(urth) Cumaean???

[Jeff Wilson]

Recursive Loop wrote:
> "Lune is a tricky subject. We know it LOOKS bigger than now. That may be because its closer. Why
> its closer we don't know. Maybe Wolfe assumes it would be closer do to gravitational attraction,
> but thats wrong, because the Moon is actually getting farther away from Earth. Maybe it was
> intentionally "pushed" towards the earth? Why I can't possibly understand. Some people say that
> its mass was increased. Maybe, but what for and how?"
> 
> If it were terraformed, they might have pelted it with comets to build the atmosphere. That would
> increase the mass. But they also might have pelted it with rocky or metal asteroids to build the
> mass (and increase the gravity) to help retain that comet-pelting created atmosphere (speculation
> here).

Lune may look bigger because it is closer. "...the green, reflected 
light that fell from the myriad leaves of the Forest of Lune, fifty 
thousand leagues away." (if an Urthly league is still three miles long, 
that's 150,000 miles, or 3/5 of the current distance.

The moon may not be strictly terraformed, as it is not massive enough to 
retain useful atmosphere, and there are not enough asteroids or 
observable comets to make it so. It may be be covered with greenhouse 
domes, or anything else green-colored, making the Forest of Lune as real 
as the Swamps of Venus were.

> Moving it closer brings it closer to the Roche Limit. Cross that line and the Moon breaks up,
> IIRC. I'm not sure where the Roche Limit is in the Earth-Moon system (looked through a few books
> on the shelves, but haven't found it yet).

Roche limit changes if the size of the moon changes.
-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >