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Treasured "Moon Rock" Is Petrified Wood
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that a treasured piece at the Dutch national museum — a supposed moon rock from the first manned lunar landing given to former Prime Minister Willem Drees during a goodwill tour by the three Apollo-11 astronauts shortly after their moon mission in 1969 — has been revealed as nothing more than petrified wood, curators say. A jagged fist-size stone with reddish tints, it was mounted and placed above a plaque that said, 'With the compliments of the Ambassador of the United States of America... to commemorate the visit to The Netherlands of the Apollo-11 astronauts.' The plaque does not specify that the rock came from the moon's surface. Researchers from Amsterdam's Free University said they could see at a glance the rock was probably not from the moon. They followed the initial appraisal up with extensive testing. 'It's a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,' wrote Geologist Frank Beunk in an article published by the museum. Beunk says the rock, which the museum at one point insured for more than half a million dollars, was worth no more than $70. The 'rock' had originally been been vetted through a phone call to NASA. As the US Embassy in the Hague said it was investigating the matter, the Rijksmuseum says it will keep the piece as a curiosity."
I hope this can be resolved peacefully, American forces are stretched a bit thin at the moment.
They'll be coming out of the (petrified) woodwork again...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0xsqV3zk1Y
you had me at #!
It kept the wayward pseudo-commie Dutch in NATO 'til we could win the cold war.
Ha ha.
to pull off that joke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_courage
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Proof that the moon landing was faked!!!
;)
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I wonder if someone swapped the fake rock for the real one back when it was presented.
Proverbs 21:19
The "rock" had originally been been vetted through a phone call to Nasa, she added.
Always good to double double check things.
And naked?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
ha ha!
Putting moderation advice in your
...to commemorate the visit to The Netherlands of the Apollo-11 astronauts
o.O
Who would want to visit an astronaut's nether regions, and even if they did why would they need a commemoration
That's no moon rock...
Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?
Well, at least it's not a coprolite.
I deliminate with tabs. Get used to it.
"Moon Rock" Is Petrified Wood
This changes the whole history of the moon as we know it. This is proof that there is (or was) life in other places besides Earth. This is a momentous discovery in the history of space science.
That's a fully operationnal petrified wood!
Perhaps someone pulled a switcharoo? If someone actually called NASA and they said they had provided a rock for this purpose then that is likely true. What was presented may or may not have been real or at some point after the presentation some monkey business might have occurred.
No, its not the moon landing was faked; what it means is (equally plausible) is that the capsule was pulled through a worm hole, to a point in time when the moon was forested. The piece of wood the astronauts were attempting to bring back, was not placed within the shielded area of the capsule so that when they went back through the worm hole, the piece of wood experienced the full impact of the millenia in between, and hence was returned as petrified. Because the shielding was somewhat worn by the initial trip, the memories of the astronauts were somewhat impacted. Film was subsequently created based upon what NASA believed happened.
How could life ever have existed in such a desolate place?
Americans passing off worthless things as somthing of value?
NO WAY! They have never done that before!
It's possible, the same way common sense exists in the USA.
Officials in Lake Havasu City, Arizona have discovered that the "London Bridge" they purchased back in the 60's is actually made of moon rock.
Have you read my blog lately?
Its petrified cheese I tell you. I've eaten cheese which tasted like petrified wood. No. Wait... that was aged Belgian cheese!! I say the visit of the Apollo 11 astronauts to Holland was obviously faked and staged in Belgium.
ZOMG!!! This means there must have once been trees on the moon!!!
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I see the picture and .... how on Earth could anybody think that was a Moon rock? It's not the right color or texture. All lunar rocks are either volcanic or intrusive igneous rocks. The specimen doesn't match at all. A geologist would realize it wasn't a Moon rock in about, oh, 5 seconds.
Here's a link to an earlier press release from the museum when they still thought it was a moon rock. It has a PDF file with a more detailed image than the BBC one. It's clearly un-Moon-like.
While "free" or "liberal" is a translation of the Dutch word "Vrije", the officially used name in English of this university is "VU University", not "Free University". See the website: http://www.vu.nl/en/index.asp
Given that moon rock cost billions of dollars to bring back a few hundred pounds, you'd think NASA would have detailed measurements on every piece that's out there.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Well, the obvious jokes about trees on the moon and fake lunar landings have already been made, so I'll make a simple observation: The curators at the Dutch National Museum thought that a red rock the size of a fist was a moon rock?
I'm not a curator at a national museum, nor am I even an amateur geologist, but I'm pretty sure I would at least recognize that the rock described didn't look like any moon rock I had ever seen or heard about. It would be woefully sad if the piece of fossilized tree was one that you could still see the rings in.
Clearly, they never knew the demand for moon rocks, and thought that enormous pieces are handed out to foreign politicians all the time:
Each year an independent peer review panel evaluates new research proposals, and curators mail out about 400 lunar samples to 40 to 50 scientists worldwide. Almost all are less than one gram in size. "We donâ(TM)t hand them out, we only loan them," Mr. Allen said.
Yes, scientists studying moon rocks have to write research grants in order to borrow a piece less than one gram in size. Yet the Dutch prime minister was given a fist sized moon rock. Yeah, OK.
Who says it never was at the BEGINNING? Maybe in its time at the museum, someone was able to pull a fast one and replace the moon rock with a fake...??
So Wan Hu made it to the moon after all!
Early in the sixteenth century, Wan decided to take advantage of China's advanced rocket and fireworks technology to launch himself into outer space. He supposedly had a chair built with forty-seven rockets attached. On the day of lift-off, Wan, splendidly attired, climbed into his rocket chair and forty seven servants lit the fuses and then hastily ran for cover. There was a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared, Wan and the chair were gone, and was said never to have been seen again.
So does this mean the moon really isn't made out of cheese?
"i lost my dignity on a slippery wiener"
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
Today the Netherlands is mourning wood?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think neil armstrong's got a moon rock in his pants!
An even trade for all those wooden shoes!
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
Natalie Portman become an ambassador?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sounds like a prank pulled by the 3 astronauts. I mean, it wasn't just a rock they found on the ground and gave to the Dutch, but petrified wood.
The ambassador should have given something like a collection of classic American music on cassette tape.
The only hoax is NASA's claim that the moon is utterly barren! This revelation proves the existence of ancient moon trees!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...could a petrified piece of wood from the Earth have been blasted away during prehistoric times by a comet or asteroid, landed on the moon, and been retrieved by Apollo astronauts?
Did it say "THE moon" (i.e., ours) or just "A moon"? Forest moon of Endor, perhaps?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That particular rock was supposed to be given not to the Netherlands, but to the Neanderthals who, presumably, would have taken much more than 40 years to discover the truth.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Reading the summary carefully, it was a rock given in commemoration of the moon walk. This doesn't mean it came from the moon. Perhaps it came from where they landed? (But they were sea landings, weren't they.) OK, well, maybe from the construction of the Johnson Space Center. Or where they were stationed.
As said, I can see how they reached the conclusion that they reached, but the plaque didn't say it was what they thought it was, and it may well be that the people making the presentation thought they were being honest and straight-forward. That nobody knew that anybody else was misunderstanding them.
But it's also humorous to think of it as a joke.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Something as valuable as a moon rock can be pretty easily switched with something else that looks rather interesting. I don't doubt that the astronauts gave them a moon rock. What I doubt is that the silly Dutch have managed to safeguard it for all this time. A little research, including photos, can clear the matter up. Next question is; where did the moon rock go?
Best regards.
It was always petrified of being exposed for what it really was, but now that that's happened, it's all cool.
Question: what do you get when you get mooned by an old woman?
Answer: Petrified wood.
No, no. It means that the moon landings really were fake!
Somewhere a plaque maker is living the sweet life.
The ol' switcheroo.
How is a fail like that in any way epic? So it works out at about 382.73 kilos, and the guy's assertion that 842lb is less than 382kg is clearly wrong. I suspect he meant "slightly more than 382 kilos".
Fail? Yes. Epic? No.
Slight. Fail.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You can't fool the Dutch...after 40 years!
The sad thing is that, had it been an Arabic country, they would quite likely have been war.
I would like to remind you that arabs haven't really started that much wars recently. USA invaded in two countries recently. Has made a few rather threatening statements about a third. Supports a country that bombs civilian targets in one coastal region very frequently... But arabs starting wars? Not that many, no.
book
The real question is not if there were trees on the moon, open your eyes!
The question is: IS THE MOON ACTUALLY A TREE?
That would be a great revolutionary discovery, a paradigm shift from cheese to trees, now the next relevant question is is the double E between those words a coincidence (wait a minute, coincidences don't exist!) or an evolutionary trait that indicates that we are on the right track?
The saddest thing is that while this kind of reasoning it may sound stupid presented just like this, this is how many people in real world reason. (ufologist, religious fanatics, religious leaders, conspirationists, new age, housewives and politicians)
I wonder why the moon rock can't be both from the moon and a sample of petrified wood? Would it not further support the theory that the moon was once part of earth, a remnant of a cataclysmic collision? Couldn't an example of what we know as a moon rock be nothing more than petrified wood? I think this is interesting.
That's no moon rock that a space station .... rock.... sorry i'll leave now
Crap, that nosey Frank Beunk! I swapped out the real rock while working at the embassy and I sold it to Kim Jong Il. I had hoped no one would ever detect the fake. I guess I'll have to go and ask Kim for it back now. Damn, just couldn't leave things alone, could you Frank! I'll probably have to give Kim his money back, too!
Fine, cat's out of the bag now. I took it. Swapped it while working at the embassy. Damn Frank Beunk and his meddling! Couldn't leave well enough alone. Thousands of visitors every year gawked with amazement at that petrified chunk of coal and he's dashed their hopes. Even if I give it back now, no one's going to know for sure it was really a moon rock. I might as well just turn over some piece of granite... Hey, that's it, I'll just get something that isn't petrified organic crap and give that to the museum. Thanks Mollog, I couldn't have figured this out without your help!
$70 for that rock?
clearly its a meteorite from mars, which obviously did have trees. It doesn't look at all cheesy so can't be from any moon we know about. Proves that man did go to the moon since they haven't gone to Mars yet.
Belgisch? Ja nu ik er aan denk, als we met die stomme Amerikanen hebben afgerekend zijn de Belgen aan de beurt. Of zouden ze in Belgie ook ergens zo'n leuke steen hebben, dat is echt wat voor ze.