Word: earthness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Harold Urey, 76, when the 55 Ibs. of lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 11 astronauts turned out to be igneous or heat-formed rock, possibly of volcanic origin. Long a champion of a "cold" moon-the theory that it has never had a molten core like the earth's-the University of California chemist sadly admitted that he could have been wrong. The moon, he conceded in the face of the rocks, might be hot, or geologically active, after all. "Poor old fellow," said one of NASA's younger geologists several weeks ago, "his ideas...
Geologically Akin. The scientists had erred in other ways. In the first exciting days after the lunar specimens arrived in Houston, they had suggested that the moon and the earth were closely akin in geological evolution and structure, and that the moon was made of earthlike layers. Now more careful study is showing that these initial ideas have almost as many holes as the moon itself. Not only have the rocks sprung such chemical surprises as an unusually high content of titanium, but the moon's seismic activity is also not what it had seemed...
...first, the seismometer left behind at Tranquillity Base radioed back several signals that were interpreted in some quarters as distinct moonquakes, a hint that the moon-like the earth -was stratified and geologically alive. Now, says Geophysicist Gary Latham of Columbia University, investigators think that the patterns may have been caused spuriously by the seismometer itself. Yet, even while it seemed to be working well, says Latham, the seismometer detected only infrequent, relatively small lunar rumbles. He accounts for that odd seismic behavior by speculating that the moon contains a large amount of cold, fragmented material that would diffuse...
...Earth. Though the Lunar Receiving Lab's examination will continue until the rocks are released from quarantine this month, it has not yet answered any of the basic questions about the moon's origin. But if the moon is actually proved never to have had a molten interior (the maria melting could have been caused by meteor impacts), scientists would be hard put to sustain one of the theories of the moon's creation: that it was torn, cataclysmically, from a hot earth. On the other hand, a cold moon does not upset either...
Urey himself believes that if the moon does indeed prove to be "cold," its virtually intact primordial surface may provide not only important clues about the moon's beginnings but also about the origin of the solar system. The most ancient rocks found on earth are 3.3 billion years old, or more than a billion years younger than the planet itself, and the moon rocks from the Sea of Tranquillity are about the same age. Nonetheless, Urey and other cold-moon proponents think that when men reach the lunar highlands, which are generally considered to be older than...