Something really interesting and not as absurd as the GOP is the lunar surface.

The largest of the newly detected graben found in the highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest example measures 500 metres across and could be up to 20 metres deep. Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution.


The Moon is as old as the Earth at 4.5 billion years, but, the recent surface finding of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is seismic activity about 50 million years old resulting from a 'cooling'  of the core, no different than Earth.


NASA believes this may mean there is still a hot core to the Moon.  There are volcanoes on the Moon.  No rivers of lava, so this is a finding that indicates there may be a hot core, but, no active vents leading to it.


Other interesting facts discovered revolve around surface findings.

High-resolution cameras (click here) aboard the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft first spotted the irregularly shaped chasm, located in Mare Ingenii on the moon's southern hemisphere. Now, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has taken a new, up-close photo of the moon pit from lunar orbit.

"Only three have been discovered thus far, so I believe it is safe to state that skylights (pits) are rare at the 100-meter scale," Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) at Arizona State University, told SPACE.com in an e-mail.

Mare Ingenii, also called the "sea of cleverness," is best known for its prominent lunar swirls, which are highly reflective surface features that are associated with magnetic anomalies. The new images of the region from LROC show a giant pit measuring about 427 feet (130 meters) in diameter.?

But still better news as why the social regressives and isolated of the GOP favor science when it is convenient.

This lunar mosaic (click here) shows the boundary between Mare Serenitatis and Mare Tranquillitatis. The relative blue color of the Tranquillitatis mare is due to higher abundances of the titanium-bearing mineral ilmenite.
CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University 


Titanium.  It will not be long before robot colonies exist to mine the Moon.  Gingrich puts settlers there because 'projection of self' is easier and less counter intuitive to explain why social programs have to be destroyed in the USA to facilitate Wall Street AT  Mare Tranquillitatis

The results of the study were presented Friday (Oct. 7) at the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Nantes, France.


Gathering Moon Rocks was not simply an exercise in futility, nor was it about building the character of American children.  The USA Space Program has many 'side effects' if character building is one of them, so be it, but that isn't the purpose.


And while the geological findings of the Moon Satellite is interesting, it is no surprise the Moon is believed to have a hot core.

Apollo Rock Reveals Moon Had Molten Core (click here)

by NANCY ATKINSON 

 JANUARY 15, 2009

Back in the 1960′s and ’70′s when scientists claimed that the Moon rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts would keep researchers busy for decades, they weren’t kidding. Analysis on one of the rocks collected during the Apollo 17 mission has helped to solve a longstanding puzzle about the Moon. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) carried out the most detailed analysis ever of the oldest pristine rock from the Apollo collection. Magnetic traces recorded in the rock provide strong evidence that 4.2 billion years ago the moon had a liquid core with a dynamo, like Earth’s core today, that produced a strong magnetic field....

This is where I get dangerous to any political discussion.  Why?  Because I can explain how knowing the Moon has a liquid core reveals the presence of Rare Earth Elements.  And the unwholesomeness of pure, unadulterated Wall Street Greed.


See, the American people are suppose to understand what they need to understand so they spend their monies according to Wall Street and not their best interests.  It is why dummying down a populous is better than educating them.  It is why spending federal monies on "The Department of Education" is hideous when home schooling is so much more wholesome for American children.

If anyone understands chemistry, that is the first step in understanding how a planet PRODUCES, yes produces, "Rare Earth Elements."  


The Sun, Sol is it's proper name, is a huge hydrogen ball.  71% hydrogen (click here).  The other chemicals within Sol are produced by Sol through high temperatures and high pressures.  Many of the other elements that are Sol are ORGANIC, oxygen, carbon, magnesium, nitrogen.  They are all organic chemicals that comprise the human body and most all living things on Earth.  Starting to get the picture?

This is an ATOM of hydrogen, but, that is NOT molecular hydrogen.  Atomic hydrogen has one electron that orbits a central nucleus of one proton and one neutron.  THE ELECTRON is what makes the hydrogen atom highly explosive and unstable.  See, in physics atoms seek other atoms to bond with to find stability in what is known as 'Noble Gases.'  


This is a webpage of the Periodic Table (click here).

The next most abundant element of Sol is helium.  Helium is 27% of Sol.  Helium is a NOBLE GAS, to put it in lay terms.  Helium is very stable.  


To the right is a Helium molecule.  This picture is on Wiki with pictures of the other Noble Gases (click here).  The Noble Gases are different colors and make Neon signs possible.  I am not going to get into the light spectrum as that is a tangential discussion.


See what happens with Sol is an emission of hydrogen and the other elements, but, mostly hydrogen into the Solar Wind.  The Solar Wind exists long before there is a Solar System and are the fascinating colors we see in pictures of other 'nebulas' in the universe.  They are the pretty pictures from Hubble.  Not don't get me wrong, I find the Hubble project an enhancement to human understanding of their own place in the universe we are a part and Hubble didn't shut down the US Department of Education.  Hubble has taught us a great deal about our universe and that is important if we are to understand Sol and Earth.  Earth is home.  Sol is what makes it possible that Earth is home.  Not understanding the universe Sol calls home is unthinkable.

This is a hydrogen, not helium, but a hydrogen molecule.  NOTE the two atoms form a molecule comprised of a similar structure to the Noble Gas of Helium.  Most chemical structures like attaining a 'molecular life' of the stability of Nobel Gases.


Carbon for instance, you know the molecule of human DNA and fossil fuels.  Weird isn't it?  Fossil Fuels are made of rotting flesh over time and UNDER Earth Crustal pressure.  Diamonds are the same element only under higher pressure than coal.


Weird when one really thinks about it.  Yes indeed, gasoline is refined rotting flesh.  I like sunlight and the energy Sol provides.  Just one of those things I find wholesome.


But, that is sort of getting more tangential than it should be in discussion.  The purpose of this entry including the composition of the sun and the presence of hydrogen as the first element in the periodic table is what this entry is about.


Atomic Bonding, click here.


Imagine now having a kiln that could produce any element in the periodic table.  You name it and the kiln can produce it.  Earth and its Moon and the other heavenly bodies that have molten (liquid) cores are exactly that.  The heavenly bodies that compose our Solar System were 'consolidated' over time from the nebula that was once Sol. They consolidated because they COOLED.  


As 'opportunity' presents in randomness, compounds are produced from elements gathering together to find stability in structures attempting to become Noble Gas elements.


It is a beautiful thing and Hubble tells us so.  Randomness and Chaos are nature's gift to us.  


Within that capacity lies the opportunity for elements to cool into compounds that humans have found service in their world.  Volcanoes are wonderful kilns.  Geologically, that is.


I am never so bold, but only humbled, to believe any creation of humans is as beautiful as the chaotic processes that have allowed it to exist.


But, the 'idea' that any heavenly body has the potential for mineral wealth is not a matter of discovery so much as fact because all undergo the same exact processes as the others.  So, any mission to any other planet or moon isn't really about humans living on them, although eventually that is possible I suppose.  We never know where 'design' will take the human mind over time.  Designs of today stand on the shoulders of those that came before.


To understand how 'mining the Moon' is a sure thing one just has to realize it is a satellite of Earth and with a molten core has the same exact processes exerting forces on it as its mother ship resulting in the same structures. But, (and this is the most precious idea) without the weathering process of an atmosphere to degrade the surface.  The minerals of the Moon are in a vacuum.  They will never be eroded.


More then, at another time.


"Save the US Department of Education"