Comments on: A space-age mystery to celebrate Apollo's anniversary

By: mfumbesi

mfumbesi — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 06:47:07 +0000

I saw nostrils…

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 09:17:28 +0000

@ Sawdust Sam (19) -
Oh, yes, I had forgotten about Webster’s contribution to American variant spelling.

By: Sawdust Sam

Sawdust Sam — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 10:58:52 +0000

@Nigel – Possibly, but Noah Webster was responsible for many of the orthographic differences between American and British English. Some say this was simply because of Revolutionary zeal (he didn’t like the English), but he claimed he wanted to simplify spelling. What he managed to do was substitute one set of odd and inconsistent spelling rules for another.
Sorry – well off topic.

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:47:03 +0000

Bazza (9) said:

“400 meters across”

Are these water meters? Multi-meters? Or did you in fact mean the unit of measurement known worldwide as the ‘metre’?

Heh.

You should know that the USAians reject the Francophilic “-re” ending to many words. Where British English has, for example, “centre” and “theatre” (after the French), USAian English has “center” and “theater”. And so on.

At least some of these words were changed in England to match the French spelling in a wave of Francophilia that swept the nation in the 18th century (IIUC). This post-dates the founding of the Colonies that later became the USA. So it is possible that some words of this type are more “authentic” with the USAian spelling than the British spelling.

But that doesn’t make them right, right?

By: Lars Bruchmann

Lars Bruchmann — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 08:45:54 +0000

“Metre” is French and English. In Germany we say “Meter” (which sort of sounds like ‘mater’ instead of the English ‘meeter’.) The Russians say ‘myetrov’.

By: Muzz

Muzz — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:19:25 +0000

We’re so hopelessly anthro-centric that we can’t see what is really going on here.
See, whenever we spot some celestial form that looks vaguely like a human eye everyone falls about calling it The Eye of God or some rubbish. We never think that our eyes are not the only eyes in the universe and here we see another one.
The moon is actually a giant cephalopod of some kind. And at last the stars are right for it to awaken!
All praise to our betentacled overlord!

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 05:15:21 +0000

The Moon is the nearest astronomical object in the heavens by far, but it also has 38 million square kilometers of surface to explore! That’s four times the size of the Unites States… and LRO sees it at a resolution of roughly a half a meter. That’s a whole lot of pixels, and a whole lot of landscape in which to hide fun little mysteries. I hope there are many, many more.

I hope we get to see humans land again and explore this and so much more one day. There were only ever six short missions with humans walking and wandering across the lunar regolith in a few small locations for very short timespans.

Luna~wise we have so much still to see and learn human exploration~wise.

- The Lunar Farside yet to be visited.
- The full lunar night and day cycles yet to be experienced.
- The Lunar poles have yet to be visited in person.
- There’s yet to be the first woman on the Moon.
- Or the first astronomer on the Moon.

Plus of course the mystery spots like these.

Once I fully expected to see these “firsts”, these places studied by astronauts in my lifetime. Now I’m not so sure.

By: David

David — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:03:25 +0000

It kinda looks like Deadpool.

By: Gary Miles

Gary Miles — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:33:50 +0000

Holy Crap! It’s Underdog!

By: Sean the Mystic

Sean the Mystic — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:09:33 +0000

Obviously that’s the spot where the von Neumann probe of a galactic civilization touched down four million years ago. This clearly calls for a manned lunar mission to investigate, but I do hope they’ll be careful not to set off the damned alarm this time!