Planet Earth

The Surface of the Moon is so Abrasive it Can Cut Through Kevlar

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On Earth we have we have winds that blow particles around and water that erodes and breaks down rock and other hard materials. These two elements work in conjunction to wear down particles over millions of years into an almost spherical shape. For example if you were to look at sand from a beach on Earth under a microscope you would find the grains to be predominantly smooth and round. This process is called erosion.

The Moon, however, has no atmosphere, as such it has no wind and no oceans, rivers or rain. It has none of the tools that Earth uses to grind away at the rough edges of particles to make them smooth like our sand and soil. As a result of this, the dust that covers the surface of the Moon is razor-sharp, made up of microscopic stone and powdered glass from millions of years of meteorites slamming into the surface at high velocities. The particles that form from the shards that break off from these impacts are far from spherical, they have jagged sharp angles, with microscopic hooks that jut out in all directions and with nothing to change them they remain this way forever…or until a man in a spacesuit decides to step on the surface and disturb them.

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Planet Earth

A Colossal Solar Storm in 2012 Almost Sent us Back to the Dark Ages

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On July 23rd 2012 a massive solar storm eruption from the Sun sent a colossal plasma cloud of magnetic energy hurtling through Earth’s orbit at over 3000km a second, and if the eruption had taken place the week before it would have collided directly with our planet. Should this have happened, modern life would have come to a standstill and we would still be recovering today.

A solar flare is an enormous explosion on the surface of the sun when a massive build up of magnetic energy is suddenly released. They are the most powerful explosions in the solar system and can equal the intensity of 1 billion hydrogen bombs detonating at once. A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is a large bubble of magnetic gas that erupts from these solar flares and launches outwards away from the sun, two of these CME’s were launched from the Sun within minutes of each other in 2012 and narrowly missed the Earth, with us being none the wiser of what justĀ almost hit us.

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