From: "Kevin Allegood" <ribo@mindspring.com>
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet
Subject: [soc.history.what-if] Re: Post script to "Moon out of Green Cheese"
Date: 15 Oct 1998 03:46:23 -0000

[Submitter's note: THIS is why I love rec.arts.sf.science...]

Subject: Re: Post script to "Moon out of Green Cheese"
From: lpurple@netcom.com (Lance Purple)
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if, rec.arts.sf.science

> [...] My question was, "How is this going to affect the size of the
> moon?"  Assuming that the same mass of moon is changed into green
> cheese and assuming that Cheese is less dense than "moon" there is
> going to be a rather larger moon there. [...] The upshot of all of
> this is that the Cheese-moon radius will have to be 45% larger to
> keep a "cheese-moon" of equivalent mass.

Hmm. OK, so we turn the Moon into 7x10^25g of green cheese.  Now,
the density of most cheeses is about 1 g/cm (one third as dense as
moon-rock), so the Moon should initially bloat out to a new radius
of 2600 km like you said.

BUT: what'll happen to the cheese down in the mantle, with the
massive weight of hundreds of kilometers of cheese crushing it?
It will quickly separate into water and casein, with the water
rising up towards the surface and the denser casein being forced
further downwards.  The protein will almost immediately start to
break down into simpler products like water, NH3, and carbon.
If you add up the amino acids that make casein, you see that the
bulk composition is something like C6 H11 O4 N. The most stable
set of end-products would probably be 8H2O + C2H6 + N2 + 10C.
I get that we start with about 2x10^24 moles of water plus about
2x10^23 "moles" of casein, and end up with:

    1x10^24 moles of C      --> 8x10^22g --> 100 km radius core
    3x10^24 moles of water  --> 2x10^23g --> 400 km deep oceans
    2x10^23 moles of ethane --> 1x10^22g     thick atmosphere
    1x10^23 moles of N2     --> 4x10^21g       "    "

So unless I've made a big math mistake somewhere, the green cheese
Moon would quickly evolve into a strange little Europa-like or Titan-
like world, with a very dense graphite core, a thick atmosphere and
deep oceans, and almost no leftover cheese. :( or :) ?


NOTES:
1. "Green cheese" assumed to be Swiss Sapsago or Schabzeiger cheese.
2. Basic Sapsago cheese composition is 40% water, 40% casein, and
   10% fats/salt/other. Values from "Fundamentals of Dairy Science,
   2nd Ed." by Webb, Johnson, and Alford.
3. Casein amino-acid composition is mostly glutamic acid (25%),
   isoleucine and leucine(16%), proline(12%), and lysine(8%).
   Values from "Modern Dairy Products, 3rd Ed." by L. Lampert.