Question about Moon rocks and Earth rocks

[PeterB]

I was marshalling my thoughts for the Moon Hoax discussion I’ll be doing on the radio in a fortnight, and I had a question about the rocks.

My understanding is that the major distinction between Earth rocks and Moon rocks is the complete absence of water in Moon rocks. However, do all Earth rocks contain water? Is water still present even in the lava which solidifies into basalt?

Cheers

[JayUtah]

Moon rocks are anhydrous, meaning that they not only do not contain water, but they show no evidence of water acting at any point in their formation. Certain Earth rocks, especially sedimentary rocks, show chemical and physical evidence that water was present at their formation. The same -- I believe -- can be said of other Earth rocks. Earth rocks can still be dry as a bone but show evidence that water acted on them at some point.

[turbonium]

But that does not mean all moon rocks definitely contain no water. There is a possibility that areas of the Moon may contain water, as this link explains....
science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/14apr_moonwater.htm

With that in mind, it isn't completely out of the question that rocks in these areas or any lunites from these areas may contain some trace of water, however minute. Of course, it's still only speculative that water does indeed exist on the Moon.

[PeterB]

The link's broken Turbonium. Or at least, it is for me.

My understanding of water on the Moon is that it's from comets, and survives under the regolith at the bottom of polar craters which never get any direct sunlight.

The water in Earth rocks is, in many cases, chemically bound into the minerals which make up the rocks. To get to that water, you need to literally melt the rocks and collect the water vapour. Simply heating the rocks up to 100 degrees C won't get you anywhere. By contrast, the water in the polar craters on the Moon is freely available.

The Apollo rocks contain no water whatsoever. According to the latest theory of the Moon's creation, this is because the material which formed the Moon was blasted out of the Earth by a collision with a Mars-sized planet. This impact was at such a temperature that the rocks would have been melted, and the water cooked out of them.

But my main interest was whether all *Earth* rocks contain water.

[PeterB]

Incidentally, the Apollo rocks are one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that people walked on the Moon.

1. They're not Earth rocks. They have characteristics which aren't present in Earth rocks. For example, the lack of water, and also, for the solidified lava rocks, convection patterns in the rocks which show evidence of them having been liquid in one-sixth gravity. Geologists have no trouble finding evidence that separates Apollo rocks from Earth rocks.

2. They're not lunar meteorites collected on Earth. Lunar meteorites passed through the Earth's atmosphere, and this melted their outer surfaces. The Apollo rocks show no sign of having experienced atmospheric heating. Instead, their outer surfaces are covered by zap pits - impact marks from being struck by microscopic dust particles at speeds of tens of kilometres per second. We don't have the technology even now to do that.

3. They weren't collected by unmanned sample return missions. The Apollo rocks include individual stones weighing as much as 10 kilograms, fragile clods of compressed lunar soil, and core samples a few metres long. Even now we don't have the technology to manage this.

This leaves only one solution. They were collected from the Moon by people.

I'd be curious if Moon Man cared to comment on this, his Sudbury statements notwithstanding.

[turbonium]

The link's broken Turbonium. Or at least, it is for me.

Link now working, thanks.

[PeterB]

Ta Turbonium

And as you can see, the article is talking about cometary water in permanently shadowed crater floors. This is very different from rocks which are made of minerals which include water molecules in their chemical composition.

[Tanalia]

From Conspiracy Theory: Did We Go to the Moon? by Steven Dutch (Natural and Applied Sciences, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay), one of the geologists that got to study moon rock samples:

Water is ubiquitous on earth - it's present in magma, rocks deep in the crust are changed by hot fluids, and rocks near the surface are altered by surface water.

He has some other observations worth checking about the rocks, plus basic debunking of all the usual HB claims.
Also, Did We Really Land on the Moon?:

The absence of hydrothermal alteration is the most obvious proof that Apollo samples of basalt or anorthosite are from the Moon. Terrestrial basalts in thin section are almost invariably altered to some extent by water in the magma or lava, which produces greenish minerals such as chlorite (a form of mica).

And a couple other sites from a quick Google:
Moon rocks through the Microscope
How Do We Know That It’s a Rock From the Moon?

[turbonium]

They're not lunar meteorites collected on Earth. Lunar meteorites passed through the Earth's atmosphere, and this melted their outer surfaces. The Apollo rocks show no sign of having experienced atmospheric heating. Instead, their outer surfaces are covered by zap pits - impact marks from being struck by microscopic dust particles at speeds of tens of kilometres per second. We don't have the technology even now to do that.

Not meant as a foray into petrology or mineralogy, of which I know little, but microcraters (or zap pits) can be simulated today in most media, from rocks to metals. Not that this technology was available back in 1969, but I thought I'd post it out of general interest.

The link below describes how microcraters 25 µm in diameter and a depth ranging 5-20 µm are created in quartz samples with irradiated laser pulses.

webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/diss/2001/mueller/diss.pdf

Below is the title and link to a document describing simulating space weathering, including microcraters, with laser pulses...

Simulation of space weathering of planet-forming materials: Nanosecond pulse laser irradiation and proton implantation on olivine and pyroxene samples. Laboratory simulation of space weathering: ESR measurements of nanophase metallic iron in laser-irradiated materials

www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/pdf/2002e/5412e005.pdf

One more link, with metal as the sample media......

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2003SPIE.5147..377D&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format=

..laser induced craters are presented in this work. Experiments with femtosecond pulses were performed in air with a Ti:sapphire laser (800 nm, 100 fs) at mean fluences of 2, 5 and 10 J/cm2. Series of microcraters were induced with 100 to 5,000 laser pulses per hole

[Al Johnston]

Of course, the first requirement for an accurate simulation is a genuine article to simulate....

[Kiwi]

Any new members who are interested in this subject might like to take a look at this other thread of Peter B's about lunar rocks. Replies 2 and 3 have a list of all the scientists who, just before Apollo 11, had put their names forward to study the samples.
apollohoax.proboards21.com/index.cgi?board=theories&action=display&thread=1122507360

One more thing that seems to get missed by HBs who claim that the samples could have been brought back by robotic missions is that after Apollo 11, most samples were placed in individually numbered bags.

But not only that happened. In many cases stereo pairs of photos were taken of the samples where they were found, and again of their sites after they were removed. Many samples were chipped off bigger boulders with hammers, and on the J Missions we also have TV film * of the astronauts photographing samples, removing them, rephotographing the sites (often in stereo), placing them into numbered bags, describing the samples to Houston, and announcing the numbers of the bags into which they were placed.

And while they do all this, we see the astronauts moving large distances and kicking dust and generally behaving in ways that very strongly indicate that they are in a vacuum and one-sixth of Earth's gravity.

I doubt that the samples could have been documented in a more scientific, thorough and convincing fashion.

* The Spacecraft Films' DVDs show hours of this sort of activity.


<Edited to fix bad grammar, on the excellent advice of Potkettle Glasshouseman, below. At the time I knew something was wrong with that sentence, but my brain, which was muttering, "Sleep... Sleep...", wouldn't tell me how to fix it -- it couldn't care less. Thanks PhantomWolf.>

[PhantomWolf]

kiwi said:

Replies 2 and 3 have a list of all the scientists who had put their names forward to study the samples just before Apollo 11.

While it seems to be all the rage today to have your sentances back the front, I think you really mean:

Replies 2 and 3 have a list of all the scientists who, just before Apollo 11, had put their names forward to study the samples.

[Kiwi]

phantomwolf said:

While it seems to be all the rage today to have your sentances back the front, I think you really mean:

Replies 2 and 3 have a list of all the scientists who, just before Apollo 11, had put their names forward to study the samples.

Quite correct! That's what comes from posting after 1 a.m.

By the way, pot/kettle, it's sentences and back to front. ;D

<Also edited to change its to it's before PhantomWolf notices. Apologies for the highjack, PeterB.>

[PhantomWolf]

Well my spelling didn't change the whole meaning. I didn't want the HB's asking you why they were checking out the samples before Apollo 11.

[stutefish]

turbonium said:

Not meant as a foray into petrology or mineralogy, of which I know little, but microcraters (or zap pits) can be simulated today in most media, from rocks to metals. Not that this technology was available back in 1969, but I thought I'd post it out of general interest.

The link below describes how microcraters 25 µm in diameter and a depth ranging 5-20 µm are created in quartz samples with irradiated laser pulses.

webdoc.sub.gwdg.de/diss/2001/mueller/diss.pdf

Below is the title and link to a document describing simulating space weathering, including microcraters, with laser pulses...

Simulation of space weathering of planet-forming materials: Nanosecond pulse laser irradiation and proton implantation on olivine and pyroxene samples. Laboratory simulation of space weathering: ESR measurements of nanophase metallic iron in laser-irradiated materials

www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/EPS/pdf/2002e/5412e005.pdf

One more link, with metal as the sample media......

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=2003SPIE.5147..377D&db_key=PHY&data_type=HTML&format=

..laser induced craters are presented in this work. Experiments with femtosecond pulses were performed in air with a Ti:sapphire laser (800 nm, 100 fs) at mean fluences of 2, 5 and 10 J/cm2. Series of microcraters were induced with 100 to 5,000 laser pulses per hole

Very nice work, Turbo. I guess what I'm curious about is this:

It may be possible to simulate the Mona Lisa at least well enough to fool the Mk I Eyeball, but a thorough microscopic investigation might reveal inconsistencies in the brush stroke, brush material, pigment chemistry, etc.

Common sense argues that there should be telltale characteristics that set microcraters made by lasers apart from microcraters made by high-energy particles. But of course the real pudding would be to compare these laser-made craters to the ones found in actual lunar material.

I think it's significant to note that you are not claiming that we have the technology to create microcraters using high-energy particles (which, not lasers, made the craters seen in the Apollo samples).

The Apollo samples should be ideal for this comparison, since whatever the result, it's still a fact that the Apollo samples were produced before the current laser technology was developed.

The Russian samples would also serve, in addition to confirming the authenticity of the Apollo samples.

(Unless the Russians also hoaxed their own space program. Actually, how come the HBs never seem to come up with that possibility? The problematic "Russians were in on it" CT is popular, but what if the Russians were busy faking their own project, and simply agreed to NASA's claims because they didn't want to reveal that in their ignorance they actually had no clue if NASA was lying or not?)