Paper: Coshocton Tribune City: Coshocton, Ohio Date: Thursday, June 12, 1958 Page: 7 Scientists Uncertain on Orgins of Strange "Moon Bits" Found in U.S. By Delos Smith NEW YORK - (UPI) - A hot scientifc arguement of this very moment is over the question of whether or not little pieces of the moon are scattered here and there on the earh's surface. There are little pieces of something scattered around all right, and if they're not pieces of the moon then what on earth are they? The origin of these strange, glassy rounded bits called tektites have puzzled scientists for generations. C. M. Varsavsky, brilliant young Argentine astrophysicists who is taking advanced studies at Harard, started the argument by producing mathematical calculations intended to show that tektites are pieces of the moon. His idea was that meteors colliding with the moon chipped off pieces, which is most plausible. The moon is pock-marked with innumerable craters evidently made by meters. It is logical to assume that collisions of such force would have had to send parts of the moon hurtling into space. Varasavsky's mathematics showed how these pieces could have spiraled, ever so slowly, down to earth. But now come three distinguished scientists, including Dr. Harold C. Urey, famous atomic scientists and Nobel Prize winner of the University of Chicago, with arguments designed to shatter his theory into pieces even smaller then tektites. Urey objected chiefly on chemical grounds. Tektites are largely silica and alumina. They are bits of rocks which evidently were made in extremely hot and long enduring fire. If tektites were moon pieces then the moon's fire - made rocks are quite different from earth's, which Urey though most unlikely. The principal objection of Dr. Virgil T. Barces of the University of Texas, was on the matter of distribution. Barnes, by the way was the first man to identify a belt of tektite deposits in the United States. It is in Texas. IIf the theory were correct, he reasoned, you'd find tektites distributed in a wide belt around the earth. Furthermore, you'd find then in all the earth's layers of rocks because the spiraling of moon pieces would have been going on over eons of time. But tektites have been found only in widely separated groups - in Indonesia, in Australia, in the Libyan Desert, and among ancient rocks along a 120-mile strip through five Texas counties. And they're found in only a few of the earth's rock layers and these few are widely separated. This shows there has been no more or less continuous rain of moon pieces or of tektites. Dr. Zdeoek Kopal, astronomer of the University of Manchester, England,objected to Varsavasky's mathematics. He granted that Varsavsky had constructed mass particles trajectories which could bring something from the moon to the earth. But if tektites were chipped off the moon by meteors, the beginning of their trajectories toward the earth would have been different that Varsavsky calculated, and the chips wouldn't have reached earth. Kopal said. In Kopal's opinion, the origin of tektites "must be sought neared to the terrestiral surface than the moon." In other words, science doesn't know where they came from, but they didn't come from the moon. Please visit, www.MeteoriteArticles.com, a free on-line archive of meteor and meteorite articles. |
