Lasers prove we've been to the moon !

I believe there are multiple big bangs, always have been, that our universe is much bigger than we think and the real universe includes trillions upon trillions of what we think of our lone universe, some tests have been done which have not given evidence whether such could be true, but science is trying! Maybe someday we will know.

Alaskan said:

I believe there are multiple big bangs, always have been, that our universe is much bigger than we think and the real universe includes trillions upon trillions of what we think of our lone universe, some tests have been done which have not given evidence whether such could be true, but science is trying! Maybe someday we will know.

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Science is still missing a lot of the answers. Many of the basic laws of physics are readily observable and verifiable, even for the average person, but a lot of it is still unproven theory. Even some things that we can observe, test, verify etc., we can't explain. We can understand it, model it and calculate it, but we can't really explain the why or the how. Much of Quantum Physics being a prime example of that.

We've come a long way, but we've got much, much more to learn. I think it's wise to take a lot of science with a grain of salt, at least the things that we can't yet actually prove to be real. I.e. don't take theories as being solid fact or truth. We have been wrong many, many times before. We'll be wrong again. Although, sometimes it's good to be wrong.

Dark matter? We can't find any evidence that it exists, but in order for our models of the universe to actually work, it must be there. So either dark matter is out there, or our models are incorrect and our understanding of the universe from a Physics point of view is flawed.

Even then... the universe and the unending, awesome power of nature may always give us another challenge to overcome and another mystery to solve.

Every generation so far has uncovered greater and greater understanding of what is really going on, but then the next one does it again to make their understanding obsolete, where this leap frogging it will end, could be many many generations from now, maybe never, maybe we are too limited to find the end of the rainbow.

Alaskan said:

Every generation so far has uncovered greater and greater understanding of what is really going on, but then the next one does it again to make their understanding obsolete, where this leap frogging it will end, could be many many generations from now, maybe never, maybe we are too limited to find the end of the rainbow.

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Exactly.

"Everything revolves around the earth" - Nope.

"An atom is the smallest form of matter" - Nope.

There's many more, but those are the first that come to mind.

Alaskan said:

where this leap frogging it will end, could be many many generations from now, maybe never, maybe we are too limited to find the end of the rainbow.

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There is a theory that the more we learn about the universe, the more complex it gets. Resulting in us never being able to form a complete understanding of everything.

diachi said:

It'd actually be relatively simple to calculate if it is indeed possible or not. As long as you know the output power of your transmitting laser and can calculate the signal attenuation from here to the Moon and back with a given aperture size/sensor efficiency.

From there you can calculate the power received by the much smaller aperture of a human eye and figure out if it'd be visible or not.

Keep in mind, the story on the FAQ is not from Steve Roberts (AKA "mixedgas" or "LSRFAQ"). It's from a different Steve.

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I believe this whole controversy can be put to rest by going to Hakzaw1's post #58 and clicking on the link he has provided there. Look for post #5 by Zom-B and read the whole excerpt from Sam's Laser FAQs. Especially look at the last of excerpt by Sam Goldwasser and his take on this whole subject of seeing lasers with telescopes from earth that have been aimed at these reflectors. THAT is priceless.

diachi said:

There is a theory that the more we learn about the universe, the more complex it gets. Resulting in us never being able to form a complete understanding of everything.

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I think Feynman among others adhered to this 'onion theory' of things - you understand one layer, but that just presents the one below that needs to be understood.

Looking at dissecting atoms this is pretty clear. Discovering that the electrons come off under some circumstances did not take long. Figuring that the nucleus was not a single particle didn't take that long either, and now we are at the point of figuring out if the quarks that make up protons and neutrons are fundamental or not.

I'm not sure how far this can continue, nor about at what point we can say with certainty to have figured it all out.

Also we have some major things to figure out, mainly how gravity actually works. For electromagnetic, weak and strong forces we know the mediating (virtual) particles, but for gravity we still do not. Surely it has been named 'graviton', but it has never been observed to this day.

Surely we understand what gravity does, like keeping is on the ground or the moon in orbit, but we don't have much of an any on -how- that happens, while we do with all other interactions.

Of all the things we understand in physics, gravity is the least understood of them all. Even when Newton was applying his laws of motion and gravity, he threw up his hands at the way he saw gravity pulling thing toward each other. It was counter intuitive to everything else he saw in nature as things push other things, such as each action has an equal but opposite reaction. Einstein was able to make things clearer with his law of special relativity and relativity and the photo electric effect. But, to this day, we still have no idea what gravity is or how it works.

I would like to premise the following response with an apology to @Accutronitis, for my contribution to the continued tangential derailment of your Lunar Retroreflector, thread.
I'm still observing the behavioral patterns and norms, at play on this forum. And at present lack sufficient experiential observations to differentiate abnormalities.

To continue:
For those interested in Gravitational Physics, I have become quite enamored with Orlov's 'Foundation of Vortex Gravitation, Cosmology and Cosmogony' hypothesis.
Of special interest to me, is Section 3, starting on page #5 of the pdf.
The introduction set the hook, but Section 3 reeled me in.
Elegant observations, that lend themselves to be easily grasped and understood by casual laymen, and academics alike.

Here is the International Journal Of Sciences and Technology, link for those interested;

http://www.journalofsciences-technology.org/archive/2012/jan_vol_1_no_1/623813189874.pdf

diachi said:

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There is a theory that the more we learn about the universe, the more complex it gets. Resulting in us never being able to form a complete understanding of everything.

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Interesting. Do you have any source for that?

I had that crazy idea independently long time ago, but now I take it in some very reduced form now (more in terms of technology and our knowledge than Universe's essence). Still if that is the truth than there is no doubt the Universe is living organism playing a game with us and keeping us entertained. Still interesting is that Universe is basically exploring itself through us and considering tricky reality it makes me curious if there is something on this theory (or more accurately hypothesis?).

I really need to finish my philosophy article and publish it as I see such a discussions here. More explanation of the Surreal world and constructive critics is needed.

Got to be right, look at our professions, getting more and more specialized.

True. Complexity is increasing, and the only way how to get everything, is to study the complexity itself and specialize on it. With this you have approach to any direction of science. Take stuff from it and build your image of the world. Unavoidable consequence of studying complexity is, you will go deeply specialized in at least several subjects to combine them in new direction.

I guess we want to understand the thibgs we observe, and often do a good job at that.

We fundamentally understand how electrcical charges attract or repel anohter, even how atomic nucleii interact and all that. Yet we still do not know the fundamentals of how the earth stays in orbit around the sun, or what caused the apple to fall on newtons head.

Obviously we know what gravity does, but oddly we still have little idea on how it works. I find that a bit ironic since we've known about gravity long before we had any notion of things like electricty, magnetsm or such: tenthousand years ago men fell on their behinds after a wrong move, blissfully ignorant of why.

They discovered things like control of fire, electricty, nuclear fission and fusion since, but still have a very limited understanding of falling on their behinds under certain conditions

Accutronitis said:

Dust On the Moon....

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@Accutronitis, thanks for posting this clip. That was very informative and added to the thread not only as concerns the Lunar, conditions. But also included a brief overview that similar hostile conditions are present on the Martian, surface as well. You began this thread by drawing attention to the retrorelfectors, that were left on the Lunar surface during the Apollo, missions. This remains as you indicated, an interesting Laser related topic. However, like with most thought provoking subjects, the conversation soon diverged into other related areas such as the current, effusively charming cosmological spitballing. That should actually be viewed, as having achieved a certain level of validation for your original premise. But I digress.

To tiller the conversation back to the Lunar, questions- after exploring what the current status of the 'reflectors' may be due to the accumulation of Lunar dust on the surfaces, this also brings up another interesting aspect of some additional measuring equipment that was installed alongside the reflectors. That equipment consisting of Seismometers, which revealed other interesting aspects of the Lunar body.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Moon

Now while this too lends itself as fertile fodder for other charming cosmological fantasies, it also provides another perspective that serves to reinforce the awe and wonder of creation. In that the Earth and Moon, relationship involves so many sublime nuances that, to coin a phrase from another recent post- layers of onion skins, really only tends to serve as a basic analogy for the current state of observational cosmological knowledge.

Also, I would like to suggest that your thread demonstrated some of the vital roles that Lasers have played.
And how they continue to provide support for Mankind's efforts towards exploring, and understand the universe that we live in. :gj:

Well yeah, no hollow moon for me.

Earths moon Luna is actually quite large. In fact, it is so large that it would be considered to be a planet if it did not orbit earth. If earth was to somehow just disappear, luna would be the 3rd planet from the sun being not -that- much smaller than mercury.

As far as being dusty: both luna and mars probably are, very much so.

Even earth is pretty dusty in some areas, mostly those that see little to no rainfall, and if you travel there the find sand also gets into everything and is a major nuisance. Even with our gravity and dense atmosphere the stuff gets in everywhere and causes problems for equipment.

On the plus size we have explored the moon in person and mars by rovers so we know what to expect.

Back in the days leading up to the lunar missions there were serious concerns that the layer of dust on the moon would be so thick things like landers wound sink into it so deeply no exploration was possbile. We now know that the dust layer on either is not so thick a person or rover would simply fall through it never to be heard of again. We have not explored all of the surface though, and their could be parts that have 'quicksand' deep enough to get lost in... the quicksand being a mixture of dust and air anything dense would easily fall through.

Benm said:

We have not explored all of the surface though, and their could be parts that have 'quicksand' deep enough to get lost in... the quicksand being a mixture of dust and air anything dense would easily fall through.

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Where is this "air" mixed with dust on the moon coming from? Last I heard there is NO atmosphere on the moon. Sounds great in theory, but without any air, highly improbable.

I should have worded that better indeed. Obviously it's not air in the sense of the stuff we breathe.

It's more of a very loosely stacked pocket of dust where the particles lean on eachother, with pretty much a vacuum between them. Such things need not collapse right away, but as soon as you set foot on them you'd sink in.

Let's say you got the dustbag out of your vacuum cleaner, not filled to the point where it stops working well, but where it's sort of "full of dust", and pile the contents of that onto a pile. You could put that in a vacuum chamber and then proceed to reduce pressure carefully to near zero.

The pile would not reduce to a 'pancake' under gravity, but most likely stay more or less the same since it an open structure all elements of which are much denser than hair anyway. If you were to step on such a pile it'd collapse under you immediately though.

Similarly you could shovel out a pit, fill it with something fluffy like cotton balls, put some leaves over it, and have a pretty good trap right here on earth: With the minimum load of the leaves it will keep its form, but as soon as you set foot in on it, down the hole you go.

Air is not really required for this at all, i just mistakenly mentioned it because that is what fills the gaps in such contraptions on earth