Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?

Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 4:47:53 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that you are probably the last person worth responding to.

All the way up the the late 17th century the idea was that larger object impart orbital motion on smaller objects with the cut-off point being the Earth -

"The Sun and the Earth rotate on their own axes... the purpose is to confer motion on the planets around them; on the six primary planets in the case of the Sun,and on the moon in the case of the Earth. On the other hand, the moon does not rotate on the axis of its own body, as its spots prove. Why is this so ?. The reason is none other than there is no other additional planet is seen revolving around the moon. Consequently the moon has no planet to confer motion by rotation of its own body" Kepler

We live in an era where augmented reality is just around the corner and some day students will be able to visualize motions as they actually happen and how we see them from the surface of a moving Earth. I have done my time explaining where this aberration of 'lunar rotation' comes from by way of a misreading of Kepler in Somnium but the real issues are for those who are sane and have a common sense view of the appearance of our nearest astronomical neighbor.

You are free Sam to believe the moon spins around an Earth which completes a rotation in 23 hours 56 minutes and turns 366 1/4 times for each orbital circuit but that is really a mockery of astronomy and clownish behavior. You are better off discussing fuel and lifestyles with the rest of the middle class here and their desperate attempt to sound different from each other.

Astronomy needs people who not only stand up but also stand out.

On 5/2/15 11:28 AM, oriel36 wrote:
On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 4:47:53 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that you are
probably the last person worth responding to.


I can see, Gerald, that you have been wounded deeply by me pointing
out some observational astronomy to you over the years, as you are
still in denial.

Bye

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 5:56:31 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 5/2/15 11:28 AM, oriel36 wrote:
On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 4:47:53 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that you are
probably the last person worth responding to.


I can see, Gerald, that you have been wounded deeply by me pointing
out some observational astronomy to you over the years, as you are
still in denial.

Bye

I think if you hadn't suffered the same generational affliction passed on through the classroom over the centuries as many have in this forum you would be a decent man but as it is you are adding to the chronic disruption to the great astronomical discipline and terrestrial sciences.

If they push a camera on the near side of the moon and looked back at the Earth these would capture the Earth rotating in two distinct ways although daily rotation almost completely drowns out the surface rotation as a function of its orbital motion. With each sweep of the moon between the Earth the camera will capture the shift in the position of either the North/South poles parallel to the orbital plane of the Earth just as we see Uranus rotating to the Sun in two separate ways -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=612gSZsplpE

The theoretical empiricist makes his living turning facts on their head so that even the common sense observation that the moon orbits the Earth without the traits of intrinsic rotation doesn't survive in classrooms even if it does in this forum as representative of genuine astronomy.

oriel36 wrote:
On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 5:56:31 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 5/2/15 11:28 AM, oriel36 wrote:
On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 4:47:53 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that you are
probably the last person worth responding to.


I can see, Gerald, that you have been wounded deeply by me pointing
out some observational astronomy to you over the years, as you are
still in denial.

Bye

I think if you hadn't suffered the same generational affliction passed
on through the classroom over the centuries as many have in this forum
you would be a decent man but as it is you are adding to the chronic
disruption to the great astronomical discipline and terrestrial sciences.

If they push a camera on the near side of the moon and looked back at the
Earth these would capture the Earth rotating in two distinct ways
although daily rotation almost completely drowns out the surface rotation
as a function of its orbital motion. With each sweep of the moon between
the Earth the camera will capture the shift in the position of either the
North/South poles parallel to the orbital plane of the Earth just as we
see Uranus rotating to the Sun in two separate ways -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?va2gSZsplpE

The theoretical empiricist makes his living turning facts on their head
so that even the common sense observation that the moon orbits the Earth
without the traits of intrinsic rotation doesn't survive in classrooms
even if it does in this forum as representative of genuine astronomy.

Which is exactly what this video shows you.

http://youtu.be/yvhqK7NVVrU

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 5:56:31 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 5/2/15 11:28 AM, oriel36 wrote:
On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 4:47:53 PM UTC+1, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUpX7J7ySo

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remind everyone that you are
probably the last person worth responding to.


I can see, Gerald, that you have been wounded deeply by me pointing
out some observational astronomy to you over the years, as you are
still in denial.

Bye

Don't run, stay awhile and we will look at what is ahead for astronomy as a visual exercise. It is long overdue and besides, the fact that saa has shrunk to its present size is a story in itself and mirrors the decline in interest in theoretical empiricism while astronomical events are becoming more popular among the wider population with live streams and things like that. The recent eclipse was an example of this.

As for 'wounded deeply' - that makes me laugh. A spirited person generally is too occupied with the challenges and puzzles out there to dwell on the things that entertain the pseudo-serious and the fictional narratives needed to justify their occupations, salaries or celebrity.

The idea of astronomers as stern academics standing in front of a blackboard full of equations is being replaced by astronomers in front of a computer screen putting narratives together for others to improve on or expand on..

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 9:47:53 AM UTC-6, Sam Wormley wrote:
Why Do We Only See One Side of the Moon?

Well, Oriel is at least _half_ right.

We don't see only one side of the moon because, by some *amazing coincidence*,
the Moon rotates with exactly the same period as it revolves around the Earth -
to such an accuracy that it hasn't shifted its orientation by so much as a few
degrees in thousands of years of recorded history.

Instead, tidal forces - due to the Earth's gravitation, and the Moon's
closeness to the Earth - reinforce the synchronization between the Moon's
rotation and its orbit. Thus, always facing one side to the Earth is actually a
lower energy state than not rotating at all.

Given that, by the standards of ordinary casual conversation, and by naive
surface appearances, the current state of affairs with our Moon is indeed what
most people would call "not rotating".

However, "most people", unlike Oriel, are at least sufficiently deferential
towards authority - even when it wears the robes of academe rather than, say, a
police uniform - that if a learned astronomy professor says the Moon rotates in
about 24 1/3 days, and it orbits the Earth in about 24 1/3 days as well, which
is why we only see one face of it, they won't challenge it, even if they can't
really understand it.

A little introductory familiarity with Newtonian mechanics will, of course,
imbue the student with the idea that the arithmetic is simpler if we do
everything in terms of what gets called an "inertial reference frame" in
Special Relativity. If you do your physics experiments on a moving merry-
go-round, you will wonder where the Coriolis force is coming from.

And so the habit of referring all astronomical motions to the fixed stars,
rather than using the more familiar synodic periods, at least seems reasonable.

But one really has to go further to explain why we're just about compelled to
accept that, yes, the Moon is rotating. Just as the Equation of Time justifies
treating the siderial day as primary in the case of the Earth, the libration in
longitude of the Moon is what makes it untenable to ignore the fact that the
Moon is, despite the tidal influence tethering it to the Earth over longer time
scales, basically to be considered as a freely rotating body on short time
scales.

And this stuff is technically out of a lot of people's depth. So when someone,
like Oriel, refuses to admit that other people can know stuff that he
personally isn't able to understand, the errors he gets into are very
understandable.

John Savard

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 3:16:36 PM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

And this stuff is technically out of a lot of people's depth. So when someone,
like Oriel, refuses to admit that other people can know stuff that he
personally isn't able to understand, the errors he gets into are very
understandable.

Incidentally, I should add to this:

Millions of years of evolution have led us to innately have the attitude that
when somebody says "oh, this is too complicated for you to understand", he is
almost certainly lying.

Because for millions of years, the human race didn't *have* differential and
integral calculus, or even higher algebra. The only complicated things there
were even for most of human history, never mind prehistory, were systems of
mumbo-jumbo.

Simple trusting faith in one's *parents*, or one's tribal chieftain, was,
though, also a survival characteristic. People like Oriel, though, don't see
scientists as having... legitimacy... and so he doesn't accept them as part of
the authority structure he respects.

I mean, it would be nice if the dream Carl Sagan expressed in "The Demon-
Haunted World" came true, and education in science and in critical thinking in
the public school system advanced to the point where most Americans could see
for themselves that modern science is valid, and self-correcting, and so on and
so forth. But we are still very far from that.

John Savard

And if you think Oriel is bad, remember that there are *millions* of people
running around loose out there who swallow twaddle like this, hook, line, and
sinker:

http://bloodmoonscoming.com/?page_id=127

John Savard

On Saturday, May 2, 2015 at 5:23:48 PM UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:

I mean, it would be nice if the dream Carl Sagan expressed in "The Demon-
Haunted World" came true, and education in science and in critical thinking in
the public school system advanced to the point where most Americans

and Canadians, Brits and everyone else (I fixed that for you.)

could see
for themselves that modern science is valid, and self-correcting, and so on and
so forth. But we are still very far from that.

No, the liberals do NOT want educated, critical thinkers. If such thinkers existed in too large a percentage, they would easily see the fallacies and illogic in the liberal agenda and then vote the liberals out.