Inspired by Ig Nobel Prize Winner, China Builds a Rising Moon

The South China Morning Post reports, on January 12, 2022, that “China has built an artificial moon that simulates low-gravity conditions on Earth“. The report begins: China has built a research facility that simulates the low-gravity environment on the moon – and it was inspired by experiments using magnets to levitate a frog. Further details: […]

Skipping on the Moon – fun maybe, but is it efficient?

History has shown* that astronauts, or more accurately lunarnauts, often like to skip about when they’re on the Moon. But, fun though it might seem, is skipping (in reduced gravity situations) an efficient way to get around? Research teams from the Laboratory of Physiomechanics of Locomotion, Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Italy, […]

Testing the Green-Cheese Theory of the Moon

Edward Schreiber and Orson Anderson once tested whether the Moon really could be made of green cheese. Caltech planetary scientist David Stephenson discussed that achievement, in Box 1 of his article in Physics Today in November 2014. In their 1970 article in the journal Science, Schreiber and Anderson compared the speeds of sound waves in rocks that were […]

Nude on the Moon

In the history of astronomy, there were many dreams about what humans would find if and when they reached the surface of the moon. One such dream is conveyed in the 1961 movie “Nude on the Moon“. (Thanks to investigator Stevyn Colgan for bringing it to our attention.) Click on the image to be shot […]