Word: mooning
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Another terrestrial phenomenon?continental drift?could be confirmed by the lunar laser experiment. Periodically measuring the distance between the moon and lasers beamed from fixed points in Africa and South America, scientists will use triangulation to determine whether the distance between the two continents is gradually increasing...
Beyond a doubt, however, the most important contribution of Apollo 11 to modern science will be the 100-odd lbs. of lunar rock and soil scheduled to be brought back by the astronauts. To safeguard this precious cargo, NASA has set up an elaborate system that stretches from the moon across space to Houston's $15.8 million Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) and to universities and laboratories all over the world. Says LRL Curator Elbert King: "Scientifically, this will be worth more than any other material in history...
Elaborate safeguards have been set up to protect the lunar samples from contamination. Should earthly gases and organisms invade the moon rocks before they are thoroughly analyzed, investigators would find it difficult to distinguish between the lunar and terrestrial origins of their samples...
Several groups of the eager investigators have been assigned the job of measuring the age of the lunar specimens by radioactive dating methods. By determining the ratio of radioactive elements (say, rubidium and uranium) in a moon sample to the amounts of their products of decay (strontium and lead, respectively), scientists can make a good approximation of its age. Thus, because the Apollo 11 samples will be taken from the surface of the Sea of Tranquillity, researchers may well be able to estimate the age of the moon's maria, or seas. This, in turn, might settle a longstanding controversy...
Perhaps most intriguing is what the moon may reveal about the earth's murky infancy. The earth was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, but the slow, relentless process of its evolution wiped out all traces of its earliest years; the oldest known terrestrial rocks date back about 3.3 billion years. "What has happened during the missing 1.2 billion years?" wonders Astronomer Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "We do not know; they are a blank page in the history of our planet. If the age of the rocks on the surface...