A Strange Object Is Circling Earth Like a Second Moon

[Music] the moon is the second brightest object in our sky at the same time among other astronomical bodies it's one of the dimmest and least reflective our natural satellite only seems bright because it's so close to earth for comparison our planet looks much brighter when you look at it from space it's because clouds ice and snow reflect way more light than most types of rock triton neptune's moon has all its surface covered with several layers of ice if this satellite replaced our current moon the night sky would get seven times brighter the closer the moon is to the horizon the larger it looks this phenomenon is called the moon illusion one of the theories explaining it claims that the atmosphere plays the role of a magnifying glass which makes the moon look bigger in reality if the atmosphere had a say in it the moon would actually look smaller not bigger most experts believe that the illusion is created by your own mind it can increase the moon's size more than twice when earth's satellite is high up in the sky you don't have any visual cues about how far away it is but when it's near the horizon you can see objects surrounding it in detail it makes the moon look larger but it's just one of the many theories explaining the phenomenon by the way you can trick yourself out of this illusion if you bend down and look at the moon upside down through your legs two or three years ago an asteroid was pulled into earth's orbit and started to travel around the planet even though it's no larger than an average car it's still a big deal out of more than one million asteroids astronomers know about it's only the second one to orbit our planet called 2020 cd3 it's our temporary mini moon it won't be with earth for long though the asteroid is following a random orbit and is slowly drifting away temporarily captured objects such as 2020 cd3 are rare they need to have specific direction and speed to be caught by earth's gravitational pull otherwise they either crash into the planet or fly in another direction a transient lunar phenomenon is one of the most enigmatic things happening on the moon it's a short-lived light color or some other change on the satellite's surface most commonly it's random flashes of light astronomers have been observing this phenomenon since the 1950s they've noticed that the flashes occur randomly sometimes they can happen several times a week after that they disappear for several months some of them don't last longer than a couple of minutes but there have been those that continued for hours the year was 1969 one day before apollo 11 landed on the moon one of the mission participants noticed that one part of the natural satellite was more illuminated than the surrounding landscape it looked as if that area had a kind of fluorescence to it unfortunately it's still unclear if this phenomenon was connected with the mysterious lunar flashes there might be more metals for example titanium or iron in lunar craters than astronomers used to think the main problem with this finding it contradicts the main theory about how the moon was formed that theory says that earth's natural satellite was spun off from our planet after a collision with a massive space object but then why does earth's metal pore crust have much less iron oxide than the moons it might mean the moon formed from the material lying much deeper inside our planet or these metals could have appeared when the molten lunar surface was slowly cooling down the moon's gravity is about 17 of that on earth if you weighed 200 pounds on our home planet on the moon your weight would decrease to a mere 34 pounds you would also be able to carry stuff six times heavier than what you can carry on earth it would be easier to walk on the moon's surface but it would be more dangerous too your feet inside a heavy space suit would sink into the lunar soil up to six inches deep but let's imagine you decided to skip the tedious process of walking by leaping through the air then you'd likely lose control of your jumps in no time plus the moon's surface is littered with deep craters it would be a tough feat to avoid all of them not so long ago astronomers discovered a massive blob of some mysterious substance it was hidden under the surface of the moon's far side its mass was the same as that of a pile of metal five times larger than the big island of hawaii the enigmatic something lies almost 200 miles beneath an enormous crater that appeared in the lunar surface billions of years ago the blob likely has something to do with a super collision it might be the metal core of the object that hit the moon back then scientists can't wait to lay their hands on the discovery it could explain lots of things about the south pole aitkin crater the largest known in the solar system if it was on earth its oval-shaped basin would stretch from washington dc to texas there's no air on earth's natural satellite but then how can it be rusting scientists have discovered the presence of hematite on the moon and it's a kind of rust a special nasa research instrument examined the light reflected off the moon's surface it turned out that the composition of the satellite's poles was very different from the rest of it the moon's surface is dotted with iron-rich rocks but without oxygen and liquid water rust can't appear solar winds add to the mystery they bombard the moon with hydrogen and hydrogen makes it much more difficult for hematite to form but even though the moon doesn't have an atmosphere it still has some trace amounts of oxygen its source is our planet's upper atmosphere earth also protects the moon from almost 100 percent of solar winds although not all the time and even though our natural satellite is bone dry there might be water ice in the shadowed craters on its far side the moon isn't a perfect sphere it's shaped like an egg plus the satellite's center of mass is a bit more than a mile off its geometric center [Music] the earth and the moon are gradually drifting apart as slowly as your fingernails grow this is the flip side of our satellite's gravitational force the moon creates tides in the earth's oceans they pull back at the moon and make it speed up this in turn moves the satellite to a higher orbit in prehistoric times the moon was way closer to our planet than it is now luckily we aren't going to lose the moon the farther away it moves the weaker its gravitational pull becomes it means that soon our planet won't be pushing the moon away with such a force there's very little activity going on inside the moon plus there's almost no atmosphere around that's why scientists can trace impact craters littering the satellite surface back billions of years while dating the craters astronomers discovered that the moon along with our planet went through a late heavy bombardment about 4 billion years ago this event is also known as the lunar cataclysm this interval lasted several hundred millions of years during it an unusually large number of asteroids collided with earth mercury mars and venus there might be a labyrinth of lava tubes on the moon not long ago astronomers received the results of an underground lunar topography they discovered a massive cave under the satellite's surface about 30 miles long and 60 miles wide the caves likely to be the result of three billion year old volcanic activity after streams of lava hardened they created a thick hard crust on the outside but inside lava kept flowing melting the rock and forming tunnels and caves countless pits in the moon's surface discovered by nasa might be the openings to lava tubes the moon's orbit around the earth isn't a circle it's an oval that's why the distance between our planet and the satellite varies from over 225 000 miles to more than 250 000 miles there's very little seismic activity going on inside the moon yet many moon quakes caused by our planet's gravitational pull sometimes happen several miles below the surface after that tiny cracks and fractures appear in the satellite surface and gases escape through them

Channel: BRIGHT SIDE

Views: 918,943

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Keywords: bright side, brightside, outer space, the universe, space, planets, stars, astronomy, astrophysics, space facts, recent discoveries, solar system, facts about the universe, the earth, bizarre phenomena, the moon, the moon's surface, apollo 11, facts about the moon, moonquakes, moon's gravity, moon facts video, the moon illusion, how the universe began, how the moon was formed, lunar phenomenon, seismic activity, astronomical bodies, neptune's moon

Id: 25JW9OcETrE

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020