1. The Moon is not a primordial object; it is an evolved terrestrial planet with internal zoning similar to that of Earth.
Before Apollo, the state of the Moon was a subject of almost unlimited speculation. We now know that the Moon is made of rocky material that has been variously melted, erupted through volcanoes, and crushed by meteorite impacts. The Moon possesses a thick crust (60 km), a fairly uniform lithosphere (60-1000 km), and a partly liquid asthenosphere (1000-1740 km); a small iron core at the bottom of the asthenosphere is possible, but unconfirmed. Some rocks give hints for ancient magnetic fields although no planetary field exists today.

2. The Moon is ancient and still preserves an early history (the first billion years) that must be common to all terrestrial planets.
The extensive record of meteorite craters on the Moon, when calibrated using absolute ages of rock samples, provides a key for unravelling time scales for the geologic evolution of Mercury, Venus, and Mars based on their individual crater records. Photogeologic interpretation of other planets is based largely on lessons learned from the Moon. Before Apollo, however, the origin of lunar impact craters was not fully understood and the origin of similar craters on Earth was highly debated.

3. The youngest Moon rocks are virtually as old as the oldest Earth rocks. The earliest processes and events that probably affected both planetary bodies can now only be found on the Moon.
Moon rock ages range from about 3.2 billion years in the maria (dark, low basins) to nearly 4.6 billion years in the terrae (light, rugged highlands). Active geologic forces, including plate tectonics and erosion, continuously repave the oldest surfaces on Earth whereas old surfaces persist with little disturbance on the Moon.

4. The Moon and Earth are genetically related and formed from different proportions of a common reservoir of materials.
The distinctively similar oxygen isotopic compositions of Moon rocks and Earth rocks clearly show common ancestry. Relative to Earth, however, the Moon was highly depleted in iron and in volatile elements that are needed to form atmospheric gases and water.

5. The Moon is lifeless; it contains no living organisms, fossils, or native organic compounds.
Extensive testing revealed no evidence for life, past or present, among the lunar samples. Even non-biological organic compounds are amazingly absent; traces can be attributed to contamination by meteorites.

6. All Moon rocks originated through high-temperature processes with little or no involvement with water. They are roughly divisible into three types: basalts, anorthosites, and breccias.
Basalts are dark lava rocks that fill mare basins; they generally resemble, but are much older than, lavas that comprise the oceanic crust of Earth. Anorthosites are light rocks that form the ancient highlands; they generally resemble, but are much older than, the most ancient rocks on Earth. Breccias are composite rocks formed from all other rock types through crushing, mixing, and sintering during meteorite impacts. The Moon has no sandstones, shales, or limestones, testifying to the importance of water-borne processes on Earth.

7. Early in its history, the Moon was melted to great depths to form a “magma ocean.” The lunar highlands contain the remnants of early, low-density rocks that floated to the surface of the magma ocean.
The lunar highlands were formed about 4.4-4.6 billion years ago by flotation of an early, feldspar-rich crust on a magma ocean that covered the Moon to a depth of many tens of kilometers or more. Innumerable meteorite impacts through geologic time reduced much of the ancient crust to arcuate mountain ranges between basins.

8. The lunar magma ocean was followed by a series of huge asteroid impacts that created basins which were later filled by lava flows.
The large, dark basins such as Mare Imbrium are gigantic impact craters, formed early in lunar history, that were later filled by lava flows about 3.2-3.9 billion years ago. Lunar volcanism occurred mostly as lava floods that spread horizontally; volcanic fire fountains produced deposits of orange and emerald-green glass beads.

9. The Moon is slightly asymmetrical in bulk form, possibly as a consequence of its evolution under Earth’s gravitational influence. Its crust is thicker on the far side, while most volcanic basins—and unusual mass concentrations—occur on the near side.
Mass is not distributed uniformly inside the Moon. Large mass concentrations (”mascons”) lie beneath the surface of many large lunar basins and probably represent thick accumulations of dense lava. Relative to its geometric center, the Moon’s center of mass is displaced toward Earth by several kilometers.

10. The surface of the Moon is covered by a rubble pile of rock fragments and dust, called the lunar regolith, that contains a unique radiation history of the Sun, which is of importance to understanding climate changes on Earth.
The regolith was produced by innumerable meteorite impacts through geologic time. Surface rocks and mineral grains are distinctively enriched in chemical elements and isotopes implanted by solar radiation. As such, the Moon has recorded four billion years of the Sun’s history to a degree of completeness that we are unlikely to find elsewhere.

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SIGNIFICANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES from experiments conducted on two recent Space Shuttle missions could greatly improve life on Earth. NASA researchers, astronauts and university scientists responsible for the space-based experiments outlined their discoveries at a recent conference at the National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, D.C., held to mark the one-year anniversaries of the second U.S. Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) and the third U.S. Microgravity Payload (USMP-3) missions.

Their discoveries are expected to lead to better synthetic drugs, less expensive alloys and metal products, improved environmental cleanup, a greater understanding of weather and climate and a greater knowledge of how blood clots in the human body. For example, the study of the compound cadmium zinc telluride is expected to result in improved radiation detectors, sensors and other electronic products. Dr. David J. Larson of State University of New York at Stony Brook discovered that crystals grown in space without touching the walls of their containers are of markedly higher quality than Earth-grown crystals.

Dr. John Hart of the University of Colorado at Boulder sought to better understand the flows in oceans and the atmospheres of planets and stars in the experiment “Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell.” The study showed “banded,” rotational patterns of flows, such as those seen in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The observations are expected to be of great importance in understanding weather patterns and climatic conditions on Earth.

Dr. J.J. Favier of the French Center of Nuclear Studies sought to discover how small disturbances in gravity affect the production of alloys and metals. Favier found structural changes resulted during crystal production because of tiny disturbances that occurred when the Space Shuttle’s control jets were fired. The study showed fluid flow damage to the crystals could be eliminated when the growing metal’s orientation was carefully controlled. This and other findings are expected to improve manufacturing processes for alloys used in airplane-engine turbine blades and electronic materials. They ultimately could bring dramatic improvements in materials manufacturing.

Successful antithrombin crystal growth experiments by Dr. Daniel Carter of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center made it possible to further define the protein crystal’s molecular model and activities in the human body. The crystals, which control blood coagulation in human plasma, are very difficult to grow on Earth because of the forces of gravity.

An experiment by Dr. Robert Gammon of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at University of Maryland, College Park, demonstrated that physical measurements can be made in the microgravity of space that cannot be done on Earth. This finding provides insight into a variety of physics problems, ranging from state changes in fluids to alterations in the magnetic properties of solids. The results will be valuable in such fields as superconductors and liquid crystals. Gammon studied the behavior of an elemental gas at critical point in the experiment. At critical point, liquid and vapor become one fluid. The fluid collapses under its own weight at critical point on Earth, preventing precise experimentation.

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The India’s smallest land vertebrate, a 10-millimeter frog, has been discovered from the Western Ghats of Kerala by Delhi University Systematics Biologist, S D Biju and his colleagues.

Indian land vertebrates (all animals with backbone except fishes), comprises of 2,400 species including 218 frog species.

S D Biju and his colleagues discovered the tiny night frog living under leaf litter and among the roots of ferns in the humid rainforest of the Western Ghats of Kerala, a mountainous region in the western portion of India. Biju gave a new name for the frog, Nyctibatrachus minimus.

With adult males of barely 10 mm in length, Nyctibatrachus minimus is the smallest of all known Indian land vertebrates and compete with miniature frogs in other parts of the world, including Cuba, the Amazon and Borneo.

This frog can be found during nighttime (hence the common name of the genus- Nightfrog) and also can be heard (mating calls) from under the leaf litter during monsoon months, the ideal time for reproduction.

Biju has been working in the Western Ghats to find new species of frogs over the past several years, and his findings include the purple frog (Nasikabatrachus) and the first canopy frog (Philautus nerostagona) from India.

The discovery was published recently in the Journal Current Science.

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