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1. Moon’s Age: The moon is far older than previously expected. Maybe even older than the Earth or the Sun. The oldest age for the Earth is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old; moon rocks were dated at 5.3 billion years old, and the dust upon which they were resting was at least another billion years older.
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Not from what I’ve read. The oldest Moon rocks are over 4 billion years old, but nothing has been recorded which is older than any scientific theory for the age of the Earth or the Solar System.
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2. Rock’s Origin: The chemical composition of the dust upon which the rocks sat differed remarkably from the rocks themselves, contrary to accepted theories that the dust resulted from weathering and breakup of the rocks themselves. The rocks had to have come from somewhere else.
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Not from what I’ve read. The dust is simply pulverised rock. Some of it may be from distant locations on the Moon, as successive meteorite impacts shove fragments around. A small amount of anorthosite was uncovered in the Apollo 11 material, even though it wasn’t native to that part of the Moon.
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3. Heavier Elements on Surface: Normal planetary composition results in heavier elements in the core and lighter materials at the surface; not so with the moon. According to Wilson, "The abundance of refractory elements like titanium in the surface areas is so pronounced that several geologists proposed the refractory compounds were brought to the moon’s surface in great quantity in some unknown way. They don’t know how, but that it was done cannot be questioned." (Emphasis added).
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My understanding is that the proportion of lighter elements is higher the further away you are from the Moon’s centre.
[/quote]4. Water Vapor: On March 7, 1971, lunar instruments placed by the astronauts recorded a vapor cloud of water passing across the surface of the moon. The cloud lasted 14 hours and covered an area of about 100 square miles. [/quote]
Never heard of this one. Anyway, how can a single instrument determine the area of a vapour cloud? Source?
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5. Magnetic Rocks: Moon rocks were magnetized. This is odd because there is no magnetic field on the moon itself. This could not have originated from a "close call" with Earth—such an encounter would have ripped the moon apart.
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I understand that the Moon has a weak, but measurable, magnetic field. That would make magnetised rocks believable.
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6. No Volcanoes: Some of the moon’s craters originated internally, yet there is no indication that the moon was ever hot enough to produce volcanic eruptions.
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Which craters are volcanic? Anyway, there’s plenty of evidence the Moon was once liquid, such as the elemental differentiation (heavy stuff at the centre), and the existence of anorthosite and the mares. The mares are solidified magma. That sounds like good evidence the Moon was once hot.
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7. Moon Mascons: Mascons, which are large, dense, circular masses lying twenty to forty miles beneath the centers of the moon’s maria, "are broad, disk-shaped objects that could be possibly some kind of artificial construction. For huge circular disks are not likely to be beneath each huge maria, centered like bull’s-eyes in the middle of each, by coincidence or accident." (Emphasis added).
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What’s the evidence they’re disc-shaped?
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8. Seismic Activity: Hundreds of "moonquakes" are recorded each year that cannot be attributed to meteor strikes. In November, 1958, Soviet astronomer Nikolay A. Kozyrev of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory photographed a gaseous eruption of the moon near the crater Alphonsus. He also detected a reddish glow that lasted for about an hour. In 1963, astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region. These observations have proved to be precisely identical and periodical, repeating themselves as the moon moves closer to the Earth. These are probably not natural phenomena.
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Why can’t the moonquakes be meteorites? And anyway, the Moon would experience differential heating which would also cause small quakes. What’s the source for the evidence of periodical phenomena on the Moon?
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9. Hollow Moon: The moon’s mean density is 3.34 gm/cm3 (3.34 times an equal volume of water) whereas the Earth’s is 5.5. What does this mean? In 1962, NASA scientist Dr. Gordon MacDonald stated, "If the astronomical data are reduced, it is found that the data require that the interior of the moon is more like a hollow than a homogeneous sphere." Nobel chemist Dr. Harold Urey suggested the moon’s reduced density is because of large areas inside the moon where is "simply a cavity." MIT’s Dr. Sean C. Solomon wrote, "the Lunar Orbiter experiments vastly improved our knowledge of the moon’s gravitational field . . . indicating the frightening possibility that the moon might be hollow." In Carl Sagan’s treatise, Intelligent Life in the Universe, the famous astronomer stated, "A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object."
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The Moon’s density is equivalent to the density of the Earth’s mantle, from which current theories suggest it was ripped by a massive collision. The theories presented pre-date Apollo, and were thus made without the massive amount of data Apollo provided.
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10. Moon Echoes: On November 20, 1969, the Apollo 12 crew jettisoned the lunar module ascent stage causing it to crash onto the moon. The LM’s impact (about 40 miles from the Apollo 12 landing site) created an artificial moonquake with startling characteristics—the moon reverberated like a bell for more than an hour. This phenomenon was repeated with Apollo 13 (intentionally commanding the third stage to impact the moon), with even more startling results. Seismic instruments recorded that the reverberations lasted for three hours and twenty minutes and traveled to a depth of twenty-five miles, leading to the conclusion that the moon has an unusually light—or even no—core.
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Solid objects vibrate like this, as well as hollow objects. The Earth vibrated after the Boxing Day earthquake.
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11. Unusual Metals: The moon’s crust is much harder than presumed. Remember the extreme difficulty the astronauts encountered when they tried to drill into the maria? Surprise! The maria is composed primarily illeminite, a mineral containing large amounts of titanium, the same metal used to fabricate the hulls of deep-diving submarines and the skin of the SR-71 "Blackbird". Uranium 236 and neptunium 237 (elements not found in nature on Earth) were discovered in lunar rocks, as were rustproof iron particles.
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The astronauts had problems drilling into the Moon dust because of extreme compaction of fine, rough-surfaced particles. Digging was easy. This statement seems to confuse a hard powder (the Moon’s surface) with a hard solid object (the hull of a submarine).
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12. Moon’s Origin: Before the astronauts’ moon rocks conclusively disproved the theory, the moon was believed to have originated when a chunk of Earth broke off eons ago (who knows from where?). Another theory was that the moon was created from leftover "space dust" remaining after the Earth was created. Analysis of the composition of moon rocks disproved this theory also. Another popular theory is that the moon was somehow "captured" by the Earth’s gravitational attraction. But no evidence exists to support this theory. Isaac Asimov, stated, "It’s too big to have been captured by the Earth. The chances of such a capture having been effected and the moon then having taken up nearly circular orbit around our Earth are too small to make such an eventuality credible."
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Yes, all three old theories had problems. As a result, a new theory was developed in the 90s – the massive impact theory. Read “The Big Splat” for an entertaining explanation of the story.
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13. Weird Orbit: Our moon is the only moon in the solar system that has a stationary, near-perfect circular orbit. Stranger still, the moon’s center of mass is about 6000 feet closer to the Earth than its geometric center (which should cause wobbling), but the moon’s bulge is on the far side of the moon, away from the Earth. "Something" had to put the moon in orbit with its precise altitude, course, and speed.
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The Moon’s orbit is hardly circular. And its rotation has been slowed by tidal interaction with the Earth. There are no mysteries there.
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14. Moon Diameter: How does one explain the "coincidence" that the moon is just the right distance, coupled with just the right diameter, to completely cover the sun during an eclipse? Again, Isaac Asimov responds, "There is no astronomical reason why the moon and the sun should fit so well. It is the sheerest of coincidences, and only the Earth among all the planets is blessed in this fashion."
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Yes, it’s a coincidence
at the moment. But in the past, when the Moon was closer to the Earth, it was obviously larger in the sky than the Sun. In the distant future, we won’t be able to have total eclipses.
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15. Spaceship Moon: As outrageous as the Moon-Is-a-Spaceship Theory is, all of the above items are resolved if one assumes that the moon is a gigantic extraterrestrial craft, brought here eons ago by intelligent beings. This is the only theory that is supported by all of the data, and there are no data that contradict this theory.
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Dang it, it’s in trouble now, after my previous comments. :wink: If anyone would like to copy them over to GLP, be my guest, as long as you provide a link back to this thread.
Cheers
