Scientific Exploration of the Moon

Abstract

The exploration of the Moon has involved a highly successful interdisciplinary approach to solving a number of scientific problems. It has required the interactions of astronomers to classify surface features; cartographers to map interesting areas; geologists to unravel the history of the lunar crust; geochemists to decipher its chemical makeup; geophysicists to establish its structure; physicists to study the environment; and mathematician to work with engineers on optimizing the delivery to and from the Moon of exploration tools. Although, to date, the harvest of lunar science has not answered all the questions posed, it has already given us a much better understanding of the Moon and its history. Additionally, the lessons learned from this endeavor have been applied successfully to planetary missions. The scientific exploration of the Moon has not ended; it continues to this day and plans are being formulated for future lunar missions.     

Exploration of Basel Mission Company shipwreck remains at St George's Reef off Goa, West Coast of India: impact of the Basel Mission Co. on society and culture

A systematic exploration of shipwrecks has been carried out in Goa waters since 1997. Exploration off St George's Reef has brought to light the remains of a shipwreck at a depth of 15 m, containing various types of terracotta artefacts intended for house construction. Basel Mission Tile Works 1865' is impressed on bricks, roof and floor tiles. Study shows that the company was active in manufacturing terracotta and exported it to Africa, Australia, Borneo, Sumatra, and other countries. It has been renamed 'Comtrust', and is still producing terracotta using the same techniques. The impact of the Basel Mission Co. on society and culture is discussed. A study of finds of wrecks in the Mangalore and Calicut areas was undertaken.     

曾过日月山

1985年暑假,我们一行数人曾远游青海湖,路经日月山。时而上坡,时而下坡,时而朝左拐,时而向右弯。越野车在青藏公路上疾驰。迎面而来的是卡车,卡车,没完没了的卡车。车号牌上以“26”开头的,显然是青     

In the Shadow of the Moon: A Challenging Journey to Tranquility, 1965-1969

French and Burgess have added yet another book to the enormousliterature on the Space Race. Based partly on oral history interviewsand partly on written and e-mailed statements and other documents,In the Shadow of the Moon focuses on the American side of thesecond half of the Space Race. (French and Burgess dealt withthe first half of the Space Race in a previous work, Into thatSilent Sea.) Between March 1965 and July 1969, the U.S. launched fifteenmanned space missions. In four years and four months, NASA wentfrom     

Interpreting the Moon Landings: Project Apollo and the Historians

By focusing on the key book‐length studies of the Apollo program that landed American astronauts on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, this essay seeks to evaluate the historiography about Apollo in the first decade of the twenty‐first century, dividing the subject into five major areas. The first area is the foreign policy and public policy antecedents of Apollo and its immediate ramifications; some of these efforts have yielded significant studies. The second area involves the evolution of space hardware, in many instances these are overwhelmingly detailed studies of rockets and other space flight technologies. Third, there is a great fascination with the astronauts and their actual flights, and a rich tradition of memoir and narrative exists in this arena. The fourth area receiving attention from historians of Apollo and the lunar voyages emphasizes the history of science, in which much of the focus is on the scientists, scientific findings from the voyages of discovery, and the use of this evidence in developing larger theories about the origin and evolution of the solar system. Finally, and increasingly so in the last 20 years, the Apollo story has been recontextualized through social and cultural investigations of its meaning in modern America. Assessing the five major areas enumerated above, this essay also offers some possibly fruitful avenues of future research.     

“暗香浮动月正圆”端砚赏析

“暗香浮动月正圆”端砚,质地优良、构图巧妙、雕工精湛,实为端砚之上品。     

我与嫦娥赏地球

<正>老人们都说广寒宫里有嫦娥,她将满身的柔情化作洁白的月光洒落人间。懵懂少年,想着有一天美丽的嫦娥与我一起赏地球。月球是距离我们最近的一个星球,也将是我们星际旅游的第一站,将这样一个美丽的星球纳入我们的旅游月志中,有何不可?     

对女传教士慕拉第的理性思考

美国浸信会女传教士慕拉第一生事主,33岁来到登州,在蓬莱、平度、黄县等地进行传教长达39年之久,在此期间创办教会学校,尤其是女学,把当地妇女从缠足、受压迫等桎梏陋习中解放出来,提升了她们的社会和家庭地位,深受当地民众爱戴。同时,为基督教在华的传播、近代科学知识在登州的传播和登州融入西方社会做出了很大贡献。     

Culture on the Moon: Bodies in Time and Space

This paper investigates whether the term ‘culture’ can be applied to the six Apollo lunar landing sites, and how the remains at these sites can be understood as the actions of bodies at a particular moment in space and time.     

Blood from the Moon: Gender Ideology and the Rise of Ancient Maya Social Complexity

Archaeological data suggests that there is a direct link between the rise of social complexity and the erosion of women's status. Through a look at the ways in which gendered practices and symbols may shift as men and women (and males and females) negotiate their relationships and interactions within shifting social contexts, this article sets out to explore this linkage between social complexity and gender equality in the ancient Maya region. Building from the notion that ‘gender’ is produced and reproduced through practice and symbol as a culture constitutes and bounds gender roles and expectations by symbolically associating certain activities and materials with each gender as iconic representations and ritual enactments of those normative gender roles then serve to naturalise a gender ideology, this article argues that the rising ancient Maya elite attempted to legitimise increasing social inequalities through the manipulation, ritualisation and abstraction of female symbols of power associated with pregnancy, menstruation and childbirth. This appropriation and contestation of symbols and performances of gender identity can be observed in wide variety of powerful representations and practices within the Maya cosmology such as genital piercing, the 260‐day calendar and the neutering of female sexuality in monumental art.     

汉画像石“嫦娥奔月”图的造型艺术与宗教品质

汉画像石中共有"嫦娥奔月"图四幅,皆出土于河南南阳的汉画像石墓中。四图在构图内容与造型艺术上呈现出各自的风格和特征;但通过对其在墓葬中的安放位置及与周边其它画像石组合关系的考察,则四图又具有着相同的现实功用与宗教意蕴,即通过对嫦娥获得不死之药而飞升入月的造型进行艺术化的表现,表达汉人热切企盼生命再生与生命永生的宗教情感。     

Dating the A Cemetery at Kish: A Reconsideration

Abstract

The site of ancient Kish consists of a series of mounds about eight miles east of Babylon in the flood plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. On several of the eastern mounds extensive remains of the Sumerian (Early Dynastic = ED) period in the early 3rd millenium B.C. were excavated in the 1920s. Among these remains was a cemetery in which were found many examples of a distinctive kind of pottery, the so-called “goddess-handled jars,” which have come to be associated with the last phase of the period and thus to serve as a criterion for dating sites where these occur.

It will be argued here that such jars were actually manufactured over a longer span of time within the Early Dynastic period and that they are therefore a less precise instrument for dating than has been believed. In my view their absence from some sites is to be explained not by chronology but by regional differences. If this argument is correct, then the dating of a number of Early Dynastic sites will have to be re-examined with greater attention to regional considerations that have often been overlooked in the past.