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Re: Today's jaw dropper



....
Well, yeah, a little atmosphere could do it, but what kind of challenge
would *that* be? Don't you suppose that Serway is referring to the effects
of the nonspherical components of the Moon's gravitational field. ;-)

Maybe. Or else maybe he was referring to the nonconservative time-dependent
perturbation caused by the Earth's tidal field gradient in the vicinity of
the moon as the moon revolves/rotates in it (including the effects of the
noninertial coodinate system in which the moon's center of mass is at rest).
:-)

(The orbital speed around the moon for near-surface circular orbits is
1.68 km/s and the escape speed is 2.38 km/s = 7.93 x 10^(-6) c.)

David Bowman
dbowman@gtc.georgetown.ky.us