Pieces of Ancient Earth May Be Hidden On the Moon 96
swestcott brings us a story from Space.com about the possibility of finding evidence for ancient Earth life on the moon. A team of scientists has published work confirming that meteorites originating from Earth could have remained sufficiently intact while colliding with the moon to allow the survival of biological evidence for life. Quoting:
"Crawford and Baldwin's group simulated their meteors as cubes, and calculated pressures at 500 points on the surface of the cube as it impacted the lunar surface at a wide range of impact angles and velocities. In the most extreme case they tested (vertical impact at a speed of some 11,180 mph, or 5 kilometers per second), Crawford reports that 'some portions' of the simulated meteorite would have melted, but 'the bulk of the projectile, and especially the trailing half, was subjected to much lower pressures.'"
Let's start with the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell would you model an asteroid with some improbable shape like a cube?
Re:Pieces of Ancient Moon May Be Hidden On the Ear (Score:1, Insightful)
The collision theory is pretty much universally accepted by now. I'm not sure it requires a complete breakup of the planetoid that hit earth.
ALso, looking at that site... the first theory... "The present Pacific Ocean basin is the most popular site for the part of the Earth from which the Moon came." I can't think of any reason why this is even remotely valid given plate tectonics and several billion years.
Re:Let's start with the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
some improbable shape like a cube?
why is cube improbable? That's like saying, an asteroid looks more like a baseball than a lego brick. I would say, sphere is more improbable than cube.
To find a perfect model for an irregular shaped object, cube is as good as any. Sphere would be the least likely and desirable shape to model after.
But what about how they got up there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably the collision needed to splash a bit of rock off the Earth, through its atmosphere, up its gravity well to the moon would be at least 6 times as forceful as the collision with the moon.
They'd have to show that bits of organic material would survive both collisions to make it plausible.
Then explain how you would go looking for the few unlikely surviving chunks on something the size of the moon. Which by the way keeps getting hit all over with rocks from everywhere else, hence all the dust and craters.
Good luck with that.
Or is this just one of those things like string theory where you get to make up a hypothesis that you can't possibly actually falsify?