{"id":14715,"date":"2012-12-04T09:18:38","date_gmt":"2012-12-04T15:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=14715"},"modified":"2012-12-04T09:18:38","modified_gmt":"2012-12-04T15:18:38","slug":"besgt-of-the-times-top-ten-space-moments-the-moon-sunk-titanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/04\/besgt-of-the-times-top-ten-space-moments-the-moon-sunk-titanic\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of the Times Top Ten Space Moments: The Moon Sunk Titanic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was just looking at the newly released <a href=\"http:\/\/science.time.com\/2012\/12\/04\/top-10-science-lists\/slide\/the-moon-implicated-in-the-sinking-of-the-titanic\/\">Time Top Ten Space (science) Moments of the year.<\/a>  This is a little unfair, actually. The year is not over. Something could easily happen between now and January 1, 2013.  Anyway, there are things on this list I didn&#8217;t know, so I therefore assume that you did not know them either.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that the Moon sunk the Titanic. At first this sounds silly, but it is actually quite possible and even if an exaggeration of sorts, interesting.  On January 4th, before the Titanic sailed, there was a Spring Tide. This is the monthly (in lunar months, obviously) extreme high tide caused by the opposition of the Sun and the Moon.  On this day, however, Earth was at it&#8217;s annual perihelion in its orbit around the Sun, and the Moon was at a 1400 year orbital low in relation to the Earth. So, the Spring Tide that month was extremely extreme.<\/p>\n<p>This, then seems to have lifted large ice bergs that would have normally been grounded and put them back into action, and one of them went over to the Titanic and sank the damn thing.<\/p>\n<p>One of the items I knew about but want to remind you of: An Earth-like planet was spotted at Alpha Centauri.  Danger Will Robinson, Danger!<\/p>\n<p>The others are all more commonly known, and they are good choices for a list of top ten space science events. Interesting, though, that the strangest and in some ways most unexpected one is about an early 20th century boat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was just looking at the newly released Time Top Ten Space (science) Moments of the year. This is a little unfair, actually. The year is not over. Something could easily happen between now and January 1, 2013. Anyway, there are things on this list I didn&#8217;t know, so I therefore assume that you did &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/04\/besgt-of-the-times-top-ten-space-moments-the-moon-sunk-titanic\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Best of the Times Top Ten Space Moments: The Moon Sunk Titanic<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-3Pl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14715"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}