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Thursday October 19, 2000 Previous | Next
Dear Yahoo!:
Where would I find the Sea of Tranquility?
Rebecca
Penguin, Tasmania
Dear Rebecca:
Well, that depends on if you are a practioner of acupressure or an outer-space enthusiast. If you are the former, it's located in the center of your breastbone, and is helpful in eliminating emotional stress or eye fatigue. For the purposes of this column, we'll assume you are the latter, in which case the Sea of Tranquility is located on the moon.

And how do we know all this? A Yahoo! search on "sea of tranquility" and some serious digging enlightened us. The majority of search results had nothing whatsoever to do with the lunar location (you'd be suprised how popular a title Sea of Tranquility is).

After some serious sorting, we learned that Mare Tranquillitatis, the Latin name for this dark spot visible in the northern hemisphere of the moon, is most famous as the landing site of Apollo 11. That infamous "small step for man" took place in the southwestern part of the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969. Upon landing, astronaut Buzz Aldrin surveyed the terrain and called it "magnificent desolation."

Other "seas" on the moon include the Sea of Crisis, the Sea of Fecundity (or Fertility), and the Sea of Serenity. These seas, or maria, are not actually bodies of water, but are lower-altitude plains filled with "dark, solidified lava from earlier periods of Lunar volcanism." Most of the maria are concentrated on the side of the moon we can see from Earth, the near side of the moon. The far side of the moon (or "dark side" to Pink Floyd fans) is more barren and has few maria.

 
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