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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."

4 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. active molton core? by joe+155 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wouldn't this be really easy to prove, I would have thought that if this was the case it would make the moon notably hotter than the ambient temperature of space, so could they not just stick an infra-red camera at it and look to see if there is a difference?
    I know I'm missing something but I'm not sure what...

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  2. Re: active molton core by Odin_Tiger · · Score: 4, Interesting
    RE:
    active molton core? by joe 155 (937621) on Thursday November 09, @10:26AM (#16787197)

    I'm not sure what you mean by 'ambient temperature of space', because temperature is a property of matter, and space is kinda empty, so there's nothing to compare it to, unless you want to call it absolute zero, in which case the moon will be quite a bit hotter than that no matter what.
    The next nearest approach I would think would be to figure roughly what temp. an otherwise 'dead' object of the moon's size would reach just through the ambient radiation in space, plus collisions (probably insignificant, but maybe not), etc. This has to be tougher than it seems at first glance, though, or I would expect they would have already figured it out.
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  3. Cue Flamebait Tag....NOW by DorkusMasterus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Okay, so I'm going to preface this: I'm asking a QUESTION, not stating anything as fact, or whatever. So don't tag this flamebait on a kneejerk reaction. I'm honestly asking a question here.

    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...

  4. Reply to DorkusMasterus by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    DorkusMasterus
    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?

    Well, if you were to disregard all other evidence that points to an old universe, and were just to take this one new bit of information (assuming its true) on its own without supporting context and information, then you could take it as evidence of creationism. However, due to the fact that we have a lot of evidence and information that supports an old universe, this tidbit, if true, is instead merely evidence that the moon has different properties than we initially thought, and that further investigation is required to understand the how's and why's of lunar geology and/or the origins of the moon. Regardless, if the moon is found to be younger than we initially thought, it does not necessarily follow that the whole universe is younger to match.

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