If You Say It, They Will Believe

Prior entries have dealt with some outrageous claims made by "scientists".  We mortals, are just supposed to believe what they say without doing any thinking on our own.

Here is another example:  This story comes from AOL News.  It has the title:  "The Incredible Shrinking Moon". 

The author tells us that a recent scientific study revealed some faults in the surface of the moon.  We had not noticed these up until the recent study.  According to a geologist at the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington D.C., the faults were "caused by the internal cooling of the moon".

(My thought - how would we know the center of the moon is cooling?  Does that mean that it used to be warm on the moon, without the aid of the sun?)

"We know it's shrinking by looking at these landforms...that kind of look like stairsteps..."  "They are caused by thrust faults, which are generated when the lunar crust material is pushed together and pushed up, forming a cliff or scarp."  said the geologist, Thomas Watters. 

(My thought - if the crust of the moon is being "pushed up", how does that prove shrinkage?)

The AOL article goes on to tell us that this discovery was due to the camera used by NASA being able to have a resolution of .5-2.0 meters per pixel.

(The equates to each pixel covering a width of surface area approximately 20 inches to 6.5 feet.  Remember that one MP (megapixel) is equal to 1,000,000 pixels.  You probable have a digital camera that is rated anywhere from 3 to 12 MP resolution.  So, one pixel is very, very small.  When one pixel covers an area approximately three feet wide, we are not getting a tremendously sharp photo.)

(So, if these photos do show faults due to the surface being "pushed up", resulting in the moon shrinking, how much has it shrunk?  Do we need to worry?)

"Overall, it's only about 100 meters in the past billion years..."

(100 meters is approximately 328 feet.  If you divide that down to a time period that is a little easier to comprehend, rather than a 1,000,000,000 years, you will see the reason some are a little worried.  Based on his numbers, the moon has shrunk .00394" in the past 1,000 years.  That is 1.5 times the width of a human hair. 

In my book, that is not something that could be measured, especially from Earth or using a camera from space.  It boils down to the moon being stable in size due to lack of evidence to the contrary.)