UWFDM-1189 A Lunar Field Geologist's Perspective 30 Years Later: Shocking Revelations About the Moon, Mars and Earth

A number of conventional hypotheses relative to the Moon and the terrestrial planets deserve both questioning and unconventional thought based on the profound advances in planetary research in recent years. For example, elemental and isotopic data on the lower mantle of the Moon suggest that lunar origin by Giant Impact is unlikely. The apparent existence of a relatively undifferentiated lunar lower mantle indicates that all the terrestrial planets began with a cool chondritic proto-core on the order of 1200 km in radius. The proto-core of Mars may have been catastrophically displaced upwards by metallic core formation and its remnants may reside beneath the Southern Uplands. The terrestrial equivalents of the very large lunar basins, such as South Pole-Aitken and Procellarum, may have seeded the first continents through differentiation of thick, hydrous melt sheets, resulting in the late stage crystallization of zircons 4.4-4.2 billion years ago. Sampling of impact glasses indicating an apparent lunar cataclysm ~3.85 billion years ago may have been biased by late, young large basin-forming impacts that resurfaced the crust. Clay minerals probably were the dominant mineral species at the surfaces of the Earth and Mars during the periods of intense impact activity prior to 3.8 b.y. and may have been critical catalysts to the formation of complex organic molecules. Mars appears to have had both early and late oceans due to two major episodes of intense volcanic activity, the oldest triggered by metallic core formation and the youngest by remelting of the Martian mantle. And finally, the Martian water-ice boundary in the crust is probably the most stable, long-lived ecological niche for simple life forms.