The Dark Side of the Moon

[JIkj fjds j]

The Neal Stephenson was purely coincidence, I hadn't noticed it before posting.

And on the subject of coincidence, it was reading this thread last night that had caused me some insomnia. While laying awake in the semi-darkness my thoughts lead me to thinking about why stars sparkle, as apposed to twinkling because of atmospheric disruption. It was then that quite suddenly the low battery indicator on my central heating control/clock began to blink, on and off.

The startling coincidence was how my thoughts about the way the human eye and a total eclipse of the Sun share certain similarities. At least in the visual sense, the pupil being surrounded by the iris and the cornea, just like the Sun shining onto the dark side of the Moon to create the corona of the eclipse. The rods inside the eye may very well break apart the beam of light like the spokes and the hub of a wheel. To help the eye be more selective, as well as a protective function stopping too much light flooding the pupil. Hence sparkle, and not twinkle!
The fact that my thoughts were interrupted by the low battery indicator only fuelled my curiosity and imagination.

And so, as the light blinked on and off from the corner of the room, I wondered how much of science is built on coincidences. The discovery of ultra-violet light, purely by accident/coincidence, springs to mind. And not forgetting Alfred Einstein's greatest discovery of how light bends around the Sun, when a car drove by him at nighttime as he was crossing a road!

Thinking about light and time led me to suppose that a beam of light may share similar behavioural patterns to an electrical current, ie, hole flow. And hence a portion of light hitting the eye (at night) sparkles because the majority of the light is actually traveling away from the eye in the opposite direction. Time displaces the light beam into the centre of the sparkle (hub of the wheel), as if it was vanishing into a micro-black hole.

But as I was trying to decide on the possibility of daylight and nightlight having a differential bandwidth and speed, I curled up and fell fast asleep.

[JIkj fjds j]

oops, binary post!

[wayfriend]

We could say the tides are a scale measuring the relative mass of moon and sun. In which case, the moon is "bigger", since it causes stronger tides than the sun does.

The gravitational effect is bigger. But not the mass.

"Mass" is inviolable. But "Weight" changes according to the strength of gravity.

So we could say, "The moon weighs more than the sun", and that would be pretty technically accurate.

[JIkj fjds j]

We could say the tides are a scale measuring the relative mass of moon and sun. In which case, the moon is "bigger", since it causes stronger tides than the sun does.

The gravitational effect is bigger. But not the mass.

"Mass" is inviolable. But "Weight" changes according to the strength of gravity.

So we could say, "The moon weighs more than the sun", and that would be pretty technically accurate.

Maybe so, but my point was that a total eclipse seen on Earth shows that the Sun and the Moon for a brief spell have equal circumferences. This being an indication that they are also for a brief spell of equal weight - as celestial bodies in space can be thought of as being weightless.
They do have mass, as you pointed out, above:

moon (approx) = (7.35 x 10^22 kg)
sun (approx) = (2 nonillion kg)

Therfore, the difference in their weight, for a brief spell, is (E) energy.
And this may be measureable in kg.

If light has weight, and it's weight varies between day and night, then ... um ... wait a minute ... um .... wait a minute .... um ... nah, it's gone. Forgotten wot I woz on about. Sumfin to do wit the darkness being ...
nope. too much interference from last night's dreamstuff.

Anyhow

be seeing ya, laters.

[Fist and Faith]

I don't understand. How is their equal circumferences from our pov an indication that they also have equal weights?

[I'm Murrin]

Obviously, Fist, it's because every object in the universe has the exact same density.

[JIkj fjds j]

My argument earlier in this thread was how an imaginary scale could balance the weight of the Moon and the Sun. The fulcrum being the position of the Earth at solar eclipse - when the Sun and the Moon have reached a state of equilibrium. The difference of both the Moon and Sun could then be thought of as the difference in weight of the dark and the light.

moon (approx) = (7.35 x 10^22 kg)
sun (approx) = (2 nonillion kg)

Which also has something to do with the different way we perceive sunlight and starlight. And certain properties of why stars sparkle could explain how the direction of the light beams from our day light star and the night sky stars are not travelling in the same direction. Hence, the night sky is black because only a portion of light travels to Earth while most of the light is travelling away from us - unlike the sunlight in daytime which is obviously moving directly towards us.

But trying to imagine a contraption capable of extracting the difference and converting it into a renewable energy source would only lead down a oute into the realms of the ridiculous.

[Vraith]

the direction of the light beams from our day light star and the night sky stars are not travelling in the same direction. Hence, the night sky is black because only a portion of light travels to Earth while most of the light is travelling away from us - unlike the sunlight in daytime which is obviously moving directly towards us.

Hee hee...well this is fun. You do know the Earth is round, so that the same amount of sunlight is always coming directly towards us...and that that amount is pretty small [I think it's measured in billionths of solar output], and the rest is going elsewhere.

Still, that's not why the night sky is dark. The night sky is dark because:
A] big bang/space expanding, and
B] our eyes cannot see microwaves.

hee[2] the Sun and Moon don't reach an equilibrium during an eclipse. If they did, then the Moon would stay there, and we'd ALWAYS have an eclipse. But it doesn't, it keeps orbiting.

And the "weights" will never be "equal" in any realistic way. That's the whole reason your "scale" needs a fulcrum, and a longer arm/lever on one side than the other.

That's enough play time for today.

[wayfriend]

I have never heard if there is any explanation other than coincidence for the apparent similar diameters of the moon and the sun when viewed from the Earth. (It's not exactly exact, and it changes all the time because both the moon's orbit and the Earth's orbit are elliptical.)

And, btw, the Earth is not exactly round, nor is the sun. I presume the moon is not, either. The variations are not visible to the naked eye. But the sun, IIRC, is wider than tall, and the Earth, IIRC, is pear-shaped. Anyway .... this also prevents any kind of perfect occlusion.

As far as the weight of the light ... I would remind Vizidor that the moon reflects the sun's light. During an eclipse, it's reflecting it all back to the sun. That's bound to throw off any balance.

[JIkj fjds j]

Well I still believe if there's such a thing as dark matter then light can have weight. Of course using kg's doesn't seem realistic to me. Maybe once I've discovered all the parameter's (having hired a very clever mathematician to do all the tricky stuff) the measurements of weight could then be called Viz.

For example: (hypothetically)

moon (approx) = (1 Viz)
sun (approx) = (1 Trillion Viz)

A system of numbers which could even be used to calculate how far the Sun could throw the Moon. If you were to image the weighing apparatus similar to a see-saw. The Sun dropped on one side projecting the Moon from the other. I would estimate the Moon to roll to a stop somewhere in the region of Alpha Centauri.

E=mcViz

[Vraith]

Returning to tidally locked things---
I just found out that Pluto and its moon Charon are tidally locked to each other.

That's gotta be in the running for universe's longest staring contest.

PLUTO: Ok, if you blink first, you keep company with Persephone for a while so I can take a damn vacation.
CHARON: If you blink first, you drag those dead people out here from Earth.

[[[Alternatively: PLUTO:

"Don't you fucking look at me!"[/quote]]]]

Charon might win in either case because

Charon is most often explained as a proper noun from χάρων (charon), a poetic form of (charopós), “of keen gaze”, referring either to fierce, flashing, or feverish eyes,