexidecimal for walking through sysudumps on an IBM mainframe. We humans base our numbering system on most of us having 10 fingers. (8 fingers + 2 thumbs to preempt the comment that was likely to follow)
Yes and no. Most systems of measurement though were based on halves, quarters and eighths – that is how people think despite how many fingers and toes they have to count manually.
Holy cow! I was always taught that the lunar day is from 27 to 29 Earth days. Essentially – new moon to new moon. Too simple?
CC – AlGore and science looks exactly like an oxymoron 🙂 Thank you very much for the pleasant reminder.
That’s why I’m puzzled / concerned.
There is a recurring problem with the “polls” that people pick the funniest or most outrageous answer – so it’s dangerous to assume the results mean anything.
Sheer lunacy!
There is no dark side of the moon. It’s all dark.
Damn… I thought this is what you guys were looking for 🙂
http://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/dollar.jpg
Wow. Next thing you will tell me is that there are really no pigeons on Fremont Street. 🙁
I’m just going to assume you haven’t read my book, and that comment is an amazing coincidence.
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. 🙂
you know, The Moon, besides affecting Tides has some pull on earthquakes and births.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/study-finds-dangerous-new-madrid-fault-alive-and-active/
Its pretty wild if you think about it.
Today on Alex Jones, Parrott calls in and reports he is glad Para_USA LLC. has moved to Pineville (inside the Charlotte beltway) which is an excellent place to have your business, and reports on Propane prices in western North Carolina.
parrott
Now cut that out! Pineville is a cesspool. Only crazy people would want to live here!
LOL !!
Parrott
This item has now been picked up by Rush that Democrats are stupid because they disagree that the Earth revolves around the Sun
Here is where this flew off tract
It was a paper written by a *law* professor from Northwestern University. The actual question asked was does the earth go around the sun or the sun go around the earth? Only if they got the first question right were they asked if this happened once a day, once a month or once a year.
It was the *law” professor of Demgraphic Diversity Studies who introduced the word “revolves” to describe the Earth going around the sun. The survey also asked whether Astrology is scientific or not without making any attempt at defining it. The study of the stars and calculating orbits (aka astronomy) is based on science. If the question was “do you believe that the location of the planets at the moment you are born detrmines your personality and future?”, the “no” response would have been higher.
http://goo.gl/MUuRX8
Honk if you believe in solar cooling
The sun cools down at night
The problem is that as the sun cools, it will expand into a Red Giant and consume the earth’s orbit.
Trouble is, we don’t tax people for that today.