Free QI: The Book of General Ignorance - the Noticeably Stouter Edition by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson Page B
Authors: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
what we already know about the structure of minerals we do have samples of – from the crust and in meteorites – and what happens to these minerals under intense heat and high pressure.
But like much else in science, it’s really only a highly educated guess.
STEPHEN What is the commonest material in the world ?
CLIVE Jim Davidson’s.
What does the Moon smell like?
Like gunpowder, apparently.
Only twelve people have walked on the moon, all of them American. Obviously, in their airtight space suits the astronauts could not actually smell the Moon, but moondust is clingy stuff, and plenty of it was traipsed back into the cabin when they returned from the Moon’s surface.
They reported that moondust feels like snow, smells like gunpowder, and doesn’t taste too bad. The dust is actually mostly made of silicon dioxide glass created by meteors slamming into the Moon’s surface. It also contains minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium.
NASA employs a small team to sniff every single piece of equipment which goes onto its space flights. This is to ensure that no items which could change the delicate balance of the climate of the International Space Station make it on to shuttles.
The idea that the Moon was made of cheese seems to date from the sixteenth century. The first citation, from John Heywood’s Proverbs (1564), says ‘the moon is made of greene chees’. It is thought that in this context, the word ‘greene’ means ‘new’, rather than having a green colour, as young cheeses would often have a more mottled appearance; much like the cratered Moon.
Does the Earth go round the Moon or the Moon
round the Earth?
Both. They go round one another.
The two bodies orbit a common centre of gravity locatedabout 1,600 km (1,000 miles) below the surface of the Earth, so the Earth makes three different rotations: around its own axis, around the Sun and around this point.
Confused? Even Newton claimed that thinking about the motion of the Moon gave him a headache.
How many moons does the Earth have?
At least seven.
Certainly the Moon (or Luna, as astronomers call it) is the only celestial body to observe a strict orbit of the Earth. But there are now six other ‘Near-Earth’ Asteroids (NEAs) which do follow the Earth around the Sun, despite being invisible to the naked eye.
The first of these ‘co-orbitals’ to be identified was Cruithne (pronounced Cru-een-ya , and named after Britain’s earliest recorded Celtic tribe), a three-mile-wide satellite, discovered in 1997. It has an odd horseshoe-shaped orbit.
Since then, six more have been identified: the snappily named 2000 PH 5 , 2000 WN 10 , 2002 AA 29 , 2003 YN 107 and 2004 GU 9 .
Are they really moons? Many astronomers would say no, but they are certainly more than just run-of-the-mill asteroids. Like Earth they take roughly a year to orbit the Sun (think of two cars going round a race track at the same speed but in different lanes) and do, occasionally, come close enough to exert a very slight gravitational influence.
So whether you call them pseudo-moons, quasi-satellites, or companion asteroids, they are worth watching, not least because some or all of them may one day settle down into a more regular orbital pattern.
STEPHEN What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon with the naked eye ?
RICH Which moon are we talkin’ about ?
How many planets are there in the solar system?
Eight. If you still think there’s nine you’ve obviously been living in a parallel solar system.
On 24 August 2006, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union finally agreed its long overdue definition of a ‘planet’. Planets must fulfil three criteria: they have to orbit the sun, have enough mass to be spherical, and to have ‘cleared the neighbourhood’ around their orbit. Pluto only managed the first two, so was demoted to the status of ‘dwarf planet’.
It’s not perfect – some
But like much else in science, it’s really only a highly educated guess.
STEPHEN What is the commonest material in the world ?
CLIVE Jim Davidson’s.
What does the Moon smell like?
Like gunpowder, apparently.
Only twelve people have walked on the moon, all of them American. Obviously, in their airtight space suits the astronauts could not actually smell the Moon, but moondust is clingy stuff, and plenty of it was traipsed back into the cabin when they returned from the Moon’s surface.
They reported that moondust feels like snow, smells like gunpowder, and doesn’t taste too bad. The dust is actually mostly made of silicon dioxide glass created by meteors slamming into the Moon’s surface. It also contains minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium.
NASA employs a small team to sniff every single piece of equipment which goes onto its space flights. This is to ensure that no items which could change the delicate balance of the climate of the International Space Station make it on to shuttles.
The idea that the Moon was made of cheese seems to date from the sixteenth century. The first citation, from John Heywood’s Proverbs (1564), says ‘the moon is made of greene chees’. It is thought that in this context, the word ‘greene’ means ‘new’, rather than having a green colour, as young cheeses would often have a more mottled appearance; much like the cratered Moon.
Does the Earth go round the Moon or the Moon
round the Earth?
Both. They go round one another.
The two bodies orbit a common centre of gravity locatedabout 1,600 km (1,000 miles) below the surface of the Earth, so the Earth makes three different rotations: around its own axis, around the Sun and around this point.
Confused? Even Newton claimed that thinking about the motion of the Moon gave him a headache.
How many moons does the Earth have?
At least seven.
Certainly the Moon (or Luna, as astronomers call it) is the only celestial body to observe a strict orbit of the Earth. But there are now six other ‘Near-Earth’ Asteroids (NEAs) which do follow the Earth around the Sun, despite being invisible to the naked eye.
The first of these ‘co-orbitals’ to be identified was Cruithne (pronounced Cru-een-ya , and named after Britain’s earliest recorded Celtic tribe), a three-mile-wide satellite, discovered in 1997. It has an odd horseshoe-shaped orbit.
Since then, six more have been identified: the snappily named 2000 PH 5 , 2000 WN 10 , 2002 AA 29 , 2003 YN 107 and 2004 GU 9 .
Are they really moons? Many astronomers would say no, but they are certainly more than just run-of-the-mill asteroids. Like Earth they take roughly a year to orbit the Sun (think of two cars going round a race track at the same speed but in different lanes) and do, occasionally, come close enough to exert a very slight gravitational influence.
So whether you call them pseudo-moons, quasi-satellites, or companion asteroids, they are worth watching, not least because some or all of them may one day settle down into a more regular orbital pattern.
STEPHEN What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon with the naked eye ?
RICH Which moon are we talkin’ about ?
How many planets are there in the solar system?
Eight. If you still think there’s nine you’ve obviously been living in a parallel solar system.
On 24 August 2006, the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union finally agreed its long overdue definition of a ‘planet’. Planets must fulfil three criteria: they have to orbit the sun, have enough mass to be spherical, and to have ‘cleared the neighbourhood’ around their orbit. Pluto only managed the first two, so was demoted to the status of ‘dwarf planet’.
It’s not perfect – some
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