The Earth Story

The minerals of the Moon Studying the rocks collected on different lunar missions has revealed a number of surprising results, as well as a great deal of information about the composition of both our planet’s satellite – and the Earth itself.

Rings around Luna Known as coronae, these shiny iridescent rings are due to the diffraction of light around water droplets of similar sizes in the thin veil of wispy cloud in the atmosphere, though dust and aerosols such as pollen can also produce the effect. While they also occur around the sun, seeing them is uncommon, as the intense glare usually drowns them out, rendering them invisible. It is a quantum effect, with each light ray being bent around one droplet, and the different wavelengths in the white reflected solar light being diffracted in varying amounts due to their inherent energy levels. This example was snapped in Argentina. Loz Image credit: Sergio Montúfar https://www.facebook.com/MilkyWayAddicted http://bit.ly/1cWrj8t https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150615.html

The Fingerprint of the Giant Impact When the Apollo program returned samples from the Moon, the rocks clearly differed from rocks on Earth. Different minerals, different abundances of minerals, clearly different histories and chemistry, but there were also surprising links between the two bodies.

spiritnectar

Rose quartz moon bowls are back! 💓🌜

I added a ton of new heart and moon shaped bowls in various crystal varieties. You can find them in my shop section “bowls and home decor”. Link in bio! ✨

Vaporizing metal

This is a piece of trinitite, a glassy, vesicular rock originally formed in New Mexico in 1945 – by the first nuclear weapon test in human history. The heat of the explosion melted some of the material on the ground and fused it into a rock, and a handful of those samples have been collected and sold over the years.

Because this material was put through such an extreme event, a team of scientists led by researchers at UC San Diego and the IPGP in Paris used this material to investigate processes that really can’t be found anywhere else on Earth today. When the solar system formed, objects in space were crashing together at high speeds, releasing huge amounts of energy. Under these conditions, it is possible for some elements to vaporize that we think of as otherwise solid to actually vaporize.

These scientists investigated abundances of the elements zinc, copper, and potassium in trinitite and found that, compared to unmelted material, the zinc was the most volatile – it was literally vaporized from the rock during the explosion. Copper was the next most volatile, and out of those 3 elements potassium was still somewhat volatile, but not as much as the other 2 elements.

Similar losses of these elements have been noted in rocks from the moon, but without calibrations for how much of these elements are lost when the rocks are super-heated scientists couldn’t say for sure whether those elements were lost during the giant impact that formed the moon or they were trapped somewhere else on the moon when it formed. So, researching trinitite in this case was actually a connection to the formation of our moon and the chemistry of the rocks brought back during the Apollo missions.

-JBB

Image credit:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trinitite_from_Trinity_Site.jpg

Original paper:

http://doi.org/10.7185/geochemlet.2014

Happy #EarthDay2020 🌎🌍🌏 The image shown is called “Earthrise”. Taken by Apollo 8 Astronaut William Anders in 1968, it has been dubbed the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken”, as it was one of the first times that people saw, in true colour, just how beautiful our little planet is. Looking at this image on a screen is humbling enough, but just imagine seeing this with your own eyes. Some lucky people have gotten to experience this, some even multiple times, over the decades. However, regardless of frequency or timing, there is one common realization that is shared among these lucky few: the Earth is precious, life is precious, and we need to mind it. To demonstrate this, here are some quotes from the men and women who have broken through to the darkness of space and observed our planet from above: "[The Moon] was a sobering sight, but it didn't have the impact on me, at least, as the view of the Earth did."— Frank Borman, Astronaut, Apollo 8. "It truly is an oasis and we don't take very good care of it. I think the elevation of that awareness is a real contribution to saving the Earth."— Dave Scott, Astronaut, Apollo 9 & 15. "The view of earth is absolutely spectacular, and the feeling of looking back and seeing your planet as a planet is just an amazing feeling. It's a totally different perspective, and it makes you appreciate, actually, how fragile our existence is." —Sally Ride, Astronaut, STS-7 and STS-41-G missions. “As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man – James B. Irwin, Astronaut, Apollo Program. "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."— Neil Armstrong, Astronaut, Apollo 11, Gemini 8. ..and last but certainly not least, "You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a b**ch.” ― Edgar D. Mitchell, Astronaut, Apollo 14. While most of us will never experience Earth from space firsthand, we can listen to those who have and marvel at images like Earthrise. Earthrise reminds us that we are delicate, exceptional creatures living on a delicate and exceptional planet- it is our duty to protect it. Jean Image courtesy of NASA

Perigean Full Moon tonight!

The orbits of the moons and planets in this solar system are ellipses, not circles. That means there’s one point in the orbit where the moon is the closest to Earth, and one point when the moon is the farthest from Earth. The point in the orbit where the Moon is closest to the Earth is the Moon’s Perigee; the point in the orbit where the Moon is farthest from the Earth is the Apogee.

The Moon Rocks of Apollo 11 - originally a public domain film from the National Archives and the Library of Congress - one of the first public descriptions of the rocks that came back to the Earth during the Apollo  missions. Some of the experiments they describe are remarkable - exposing plants and animals to the rocks to determine if there were any harmful effects! Shrimp swimming next to moon rocks! It’s interesting to note how the rocks are somewhat similar to those from Earth but also fundamentally different. From Apollo 11 and the other missions there were even new minerals identified that had previously never been found on Earth. One of them, with permission of the astronauts, is name Armalcolite - for Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins (ite). Little bits of the solar wind - mostly blocked from Earth by our magnetic field and atmosphere. Breccias and glasses formed by impact - rare on Earth’s surface. No evidence of surface water. Yet somehow it turns out related to Earth - not understood at the time these rocks came back, but the high temperature origin of these volcanic rocks was in part a signature of the fact that the Moon formed from debris blasted off of the Earth during a gigantic impact about 4.5 billion years ago.

Timelapse of the total solar eclipse of 2nd July 2019 near Bella Vista, San Juan, Argentina

Lunar Lava Tubes

Lava tubes are sub-surface volcanic tunnels. These structures form on surfaces sloping 0.4-6.5 degrees when a roof of basaltic lava (up to 40m thick) hardens over molten rock below. This molten rock eventually drains away leaving a hollow structure. These structures also form on Earth as seen in Iceland, Portugal, Spain and the USA, however it is thought they would be larger on the moon due to its lower gravity.

This picture shows a 50km chain of collapse tunnels moving into an un-collapsed example of a lunar lava tube. In 2008 the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya sent back a picture of a suspected opening to a lava tube from the Marius Hills region (a noted lunar volcanic province). This structure was circular and approximately 65m in diameter and estimated to be 85m deep. Surrounding the hole on the lunar surface was a thin lava sheet which may have protected the tube from collapsing previously due to impacts. From 2009 onwards NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also sent back pictures of deep caverns on the moon which had potential to be collapsed lava tubes.

It is thought that lava tubes would offer an environment to build a base for humans on the moon due to the protection they would offer. There would be three major factors such a tube would protect a human base from. Firstly caverns with roofs thicker than 10m would create a more stable temperature (of about -20 degrees C) than is found on the lunar surface, which varies by 100s of degrees C in a day. Secondly the moon also has no atmosphere, so these tubes would provide protection from cosmic radiation. Finally protection from meteorites, micrometeorites and collision ejecta would be offered (however it should be noted that stable lava tubes could be disrupted by seismic events and meteorite strikes).

It has been structurally modelled that tubes would be stable when sized between 1 and 5km wide and therefore could host a pre-fabricated base. The building of this base in the tube would be beneficial as lightweight construction material could be used as it would not have to shield the base from the threats mentioned above. ~SA

Pictures: http://bit.ly/1MRgf85 By NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University and http://bit.ly/1H6pWRN By Melissausburn