[meteorite-list] Searching for Earthites on the Moon

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2007 19:09:44 -0500
Message-ID: <03f401c7e907$bd771790$2850e146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Rob, Darren,

    Lunar escape velocity is 2368 m/s, and each gram that
"falls" to the Moon's surface carries a minimum kinetic
energy of 2803.7 joules or 2.8 x 10^8 ergs.

    The energy required to melt (from room termperature)
1 gram of Earth rock is about 1.2 x 10^10 ergs. Vaporizing
it takes more energy still. The energy required to crush it
to a fine powder (bursting strength) is about 1/10 that amount.

    So an Earth rock appears to be 43 times stronger than
is necessary to survive the impact "unpowdered." However,
that is a very small margin of safety when you consider
that the "Earth rock" will have just been recently subjected
to a much bigger impact knocking it off the Earth and will
have been considerably weakened by that experience!

    On the other hand, "conventional" meteorites, structurally
weak to begin with, are approaching the Earth-Moon system
are 5,000 m/s to 15,000 m/s in their orbits. They will strike
with 100 to 500 times more energy than the minimum "fall"
energy.

    The "biggest" meteorite ever found on the Moon, HADLEY
RILLE, is a 1 millimeter fragment of EH chondrite. Virtually all
"conventional" meteorites will impact with more than enough
energy to powder them (or worse). HADLEY RILLE was just
lucky... and tough.

> pig migration season... asking one for it's opinion
> as it flies past...

    Not "scientific" enough.

    Possibly we could observe the flight of the pigs and
from the number of pigs shot down by meteorites, deduce
the lunar meteorite influx to see if this project is worthwhile?

    With a suitably sensitive 10,000 meter telescope in orbit,
we could probably even deduce the kinetic energy of each
meteorite by observing the damage to the pig in detail.

    [Insert artist's rendition of perforated pig falling into
death spiral with lots of red splatter.]


Sterling K. Webb
---------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob McCafferty" <rob_mccafferty at yahoo.com>
To: <cynapse at charter.net>; <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Searching for Earthites on the Moon


More than a little ambitious if you ask me.

This is assuming that any evidence isn't vapourised by
the impact of such earthites hitting at a minimum of
2.?km/s and also assuming that such unmolested
evidence is present wherever they intend to drill for
it.
They'd be better off waiting until the pig migration
season and asking one for it's opinion as it flies
past.


--- Darren Garrison <cynapse at charter.net> wrote:

>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/08/26/scimeteror12.xml
>
> Moon meteorites may hold clue to life on Earth
> By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday
> Telegraph
> Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/08/2007
>
> Scientists are planning a mission to drill beneath
> the Moon's surface for buried
> meteorites that may hold clues to how life began on
> Earth.
>






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Received on Mon 27 Aug 2007 08:09:44 PM PDT