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Lunar eclipse flash - Asteroid Strike, or a Static Electrical Discharge?
by Stephen Goodfellow
on Jan. 21, at 4:41:38 universal time (23:41:38 US eastern time). a brief flash took place during the totality phase of the lunar eclipse.
Location of flash
Do asteroids impact on the Moon? Of course they do. A peek through a pair of low magnification binoculars will attest to that.
But are all flashes observed on the moon, asteroid impacts?
Sunlight hitting the Moon's surface, creates a temperature can reach 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius).
When the sun goes down, temperatures can then dip to minus 280 F (minus 173 C) - pretty extreme.
Typically, daytime on one side of the moon lasts about 13 and a half days, followed by 13 and a half nights of darkness. The Luna 'dawn' is a slow and gradual event, unlike the rapid shadow appearance and disappearance of the Earth shadow eclipse.
This sudden eclipse of the Earth causes the Lunar surface temperature to drop precipitously.
I suggest this causes a static charge which can create an electrical discharge cascade, much like that experienced when touching a door handle in low humidity and experiencing a shock.
This rarely, if ever happens when the Moon experiences its slow, regular drop in temp in temperature during its 13 and a half day/night cycle, but the radical shift in temperature caused by the eclipse may be the cause of the sudden static discharge.
Essentially, the sudden Lunar temperature variation causes electrons move from one surface to another through contact. Because the particular dust surfaces are both insulators, they'll build up an electrical charge. One object will have a positive charge (because it lost electrons) and one will have a negative charge (because it gained electrons). If one of the charged objects then touches a conductor, like a piece of metal, the charge will neutralize itself, causing a static shock.
All it takes is a small movement, like a minor avalanche of lunar dust, to trigger an immense electrical discharge.
A paper, "Electrical Phenomena on the Moon and Mars ", was submitted at the ESA Annual Meeting on Electrostatics 2010, states:
"...Measurements during the Apollo missions, together with more recent data from orbital spacecraft, indicate that there are active and dynamic charging processes occurring on and near the lunar surface. One possible consequence of dynamic lunar electrical activity may be the levitation and perhaps large scale transport of lunar dust. .."
http://www.electrostatics.org/images/ESA2010_A1_Delory.pdfc
Between 2005 and April 2018 the MEO recorded 435 flashes from meteoroid collisions. That's less than one every eleven days. The question is, how many of these 'collisions' were confirmed by telescope observation displaying evidence of an impact crater?
I posed this question on the notice board of Physics.org and received many responses, but none that let to conclusive data as to confirming that all flashes were asteroid impacts. Of course, any confirmation is also clouded by the fact that smaller impacts may not be noticeable through telescope confirmation, but than again, the flashes may be small enough to not register on any instruments, due to the distance.
I also asked a prominent local astronomer who suggested sources, but had no definitive answer.
The Sky & Telescope article states:
According to the MEO, about 33 metric tons (73,000 pounds) of meteoric material pelts Earth every day, nearly all of which burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere. A steady stream of space grit likewise slams into the Moon, but with little to no atmosphere to resist, it strikes the surface and vaporizes in a flash of light and heat. Speeds of incoming meteoroids range from 20 to more than 72 kilometers per second (45,000–160,000 mph), so even small rocks can pack a wallop. A meteoroid weighing as much as a holiday turkey (~5 kilograms) will excavate a crater over 9 meters across.
Will we be able to spot the impact scar or crater from Earth? Chances are slim as it's probably too small; it doesn't help that it occurred so close to the lunar limb, where everything gets scrunched (foreshortened) because of perspective. But it might be possible for NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to spy the fresh impact with its associated debris apron provided we can pin down the position.
Impact candidates recorded by Meteoroid Environment Office telescopes from 2005 to mid-2018. The Office estimates that the mass of the impactors ranges from tens of grams to kilograms.
NASA / MEO
Another curious observation is that all the impacts show a sharp division down the middle, where no impacts seem to occur. It could be an artificial artifact in the data, but it does seem strange, especially when the subject at hand is a proposed electrical phenomenon. Is this an electrical polarization?
Conclusion: Do static flashes occur on the Moon?
If a crater is found where no crater existed before, the flash can be attributed to an asteroid impact.
But if are large flashes that exhibit no cratering, might that not be the result of a Lunar static discharge?
Further investigation into this might resolve the issue.
Stephen Goodfellow 01/29/19
Update 02/07/19:
Rob Lerner came across this recent article, "A basketball-sized rock hit the moon during the last lunar eclipse" that I'd like to comment on:
"...when something suddenly smacked into the moon..."
The article begins with the understandable assumption that is was an asteroid impact, and it is from that train of thought that all further logical progression of reasoning in the article originates.
Since I wrote my initial thoughts on this, I've done some research, and cannot find definitive proof of an exclusive relationship between flashes and impact craters.
Spectral data from such flashes at the moment of the event may give us a more informed observation. It could tell us if it was an ice impact, a stone/metal impact or an exclusive moon dust spectrum - no impact.
- Which could be additionally confirmed by the lack of an impact crater.
The greatest discoveries mankind have been made from challenging basic assumptions.
That this is a minor challenge doesn't make it any less valid.
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Update 06/21/19
And then, four months later, (Jun 21, 2019) The Electric Universe publishes this video. Apparently, I am not the only one thinking along these lines:
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