William Atkins
Sunday, 18 January 2009 22:22
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 4
This piece of “unshocked” lunar rock, called
troctolite 76535, is the oldest of all the lunar material, which had not been impacted by foreign materials, brought back from the Moon, by the six NASA Apollo missions (11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) that landed on the Moon.
According to the January 15, 2009 MIT News article “
Astronomers crack longstanding lunar mystery,” Dr.
Benjamin P. Weiss, professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences and one of the authors of the study, stated,
“Many people think that it's the most interesting lunar rock.”
MIT graduate student,
Ian Garrick-Bethell, who is another author of the study, stated,
“It is one of the oldest and most pristine samples known. If that wasn't enough, it is also perhaps the most beautiful lunar rock, displaying a mixture of bright green and milky white crystals.” [MIT]
These astronomers studied in extreme analytical detail (specifically,
“magnetic measurements and 40Ar/39Ar thermochronological calculations”) of this particular rock because it had not been impacted by foreign materials (such as meteoroids) falling onto the lunar surface.
The MIT scientists stated that when lunar material is
“shocked” (hit) by foreign material, the shock from such an impact removes any previously present magnetic field found on such Moon rocks.
From the use of a rock magnetometer that was equipped with a robotic system, these researchers were able to take readings much more accurate than ever attempted before.
According to the MIT article,
“And those data enabled them to rule out the other possible sources of the magnetic traces, such as magnetic fields briefly generated by huge impacts on the moon. Those magnetic fields are very short lived, ranging from just seconds for small impacts up to one day for the most massive strikes. But the evidence written in the lunar rock showed it must have remained in a magnetic environment for a long period of time -- millions of years -- and thus the field had to have come from a long-lasting magnetic dynamo.”
Page three states the important conclusion of this research: how did the Moon get this magnetic field?
