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Birth of the Moon: a Runaway Nuclear Reaction?
An anonymous reader writes "How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth."
Wouldn't there be evidence of this on the surface somewhere? I know the crust has shifted considerably, but that's a *lot* of material to suddenly vacate.
the moon is made of cheese
clearly, the young earth was lactose intolerant, and ejected it for that reason
the problem is all infants can digest lactose, and lose the lactase enzyme ability later in life if they don't have the right genes
but all theories have holes in them
like swiss cheese!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Check. Dutch Scientists, Check. Thought that the moon was caused by a Cosmic Dutch Oven, Priceless.
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So Earth basically got a bad case of gas, had an accident and now has its own turd in orbit.
We all know that if there were a nuclear catastrophe of this magnitude, then the whole planet would be hurled through space at such speed that each week we would encounter a new alien race, group of outcasts, or supernatural being. Seeing as the earth is still in its stable orbit around the sun, we can conclude that this must not have happened.
I'm on page three. I had to look up a couple of things of wikipedia so far. I hadn't heard the word Petrology before; it's the study of rocks.
The term "georeactor" seemed self-explanatory but I looked it up anyway, and was glad I did.
As Mr. Spock would say, "fascinating." My thanks to the story submitter.
Free Martian Whores!
If the moon were real, it would have been created by God. Clearly a large ball of rock is the sign of an intelligent Creator, if it were there.
Actually they used DC-8. The 737 didn't come out til like 10 million years later!
Can't get to the article, but - if you haven't heard of this before, it's pretty cool: the Oklo Natural Fission Reactor in Gabon. And while you're at it, you can read about how this natural reactor has scientists rethinking how constant the fine structure constant really is.
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We may never *know* for certain. We can have hypothesis after hypothesis, and although the giant impact fits the data nicely, and is unlikely to be wrong, the only way we'll really challenge that is by having other ideas. What really throws this theory out for me however (And I admit, I can't view the page, it's been /.ed) was that most of Earth's fissle material is in the crust, not the core. So any 'deep explosion' would have to have been in the crust or mantle, not the center.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
My problem with it is simple that the impactor idea seems to fit all the data so well I think it's unlikley to be wrong.
Further on they say that the impactor theory doesn't exactly fit the data. I'd blockquote, but I'm stuck on page three, I think we slashdotted it.
They give several reasons; one is that the object would have had to hit at a precise angle to become the moon and not completely vaporize the earth. Another is that the object would have had to have been formed very near the earth; they calculate from the moon rocks it would have had to be between Venus' and Mars' orbits.
Free Martian Whores!
> it would have had to be between Venus' and Mars' orbits.
They quote this as a problem?!
The baseline assumption is that the impactor formed in the Earth's trojans, which fixes this "complaint" perfectly. Unlike Jupiter (for instance), the Earth's trojans are not entirely stable, and any large objects placed in it will drift back and forth. This explains a VERY large number of data points:
1) it explains geological makeup perfectly
2) it explains why the impact angle was grazing
3) it explains why the Moon formed so long after the Earth
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis
Maury
Oh, wait... it is. Nevermind.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
It's the mother of all core dumps!
Just how much crust there is is often misunderstood.
Example: imagine a model of the earth where 1 mm = 1 mile. (or you can use 1mm = 1 km, if you like)
The earth is 7926.28 miles (12756.1 km) in diameter.
At this scale, you can make out significant mountain ranges, etc. The Atmosphere would be 4 or 5 inches deep. The crust is an inch or 2 thick.
And the Earth itself is more than 8 yards across. That inch or two of crust is sitting on a chewy molten insides. (check volcano flows, etc.)
The Earth is really a molten droplet spinning in space with the thinnest external layer where life has happened to accumulate, like the layer of tarnish on a coin.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's really not the same at all, but the article did call this story immediately to mind.
"Blowups Happen" is a classic 1940s SF story about a future in which society is total dependent on nuclear power plants. The engineering theory behind them shows that they are intrinsically safe and cannot blow up like a bomb. Then someone discovers that there is a false assumption in the equations and that, in fact they can blow up like bombs.
Meanwhile, an expert in the theory of lunar formation has concluded the lunar craters cannot have been formed by meteor impact, because of the "rays." There had to have been enough energy to "crack an entire planet." The only possible explanation, he says, is that the Moon was once an inhabited planet with an atmosphere and that "Here at Tycho was located their main power plant, and here at Copernicus and Kepler, on islands of the middle of the great oceans, were secondary power stations."
In other words, not only can they blow up like bombs, but that is what reduced the Moon to its present airless, lifeless, cratered and cracked state.
As I say, that's a completely different theory from the one being discussed. Nevertheless, I would bet a nickel that at least one of the authors of that article had read "Blowups Happen."
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