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."

Comments

Molten Core = Magnetic Field

[casualsax3]

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

it's not the size of the field...

[Red Flayer]

it's the presence of a dipole. (There's some really terrible doulbe entendres to get from that, but I'll pass onthe opportunity).

by casualsax3 (875131) Alter Relationship on Thursday November 09, @12:30PM (#16787241):

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]

The moon's sidereal period is over 27 days, a strong magnetic field would not be expected. The major indicator that a molten core is not present is the lack of a dipolar field -- which a geodynamo (from the molten core) would cause.

Re: creationism

[geoffspear]

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?

No. Even absolute proof that the moon was about 6000 years old would have nothing whatsoever to do with the Big Bang theory. No one thinks that the solar system is anywhere near as old at the universe itself, and the age of the objects in the solar system is miniscule compared to the time since the Big Bang.

In any case, if your conjecture about "geologically active" = "created recently" was remotely plausible, why would you need to look at the moon at all? The Earth has plenty of active volcanos that you can go and look at, which by your logic would "prove" that the Earth isn't "old".

What a weird question, but here goes

[jlehtira]

No. This has nothing to do with creationism. Not much of the real world has anything to do with creationism. And conversely, creationism doesn't have anything to do with the real world. Why? Because creationism doesn't tell us what the world should be like, and just not knowing how the world came to be what it is doesn't mean there's no natural way for it to happen. Probabilities? Now that's pure guesswork, not science.

Yet again, this doesn't have anything to do with the age of the Moon either =). The question is *not* how old the Moon is (how long ago it was formed) but instead, how long did it stay alive since then. We know Earth's core is pretty hot, and we're assuming the cores of the moons and the planets too were hot when they formed. It's logical to assume that this heat is conducted to the surface and radiated to space with time. The question is, did Moon (being much smaller) already cool down all the way to the core or not? We've been assuming that it did, but that's not a fact.

Either way, I don't see how moons cooling down slower than we expected / starting out hotter than we expected would really support or not support anything. What exactly do you mean by supporting creationism? Do you think that every time something we thought was good science is proved wrong, creationism gets supported?

I think the next humans to go to the moon should seriously take some geologic equipment with them. Blow up some stuff and record all the vibrations that get echoed from underground layers. Liquid should be visible.