Peering into Past: What Happened to the Moon 3.6 Billion Years Ago? - Positioning

POS > Vol.9 No.3, August 2018

Positioning

Volume 9, Issue 3 (August 2018)

ISSN Print: 2150-850X ISSN Online: 2150-8526

Google-based Impact Factor: 1 Citations

Peering into Past: What Happened to the Moon 3.6 Billion Years Ago? ()

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DOI: 10.4236/pos.2018.93005 692 Downloads 1,357 Views Citations

Author(s)

Diamar Pechersky¹, Lev Eppelbaum²

Affiliation(s)

¹Schmidt Institute of Earth Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
²Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

ABSTRACT

Invaluable data can at times be overlooked or not fully exploited when first collected. Striking conclusions can often be drawn on the basis of a specific analysis many years later. The Apollo 11 - 17 missions (1961-1972) provided detailed information on lunar basalts which make it possible to measure the iron grains in basalts from microphotographs of thin sections. Analysis of the average size of these grains (D) differed as a function of the age of these basalts dated between 3.9 and 3.4 billion years ago, revealed that D increased 1.5 fold, therefore the gravity acceleration g decreased 1.5 fold. The intriguing conclusion can only be that the size of the Moon increased, its mass decreased, or both these factors have changed.

KEYWORDS

Apollo 11 - 17 Missions, Lunar Basalts, “Iron Particles”, Moon Parameters

Share and Cite:

Pechersky, D. and Eppelbaum, L. (2018) Peering into Past: What Happened to the Moon 3.6 Billion Years Ago?. Positioning, 9, 73-78. doi: 10.4236/pos.2018.93005.

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