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Moon May Be Geologically Active
dptalia writes, "For decades scientist have thought that the moon has been 'dead' for about 1 to 3 billion years. However, new research points to the idea that the moon may have been volcanically active as recently as 1 million years ago. In fact, NASA geophysicist Paul Lowman believes the moon's core is still molten."
Geologically active = not news
The ten-year-old astronomy book I read to my five-year old son last week noted that the moon has several weak "moonquakes" every year. What's the news; the volcanic part?
Okay, with that out of the way, my question is this: Does this tend to support creationism then (at least as opposed to a big bang with an extremely old universe), as a dead moon would likely be much older than a "recently" geologically active moon? Meaning, would this indicate a "newer, younger" moon, generally speaking? Just curious...
As I know it and as used in the "Inherit the Wind" play/Scopes trial: Going strictly by the bible and using terms in it as not exactly the terms we use today, there is no way to define the age of the universe. Since so much is open to interpretation that makes just about anything possible. There are certain figures who think that they can use the bible as a timeline to figure out the creation of the universe to a day. I don't know if any institutes support these claims or not.
Either way the age of the moon even by the larger creationist theory means little and certainly means nothing about the age of the universe in the accepted scientific "big bang" theory of things. In either theory the universe could be seen as billions of years old without invalidating either one. By all scientific measures our sun is at least a second or third (or more) generation star because of the existence of heavier elements in the local neighborhood. With that in mind the age of the moon means nothing as well.
This isn't even to mention that the earth is still geologically active and yet it's generally accepted to be older than the moon. And who's to say that a large impact wouldn't make the moon geologically active? I'm not qualified to make these assumption more than just mere musings so take it with a grain of salt or moon dust.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The fact that the moon as a very weak magnetic field is almost proof in and of itself that it doesn't have a molten core: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_field#Magnet ic_field_of_celestial_bodies [wikipedia.org]
A molten core is necessary, but insufficient condition for the generation of a magnetic field. The core must also be convecting, which implies its losing heat to the mantle above it. If the core is only cooling conductively, then the core fluid will just rotate along with the planet and that won't generate a magnetic field. The core of Mars is likely molten [Yoder et al. (2003), Science, 300, p.299-303], but it has no global magnetic field (although the strong remanent magnetism strongly implies it had one early on [see e.g. Arkani-Hamed (2003), J. Geophys. Res. 109, E03006]). The high rigidity in the lunar mantle and the small possible size of the lunar core makes core convection very difficult there. (Yes, IIAPS (I am a planetary scientist).)