Friday, December 21, 2012

The Windy Moon


I caught a bit of Who Wants to be a Millionaire last night and really wish I hadn’t. The question I heard was, ‘Which of these do you find on Earth but not on the Moon?’ and the choice of answers was: sunlight, gravity, craters and wind. I stood there with my mouth hanging open listening to two ‘celebs’ debating whether or not the Moon has gravity, then one of them stating quite firmly that there was wind up there. In the end they made the sensible decision not to commit to an answer and take the money and run.


Now, I really don’t expect people to know the names of the main moons of Jupiter or to even be able to recite the order of the planets in the Solar system, but a little basic scientific knowledge would be good. But then, I was showing a lack of basic scientific knowledge too because they couldn’t hear me while I was shouting at the television.   

11 comments:

Michaelvf said...

There's gravity on mars? Holy moly.. we should get some gravity mines up there in case we ever run out here on earth!!

In all seriousness I cannot believe that some people would be that ignorant though.... It reminds me of this hoax: http://stevendx.deviantart.com/art/Elephants-bigger-than-moon-162762780

Phil M said...

But the celebs will know more useful things like where to get the best fake tan and who has the best stock of D & G handbags!

Happy Xmas everyone













Tony B said...

The inanity of the questions and stupidity of the contestants on most TV quiz shows makes me cringe. Question time is even worse, a bunch of politicians, journalists, celebrities, and members of the public debating issues about which they know absolutely bugger all.

Bob Lock said...

Hmm... that's a trick question, wind on the moon is dependant on the amount of beans the astronaut has eaten....*simples*

LarryS said...

Unbelievable!

beak said...

everyone knows there's no sunlight on the moon.. thats why they call it moonlight! duh!

Northern Fop said...

*cough*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

...arguably a shitty question.

Neal Asher said...

Northern Fop, believe me, they weren't discussing whether the solar wind counted.

Unknown said...

In point of fact, though, there
is indeed a wind of sorts on the moon; not the wind of a gaseous atmosphere but rather the steady flow of the continuous stream of charged particles emitted by the solar wind; it has blown a gentle breeze of tenuous ionized plasma across the moonscape for some
four billion years.

Unknown said...

Forgive me; I see that someone had
already made the same point, and less
pedantically as well.

Alex Cull said...

But there must be air up in space - otherwise, what would the rockets push against? :P