Ok, I must have made a mistake; it's better to let Jack himself tell us:(unabridged interview)
About "ice" on the poles:
One is the recent alleged discovery of ice at the poles of the moon. Well, theoretically, a comet hitting the moon may well deposit a layer of ice in the permanently shadowed, very, very cold parts of the moon at the poles. But practically it’s not clear that that ice will last very long because of the impact of micro meteors and some other effects. On the other hand, the, this solar wind hydrogen is implanted in the moon continuously and hydrogen moves around on the moon. It’s released, some of it’s released thermally and will move around, and also probably precipitate in those permanently shadowed areas. So what the lunar prospector has seen literally is hydrogen, and they have interpreted it as water. But we don’t know that it’s water ice. We can certainly be sure it’s hydrogen and I think the probably is somewhat higher that it’s solar wind hydrogen that’s concentrated there.
About the Moon formation theory:
But even more intriguing were powerful elements that had absorbed, been absorbed on the surfaces of these spheres that presumably were part of the driving force that brought them to the surface. And these viable elements indicate that below that 500 km. somewhere there is essentially unchanged material from the time the moon was formed, what we call undifferentiated material, largely resembling probably the kind of debris that made up both the moon and the earth and its very, very earliest stages. Now this is a very intriguing thing because it makes it very difficult to - to explain some of the more popular models for the evolution of the moon, particularly that model that says the moon resulted from the impact of a Mars-size asteroid on a very young earth but both having already been differentiated or changed because of their existence. It’s very difficult to figure out how that unchanged material on the moon could still be there, having formed by such a model for origin. So my suspicion is the moon is formed independently of the earth, was captured at some point after both were coherent bodies and we’re going to eventually get to that point. And increasingly I think others are beginning to feel that way, that this very nice computer model for a Mars-size asteroid with a giant impact, a Mars-size asteroid, however valid it may be in a computer
probably doesn’t match the geological facts as well as they would like
Raoul
Space/Science » in reply to Schmitt
Re: Schmitt
