Friday, August 12, 2022

"Some of the largest of these impact events would have blasted fragments of the Earth's crust up onto the Lunar surface" -David A. Kring


A major theme in this LPI seems to be an origin of life hypothesis involving hydrothermal systems that are caused by impact craters. As it turns out, Dragonfly is going to try and feed data into this hypothesis at Titan. Curiosity has and is working under the notion that the heat that powered the waterworks of Gale crater came solely from the impact that made Gale crater, not Mars-climate or the influence of The Sun. So this impact-local-hydrosphere is thematically a thing planetary scientists are picking at.

In relation to Earth, Hadean Earth is pretty inaccessible, except when talking about Luna. Lunar craters date to the Hadean era, and there may be some impact basin hydrological exchanges there. Can't say, but don't ever think that future Lunar missions will have a low science return.

There is of course the odd chance that a Lunar rock can be found that is ejecta from the Chicxulub impact, or a Hadean impact. No doubt the samples are up there somewhere. The question is if or not they can be found. 

  • You've heard of shock-quartz. At 7:20 an image will burn into your memory what it looks like.
  • At 12:10 you get a comparison crater. A lunar crater that is about the same size as Chicxulub.
  • In truth most slides are eye candy, so I don't want to list them all. Tons of mineral close-ups and thin-slices.
  • At 27:00 you get a sense of hydrology under an impact basin.
  • Conclusions at 46:00


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