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Old 01-April-2004, 12:47 PM
jfribrg jfribrg is offline
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Default moon rocks

The argument that the moon rocks could not have formed on Earth is in my view one of the most compelling ones. However, in thinking about it, a couple of questions have come up in my mind that don't seem to have a simple answer. The rocks have been dated to 3.5 billion years or so, and IIRC were formed in the absence of water. The age of the rocks are sufficient in my view to debunk the HB'ers, but I'm looking for a more compelling proof. The problem is that many scientists believe that the moon was formed due to an impact with another planet, so one could expect that conditions on both planets were in some way similar. Also, how are we able to tell what the conditions were on Earth 3.5 billion years ago? My understanding is that it was a very oxygen poor atmosphere. Is there evidence that the rocks formed in the absence of an atmosphere?
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Old 01-April-2004, 02:07 PM
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jrkeller jrkeller is offline
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Default Re: moon rocks

Quote:
Originally Posted by jfribrg
The argument that the moon rocks could not have formed on Earth is in my view one of the most compelling ones. However, in thinking about it, a couple of questions have come up in my mind that don't seem to have a simple answer. The rocks have been dated to 3.5 billion years or so, and IIRC were formed in the absence of water. The age of the rocks are sufficient in my view to debunk the HB'ers, but I'm looking for a more compelling proof. The problem is that many scientists believe that the moon was formed due to an impact with another planet, so one could expect that conditions on both planets were in some way similar. Also, how are we able to tell what the conditions were on Earth 3.5 billion years ago? My understanding is that it was a very oxygen poor atmosphere. Is there evidence that the rocks formed in the absence of an atmosphere?
I believe that everything you said is correct, unfortunately the HBs will just say that the rocks were created in a lab, or harvested from Antartica.

Here are a couple of good moon rock sites,

Here and

Professor Steven Dutch a personal favorite, and

moon rock currator at JSC. This is a good site. It states that "Nearly 1000 samples are distributed each year for research and teaching projects" Nobody that looks at these rocks claim they are faked.

Another good place to go is the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and then click on over to each mission. There is a sample catalogue for all the missions, except Apollo 11 and Apollo 13, in pdf format. Very large 20 to 100 MB. They give a description of each sample and a photograph.
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