Water Anomalies on the Moon - the implications

NASA's data about Moon rock composition over the last 40 years has been very consistent.  The non-polar regions of the Moon are dry, desiccated, dead.  Until yesterday.  NASA announced that data from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbitor indicates that there is a relative abundance of lunar water - even in areas exposed to the Sun's rays.  At 750 parts per million, a ton of lunar rock would yield about a litre of water (1).  Helpful for future missions.

But, how on earth did NASA get this so wrong for the last 40 years? The Apollo astronauts brought back piles of Moon rocks, many of which were analysed for water.  Traces were found at the time, but NASA claimed that "most of the boxes containing the lunar samples leaked which led scientists to assume traces of water found came from Earth air that had entered the containers".  750ppm is not a trace. And how about the boxes which did not leak?  What of the water composition in them?

Then there are the NASA probes in the late 1990s,which deliberately set out to discover water on the Moon.  They found frozen water in deep polar craters.  But Clementine, and particularly Prospector, were set up with spectrometers capable of detecting water across the surface.  How did they miss it?  They certainly shouldn't have!  Here's the Mission guidelines for Prospector's spectrometers:

"Lunar Prospector (LP), which was launched on January 6, 1998, carries an integrated suite of three spectrometers. A Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) and a Neutron Spectrometer (NS) are providing global maps of the major and trace elemental composition of the lunar surface, with special emphasis on the search for polar water-ice deposits, implied by the H abundance...Global mapping of elemental abundances by the LP GRS and NS will impose major new constraints on the bulk composition of the lunar crust, on compositional variations over the lunar surface, and on the existence of lunar resources including polar water ice" (2)  [my emphasis]

The map opposite shows Prospector data from 1998 (3), which has still not been properly peer-reviewed over ten years on, according to the PDS website (4).  The equatorial map indicates that a fairly detailed, surface wide analysis was undertaken.  So - it begs the question:  Why is the Indian data (and also Deep Impact data, we learn) so radically different?  How is it that 40 years of scientific opinion about Moon soil and rock composition has been so fundamentally overturned?  Did God just pee on the Moon?  Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the data that NASA has been making public for the last 40 years?  The BBC news report about the discovery heard that NASA scientists were 'very sceptical' about the Indian finding at first, simply because it so comprehensively overturned their previously held beliefs about water on the Moon (5).

It beggars belief that two American probes sent to comprehensively survey the Moon just a decade ago could have come up with the wrong data - wrong data that is consistent with a scientific belief about the composition of Moon rock dating back to the 1960s.  Are we to believe that in the last decade the Indians have made a quantum leap forward in technology above and beyond NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense (which controlled Clementine)? I don't think so.

Notwithstanding that puzzling aspect of this story, there are other implications for the discovery.  Water is common throughout the solar system, it appears.  According to theories of planetary formation in the early solar system, inner worlds tend to have their water veneers driven off by the strong solar wind of the young vibrant Sun.  This is why Mercury and Venus are dry, and also why the Moon is supposed to be a desiccated shell.  Yet, now it is clear that the Moon is not that dry at all.  If the Moon was formed by an early collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized planet, as is currently accepted, then why does the Moon have this water? It should have been driven off long ago.  NASA argues that this water 'comes and goes' with the long lunar day - and therefore is part of a continuing chemical process activated by the Sun's rays.

We return to the great water conundrum that features prominently in my book 'The Dark Star' (6).  Isotopic studies of solar system water are essential to understand the point of origin of any given water bearing object, as the ratio changes with distance from the Sun, roughly. This is complicated by collisions with comets which bring water from the outer solar system. The Earth is a puzzle in this regard, and I have suggested that this puzzle is best solved by the recognition that Earth began at a more distant orbital point, and then migrated in to its current position, perhaps due to a collision.  That the Moon still holds quantities of water in its surface soil and rocks strengthens that point.

The LCROSS Mystery

An essential next step is to establish whether the isotopic ratio for that Moon-water is more like a planetary object beyond Mars than one at Earth's current location.  The answer to that question would surely have been solved by the planned impacts of two parts of the LCROSS spacecraft into the lunar surface.  NASA expected a plume of dust and rock to result from the 5,600 mph collision, but there was no obvious sign of any plume from either collision (7).  However, closer scientific analysis eventually provided exciting news about ice on the Moon:

NASA confirms a "significant amount" of frozen water

If water was deposited by comets, then there might also be present on the surface of the Moon organic material from the same source.  Given that the water ice is held within the lunar soil, then it seems reasonable to suppose that comet-sources organic material and volatiles might also be prevalent within the lunar soils.  Which begs the question - why was this not realised when the lunar rocks returned to Earth by Apollo were analysed?

Written by Andy Lloyd, 25/9/09, and 13/11/09, author of 'The Dark Star' and 'Ezekiel One'

References:

1) Claire Bates  "'Widespread water' found on the Moon, opening the way for man to live there full-time" Daily Mail, 24/9/09

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1215721/Water-moon--Indias-lunar-mission-detects-it.html#ixzz0S1TxnrKX

2) Lunar Prospector Data Maps  http://lunar.arc.nasa.gov/dataviz/datamaps/index.html

3) The Los Alamos Built Spectrometers http://lunar.lanl.gov/pages/spectros.html

4) Lunar Prospector Reduced Spectrometer Data  http://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/lunarp/reduced.html

5) BBC Radio 4 News, 10pm 24/9/09

6)  Andy Lloyd, 'The Dark Star -The Planet X Evidence', Timeless Voyager Press 2005, see also http://www.darkstar1.co.uk/water.html

7) Ian Sample "Moon Crash Landing Fails to Raise Dust" The Guardian, 10/10/09, p5

8) "NASA finds frozen water on the moon" 13/11/09 http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=2219767

9)  'P.M.', BBC Radio 4, 13/11/09

10) 'Large Amounts of Water on Moon' BBC News, 13/11/09, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8359744.stm, includes a video clip of the LCROSS impact

11)  Jonas Dino, 'LCROSS' http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LCROSS/main/prelim_water_results.html with thanks to Lee

Dark Matter Dark Stars

On occasion people write to me advocating the possibility that a brown dwarf binary companion might be be constructed by 'electric fields' or plasma.  I generally reply that the Dark Star theory does not require a new theory of physics to work.  A sub brown dwarf built of regular elements would do nicely.  However, there is one intriguing possibility from new physics that might also fit.  Could a Dark Star binary companion be made up of 'dark matter'?  Dark matter is still largely theoretical, but its presence is required to explain the missing mass of the universe.  Given the quantity of mass missing, is seems likely that it clumps into Dark Stars.  It would also make sense that there are a huge number of low mass stars rather than extremely massive Dark Matter Stars which might be bending light, and creating other more noticeable effects.  So such a notion would fit with a multitude of missing low mass companions located at the peripheries of stellar systems.

 Here's a piece from 2007 sent to me by my astronomer friend Mattia which puts just such a possibility across:

"Before stars were fueled by nuclear fusion, they may have been fueled by dark matter. Researchers have theorized that "Dark Stars" may have been supported by the huge release of energy from dark matter annihilation (i.e. the release of energy that comes when matter and antimatter encounter each other) in the early universe. The physicists from UC Santa Cruz, UM Ann Arbor, and the University of Utah believe that despite many theories stating otherwise, dark matter did have an effect on the first stars in the universe.

"The release of energy from dark matter/anti-dark matter annihilation may have prevented the first proto-stars from collapsing and beginning fusion, but in turn could have heated a star¿s core enough to support it. This would change the time scale of the formation of second generation stars, the appearance of elements like nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen in our universe, and other aspects of stellar evolution.

"Products of the annihilation, such as neutrinos, gamma-rays, or antimatter may make these dark stars or their remnants detectable. Although stars composed of dark matter are likely to be much dimmer than normal stars, they may produce some light. The next step for researchers will be to determine how much visible light the dark stars give off, and how long they survive. Dark stars may have died out millions of years ago, or they may still exist today.

"The idea of dark stars relies on the Lightest Super symmetric Particle (LSP), a highly favored candidate for particles that make up dark matter. The properties of the LSPs are consistent with current information about dark matter in the universe. Many physicists are hopeful that new experiments in particle colliders will soon yield more discoveries on the nature of dark matter, and perhaps offer insight into the possibility of dark stars in the early universe."

Reference: "Dark Matter Stars" Douglas Spolyar, Katherine Freese, and Paolo Gondolo Physical Review Letters, 30th November 2007 http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/physik_astronomie/bericht-99247.html with thanks to Mattia

Scientific American catches Dark Star Fever

Scientific American are leading with this brown dwarf planetary systems article, and accompanying image on the front of their June 2009 magazine which looks an awful lot like the cover of 'Dark Star'!  It's not just the cover either - 'Scientific American' speculates about the possibility of habitable planets existing around brown dwarfs, and mentions the potential for such objects to lie hidden between us and the nearest star.  Which is exactly what I've been advocating for some years.

"Unlikely Suns Reveal Improbable Planets - Astronomers are finding planets where there were not supposed to be any."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=improbable-planets  With thanks to David

The Late, Great Bombardment

Many of my readers will be familiar with my description of the late, great bombardment.  After the formation of the solar system, there was a volatile period involving planets crashing about, and at some point very early in the system's history Earth took a hit from a Mars-sized body. This incredible impact eventually led to the formation of the Moon.  Things quietened down considerably, until a point when the Sun was over 600 million years old.   Then a new series of high impact events caused mayhem in the inner solar system.  This event, some 3.9 billion years ago, was the Late, Great Bombardment.  What created these catastrophes?  Astronomers don't know.  I have proposed that this is the point when the 'Celestial Battle' took place - the advent and close approach of the Dark Star binary companion and its system of planets.

Whether my explanation is correct or not, the catastrophe was certainly real enough.  Scientists working on this mysterious period of cataclysm have now found that life might have survived the multiple asteroid impacts, which would help with the modelling of the emergence of life on this planet.  The extent of the damage to Earth is also consistent with the damage sustained by 'Tiamat' asdescribed by Sitchin:

Geologic evidence suggests that life on Earth was present at least 3.83 billion years ago, said Mojzsis. “So it is not unreasonable to suggest there was life on Earth before 3.9 billion years ago. We know from the geochemical record that our planet was eminently habitable by that time, and this new study sews up a major problem in origins of life studies by sweeping away the necessity for multiple origins of life on Earth.” 

Most scientists believe a rogue plan et as large as Mars smacked Earth with a glancing blow 4.5 billion years ago, vaporizing it self and part of Earth. The collision would have created an immense vapor cloud from which moonlets, and later our moon, coalesced, Mojzsis said. “That event, which preceded the Late Heavy Bombardment by at least 500 million years, would have effectively hit Earth’s re-set button,” he said. 

“But our results strongly suggest that no events since the moon formation were capable of destroying Earth’s crust and wiping out any biosphere that was present,” Mojzsis said. “In stead of chopping down the tree of life, our view is that the bombardment pruned it.”

Reference:  "Early cells might have thrived amid asteroid pummeling" 20th May 2009, http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090520_asteroid

Brown Dwarf Discoveries

There has been a rash of discoveries about small failed stars this week.  Some very young (and therefore still hot) sub-brown dwarfs have been found (1).  Their mass is in the region of what I expect for our binary Dark Star, although their youth makes them an awful lot more active as they have not yet used up their fuel.  They are not bound to parent stars, but have formed within stellar nurseries alongside more traditional suns.  Another recent discovery is of a binary object which is very cool by failed star standards.  At just 300 degrees Celsius, Wolf 940B is clearly an old brown dwarf, weighing in at between 20 and 30 Jupiter masses (2). 

The size and warmth of these discovered objects is dropping as detection methods improve.  But they remain difficult to find, and old objects of the order of ten Jupiter masses remain beyond current limits.  But it is only a matter of time.  Crucially, brown dwarfs are popping up despite their difficulty to be spotted, and this may show that they are far more abundant than has been thought, which may mean that scientists need to revisit their theories of star formation (3).

References

1) "Astronomers Discover Youngest And Lowest Mass Dwarfs" 22nd April 2009 http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Astronomers_Discover_Youngest_And_Lowest_Mass_Dwarfs_999.html With thanks to David

2) Anna Salleh "Coolest brown dwarf in universe found" 20th April 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/04/20/2547549.htm?site=science&topic=latest With thank to David

3) New Scientist "'Failed stars' may be common in our galaxy" 19th April 2009 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227044.900-failed-stars-may-be-common-in-our-galaxy.html With thanks to David

Habitable Planets around Dwarf Stars

There have been a couple of interesting articles recently about whether life could exist on planets orbiting red dwarf stars.  These small stars are common, but have been traditionally left out of the debate about life on extrasolar planets.  But more recently, planetary scientists have reconsidered this prior prejudice. 

Red dwarfs are much larger than the Dark Star object I discuss, which is more like the planet Jupiter.  Nevertheless, some of the considerations are interesting, and valid for both cases.  In particular, whether tidally-locked planets around parent dwarf stars could have reasonable atmospheres (1).  Another point raised by NASA is that data from protoplanetary disks around red and brown dwarfs shows a lack of hydrogen cyanide, which might be a problem for the evolution on life in such systems (3).  Also of interest is the need for a magnetic field on the candidate habitable world, which is a function of its spin and size (1). 

Here are the references:

1) Michael Schirber, Astrobiology Magazine, 9th April 2009 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090409-sm-reddwarf-life.html  With thanks to Brian, Pat and David
 

2) "Prospects for Red Dwarf 'Earths'" http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=6713  With thanks to David

3) Whitney Clavin, NASA JPL press release "Cool Stars Have Different Mix of Life-Forming Chemicals" 7th April 2009, with thanks to Monika
 

Dark Star on Coast-to-Coast

Andy Lloyd was George Noory's guest on the night of Wednesday 4th March 2009. 

He talked about his new novel, “Ezekiel One”.  Topics under discussion included 2012, government cover-ups about intelligent E.T. life, governmental manipulation of the mainstream media, the Anunnaki, and Planet X / Nibiru.  Andy built upon his ‘Dark Star Theory’ research to show how intelligent life can exist on our doorstep, posing challenges and dangers for those in power on Planet Earth.  There was a lively and well-informed final hour of questions.   Thanks to George, Tom, Lex and Stephanie at Coast-to-Coast for facilitating another great show.  Here's the show's recap, and subscriber podcasts:

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2009/03/04.html

 This was Andy's third appearance on the show.  Here are the links for his previous interviews:

My new Dark Star novel, 'Ezekiel One', has now been published by Timeless Voyager Press.  I decided to write a novel to set out some of my Dark Star ideas in a more accessible format, and to present a story rich with conspiracy theory.   The book is "fast-moving and intriguing", and full of surprises.   'Ezekiel One' has the feeling of a cult thriller. Think 'The Ipcress File' meets 'The X-Files', with a generous sprinkling of 'The Dark Star'.  The sequel to 'Ezekiel One', entitled 'The Followers of Horus', will be available in 2010.