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

Posted by samzenpus on from the how'd-this-get-here dept.

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.

88 comments

  1. Why by phibermon · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    On earth are you asking me?

  2. Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Err... I mean no.

    (Like you expected the first comment to not suck anyway)

    1. Re:Yes! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 0

      I swear not being the author of that AC post! Even though we posted at the same time, with the exact same title!

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, we can definitely send more machines like Luna 16 in 1970. Dig a bit deeper, get some more dead rocks and dust, put it in a box and return it to the Earth where we have all our labs and people.

      I agree.

    3. Re:Yes! by NotDrWho · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      That makes another good reason to go back to the Moon!

      And I take it you're volunteering my grandchildren to pay for it? 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. And I say "government" because I don't see any private companies stepping forward to go to the moon (not unless they're looking for the government to pay them to, that is).

      But if you want to start a company that's going to go to the moon without using any of my grandkid's tax money to do it, then yes, I'm all for it. I'll be watching your launch on TV and wishing you well.

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    4. Re:Yes! by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1

      I completely agree with going back to the moon for the scientific and engineering advances it would provide, but this reason is far down the list. This is like looking for a specific needle in a trillion other needles.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    5. Re:Yes! by morgauxo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    6. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Yes! by Shortguy881 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    8. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Actually most of the things you mention have a positive ROI too. Just look what happens if you don't spend in those areas.

      The problem is 1) that the US is spending its money inefficiently compared to other countries and 2) that some of its citizens who could easily afford to contribute more aren't willing to do so and the public is unwilling to force them.

    9. Re:Yes! by sls1j · · Score: 2
      Funny that those to areas of Government spending are both mentioned (research and development, and infrastructure) in the Constitution, while most of the last are not. You'd think the founders were thinking when they wrote the document. Excerpt from the constitution Article 1 Section 8,

      "To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

      To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

    10. Re:Yes! by NotDrWho · · Score: -1, Troll

      "You're deep in debt, about to go bankrupt--and you BOUGHT A NEW CAR??"

      "Yeah, but the cost of this new car is relatively small next to the mountain of debt I already owe. Besides, it's a really cool car."

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    11. Re:Yes! by Baron+von+Daren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    12. Re:Yes! by Shortguy881 · · Score: 1, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    13. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      If China wants to pump money into that endless money pit, more power to them. Somehow I suspect they won't be so stupid. They could have long ago put a man on the moon had they wished. Instead, they've had a very modest program of probes and haven't even talked about a manned program. They know that it's just for some nationalistic PR, and spend accordingly.

    14. Re:Yes! by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      There comes a point where you know the credit is going to be cutoff. At that time it makes idiot sense to charge a (new car/obamacare) before the line of credit is pulled.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    15. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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.

      Actually, we usually are the one's removing democratically elected leaders so that dictator's on the CIA payroll can take over. Either that or just fucking with other countries for shits and giggles. So yes in the grand scheme of things throwing some rockets at the moon seems like a relatively benign waste of resources.

    16. Re:Yes! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      OK, so when Earth is attacked by giant aptosauruses (? sp) and we don't know whether or not they came from Earth, the moon or Mars are your grandkids going to be happy with you, hidden in your cloak of Randian ignorance?

      I suspect not. They will spit on your cheap ass grave, assuming that the apto doesn't squash them like bugs first.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    17. Re:Yes! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Earth rocks with fossils on the moon are probably rare enough that lots of sifting will be required. Robotic survey & collection missions are much better suited for such a task.

      It's too much money to pay a human in space garb to pick up each rock and go, "This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No...This from Earth? No..."

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    18. Re:Yes! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      Actually, Saddam was a CIA appointed dictator that left the reservation.

      And like all the other petty dictators that we stopped supporting (Shah of Iran, Qaddafi, Mubarak ... ) it was replaced by something much much worse.

      And I know that the Left loves to blame the USA for "meddling" into the affairs of radical Islamists, but I would like to point out that when the USA was a new country, having its merchant ships being attacked by the Pirates of Tripoli, it responded and thus formed the Marine Corps. In other words, if you're going to start issuing ridiculous "we started it" logic, go back to the beginning, and realize that it was Radical Islam that forced us into a permanent military class ;)

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    19. Re:Yes! by khallow · · Score: 2

      I reminded them that the entire SSC project would have cost less than two months of the war in Iraq.

      One expenditure keeps a newly minted US ally stabilized for at least two months. That at least fulfills concrete interests of the US. The other distracts thousands of physicists from doing productive work for two decades and sucks the oxygen out of the room for future physics research funding.

    20. Re:Yes! by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      A better analogy would be your are deep in debt, still buying a new car that you cannot afford every other day or so and some dipshit is complaining at you because you also invested a few dollars in a savings account for your kids college fund.

    21. Re:Yes! by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, sure... how's it working out for that ally?

      I was all for the invasion of Iraq at first. The WMD story always did smell like BS but I was filled with all the stories of the horrible things that Sadam and his family and friends had done. Now all I hear about is the horrible things that ISIS is doing and the old dictator sounds pretty good.

      Meanwhile half their neighbors have ousted their own dictators and voted in religious nutcases. Oh boy.. the world just keeps getting better doesn't it.

      I strongly believe that increasing our knowlege of the universe and how it works is far more profitable in the long run than getting involved in the middle east could ever be.

    22. Re:Yes! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      some of its citizens who could easily afford to contribute more aren't willing to do so and the public is unwilling to force them.

      This assumes that Taxes are a right of government, and not the consent of the governed.

      Considering that we (the USA) were formed on the basis of a tax revolution (at least in part), because we weren't being represented by those in government (a lot like now), this (protesting, avoiding taxes) is our national heritage.

      If Europeans want to continue paying their masters, that is fine. I don't want to be a serf to those in government.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    23. Re:Yes! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Yes, those things are MENTIONED, but science and technology were never a function OF government, at least directly.

      And as a libertarian, I would be HAPPY to support government grants via taxes on patents discovered / created / inventions that were the result of (directly or indirectly) of those government grants. The problem is, government gives a grant to University to do _________, which leads to discovery ______, which is used in patent _________ which is used to generate all sorts of revenue, none of which ever makes it back to the government program that created the grant used in step 1.

      I simply oppose using government largess to enrich private parties at the expense of tax payers, regardless of the benefit to those tax payers. It is simply unfair that the tax payers continue to get screwed by government / corporate complex.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    24. Re:Yes! by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      I thought that was more what we did in the 80s. Today we oust the dictators so that the people can over compensate and democratically elect what they perceive to be the dictator's polar opposites.

      IE religious whack jobs replace secular dictators. In another 20 or 30 years we can shift back to our old ways and start replacing the religious whack jobs with cruel secular dictators again so the cycle continues.

      Meanwhile.. cruel secular dictators or religious whack jobs.. either way we have plenty for the population over here to fear and hate thus keeping attention away from our own government's faults.

    25. Re:Yes! by khallow · · Score: 2

      Yeah, sure... how's it working out for that ally?

      It was working well until Iraq was abandoned to ISIS.

      Meanwhile half their neighbors have ousted their own dictators and voted in religious nutcases. Oh boy.. the world just keeps getting better doesn't it.

      The world is better for it. What you don't get here is that first, we now have established precedent for getting rid of tyrannical governments. Second, why shouldn't the voted in religious nutcases get a chance to show they can govern?

      I strongly believe that increasing our knowlege of the universe and how it works is far more profitable in the long run than getting involved in the middle east could ever be.

      But I believe that spending money in a way that strongly impairs our future ability to gather knowledge of the universe is worse that dumping that money on two months of war.

    26. Re:Yes! by Solandri · · Score: 1

      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.

      FYI, at the same time the SSC was killed, Bush and the Republican Congress passed the biggest increase in non-defense science spending in decades (I usually link directly to aaas.org, but their site appears to be down). Only the space race in the 1960s was bigger.

      But because the press leans left, that never made the news, while the SSC cancellation was shoved in all our faces at every opportunity as an "example" of how Bush was "anti-science". Bush and Congress decided (correctly IMHO) that funding R&D in health and medicine was a better investment than R&D into subatomic particles, when the U.S. was already contributing to an essentially duplicate project in the LHC.

      And FWIW, I was opposed to the 2nd Iraq war, albeit for entirely different reasons. It reinforced a bad socio-political precedent that a powerful nation could "legitimately" go traipsing into war for its own reasons even when it failed to get UN support. If the rest of the world is telling you don't do it, you probably shouldn't do it. Economically, it may have been a negative for the U.S., but in the long term it should turn out to be a positive for Iraq and hopefully a net positive for the world overall. (The current situation is what you get when you set about nation-building, then decide halfway through that you don't want to do it anymore. I expected us to have to be there 1-2 decades if not permanently like Korea. I didn't expect the U.S. public to have the patience to stay there that long, which was yet another reason to oppose the war.)

    27. Re:Yes! by sudon't · · Score: 1

      Yes, a spending problem. We spend far too much on the military, and too little on infrastructure, and other investments in the future. But it's not a money problem, it's a printing problem, or rather, a philosophical problem. Many in our government do not understand how a fiat currency, (or the economy), works.

      --
      -- sudon't

      Air-ride Equipped

    28. Re:Yes! by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

      but I would like to point out that when the USA was a new country, having its merchant ships being attacked by the Pirates of Tripoli, it responded and thus formed the Marine Corps.

      Well, no.

      The Marines (and the Navy) were formed in 1775. Then they were disbanded at the end of the Revolution.

      Then they were recreated in 1798 for the Quasi-War with France.

      Shortly after that (1801), Marines were sent with Decatur's Squadron to deal with the Barbary Pirates.

      And no, the Barbary Pirates had little, if anything, to do with "radical Islam". No more than Edward Teach was a part of "radical Christianity" a century earlier....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    29. Re:Yes! by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      One expenditure keeps a newly minted US ally stabilized for at least two months. That at least fulfills concrete interests of the US.

      I'm sorry, but what?

      All of the justifications to topple Iraq's government in 2003 were fabrications and lies.

      Going in there in the first place was misguided, wrong, and pointless.

      So don't suddenly act like the expense to stay in there is better than doing something useful.

      Toppling the government in Iraq was sheer folly, pushed by an idiot, and justified by things which were provably false at the same time.

      The expenses of staying there don't get to be justified as a better deal, because you shouldn't have been in there at all .. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that was known before America went int there.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    30. Re:Yes! by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      That's like saying that swimming is wrong, because falling into a river in the first place is a stupid thing to do.

      See also: sunk costs fallacy.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    31. Re:Yes! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Except that the Shah was not a dictator.

      Perhaps you should read about his history :)

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    32. Re:Yes! by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

      Well..... not entirely fabrications. And I believe it was more a case of bad information than deliberate lies, but if you hate Bush, than nothing else will suffice to say.
      While there was no active WMD program after all, there *had* been one, as we all knew, and the NY Times recently expounded on just how much of those chemical bits were lying all over Iraq; although ironically, they were safer in the hands of Saddam Hussein than ISIS.

      --

      Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
    33. Re:Yes! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, to hell with inventing the MRI, if some other asshole might make a little profit on it for doing the work? ...talk about shooting yourself in the foot...

    34. Re:Yes! by Baron+von+Daren · · Score: 1

      My overall point was more generic than specific. I was using the SSC and HLC symbolically to represent the kind of colossal projects we often think are out of reach economically and juxtaposing them to the truly fantastic sums of resources humanity expends on war, for whatever reasons. R&D in health and medicine, and myriad other constructive endeavors, are just as worthy if not more worthy of our funds and attention, but smaller projects simply don’t require the same will and commitment to achieve as grand endeavors.

      Moreover, you highlight the reality that we much decide which scientific endeavors to invest in, and that underscores my point. We wouldn’t have to make as many of these kind of choices, choices about what to achieve, if we didn’t have to allocate so drastically to war and defense. Again, I am fully and pragmatically aware that there is conflict, there is war, but we are at a point in our technological history where it is far less excusable. I say this because we have the technology to address the most pressing forms of scarcity. That of course is an entirely more complex discussion.

      I would like to point out that while the SSC would have been similar to the LHC, it is not as if it would sit fallow because the LHC existed, and the project was already very much underway when canceled. If the SSC were complete now, there would be significant research being conducted there, LHC notwithstanding. Canceling the SSC mid-way rendered the funds already dedicated to the project a waste, and that is a kind of tragedy in and of itself. That being said your point about redirecting those funds is well taken, though I’m on the fence whether it was the right call mid-project.

      Finally, though I have my opinions about the Iraq war, they are not specifically germane to my point. Like the SSC and HLC that war is symbolic of a larger facet of humanity, but on the opposite side of our priorities and endeavors.

    35. Re:Yes! by khallow · · Score: 1

      So don't suddenly act like the expense to stay in there is better than doing something useful.

      I certainly didn't do that. I compared it instead to something actively harmful, a program which squanders the labor of thousands of physicists for a couple of decades. And Hognoxious has a point about sunk costs. Sure, it'd be nice if the US didn't do dumb shit that cost trillions of dollars, but if the US were smart enough to not do that, what makes you think they'd still be dumb enough to fund the SSC?

    36. Re:Yes! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      No,

      How about "to hell" with using government money for self enrichment. IF you take a grant or whatever funding to get you MRI, your discovery belongs to the people of the USA, and no yourself. That way, anyone can use the technology that everyone paid for, without having to worry about royalties to people who used public funds to enrich themselves.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  3. Yes! by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That makes another good reason to go back to the Moon!

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  4. obligatory NO answer to question mark. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Besides, there is no way to tell. We haven't been back to the Nevada desert since Cernan's jeep broke down.

  5. Of course they could by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1, Informative

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

    I'm sure they could, if we took some there.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    1. Re:Of course they could by buchner.johannes · · Score: 2

      The moon is probably a good place to store time capsules (or backups). Well, except for the meteorites and the annoying dust that gets everywhere.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    2. Re: Of course they could by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I'm slightly older then most of you, but I remember off the old asmov show, that there were large collissions from space bound objects, in our distant past. One off the spinoffs is probably the moon. Even the planetarium of my old home town used to emphasize that. So, why would you not find early protolife there? The same type of collisions occurred with and to the other planets. Why would you not find proto parts there? Give man something to shoot at other then humans and see what happens, maybe he would learn touse his brain for something good!.

    3. Re: Of course they could by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 0

      I'm slightly older then most of you

      How do you know how old most of me is?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  6. YES!! OIL!! by Idou · · Score: 1

    Let's invade the moon!

    --
    Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
    1. Re:YES!! OIL!! by buchner.johannes · · Score: 1

      Oil is not made from fossils. Oil is mainly compressed sea flora.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    2. Re:YES!! OIL!! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      OK, let's go invade MARS!

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  7. Buggy sidebar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Have someone else noticed that the right sidebar on Slashdot covers the main content if the browser window is too small?
    Doesn't people test their website on more than one resolution anymore?

    1. Re:Buggy sidebar by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I have noticed a lot of websites don't work well if the browser window is small enough. That's why websites do have "recommended resolution".

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    2. Re:Buggy sidebar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But there is no reason at all for the slashdot poll to hover above everything else.
      Seems like web developers just keep misusing whatever tools they get, doesn't matter if it's tables, framesets or css.
      Heck, if they should keep misusing stuff, why not just add an element with a fix width to force the page to expand to the minimum allowed size and let the browser handle the rest?
      Letting the page get impractical on small screens is OK, making them unusable is just a bug.

    3. Re:Buggy sidebar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Changes to the Slashdot HTML generation are apparently made by some guy who does them so he can point to them and say to whoever pays him money, "See, I did something!" There is also apparently no staging server where they can load a new version and run it for a few days to make sure that rendering isn't completely broken, nope, it worked on IE with the window zoomed to full-screen on a 4K monitor, got to push em right away! And "beta" means that the "See, I did something!" changes (in overall site design rather than tweaked HTML) came from a manager who wants to justify his existence to whoever pays him money.

      The big question is whether this is one guy continuously making a bunch of stupid changes, or whether they have constant turnover (or outsourcing) and it's a different guy making the stupid HTML changes every time.

  8. WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is certainly no moon law preventing ancient Earth fossils from residing on the moon.

    Come on, we find rocks from Mars on Earth, how hard would it be to presume "early bombardment" rocks could have been captured by Luna?

  9. Get digging. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The issue is we'd likely need to be digging for decades to find something that might have something, if it hasn't been broken down so much from high radiation in solar storms.
    It would be a very long search for that needle.

    Even on Earth as we find fossils, these are just fossils that are LUCKY enough to have survived all that time. The majority of skeletons aren't lucky and degrade.
    There are very likely large numbers of life we will never* know about that filled various niches, was the in-betweens of one lifeform and another as it evolved over millions of years.
    We have also just barely scratched the surface. The deeper we go, the older we are finding. (especially in the cold pole regions)
    Just recently we found that cave with stupidly old stuff in it, several billion years old if I remember.
    There are likely millions of little caves like this scattered all over the planet where life has been hidden away and protected .
    Also aliens. And pyramids.

    *unless we make time machines.

    1. Re:Get digging. by EdwardFurlong · · Score: 2

      But... but... " The implications for science and future lunar exploration are profound". No I agree, the odds of finding something have got to be so small I can't imagine how much work you would have to go through to find something.

    2. Re: Get digging. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, too hard. Let's not bother with this science stuff, it makes us unpopular.

    3. Re:Get digging. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You had me at aliens, pyramids and time machines... but forget all that other stuff about digging for fossils... far too boring.

    4. Re:Get digging. by Megane · · Score: 1

      Not only is it less likely for earth rocks to end up on the moon than the reverse (higher escape velocity), but the question wasn't if earth rocks ended up on the moon, it was fossils. Would the energy it took to get fossil-bearing rocks past escape velocity be so much that the fossils are likely to get damaged? That would further reduce the chance of find earth fossils on the moon.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    5. Re:Get digging. by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Perhaps if a particularly large chunk got blown out and the fossil was deep inside it.

      Then again, if it's deep inside it'll be bugger to find. I for one have better things to do than splitting random rocks open just in case there's a bilobite inside. I don't think Bennet Haselton could solve this one, even if Elon Musk offered him all his money.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re: Get digging. by EdwardFurlong · · Score: 1
      Just as much chance the rocks did not make it to the moon and are floating around.... lets go collect millions of space rocks looking for one from earth... with fossils... that have scientific merit.

      The return on investment just looks terrible to me.

  10. Summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The summary is basically everything from TFA that is NOT related to the news.

    1. Re:Summary by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      The summary is basically everything from TFA that is NOT related to the news.

      It's not TFA, but TFAs. Did you bother RTFA2?

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  11. Sounds like a lame excuse to visit the moon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Finding such fossils would be incredibly, insanely difficult.

    It sounds like yet-another-lame excuse for more manned missions; manned missions are becoming more and more pointless but NASA keep dreaming up ludicrous schemes, such as the asteroid capture, to keep the pork rolling....

  12. Very silly excuse for going to the moon by The+Real+Dr+John · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
    1. Re:Very silly excuse for going to the moon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Cause don't you know. At one point in the past the moon was really part of earth. An asteroid hit earth and broke a chunk off. This is how the moon came to be.

    2. Re:Very silly excuse for going to the moon by war4peace · · Score: 3, Informative

      You wanna be pedantic? I'll bite.
      The Moon is made of both Earth and Theia protoplanet that slammed into it. Not an asteroid, it was Mars-sized.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    3. Re:Very silly excuse for going to the moon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      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?

      Well.... Maybe because Moon doesn't have tectonic plates to recycle/renew its entire crust once in a while?

    4. Re:Very silly excuse for going to the moon by slackware-dude · · Score: 1

      We have no known samples from our twin planet Venus. Although the current thick atmosphere inhibits spallation ejecta from escaping, was the atmosphere always as thick as today? The article suggests that sufficiently large impactors may help. Although there may never have been oceans on Venus, could there have been sub-surface pockets of water under high pressure (and temperature) that may have hosted forms of life? I would think that in-situ sample analysis on the moon or even return to Earth would be far more feasible with today's technology than trying to do this on Venus itself.

  13. Science and Pr0n by WayToGoPhil · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    New Bukkake theory that was already proposed by nephilimfree. I'm sure he will feel vindicated that his"theory" of the flood putting life on the moon now has scientific backing.

  14. Quite possible. by Qbertino · · Score: 1

    Since one of the theories of the moons origin is from impact of an asteroid with earth, this is not completely unlikely.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:Quite possible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Are you high? The Moon formed 1 billion years before life started on Earth.

      And notice one thing that's different about the planets mentioned for getting material from one planet to the other? The Earth has a fairly good atmosphere!

    2. Re:Quite possible. by Megane · · Score: 1

      Not only that, but life would have been unlikely to survive the event that split the moon away from the earth even if it had already started. There would be tremendous rock-melting heat involved, and fossils would have been destroyed on both the earth and moon.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    3. Re:Quite possible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice mod points, for agreeing with me....

  15. Unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fossils didn't exist billions of years ago, when planets were young enough that meteorite impacts could easily exchange material. There's a big difference between rocks believed to come from low-atmosphere planets billions of years ago, and fossil-bearing rocks being ejected from Earth's thick atmosphere mere millions of years ago.

    1. Re:Unlikely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at your timeline of life again... there is chemical evidence for bacterial life ( most of the fossil record is actually made from bacteria and other microbial life ) all the way to ~3.9 billion years ago, just after the Hadean ended. Coincidentally this is somewhere near ( give or take ~400 million years in 4.6 billion ) the time Theia smashed into the Earth.

    2. Re:Unlikely by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Leaving 400 million years for the earth and moon to solidify a crust after the collision.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  16. That theory has been laid out by Nutria · · Score: 1

    Is it a theory or a hypothesis?

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  17. Earth Fossils on Mars? by PineHall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    If we are finding rocks from Mars on Earth, it is likley there are rocks from Earth on Mars and possibly fossils from Earth on Mars. And I wonder about bacteria from Earth on Mars. It is possible. This complicates the "finding life on Mars" projects. Is it martian life or transplanted life from Earth?

    1. Re:Earth Fossils on Mars? by bigpat · · Score: 1

      If we are finding rocks from Mars on Earth, it is likley there are rocks from Earth on Mars and possibly fossils from Earth on Mars. And I wonder about bacteria from Earth on Mars. It is possible. This complicates the "finding life on Mars" projects. Is it martian life or transplanted life from Earth?

      There will always be uncertainty, but if we can find some trace of life on Mars and it isn't directly associated with a meteorite with a composition that could indicate it is from Earth then that would probably be good enough to rule out direct transport from Earth... but it wouldn't rule out that it was transplanted life unless it was completely different than anything we have or had on Earth. So if it is bacteria or other simple life it is going to be nearly impossible to rule out transplant theories with limited evidence.

      But even the result of finding life on Mars that reproduced or flourished there in the past would be a great milestone of discovery and I think we can safely rule out mere contamination by meteorites just by looking at the geology of where we find it.

    2. Re:Earth Fossils on Mars? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      I would say it is much less likely- the escape velocity of Mars is half that of Earth's and the thick atmosphere would keep many smaller fragments from leaving orbit.

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Earth Fossils on Mars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      from that line of thought, life on earth could not even be (originated) from earth itself, or mars, and vice-versa... I seriously don't think its of any concern *where* life came from, what is important is if it thrives on another planet or not (whatever definition of "thrive" you have) ...

    4. Re:Earth Fossils on Mars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it martian life or transplanted life from Earth?

      Or is life on Earth transplanted from Mars?

  18. Why just fossils? Maybe organics too. by steam_cannon · · Score: 1

    I think it I would be interesting if we found terrestrial organic contamination on the moon. As in what's called panspermia, organics from earth spreading out into space. It would be really cool if a moonbot found something like spores protected under lunar dust and wicked cool if they found a tardigrade!

    1. Re:Why just fossils? Maybe organics too. by gewalker · · Score: 1

      I don't know, if you have a comet or asteroid impact big enough to eject material into space you have to consider that the ejecta is going to be heated by a large amount. Much of the "ejecta" is in the form of vaporized rock, much of the solid ejecta will be fractured. The fireball associated with an impact of this size is also going to be large (10's or 100's of km in diameter), so you get additional heating beyond the heating of atmospheric compression while the ejecta is departing.

      Seems like organics would be unlikely to survive the trip most of the time.

      The slower eject will not be generally be heated as much, but you won't find those on the moon.

  19. Betteridge by Subm · · Score: 1

    Headline writer: Why ask us when you can ask Betteridge?

  20. Possibly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But only if Satan buried them up there too, like he did on Earth, so he could lure scientalists and materialistics away from God's True Path.

  21. life evolved once in solar system by peter303 · · Score: 1

    Then cross-infected suitable host planets and moons. I wouldnt be surprised to find DNA on MArs and Europa.

    Cross-infecting other solar systems is more tenuous.

  22. Fossils escaping velocity to reach moon? Really? by Eloking · · Score: 1

    I'm I missing something or TFA is suggesting that the earth got hit by something big enough to make an explosion with fire and heat and power big enough that some debris reach escape velocity to escape earth. And that somehow some fossils survived the trip on these debris?

    --
    Elok
  23. smashing time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Meteors / comets /asteroid hitting planets, and ejecting material into space. Yes, that's one explanation.
    However, the alternative would be electric machining, which our ancestors in earth recent past may well have witnessed.
    There's a lot of evidence to suggest the scarring in Mars is electrical, Surprising and that may seem, it's worth investigating.
    see here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvHqXK_Hz79tjqRosK4tWYA