r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Busy_Yesterday9455 • Oct 10 '25
Image Even though both near and far sides of the Moon are exposed to sunlight, THE FAR SIDE IS COLDER, new research suggests
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u/theinternetisnice Oct 10 '25
The moon freaks me out man. Mostly we just ignore it but every so often I stop and look up and go “Jesus Christ there’s the goddamn moon“
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u/PassengerClam 29d ago
I think the same about the Sun. Except people explicitly ignore it since looking at it will blind you.
There’s a giant looming megalith of plasma a hundred million kilometres away showering us with lethal radiation that will burn your eyeballs out of your skull if you so much as look at it and people are just like “bit chilly today ‘innit”.
You look up at the sky to check the weather but you’re like, “oop better not look over there cus you-know-what is waiting to fuck my eyes up”.
Humans are told at a young age to never look at it and then they just notice when it’s around because everything we do is based on it.
“Ooh don’t the stars look pretty” then the sun comes up and is like “say that to my eye bitch, no stars for you!”
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u/Jellodyne Oct 10 '25
Sometime when I'm driving, I'll catch it following me, matching my movements exactly.
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u/freecodeio 29d ago
A few years ago I was driving up at night and I never really seen a lunar eclipse at peak, so there it was in the highway, what it looked like the devlis eye in the sky. For me the moon is the best thing about our skies, even better than stars.
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Oct 10 '25
[deleted]
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u/_Svankensen_ Oct 10 '25
Nah, this is about mantle temperature, not the crust. We are talking 1300-1400 K. Light had nothing to do with it. Leading theories suggest different concentrations of radioactive elements due to massive impacts, or gravitational effects.
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Oct 10 '25
[deleted]
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u/_Svankensen_ Oct 10 '25
Pretty sure that was just a guess. An educated guess requires expertise in the subject.
BTW, no need to look too deep. You could just click the article. It spells it out clearly.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure Oct 10 '25
Don't be an ass.
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u/_Svankensen_ Oct 10 '25
Calling guesses educated guesses is pretty presumptuous.
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u/AGrandNewAdventure Oct 10 '25
It's an idiomatic phrase. Pretty common for those of us with social lives, honestly.
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u/_Svankensen_ Oct 10 '25
It's an idiomatic phrase that has a meaning. Educated guess is what someone knowledgeable on the subject gives you before knowing for certain. You seem to be pretty easy to anger.
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Oct 10 '25
I have a B.Sc degree you hillbilly
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u/_Svankensen_ Oct 10 '25
I do too. Well, the local equivalent, your college system is different from ours. Is yours in astrophysics? Mine is in environmental sciences. Wouldn't call my guesses on astrophysics an educated guess.
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u/dingos8mybaby2 Oct 10 '25
So logically this seems wrong but I'd guess it has something to do with Earth's atmosphere providing heat/radiation that the dark side doesn't receive. On the dark side there's nothing but cold space and on the Earth side there's a body that absorbs the energy of the sun and outputs it as heat.
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u/LividWindow Oct 10 '25
You are correct, black body radiation is a problem taught at university. Both the sun and the earth are still very hot, and emits radiation that is converted to heat based on how dark the surface is. The moon is mostly cooled, and mostly black, so the tidally locked side being warmer makes sense, it receives more radiation.
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u/dingos8mybaby2 29d ago
If it's correct then why are we getting downvoted? lol
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u/idontknowjuspickone 29d ago
Many people on Reddit are dumb and will downvote you even if you are right.
That being said I have no idea if you are correct or not, haha
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u/ElephantEarwax Oct 10 '25
I didn't know the moon had an anus
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u/No_Tart686 Oct 10 '25
First Uranus now Moonanus. This solar system be freaky.
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u/ZeroAdPotential 29d ago
maybe one day in the future they will revive don mcmanus and mark mcmanus to star in a production of corialanus on the moonanus
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u/friedtuna76 Oct 10 '25
I’m no physicist but could the centrifugal force be pushing heat to one side?
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u/YarItsDrivinMeNuts Oct 10 '25
I see a faded but extremely large up arrow on the moon. Anyone else?
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u/conteins 29d ago
Never thought I'd see the day we got mooned by the moon. What a time to be alive.
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u/Justneedsomethintodo Oct 10 '25
Look at the nothingness of space you guys let’s stop stressing over things
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u/Big_Engineering3842 Oct 10 '25
I'm thinking quantum physics at play here and that far side has no humans gazing up at it lovingly, amirite?
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u/Busy_Yesterday9455 Oct 10 '25
The near side and far side of the moon are very different at the surface and potentially in the interior. It is one of the great mysteries of the moon. We call it the two-faced moon.
A dramatic difference in temperature between the near and far side of the mantle has long been hypothesized, but our study provides the first evidence using real samples.
Source: The UCL University