Record-Breaking Meteorite Crash on Moon | Hacker News Reader

Record-Breaking Meteorite Crash on Moon

space.com

40 pointsanigbrowl17 comments

Blowing up 15 tons of TNT on the moon is visible from the earth - I would not have expected that. And now I wonder what a Tsar Bomba like bomb - 50,000,000+ tons of TNT equivalent - on the moon would look like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119

We almost found out. As insane as that plan was, it was relatively sane compared to this, and similar, tests:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

There is speculation that the crater Giordano Bruno was caused by a large impact on the moon in 1178. If true, it would have been way larger, but evidence of any debris hitting the earth is missing, so it's probably just a nice story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno_%28crater%29

Any reason this was unveiled 5 months after it happened?

Possibly it took almost that long before someone viewed it or it was otherwise analyzed. The data pile is large.

It is interesting to compare energy released by meteors to bombs. This meteor was about 1 meter in diameter, and made 40m crater. The biggest artificial explosion made crater 500 meter wide crater. Mosquito bite compared to bit larger asteroid.

> "Record-Breaking Meteorite Crash on Moon Sparks Brightest Lunar Explosion Ever"

Did they mean "... ever recorded?" I'm sure there were brighter crashes in the past four billion years, many of which humans saw.

Of course they did :-) It must have been exciting when that first year they started recording temperatures, every day was the hottest and coldest it had ever been on that day, just one record after the next, falling like raindrops.

I was somewhat amused that 'imaging the dark side and recording flashes' was a fairly recent idea. But we have gotten much better about being able to just throw a few multimegapixel imagers around for doing things like that of late.

Better link to the video http://youtu.be/kuLzjwkXxZw?t=2m50s from youtube without the annoying space.com monetization

How would a potential base on the moon defend against that?

I don't think you do defend against that. Even if you buried your base, a direct strike by something that big and fast would almost certainly cause you problems unless you were very deep. The crater is 40 meters across and while it isn't as deep, the shockwave anything under it would have felt probably would have been pretty brutal.

A potential Moon base would count on direct strikes by very energetic meteorites being extremely unlikely.

I'd expect that it's such a rare and localized event that you probably wouldn't prepare for it.

But, wouldn't less meteorite crashes happen at the poles? Would that be the safest base location?

It doesn't look like there are fewer craters at the north pole:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2011/09/lunar...

I would think the ideal moon base would have multiple layers, the innermost an oxygen volume and the outermost a thick absorbing defensive layer against space debris, enemy/terrorist attacks. Dome structure perhaps.

Alternatively - mobile moon bases, and be super ready to spot space debris.

Make it movable, and a alarm system?

And by movable, not in "left-right" but "up-down". I think is easier to deflect a blast if the base move up, instead of try to run...

I think reactive armor might be an interesting strategy. But, then again, it was traveling at 40,000 MPH, which, I think, places it at about twice the velocity of high explosive plastique... So, would blasting it, before it blasts you, actually work?

I think there would need to be a complex early detection and warning system, capable of intercepting high speed objects, well beyond what we consider normal terrestrial speeds. Being lazy, I'm tempted to just say "why not some lasers, maybe?" and shrug, but maybe there are some cooler options possible?

Seems like a pretty unexplored deficiency of moon habitation.

Track any asteroids/debris that could impact the moon and keep it out of the way.

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