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The Moon: Earth's Sneezeguard
Mandi Walls writes "SF Gate is running an article about looking on the moon for pieces of Earth that may have been knocked into space by collisions with asteroids, etc. The article claims the guys responsible for the idea came up with it while stuck in traffic. They were probably digging for change for a toll in the seats."
the article says that the guys thought of this while stuck in traffic one day a few years ago. Fundamental ideas and concepts sometimes do get thought up while the person is in an odd situation, iow not the place one would expect such a solution would be thought of.
examples: Newton determined that buyuncy (sp?) exists because he felt lighter in weight after getting into the bathtub one morning. This helped him solve a problem given to him by the King who said his new crown felt lighter than the previous. The story goes that Newton ran through the streets nude shouting "Eureka!! Eureka!!" His discovery helped him determine that the crown was not 100% gold, but rather some other metal with a layer of gold on the exterior. This was determined before he tore the crown open to confirm his theory.
example 2: The guys who found a key exchange algorithm for quantum encyption keys. They had a chance meeting with each other at a train station after one of their trains ran late. Standing on the platform, they had, as Simon Singh put it in his book The Code Book, "one of those eureka moments" where they figured out the trick needed.
"As magmas move through the crust towards the surface or as lava flows over the Earth's surface, they may pickup chunks of surrounding rocks. Sometimes, the magmas and lavas are not hot enough to melt the captured rocks. Once the molten rock solidifies, the plucked rocks remain trapped in the igneous matrix. These trapped rocks are called xenoliths. If the trapped materials are individual minerals, they are called xenocrysts.
Xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, and xenocrysts (like metamorphic and weathering features) are often easily identified under the microscope and sometimes even in the field. In some cases, a geologist may be interested in dating xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, or the xenocrysts. However, obviously, if the geologist is interested in dating the younger matrix, he/she will look for and avoid any xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts or xenocrysts. While mainstream geologists know how to avoid xenoliths, zoned phenocrysts, and xenocrysts when dating igneous rocks, creationist Steve Austin apparently was not careful to avoid them when he conducted his "research" at Mt. St. Helens or the Grand Canyon, see " A Criticism of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project by Chris Stassen and compare with Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mt. St. Helens Volcano, by Steven Austin. In his Mt. St. Helen's study, Austin collected what he thought was a freshly solidified dacite. He removed the gabbro xenoliths, but there's no mention if he found and removed any lighter colored, less obvious xenoliths, such as andesites or quartz diorites. Austin states that xenoliths of gabbro, quartz diorite, basalt, and andesite are common at the Mt. St. Helen site."
The study by Austin the author, a Dr. Henke, is referring to is one which claims impossibly old dates for fresh dacite.
We could go on for a long time, but I would simply say that science is self-correcting: it is a field which encourages criticism and revision, so long as the criticism is valid and demonstrable. No good scientist would ever claim to any perfection in his or her work. A scientific theory is only valid so long as it has been demonstrated in experiment and has not been disproven by other experiments. The reason why I have such a hard time accepting what you're saying is because, so far as I can tell, it has not stood up to peer review.