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Moon Rocks Still In Demand After Almost 40 Years
During NASA's Apollo missions to the moon, roughly 842 pounds of rocks were collected from the lunar surface. Scientific demand for the rocks has always been high, and a review board tracks and sends out hundreds of samples each year, even now, decades after the rocks were brought to Earth. They've provided researchers with a wealth of information about the entire solar system. From the NYTimes:
"The samples have confirmed that asteroid and meteor impacts, not volcanism, created the vast majority of craters that define the Moon's topography, while a constant barrage of meteorites, micrometeorites and radiation melted and pureed the bedrock to create the blanket of fine-grained soil and dust -- known as regolith -- that now cloaks the lunar surface. And knowing the ages of Moon rocks, which can be computed to within 20 million years, has enabled scientists to establish a baseline that allows them to date geologic features throughout the solar system. The surface of the Earth, one of the solar system's youngest topographies, is constantly changing, as it is faulted, folded, shaped and reshaped by eruptions, earthquakes and erosion. By contrast, the Moon is as old as it gets."
I can't wait for the first samples from Mars to be returned, though at this rate I'll be a grey old man. I've always loved the description of the planetary landscape in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars , especially his account of how astronauts would have to deal with "fines" (ultra-small dust particles that seep everywhere). Even if I could only see a marsrock in the Smithsonian, it would make me feel so much closer to the Red Planet.
Too bad they're all fakes picked up from the driveway outside a soundstage in southern california. All those so called "scientists" and "NASA" will look so silly once people actually make it to the moon and find that it really is made of cheese. Demand for the gourmet "moon cheese" will cause overmining of the moon and an eventual orbital shift sometime in 2012 which will cause all female mammals on earth to have a massively synchronized ovulatory cycle which will end with the death of all the males.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
When we go go back: Take a shovel and bucket.
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You might want to look up "plate tectonics".
We really should stop outsourcing dirt from other planets to fill out dirt needs. Think of the economy!
It's not rock... it's fossilized whalebone.
You mean compared to the 5.9736 × 10^24 kg of Earth?
Who'da thunk it?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Even though the surface of earth changes, but I dont thing the stuff (rocks etc) just disappear. They still remain on earth. So, why can't they be used to find anything about the universe?
Mainly because bits of the surface are constantly being subducted into the core of the earth and melting into the general magma soup. The entire surface is also constantly subjected to erosion and weathering, which breaks rock down both physically and chemically. They are slow processes, but we're talking about ~4.5 billion years. That is enough time for pretty well the entire surface of the earth to have been destroyed and reformed several times over.
A sample from the moon is largely an unaltered and uncontaminated record from the moment it first solidified as rock.
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"By contrast, the Moon is as old as it gets.""
So true. Even when John McCain was a kid, he could look up in the night sky and see the moon.
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This article is about the rocks we already have being wanted for science. At the moment there are about a half-dozen nations who want the rest of them for construction materials.
One word: volcanism.
The Earth has it, the moon does not.
Elementary geology tell us that the composition and structure of the rocks changes when it undergoes igneous or metamorphic transformations, meaning we can not trust anything that we can reach to be in its "original" state. If nothing we can access on Earth is guaranteed to be "original", then no, it doesn't tell us a whole lot about the origins of the Universe.
The moon, on the other hand, is pretty much the same as it was when it first formed (save for the changes caused by impacts and radiation), making it a much more reliable record of "how things were."
I worked in the photo labs at Johnson Space Center (Nasa Houston) back in 1972 and was told that when Apollo 11 returned, Nasa had the Lunar Receiving Laboratory set up like a Fort Dietrich style germ warfare lab. Apparently there was actually concern that the rocks could harbor harmful microbes. This may have all been an urban legend of the time - I'm not sure. In any case, the photo techs thought this was pretty funny, since the boxes that the Hasselblad film cassettes were returned in were full of moon dust and it stuck to everything.
They are the only way that I know of to successfully get the Avatar to Britania and back.
I sell mine on ebay. The ones with a picture of Mary or Jesus fetch a handsome price.
"It's hard to wrap your mind around a place where nothing ever happens," Mr. Allen said.
Okay everybody - use this comment as a jumping-off point to rag on your job/office/co-workers...
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I'd love to see a sample return mission from Titan. The delta-v requirements would be stupendous, but just imagine finding a whole alternative biochemistry based on liquid methane.
Yeah, but there were fewer craters then.
Every time a political career fails, a new crater appears on the moon. Of course, most failures are too small to see, even if we think they are important. Local elections generate moon dust. You need a Ceasar undergoing an ambitionectomy to just make it visible. The really big craters probably occurred when there were only a few humans. Say about 4004 BC.
So now you understand the background behind election talk, the inner message.
Talk of "Impact".
Talk of "Give me a ring sometime".
Talk of "The Crater Good of Mankind".
It's all covered in the Science lectures in a Political Science course. There are only 3 of those, they all occur 5 pm on a Friday, and don't get examined. Even Political Scientists know that science is irrelevant. But any senator that said that would create a 5mm crater. (Not 5 million miles. This is science. 0.2 inches.)
Loonie is perfectly good variant of English, tovarisch.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
"... knowing the ages of Moon rocks, which can be computed to within 20 million years"
If there's a 20-million-year margin of error, then they certainly do not 'know the ages of moon rocks'. It really is pathetic what society tolerates/accepts when it comes to "science".
As shown in this YouTube video. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
A sample from the moon is largely an unaltered and uncontaminated record from the moment it first solidified as rock.
I dare to challenge that. The moon is subject to constant (with "constant" on a cosmic timescale) bombardment, asteroids hitting it left and right, so I wouldn't say this is unaltered or uncontaminated in any sense. You may argue that those rocks are most likely also as old, or at least "old enough" to keep the sample in a somewhat pure state, but if you really want ancient matter from the dawn of the solar system, I'd guess we should start digging a few miles into the moon's surface.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I admit that English is a fluid language, making it awkward to correct authoritatively. Heinlein dropped the use of "the" in the book The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. However, this style is non-standard and I think it is jarring for native speakers. Anyone learning English would be advised to learn the proper use of articles.
You're just a jerk.
What I wrote was unnecessarily insulting. I don't normally act like this. You can't know I'm a jerk for sure.
some of the NYT comments are worse. The guy touted a lunar sample mission by the Russians and they certainly didn't bring any lunar rocks back during the height of the space race and quite honestly I don't think anyone has brought anything back since the astronauts picked them and returned them.
Some of the other stuff, too, is the claim that 800 lbs of lunar geology is enough to tell the story of the moon. We still get cannot get the earth's story straight, geologically speaking, and we're standing on the samples! There's been no systematic mineral assay, no samples in the mountains, no samples in the big caves thought to be on the moon, no samples from the polar regions and really, not much at all.
This is my sig.
If only there was a way we could get more of them.
A little-known fact: It is against Federal law for a private citizen to own any piece of a legitimate moon rock. If you own one (or have bought one), you are required by law to contact NASA immediately and hand it over; without delay.
Fucking rocks, Neil? I don't know if you noticed before you left, but the earth is made of fucking rock. Oh, but this is "moon rock" you say? And this is "earth rock." Did you hear that rock has gone up three points on the market? No, it didn't, because it's fucking rock! We wanted diamonds or sherbet, or a squirrel with a flute, Neil!
-Eddie Izzard.
How silly this all is. Everyone knows that the moon landing was filmed at Universal Studios.
My wife teaches fifth grade. A few years back, as part of her science curriculum, she was able to get a moon rock on loan from NASA for her classroom. I was amazed at how (seemingly) simple it was - she (and the school) had to sign some papers, and they left it with her for a week. I came in after class one day to see it -- I was pretty amazed to actually be holding a moon rock in my hands. As I recall, it was from one of the later Apollo moon missions, but still very cool.
I saw a piece of moon rock while on vacation this sprint, at the New Mexico Museum of Space History. It looked like a piece of brownie with some icing sugar sprinkled on top. That, coupled with how the website refers to it as "moon rock" (their quotes, not mine), is highly suspicious...
Yes, I was careful to say "largely" unaltered and uncontaminated. Not just because of impact bombardment, I also had cosmic ray bombardment in mind. A significant impact would melt some rocks in the immediate vicinity, but in general it would only contaminate the surface of most rocks. So you test the rock interiors, and rocks which have been melted like that will clearly test out differently and can be rejected. I think cosmic ray bombardment is the more significant issue to be concerned with, but with care the issue can be accounted for or avoided.
So "largely an unaltered and uncontaminated record" means there *is* some issue about alteration/contamination, but that it is a small enough issue to gloss over in answering his particular post.
Getting deep moon rocks, as you suggest, would be indeed be better and would provide more and better results. But we're doing pretty well with what we have.
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I'm just saying that we shouldn't assume everything on the Moon being "of the Moon" as well. You know just how quickly people jump on stories they want to hear. Imagine a dirtball going poof on the moon, we dig it out and the next headline reads "we found water and methane on the Moon!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, you certainly prove human stupidity has no limits. You choose to ignore one of the greatest achievements of mankind in favor of some idiotic conspiracy theory that would be impossible to pull off and keep secret for 40 years.