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Moon Rocks Still In Demand After Almost 40 Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-went-to-the-moon-and-all-I-got-was-this-lousy-rock dept.

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."

6 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Too bad by sokoban · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

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    1. Re:Too bad by maxume · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In short, the conspiracy would be more complicated than the actual event.

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      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  2. Re:Mars missions by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Even if I could only see a marsrock in the Smithsonian, it would make me feel so much closer to the Red Planet.

    No idea about the Smithsonian, but I've already seen Mars rock - at the Natural History Museum in London.

    Bits blasted off Mars in some titanic collision aeons in the past, which have drifted through space before falling to Earth as meteorites. Bit of a roundabout route, but it works!

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  3. Re:Mars missions by spoonist · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have touched Mars. Repeatedly.

    Tucked away in a tiny corner of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, ignored by most visitors, is a small display of a tiny rock.

    You can touch this rock.

    The description of the rock states that it is a meteorite from Mars that was collected in Antarctica.

  4. Re:Mars missions by Alsee · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have touched Mars. Repeatedly.

    Stop doing that.
    You'll go blind.

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  5. Re:Mars missions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have touched Mars. Repeatedly.

    Stop doing that. You'll go blind.

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    Or gain superpowers!