Mysteries of the Moon

… or rather, mysteries of the Moon that really might not be as mysterious as this piece at www.disinfo.com/2010/09/who-parked-the-mooon/ would have its readers believe (sent in by Gary). It is actually reminiscent of a speaker at an SIS meeting a few years ago and begins rather tamely by telling us that the Moon is more complicated than scientists imagined. One such complication is said to concern the age of the Moon – which by its nature is highly speculative. It is older than they thought, it is alleged, and when it comes to water on the Moon, clouds of water vapour released during ‘moon quakes’ have been spotted. Moon rocks, we are told, have also been found to display weak magnetism – but there is no magnetic field on the Moon? There are large scars of solidified but once molten rocks – assumed to be lava, and some of the craters on the Moon do not originate from impacts but may have an internal origin. The ‘seas’ of formerly molten rock tend to occur on the face of the Moon that looks towards the Earth but on the far side of the Moon there are more craters. It also has mountains. Further, there are no craters in the molten rock regions which the author suggests is to be associated with that molten rock outflow occurring fairly recently, and covering any earlier cratering, which in turn may indicate they are an addition to the topography that has yet to be explained. The Apollo mission seismographic instruments indicated there are up to 3000 moon quakes annually – mostly small affairs triggered by meteorites. Other quakes occurred deep inside the Moon which may indicate vibrations are involved as a result of Moon/ Earth orbital processes. There is also the theory the Moon is hollow – or has a series of vast caverns. It seems that objects striking the surface of the Moon can cause it to ring like a bell as if the core of the Moon was hollow or composed of very light material in contrast with the crust at the surface. As in all good conspiracies, charges were laid that the authorities had witheld information from the general public. It seems there are people out there who are convinced the Moon is artificial, placed on the doorstep of the Earth in order to study we humans – a sort of floating spy ship in near space. However, we may note some of the oddities displayed by the Moon could alternatively be explained if it had reached its current orbital position as a result of being nudged by a comet or asteroid that in some way caused it to slow down – but this would require changes to rotation that are perhaps not as yet viable explanations as the same might be applicable to the Earth itself – and that is not currently allowed by science. The idea the Earth expelled the Moon and in doing so created the Pacific Ocean is not now seen as at all viable – and in any case plate tectonics would have hidden the evidence by subduction processes. The rocks of the Moon indicate it originated elsewhere – but exactly where is unknown, or how long ago it was captured by the Earth is also unknown.