[meteorite-list] NP Article, 07-1969 Moon Rocks and Meteorites

From: MARK BOSTICK <thebigcollector_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:23:46 2004
Message-ID: <OE251QO05Ryn2HiVQ4h0000134e_at_hotmail.com>

Title: The Post Crescent
City: Appleton, Wi
Date: Sunday, July 13, 1969
Page: A6


More Precious Than Diamonds Rocks Will Answer Moon's Secrets
By Alton Blakeslee
     Eleven days from now, an extraordinary shipment is due from the moon.
     It will weigh 50 to 60 pounds and be vacuum-packed inside two metal
boxes. If a price tage could be placed upon it, the bidding might start at
100 times the value of the same amount of diamonds.
     It will be a collection of rocks and dust, hand-picked from the lonely
surface of the moon by two American astronauts, the first men on the moon.
They may be rather ordinary rocks or exotic rocks: in either case they will
be priceless because they will be the first specimens known to have come
from the moon, or any other known place in the universe.
     Several hundred impatient scientists in 13 nations will be waiting to
interrogate these rocks, pouncing on them for what they really represent -
pages out of the history of the mysterious challenging moon.

Quarantine Period
     "Are you dangerous?" will be the first question. Do these rocks carry
germs, viruses, peculiar life forms that might sweep in a bizarre epidemic
among people on earth? They will be quarantined, isolated, for at least
three weeks while this worry is tested out.
     But then the questions from scientists will flurry.
     "How were you born? Tell, tell - is the moon you came from a sister, or
a daughter, or a captive wive of this planet earth? Is the moon's deep
interior hot or cold? Did a volcano spew you out from inside the moon? Did
a meteorite flashing in from space a 7 to 45 miles per second, rip you from
the bowels of the moon, or in its hellish, cataclysmic explosion create you
from molten moon material that then formed into a rock?
     Tell, tell, tell!
     This first sample of the moon rock is bound to tell something, if
perhaps only a tease a bit longer the advocates of various theories as to
how the moon and earth began, how they are related. Perhaps they will put
some theories to death.
     Is the moon the earth's sister? By this theory, earth and moon began
as great clouds of space dust, which condensed under gravitational pressure
to form planetary bodies wheeling around the sun, about 4 1/2 billion years
ago. The rocks may answer.
     Is the moon the earth's daughter? When one great blod of condensing
space dust was congealing into more solid matter, was the moon pulled out to
become a satellite of the earth? Or - in a theory pretty well discarded -
was the moon rippd out of the Pacific Ocean basin eos ago when the earth was
spinning faster than now? The rocks may tell.
     Or was the moon a wandering planet which happened to approach too close
to the earth and sun, thus becoming a captive wife of the earth?
     Does the moon have a molten core at its center - as the earth does - or
was it formed "cool", never alive with hot fires from radioactivity or other
causes?
     Were the moon's tremendous craters and so-called "seas" formed by
volcanic action, or by the brutal bombardment of great and small meteorites?
Unlike the earth, the moon has no cushioning atmosphere to incinerate chunks
of stone and metal homing in from outer space.
     Does the moon have life on or under its surface, even if it be in the
form of suspended animation, like a virus that can be freeze-dried, then
reactivated on contact with water? Did life on earth begin from curious
spores floating in from somewhere in space, as one old theory holds, and if
so, could there not be similar spores on the moon? Does the moon have the
beginnings of organic materials out of which life might spontaneously
spring?
     Some specialists think the moon's seas once were really seas, but that
the water long ago evaporated. Dr. Harold Urey, a Nobel laurete and moon
specialists, proposes that once, when the moon and earth were much closer
together, a great body from space hit the earth, splashing a great geyser of
water onto the moon, carrying primitive life organisms from the earth to the
moon.

Dusty History
     Other scientists think the moon's dusty surface may contain a history
of the moon, sun and space dating back billions of years. The moon's
surface could be like a dusty table that has never had a swipe from a
housewife's cloth, never disturbed by wind or rain, hence supplying a record
of things past, just as layers of rocks and sediments and imbedded forssil
supply a history of the earth.
     The moon could be a facsimile of how the earth looks and was billions
of years ago, before erosion, volcanic activity, mountain building - and
man's aterations - changed its first face.
     Major features of the moon have not changed since Galileo first peered
at the moon with his primitive telescope in 1610. Major actions altering the
moon's face, whether from volcanoes or the imoact of huge meteorites, or
both, appear to be over.
     Soviet and American observers believe they have detected signs of
volcanic activity, in the form of curious red-colored blotches that might
represent the venting of volcanic ash or gases, near the crater Arisharchus.
But was it that?
     Literally tons of meteorites fall on earth each year, mostly in the
form of tiny particles or shooting star that turn to and drift down as dust.
Some are believed to be bits of moon matter, shot free of the moon's weak
gravity when a meteor thundered in and exploded and created a hole. But
meteorite specialists cannot say for sure which recovered meteorites came
from the moon.

Small Meteorites

     The moon is also being steadily bombarded by small meteorites, churning
its face into dust. Some rocks - perhaps one to be returned in Apollo 11 -
might have originated halfway around the moon from where Neil Armstrong and
Edwin Aldrin find them, The impact of a meteor could have sent them flying
until the moon's gravity brought them down to the surface again.
     Some puzzles of the moon have been partially resolved by the probings
of Surveyor spacecraft that landed on the moon, by Rangers that crashed into
the moon, by Orbiter spacecraft which flew around the moon, also taking
thousands of pictures.
     The Surveyors, landing heavily but no sinking, showed that the moon's
dust is not so think that Apoll 11 and its astronauts will sink fatally
beneath the surface. The moon's texture seems indeed to be like that of the
earth's in composition and consistency.
     Various pictures yielded evidence - at least to theorists looking for
it - that some moon features were born of volcanies, others created by
meteors.
     The handful of moon rocks may go far in supplying answers to all there
questions.
     So vital is winning the yield of just one rock that Armstrong's first
task when he sets foot on the moon is to pick up one rock and stick it in
his pocket, in case some emergency forces a quick halt in his stay to the
moon.
     Armstrong and Aldrin have been honed in geology, taking about 150 hours
of classroon instruction, plus numerous field trips, so they can recognize
the most valuable, informative types of rocks.
     And they will set up other experiments on the moon to broaden
scientific knowledge about the moon, earth and sun.
     They will set up a seismometer to radio back whether any moonquakes
occur and if so whether they were caused by volcanoes or by a blow from a
meteorites.

Window Shade

     For another, they will set up a special alumnized "window shade" which
for more than two hours will collect atomic particles raining from the sun
in a steady solar wind. They'll bring in back for analysis of what kinds of
particles, from atomic hearts known as protons to perhaps atoms of iron, the
sun keeps pouring into space.
     They will leave behind a special reflector to send back lasor beams
pulsed out from the earth. These narrow beams of light, travelling at
186,000 miles per second, can measure the distance from earth to moon within
six inches.
Received on Thu 06 Mar 2003 01:39:02 PM PST