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Do you “outgas” sometimes at inopportune moments? Have you been known to emit a “sigh” after a bean-filled meal? According to an odd blurb in today’s “Science Times,” the moon does both. That ball of cheese in the sky releases gas from time to time, says the paper of record, which tries to apply poetic whimsy to its report on a recent study published in Nature. The lunar body “shows signs of a relatively recent release of gas from deep beneath the surface,” says the article, headlined “The Moon Sighs.” (Why not “The Moon Breaks Wind”?) While flatulence is perhaps better attributed to outpourings from Titan (a moon of Saturn wrapped mostly in methane), the real reason, we suppose, to avoid the more direct language is that no gas leak in cold space, whether said to imitate the mouth or the anus, has any odor or sound. So even if the Gray Lady’s anthropomorphism of the moon could be excused, one truth remains. In space, no one can hear you fart.
— Carl Rosen
