Tuesday, May 23, 2006

TO THE MOON


I'm always going on about how we should spend more money on exploring the deep oceans instead of planning on another trip to the moon but now I might change my mind. It has to do with impact events and the effect they've had on the Earth. There could be tonnes of earth rock on the moon which could contain fossils or organic signals of microbial activity at the start of life on this planet.
The evidence of life on Earth as long ago as 3.8 billion years is based on rock chemistry rather than fossils. Finding sedimentary rocks of the kind that could contain fossils older than 3.5 billion years is a virtually impossible task considering plate tectonics. They still could be found as geologists discovered Ophiolites, the remnants of the ancient seafloor crust which had escaped the tectonic re-cycling.
The moon's surface is littered with rocks many of which could be from Earth and older than found here. Asteroid impacts fling huge quantities of material into space.



The K/T (Cretaceous/Tertiary) event which is generally thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs has left an impact layer spread all over the world. While most material fell back to Earth, some would have been propelled into space even landing on Mars but the closest landing would have been the moon.



In 2001, John Armstrong joined with L. Wells and G. Gonzalez to calculate how much material would reach the moon after a large impact. They calculated that the impact of a body, 100 metres in diameter would deposit about 120 kilograms of Earth rock on each squae kilometres of the lunar surface.

Between 4.2 and 3.8 billion years ago, in a heavy bombardment of a solar system wide event, Earth was struck by thousands of asteroids that were K/T sized or bigger. So rocks landing on the moon and containing evidence of the beginning of life on Earth would still be lying around. As life on Mars and Venus might have been going around this stage, there may be proof of this as well.

It's worth a trip to answer a rocketship load of questions about our origins. As long as we keep the military in any country from having anything to do with it.

6 comments:

Jeremy said...

I thought the moon was formed when a Mars-sized planet wacked into a larger Earth, was destroyed and it, and a whole lot of material it had whacked off the Earth (where the pacific ocean is now) all gradually coalesced together to form the Moon.

R.H. said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
R.H. said...

Forget it. I can't be bothered.

Let's just say that RH has finally been banned from dopey LP.
Yes well I challenged old grasshopper-head Bahnisch to do it and he was eager to accept. Which means Miss Winter has finally got what she wanted. Good. Well I'm pleased to be able to make their lives a little brighter. Yes. But the trouble with the pair of them is they both want to be men.
How unfortunate.

They'll never make it.

-Robert.

R.H. said...

I want to thank you very much.
I intend wandering back into the big world now. Well an artist needs to keep on the move. Nothing good was ever thought up in comfort.

Thank you Jahteh, dear lady.

-Robert.

PS: Savers half price sale: Monday, June 5.
-Just in case you're interested.

Robert.

JahTeh said...

For Heaven's sake, RH, would could you do worse than Watson and Civitas did?
Now I'll have to go there and find out.
You'll always have a ranting place with me, sweet thing.

JahTeh said...

mrlefty, you are right and I posted a reply. Thank you for making my head spin when I already had a mother induced migraine.