Tiny Orange Beads Found By Apollo Astronauts Reveal Moon's Volcanic Past (sciencedaily.com) 17
"When Apollo astronauts stumbled across shimmering orange beads on the moon, they had no idea they were gazing at ancient relics of violent volcanic activity," writes ScienceDaily.
These glass spheres, tiny yet mesmerizing, formed billions of years ago during fiery eruptions that launched molten droplets skyward, instantly freezing in space. Now, using advanced instruments that didn't exist in the 1970s, scientists have examined the beads in unprecedented detail. The result is a remarkable window into the moon's dynamic geological history, revealing how eruption styles evolved and how lunar conditions once mirrored explosive events we see on Earth today...
Analyses of orange and black lunar beads have shown that the style of volcanic eruptions changed over time. "It's like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist," said Ryan Ogliore [an associate professor of physics at Missouri's Washington University, which has a large repository of lunar samples that were returned to Earth].
"The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior..." says Ogliore. "We've had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them..."
"The very existence of these beads tells us the moon had explosive eruptions, something like the fire fountains you can see in Hawaii today."
Thanks to Slashdot reader alternative_right for sharing the news.
Analyses of orange and black lunar beads have shown that the style of volcanic eruptions changed over time. "It's like reading the journal of an ancient lunar volcanologist," said Ryan Ogliore [an associate professor of physics at Missouri's Washington University, which has a large repository of lunar samples that were returned to Earth].
"The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior..." says Ogliore. "We've had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them..."
"The very existence of these beads tells us the moon had explosive eruptions, something like the fire fountains you can see in Hawaii today."
Thanks to Slashdot reader alternative_right for sharing the news.
NASA foresight (Score:5, Insightful)
Moon Rock Storage (Score:3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Not just "a number of moon samples", it is still most of them [sciencenews.org].
Even with all that sharing, upward of 80 percent of the original haul is still untouched. Keeping with NASA’s hypercareful approach, nearly 15 percent of that lot is stored in a vault at the White Sands Test Facility near Las Cruces, N.M., a roughly 1,300-kilometer drive from Houston.
Liquid Nitrogen or Vacuum? (Score:4, Informative)
These glass spheres, tiny yet mesmerizing, formed billions of years ago during fiery eruptions that launched molten droplets skyward, instantly freezing in space.
That's movie physics, not reality. They would have cooled more slowly in a vacuum.
If you want see them, this article has the only two pictures I found while (briefly) searching:
https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/0... [dailygalaxy.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of the question (fairly) recently answered in a study: "how hot is the interior of a meteorite when it hits the Earth?".
A meteorite that is intact and is of substantial size (say a kilogram or so) will have the same temperature in the center that it does in space since the trip to the ground is so fast, and through most of that fall (a few minutes of "dark flight") the ten or twenty second entry heating is removed by cooling air.
In space the meteorite is continuously exposed to the Sun and so it
Re: (Score:2)
IF the meteorite had been in an Earth-like orbit for long enough to equilibrate to Earth-like orbital conditions.
But if, for example, it was on a comet-like orbit, it could come in with an outer Solar system temperature. Or a "just been Sun-diving" temperature, which wouldn't be much different.
Under the microscope (Score:1)
They say Trump 2024
So (Score:2)
I was wondering how Buzz Aldrin beat me at chess.
Luna vulcuna (Score:2)
For a moment, leave the science behind and enter the poetical realm. Imagine that the moon was still actively volcanic. Eruptions would easily be seen from Earth.
How would that have influenced mythology, religion, arts, poetry? How would that have changed ideas like "lunacy" or romance under a full moon?
This could be the impetus for some good sci-fi movies or romance novels.
Re: (Score:2)
We have evidence now that volcanism occurred as recently as 120 million years ago [science.org], which is just 2.5% of the Moon's current age. So really recent in a geological sense, the poets among the dinosaurs might have commented on it. Humans occasionally see lunar impacts though not the formation of crater Giordano Bruno in AD 1186 [nasa.gov] as has been proposed. Investigation of the claim led an astronomy grad student to determine that "Such an impact would have resulted in a blinding, blizzard-like, week-long meteor storm
Bummer. (Score:2)
Moon Bead Jewelry? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
So how much would a moon bead pearl necklace set me back?
Up to eight years [fbi.gov], depending on aggravating circumstances. It is not legal to own Moon rocks unless President Nixon gifted them to you.
Waiting (Score:2)