Word: geochemist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...finally have the services of a professional geologist on the moon. The Taurus-Littrow landing site contains what may be small, volcanically created cinder cones; they seem to be miniature versions of earthly features like Honolulu's Diamond Head. The cones may well be remnants of what NASA Geochemist Robin Brett calls "some of the last belches of lunar activity before the moon turned off." Finally, Apollo 17 planners have scheduled a program of experiments and observation far more sophisticated than any of the earlier scientific efforts on the moon...
...what the astronauts and their cameras saw were fragments called breccias, which are forged together from still more ancient rocks. At the very least, that unexpected finding means that the Cayley Plains were formed, not simply by volcanic flows, but by far more complex geological processes. Said NASA Geochemist Robin Brett: "We went to the right place for the wrong reasons...
...Shortly thereafter the newborn moon was rapidly heated, possibly by its radioactive elements, and underwent surface melting about 4.5 billion years ago. In contrast with delegates to previous "rock conferences," the experts assembled this year were unusually reticent about advancing new theories on the moon's evolution. Said Geochemist Paul Cast, chief lunar scientist at the Manned Spacecraft Center: "We have so much data to examine that the boys just aren't doing much speculating." Added NASA Geochemist Robin Brett: "The Apollo 15 material alone will keep us busy for about five years...
Before the Pyramids. Working with hundreds of ancient wood samples, Geochemist Hans Suess of the University of California at San Diego recalibrated archaeological ages derived by carbon 14 dating in all parts of the world. His corrections did not affect the commonly accepted dates of Near East events and artifacts, which have been largely deduced from ancient calendars. But they did show that carbon-14-based European dates before 1500 B.C. must be adjusted by the addition of as many as 700 years...
...silver production stops, a nation's entire supply can disappear in about a century. Production in the silver mines of Rome began to decline about A.D. 200. By then, they were so deep that Roman engineers had no way of clearing them of water. After that, says the geochemist, "it was like being bled to death without knowing that one was bleeding." The result was the gradual disappearance of Roman coins and the return to an unwieldy barter system too crude to sustain the empire...