New Lunar Meteorite Provides its Lunar Address and Some Clues about Early Bombardment of the Moon

Details New Lunar Meteorite Provides its Lunar Address and Some Clues about Early Bombardment of the Moon New Lunar Meteorite Provides its Lunar Address and Some Clues about Early Bombardment of the Moon

Oct 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004psrd.repte..89t&link_type=abstract

Planetary Science Research Discoveries

Other

Meteorites, Lunar Meteorites, Sau 169, Impact Rate, Lunar Bombardment

Scientific paper

Edwin Gnos (University of Bern, Switzerland) and colleagues from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, England, and the United States describe an information-packed meteorite found in Oman, Sayh al Uhaymir 169 (SaU 169). The complicated rock is composed mostly of an impact melt that contains an exceptionally large amount of thorium, indicative of an origin in the Imbrium-Procellarum region of the Moon. Gnos and his colleagues report that the impact melt has an age of 3.909 (±0.013) billion years, slightly older than estimates of when the huge Imbrium impact basin formed on the Moon (about 3.850 billion years ago). The meteorite was involved in a subsequent impact 2.8 billion years ago, then another 200 million years ago, and a relatively recent one no more than 340 thousand years ago. It landed on Earth about 10 thousand years ago. This amazingly detailed record led Gnos to conclude that the rock was blasted off the Moon from a place not far from Lalande Crater. The 3.9 billion year age of the impact melt adds to the debate about whether there was an increase in the impact rate 3.9 billion years ago or there was a continuous decline in the impact rate from 4.5 to 3.8 billon years. This debate may not be settled until we have samples from the South Pole-Aitken basin on the farside of the Moon.

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