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Closer to Deducing the Origin of the Moon
eldavojohn writes "A giant explosion on the sun in January of 2005 allowed SMART-1 (a European spacecraft orbiting the moon) to detect what elements the moon is made up of based on the X-rays from the sun's explosion. This allows scientists to speculate on the moon's origins while seeing data from all over the moon as opposed to the core samples we have collected and returned in the past. From the article: 'Scientists responsible for the D-CIXS instrument on SMART-1 are also announcing that they have detected aluminium, magnesium and silicon. "We have good maps of iron across the lunar surface. Now we can look forward to making maps of the other elements." said SMART-1's Principal Investigator.'"
Oh man, you can bet that looking into the moon or bits of it will have you coined as a loony, figuring out its "source" is just plain cheesy, and given its size is anyway having to force a choice between the light and dark side.
Have you read my journal today?
Don't believe me? Go to google moon and zoom all the way in.
Technoli
What are the odds that the moon turns out to be composed partly of gold, or platinum or palladium? Would moon mining be profitable?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I thought God made it. Oh well, learn something every day.
Funnypics
What's now posing as the Moon is really the Fourth Imperium Utu-class planetoid Dahak, hull number 177291 -- the original was destroyed 51,000 years ago.
Forget the origins of the moon. The moon's here. What I find interesting is that they're mapping the elements on the moon, and where they are. This gives us a map of where to go mine. They already said they found iron; eventually, someone will find a way to make moon mining more monetarily motivational.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
There is no moon.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Where are the vast deposits of cheese Grommit, the Cheeeeeeese!
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19And God said, Let the lesser light of the night be composed of green cheese.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Here's a few more details about this Impact Theory:
s tions/question38.html
"The basic idea is this: about 4.45 billion years ago, a young planet Earth -- a mere 50 million years old at the time and not the solid object we know today-- experienced the largest impact event of its history. Another planetary body with roughly the mass of Mars had formed nearby with an orbit that placed it on a collision course with Earth. When young Earth and this rogue body collided, the energy involved was 100 million times larger than the much later event believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The early giant collision destroyed the rogue body, likely vaporized the upper layers of Earth's mantle, and ejected large amounts of debris into Earth orbit. Our Moon formed from this debris."
Plus, this page has a really cool rendering of the Impact:
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/que
Health Insurance Quotes
Your point doesn't stand - the moon mineral composition is fundamentally different from Earth's for the straight forward reason that it was made up of materials from Earth's outer layers - it lacks the heavy elements that concentrate in the Earth's core.
Clear, Dark Skies
Well of course the "lunar landing" rocks were similar to Earth's, they were from Earth. It is accepted fact that we never went to the moon. The present analyses simply add more support to this fact. Oh, and if you want to know my credentials, as IANAA (the last part can be astronomer or astronaut- take your pick) I watch Fox, and that is where I get all my current information, everything else is in my Bible. You can't imagine how much I have saved on bookcases and moving expenses over the years by only reading and owning one book.
Well, as far as Sig's go, Freud was a doozy.
You are aboslutly correct, and it seems that you would have the added benefit of being the most secure storage site on the plan... eh... in the solar system.
Please, do not anger the Great One. He is always watching and always has a slide show ready.
'Origins' aside, it's mining companies (and venture capitalists with an eye for off-world enterprises) that will be most interested in these findings, lending the idea that they are likely funding some of this research.
While this may sound absurd, it's perhaps worth asking: How much rock do you have to move off the Moon before the Earth starts seeing climatic changes as a result? Any one know of research into this area? Given the blatant denial certain first word countries have evidence in the face of an eroding Ozone layer, let's hope the moon isn't laden with valuable metals, ores and other resources..
Its an accepted theory that the Moon originated from the Earth.
Sometime in Earth's early history, before the formation of life, a large Mars-sized object probably collided with the Earth throwing off a massive amount of material.
For a time its believed the Earth might have had a Saturn-like ring system until tidal/gravitational forces caused the material to begin clumping together into what would one day be the moon. Its also likely that some material rained back down on the Earth. Supporting this theory is the well known fact the Earth has a very faint, barely detectable, ring.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
thezorch@gmail.com
http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
See: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
That depends. Is the floor carpeted?
Have you read my journal today?
The findings make sense for the theory which states that an off-center impact of a largish planetesimal merged with the nascent earth 'momentarily', then threw off a globule roughly the same size as that planetesimal. It makes sense if you consider that the earth's mantle is made primarily of molten silicate rock and light metals, so an impact which 'punctured' the earth and 'kept on going' would have passed through the mantle and taken the mantle rock with it. The moon, if the samples brought back are any indicator, is more than likely nothing more than a solidified blob of ejected mantle collapsed to a sphere due to its mass. Of course, the fact that the moon is slowly moving away is another good indication of a birthing impact as it seems to suggest a point of origin. The earth is probably too small to have captured a body the size of the moon anyway. Another good piece of evidence is the fact that the moon always faces the earth on the same side, a coincidence of angular momentum that suggests that the moon was once a part of earth.