Could Fossils of Ancient Life From Earth Reside On the Moon?

MarkWhittington writes Does the moon contain fossils of billions of years old organisms from Earth? That theory has been laid out in recent research at the Imperial College of London, reported in a story in Air and Space Magazine by Dr. Paul Spudis, a lunar and planetary geologist. The implications for science and future lunar exploration are profound. Scientists have known for decades that planets and moons in the Solar System exchange material due to impacts. A large meteor smashes into a planet, Mars for example, and blasts material into space. That material eventually finds itself landing on another planet, Earth in this case. Mars rocks have been discovered on Earth since the 1980s. Other rocks from the moon and, it is surmised, Mercury have also been found, blasted into space billions of years ago to eventually find themselves on Earth.

Comments

Very silly excuse for going to the moon

[The Real Dr John]

This is a very silly idea. There are countless fossils still to be uncovered on Earth, including microfossils from billions of years ago in rock that has not been altered by too much heat and pressure. On the moon there are probably very, very few, if any fossils. Why would anyone waste time and money going to the moon to look for fossils rather than just spending more time carefully looking and digging on Earth? This is the silliest excuse for sending something or someone to the moon I can think of. If you want to explore the moon, go to the moon. If you want to look for fossils, dig right here on planet Earth where you actually have a good chance of finding something very interesting, and very old.

Re:Yes!

[morgauxo]

Oh please! That is a really stupid reason to do nothing.

The money spent on space exploration is virtually nothing compared to the rest of what the government spends. Diverting just a month or two's bill for removing foreign dictators so that religious wack jobs can take over would be enough to really start to move forward as a species.

Your grandchildren wouldn't notice the money as it would be just pennies compared to dollars spent on much less productive stuff.

Re:Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Those private companies started by Ex-NASA employees? At the height of space expenditure the US spent about 4% gdp which it got back 10 fold with super qualified skilled engineers allowing the US to dominate war production.

But don't worry China will do it.

Re:Yes!

[Shortguy881]

A little off topic but ok. Lets focus on the key to your argument:

Because *YOU* and *I* aren't even paying enough taxes for the government to pay its bills for the stuff it's already doing right now

We don't have a tax problem, but an appropriations problem. We collected over 3 trillion in taxes last year and only 1% went to science and technology. That's abysmal, but reflects our overall stance to disregard facts and science (selective ignorance), and indulge our gross sense of self entitlement.

Economically speaking, there are only two areas of government spending that have a positive ROI, research and development (10:1), and infrastructure (3:1). If you are concerned for future generation, the last thing you want to cut are these two areas of spending. If you really want to fix the problem, cut medicare, medicaid, welfare, social security and military spending.

Re:Yes!

[Baron von Daren]

This reminds me of a time that I showed picture of the LHC to a few (ahem Republican) colleagues and lamented that we stopped work on the SSC. That started a debate and they started lecturing me that the SSC was a frivolous waste of tax payer money. This was back in the bowels of the Iraq war and I reminded them that the entire SSC project would have cost less than two months of the war in Iraq.

It was one of those rare moments where you could see a light turn on. They realized it wasn’t a matter of whether the war was necessary and justified or ill-conceived and evil. They realized the raw trade off humanity makes for whatever reason. They considered the fantastic scale and complexity of the LHC and how it embodied a small facet of humanity’s capacity to achieve and progress and weighed it against a blip in one campaign of misery and devastation.

BTW, I’m neither a hawk nor a dove. Humanity is too often brutal, and I have always had a certain respect for and fascination with the spirit and technology of the military in the face of that brutality. Humanity is a long way from peace on Earth. That doesn’t mean I don’t grasp the almost incomprehensible loss of prosperity and potential humanity accepts to maintain and flex the machines of war (many of which are economic) and the conflicts that allow those machines to flourish.

Re:Yes!

[Shortguy881]

You clearly don't know what ROI is or how its calculated. And again with this:

could easily afford to contribute more

What part of 3 trillion dollars do you not understand? Its not a tax collection problem. Its a spending problem. Yes people could contribute more, but that's not the point. In its current state, the government would waist that revenue to.