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MIT-Led Mission Reveals the Moon's Battered Crust Is Riddled With Cracks
SternisheFan sends this quote from the Boston Globe:
"The moon's battered crust is riddled with deep fractures that may extend miles underground, according to the first findings from two NASA spacecraft orbiting Earth's nearest neighbor. The results of the mission, led by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist, surprised researchers, who said it will provide new insight into the evolution of the early solar system, and even help inform the search for life on Mars. Announced Wednesday, the discoveries are also a reminder that the familiar moon still holds secrets four decades after NASA ended its manned missions there. 'We have known that the moon's crust and other planetary crusts have been bombarded by impacts, but none of us could have predicted just how cracked the lunar crust is,' said Maria Zuber, the MIT geoscientist who led the mission, called GRAIL."
Here are the abstracts from the three studies published in Science.
... and chairs at a geek conference
Without plate tectonics, the fact that the moon is riddled with cracks as it cooled is hardly surprising. The pounding it took during the late heavy bombardment probably didn't help either.
One of the interesting parts of this mission is MoonKAM, which let grade school and middle school kids select targets on the lunar surface for the orbiters' cameras to inspect. It returned some pretty interesting (if low-res) images until a solar flare recently took the imaging system down. If you're interested, there's some more info about GRAIL: today's announcement from NASA, and a public lecture tomorrow with a live feed.
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
While cheese can keep for a long time if refrigerated properly,
the SPACE environment is too dry for its extended stay.
of several billion years.
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A "battered crust" is a rocky outer layer pelted by meteorites, and not the delicious outer layer of a corndog.
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And if some believe the Moon was larger at some time earlier, it fits my theory that it was not due to a “giant impact" but instead moved into the tidal lock pattern, which caused internal heating of the moon, and some shinkage internally, but the crust was already cooled and stiff. When you have a relatively stiff outer core, but the internal core is cooked and can shrink, the outer core will want to settle inward, but due to its already stiff composition, it can't just settle in. It will crack. The real question is: What caused it to get close enough to the Earth to get trapped in orbit around the Earth? Was it some other event past Mars? Or was it tugged into place by Martians? Note that the Moon is really a small planet. Is Mercury and Venus earlier moons of Earth that were discarded due to inapplcable usage as the Earth was cooked via tidal lock? Is Earth really an assembled planet? It is the only one in this star system that has plentiful water at the proper distance from the star to support plentiful life. You may just be part of a herd to be harvested some day. You are the only bipedal Earth lifeforms that can be convinced to board a spaceship because you believe that is the proper survival stratgey when the volcanism of Earth starts to make survival on Earth questionable.. But if you are really part of a herd, and the spaceships come to rescue you, the odds are good that the aliens are not really here to help you survive. The odds are good that they are here to harvest the herd.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
...they are underground chambers prepared by the alien overlords who have been watching us for millions of years. They'll be making their move on December 21, 2012 to mark the end of an era predicted by Mayan astronomers. Right before the end of the world, the aliens will scoop up their followers in a big rapture. They will hide them and feed them in the underground chambers of the moon away from the chaos on earth. Then the big Yahweh chief of all aliens will make his apparition, as written. He, he.
The Siberian flats formed opposite Tierra Del Fuego. But considering that the Deccan flats formed opposite chixlub, the current theory has people guessing that there might have been an asteroid strike at Tierra Del Fuego.
However, the Smithsonian's lead paleoarchaeologist looked for evidence, and failed to find it. So that one is still out.
That said, I think there nonetheless WAS an asteroid strike there, travelling eastward, that formed both the Scotia Plate, and the African Karoo, which happens to have been directly above the Scotia Plate, and oriented the same, an. the same shape and size, and formed largely of impermiable Kimberlites [that is, mantle material].
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Except that Pangaea was not the only super-continent, there have been several over the geological history we've worked out, and hints that they go further back before that too. It would seem to be an odd coincidence that an asteroid his Earth shortly after every super-continent was formed leading to another break up, as opposed to the same forces that created the continent being able to break it up again..
So the "moon" has a "crack".....anyone? Really? Guess it's just me....
Suddenly I have a desire to have a croissant. =[
Accidentally bounce yourself into a miles-long crack and you'll be treated to a slow and agonizing fall to the depths of the moon before your oxygen tank is depleted.