Oldest Earth Rock Found... on the Moon!

[Yazata]

It's more than 4 billion years old, from just a few hundred million years after the Earth was formed, and even closer to when a wandering Mars sized planet is hypothesized to have collided with Earth, releasing so much energy as to render it molten and splashing out a huge mass into orbit, that was to become the Moon.

Here on Earth, there aren't any more 4 billion year old rocks on the surface. Plate tectonics has seen to that.

But researchers examining the last of the rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts from the Moon discovered that one of them doesn't match the Moon's chemical composition and is much more similar to Earth rocks, with silicates, feldspar and so on. So the thinking is that this is an Earth rock that somehow got up to the Moon.

But how?

Well, back at the period we are talking about, the Earth is believed to have been enduring a whole succession of planet-killer-sized asteroid strikes, the "late heavy bombardment". It's what pocked the Moon with its craters. (On Earth, plate tectonics has erased our early craters.) Large impacts are known to be able to blast rock fragments into space. (Mars rocks have been found in Antarctica.)

Interestingly, this period is when some of the more extreme early-life theorists hypothesize that life was first appearing on Earth.  

https://www.foxnews.com/science/moon-dis...ar-surface

Abstract of the paper (which is behind a pay-wall):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1X19300202

[C C]

If this was a movie or a novel, they'd discover either a shell fragment or microscopic fossils in it.

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[RainbowUnicorn]

It's more than 4 billion years old, from just a few hundred million years after the Earth was formed, and even closer to when a wandering Mars sized planet is hypothesized to have collided with Earth, releasing so much energy as to render it molten and splashing out a huge mass into orbit, that was to become the Moon.

Here on Earth, there aren't any more 4 billion year old rocks on the surface. Plate tectonics has seen to that.

But researchers examining the last of the rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts from the Moon discovered that one of them doesn't match the Moon's chemical composition and is much more similar to Earth rocks, with silicates, feldspar and so on. So the thinking is that this is an Earth rock that somehow got up to the Moon.

But how?

Well, back at the period we are talking about, the Earth is believed to have been enduring a whole succession of planet-killer-sized asteroid strikes, the "late heavy bombardment". It's what pocked the Moon with its craters. (On Earth, plate tectonics has erased our early craters.) Large impacts are known to be able to blast rock fragments into space. (Mars rocks have been found in Antarctica.)

Interestingly, this period is when some of the more extreme early-life theorists hypothesize that life was first appearing on Earth.  

https://www.foxnews.com/science/moon-dis...ar-surface

Abstract of the paper (which is behind a pay-wall):

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1X19300202

crazy what if thoughts...
imagine how amazing it would be if they confirmed 100% it wasn't from earth and so must have come from another planetary type body somewhere.
mystery +++
im looking forward to see if & what type of life may be found on Europa
i expect the possibility(possible but less probable) of almost plankton like life
something that lives off algae

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If this was a movie or a novel, they'd discover either a shell fragment or microscopic fossils in it.

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perfectly preserved strand of DNA that can be grown in an egg which produces a vampire chicken/lizard that then breeds with komodo dragons and hatches batches of 10 winged komodo dragons per nest
chicken that breeds with a pelican that eats a baby komodo that then rots in a pile of rotting flesh that a komodo then eats which creates a virus that infects the dna ....