Complex Numbers

Spaced Out

Another one from Cracked. This one's about a whole lot of nothing:

    All the Stuff a Second Grader Knows About Space That You Totally Forgot About  

Except that as regular readers know, I kind of have an interest in space. "Space" in this context means "anything that's not the Earth," not just the nearly-nothing that the stars and planets whirl through.

This doesn't mean I knew all these things. It's rather a broad topic.

Unless you have a way cooler job than we do, there are precious few opportunities in adult life to talk about outer space.

Well, it's not a job, but there's this blog.

That’s why little kids rule. They just learned that space is a thing, they think it’s amazing and they have no qualms about saying so.

They're also obsessed with dinosaurs. When I learned that the dinosaurs were probably killed (mostly, except for the ones that evolved into chickens) by something from space, man, was I conflicted.

Now... there are 10 of these at the link (counting down as per their usual mode, like the old space rocket countdowns). I'm not going to cover all 10. Just the ones I have something to say about. Also, I didn't fact-check these, ironically because I want to keep this short so I can go back to playing Starfield, a video game set in... wait for it... space.

Those disclaimers out of the way...

10. The Sunset on Mars Is Blue

Just like the daytime sky on Mars is the color of our sunsets, its sunsets are the color of our sky, i.e. bluer than a George Carlin set.

I have a memory from the 70s, when I was one of those space- (and dinosaur-) obsessed kids, of the first probes to return images from Mars. The Viking ones from the US. One early image rendered the Martian daytime sky as blue, and I think people commented on how similar that was to Earth despite, you know, it having about 1/500th of the atmosphere. Then NASA discovered that the color correction was off, and the sky was actually pink. Well, I say "actually," but... okay, no, I'm not going to get into how color isn't always what it seems, not today.

9. There Are Planets Made of Diamonds

Yes, I saw the Doctor Who episode called "Midnight," so this must be true.

Diamonds are valuable on Earth because they’re relatively rare, but there are planets that are absolutely lousy with the things.

No, diamonds are valuable on Earth because a certain company from South Africa artificially keeps prices high.

Diamonds are carbon, and carbon isn't exactly uncommon, so space diamonds aren't that farfetched an idea.

6. Comets Are Leftovers

They’re sometimes called “dirty snowballs,” inspiring jokes that would be inappropriate for our proverbial second grader (but he might also think of anyway).

Wait'll that second grader finds out the name of the seventh planet.

4. The Largest Known Body of Water Is a Space Cloud

The Pacific might seem impressive from the boardwalk, but it’s puny compared to the oceans floating out there in space.

Sure, if you want to stretch the definitions of those words to the breaking point. As with carbon, though, it shouldn't be surprising that there's water out there. All of Earth's water came from "space." (Along with everything else on, in, and around the planet.)

1. There’s No Wind on the Moon

I mean, technically, yes, because wind as we know it requires air. Even the extraordinarily rarefied atmosphere of Mars is enough to make wind. But there's a stream of particles from the Sun called the "solar wind," which is even more rarefied, but substantial enough so that people have proposed space probes with giant sails to use the solar wind for propulsion.

That means that, unless someone else comes along and rudely brushes them away, all those footprints from the moon landings are probably gonna be there until the moon dissolves. Them and the poop.

Yeah, no. Erosion is much slower on the Moon, what with the no wind or rain thing, but over deep time, erosion does happen (from solar wind and tiny space rocks and such). That's how it got regolith (Moon dust) in the first place. So even if we never touch the orb again, they'll probably wear away in the five billion years it probably has before getting swallowed by the expanding Sun.

Also, that first footprint? The "one small step" one? That's probably long gone. Think about it: it was right at the bottom of the only ladder that Armstrong and Aldrin used to enter and exit the lander. Not to mention the rocket exhaust from when they took off.

Still, I retain enough sense of wonder to still be impressed that there are footprints on the Moon at all.