Big Bertha (moon rocks)
Big Bertha , scientifically also known as Apollo Sample 14321 , is a rock found on the moon that, according to the latest findings, is believed to have come from Earth.
history
On February 5, 1971, the Apollo 14 crew landed in Fra Mauro , a 95 km large impact crater on the moon. As researchers had previously expected, mainly breccia was found there - that is, closed rock that consists predominantly of fragments of other types of rock. These breccias were most likely caused by impacts on the lunar surface, as the resulting heat and pressure press various minerals together.
In total, the crew took around 45 kg of lunar rock with them to earth, the largest of them weighing nine kilograms and earning the name “Big Bertha”. According to NASA, it is in the name Big Bertha is a reference to the German gun Big Bertha the company Krupp , whose name is reportedly on the more corpulent owner Bertha Krupp moved. Nowadays, Big Bertha generally stands for a melodious description of a very large object in a group.
At nine kilograms, Big Bertha was the heaviest moon rock that had ever been brought to earth. This record was broken by the subsequent Apollo 15 mission , whose crew brought a 9.6 kilogram lump of basalt called Great Scott .
Chemical composition
Many of the breccias found are abundant in so-called KREEP (acronym for Potassium, Rare Earth Elements and Phosphorus). Big Berta, on the other hand, consists mainly of quartz , feldspar and zircon (not to be confused with zirconium ), which is very similar to the structure of earthly granite . Such rocks are extremely rare on the moon.
In 2019, Jeremy Bellucci, a Swedish geologist, analyzed fragments of Bertha using ion mass spectrometry. The researcher and his team found that there is an exceptionally high concentration of titanium in the zirconia being analyzed . This suggests crystallization under very special circumstances. Circumstances that do not occur on the moon. The most common explanation is that the rock formed about 4.0 to 4.1 billion years ago at a depth of about 20 km and was catapulted into space by earth impacts.
If the suspicion is confirmed, at least the analyzed, 2 centimeter fragment of Big Bertha comes from Earth.
Web links
- Spektrum .de: The oldest rock on the moon was on the moon January 25, 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ Terrestrial-like zircon in a clast from an Apollo 14 breccia , sciencedirect.com, accessed February 2, 2019.
- ↑ a b Apollo 14 Info nasa.gov, Retrieved February 2, 2019
- ↑ Transcript of the Apollo 14 mission nasa.gov, Retrieved February 2, 2019
- ↑ Ever wondered why so many things are nicknamed Big Bertha? theblaze.com, Retrieved February 2, 2019.
- ↑ Jeremy Bellucci researchgate.net, Retrieved February 2, 2019.
- ↑ Apollo 14 crew accidentally collected stones from the earth on the moon derstandard.at, accessed on February 2, 2019