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The Moon is an 81 million billion ton lamp of rock and dust, almost 3.5 thousand kilometres in diameter, orbiting 400 thousand kilometres above our heads. It’s the second ……………….in our skies, with temperatures raging from 120° to less than minus 230°C. Its gravity is thicker than that of the Earth. It has mountains that tower to almost 5 thousand meters and millions of craters lither the……………………, where no liquid water has ever been found. This is not a hospitable place. And yet we often associate the Moon with romance and mystery. The man and the Moon enraptures people all over the world and feeds our hunger for ……………………..and legends.

We are far from being alone in having a moon. There are at least 135 other moons orbiting the planets in……………….. Saturn has the most with 46. But there are at least 10 mysterious bodies orbiting our planet: 5 are …………….temporarily caught by the Earth’s gravitational field and 4 are probably fragments of the Apollo 12 rocket. The 10’th and largest is our Moon.

Since long before the………………………, the Moon has been the Earth’s constant companion. But until relatively recently we’ve known little about its true nature or even how it was created.

Scientists explored several………………………….. One suggested that the Moon was an asteroid or planet trapped by the Earth’s gravity. Another …………..its creation to a giant impact on Earth which ejected masses of material that formed the Moon. …………..to which theory was more likely to be correct came when man first landed on the Moon and began to …………………………..that were berried within its lunar rocks.

 

“5…4…3…2…1…0…and a lift off….”

“And a step on the land now...”

“ It’s one small step for men but a giant lip for mankind. ”

 

Between 1969 and 1972 six missions blasted off the Moon.

 

“-Wow! What a flight! What a view! Isn’t it Dylan?

-It is absolutely unreal!!”

 

Only 12 humans have ever walked on the Moon. But these astronauts did more than just…………………... They also returned with samples of lunar rock. These moon rocks were amazingly similar to Earth rocks but they contained far less iron and this seemingly …………………offered a huge clue as to how the Moon was created. It showed that the Moon started with a………...

Four and a half billion years ago the Moon did not yet exist. The inner ………………….have about twice as many planets as before that exist today. But many of them were on a ……………………….to destruction. Among them was a planet about half a size of Earth since named Thea, who in Greek mythology was the goddess mother of the Moon and it was on a collision course with our planet. Thea rushed closer and closer to Earth. The approaching planet would have been a terrifying sight.

Astrophysicist Jeff Taylor has studied the Moon’s fiery birth and describes the view from Earth as Thea rushed towards it.

 

Professor Jeff Taylor, University of Hawaii:

“ It might have started looking like a star or pretty big star, but than as it got closer and closer this thing would get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger…Until it has filled the sky moments before the………………... And than everything would be...be gone for you as a witness. And it would be a…………….., ‘couse everything would be white hot. And if you were standing, or friend of yours’, on the other side of the Earth, they would see the flash in the atmosphere and…and…feel gigantic ………………..passing through the Earth.”

Thea was 6.5 thousand kilometres in diameter. To…………………– the meteorite thought to have wiped up the dinosaurs was about 10 kilometres across. And Thea was travelling at 40 thousand kilometres per hour.

 

Professor Jeff Taylor, University of Hawaii:

“This is an object that is the size of Mars, which is about half of the Earth’s diameter. So it’s a gigantic event of………………………...”

 

 

As the planets got closer their immense gravitational fields ribbed each others outer layers to pieces. Then they…………………………..

The impact was equivalent to billions of…………………. It [shierd] off continent-sized sections of the Earth’s crust and blasted surface rocks out into space. These surface rocks contained only a small amount of iron. The atmosphere around the ………………..was filled with rock vapour.

Earth’s gravity pulled back most of the………... But some was captured into space. Although it could not escape completely. Instead it was trapped by the Earth’s gravity, forming a ring of …………….and rock around the planet.

In a process called [ecrision] the circling dust and rocks collided and fused with other fragments to create……………...

 

Professor Jeff Taylor, University of Hawaii:

“We can represent this process by olive oil and water. The water here represents the space around the Earth and the olive oil is the…the… debris thrown around the Earth by this giant impact. And each ……………………that we poor in here represents a given chunk of meter thrown up, blasted off the Earth. We are going to stir this around ………………..the way that the debris is being moved around the Earth.”

When Taylor stops stirring the drops ………………………and come together as bigger droplets.

 

 

Professor Jeff Taylor, University of Hawaii:

“ And that process of small things bumping into each other, becoming larger is called [ecrision]. And that’s how the Moon formed around the Earth. That’s how the Earth formed around the Sun.”

As the debris clumped together, its combined gravity became strong enough to attract even more debris. This ………………..didn’t stop until the billions of fragments of vaporised rock had gathered into one red hot ball of meter. In less than a hundred years this [gruel] becoming a …………………of rock- one fifty of the volume of Earth. It became the Moon.

When the Moon formed, it was just 27 thousand kilometres away. But it didn’t stay as close as that. Its violent birth ………………..away from us on a journey that would last for 10 billion years.

Absolute proof that the Moon is moving away came in 1969, when astronauts left the 45 cm …………………..on the Moon’s surface. By bouncing lasers of this plate scientists can ……………the Moon’s distance from Earth to within a few centimetres. Such calculations reviled that the Moon is moving away from the Earth at rate of about 4 cm per year. So why is the Moon on the move?

In the 1990s’ super computers gave scientists a more ………………….of what happened 4.5 billion years ago. Computer models of the impact reviled that the collision of Thea and Earth was a glancing blow that imparted …………………….to the Earth. This rotation is what gives Earth days and nights. But the huge power of the collision set the Earth spinning far faster than the Moon, which was………………………...

In those early days, Earth span once every 6 hours – 4 times faster than today, whereas the Moon took 20 days to…………………... So the Moon was orbiting more slowly than the Earth was spinning.

However, the early Moon was about 15 times closer than it is today. And the effect of its gravity was so strong that it pulled up a [balg] …………………………..directly below it. This [balg] moved like a tide across the surface, with its own ……………………on the Moon. Because the Earth was spinning faster than its satellite, the [balg] was always ahead of the Moon, so it constantly pulled the Moon forwards, causing it to accelerate. Any object that travels in a circular motion will move outwards as it accelerates, much like a hammer being………………………….. So as the Moon accelerated in its orbit, it began to spiller away from the Earth. This journey would continue for……………………..

At the time of its birth, the Moon orbited Earth 15 times closer than today. But this close proximity put the Moon in……………………. It faced bombardment by thousands of asteroids that would eventually destroy 80% of its surface.

4 billion years ago – the time that scientists call 4 giga years ago or 4 GYA, the Moon was orbiting 100 hundred and 40 thousand kilometres away, still 3 times closer to Earth than it is today. From our planet the Moon ……………………..in the sky.

During this early period of its life, the Moon had its most……………………………….. The massive collision that created the Moon was so powerful that it knocked the Earth off balance on to an axis of 23.5 degrees. It’s this tilt that gives us our spring, summer, autumn and winter. If we……………………………, like the planet Mercury, seasons wouldn’t exist. Everywhere would receive 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. The poles would be inhumed in an internal freezing twilight, while the equator would bake in………………….. But the Moon did more than merely produced this tilt, it also maintains it.

The strong gravitational pull of our Moon acts as a…………………, stabilizing the Earth’s axis. Astrobyologist Lyn Rothschild explains how this works.

 

Dr. Lyn Rothschild, NASA:

“ The reason we have this obliquity, that holds steady, is because the Moon helps to stabilize the obliquity of the Earth. If we had no Moon, we would end up with what the astronomers call –…………………….– we have quite a big shift and fearly low time skills.”

Without our …………………….our axis could very between 0° to 90°. This would alter the distribution of sunlight across the surface of the planet, devastating our finally balanced weather systems. Climate patterns would go bizarre. The Tropics could find themselves ……………….and Antarctica would be transformed into a vast desert. But luckily the Moon saves us from such disasters and allows………………..

 

 

Dr. Lyn Rothschild, NASA:

“It turns out that it may have had a really ………………………..on how life has originated and evolved on the Earth. In fact you might almost be able to argue that we would be here today, filming this, if the Moon………………………….”

Not all the planets in our solar system are so lucky. Mars has 2 moons, but they are too small to stabilize its tilt. And as the result, ………………………rolls much more than Earth. Some scientists believe that this is one of the reasons there’s no life there now.

When we look at our Moon today, the first thing we tend to notice are the………... To astrophysicist like David Kring these indicated ………………………past.

 

Dr. David Kring, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory:

“You can look up from your own back yard and see …………………….on the lunar surface. There are over 300 thousand craters, half a mile to over 500 miles in diameter on the…………………..”

 

Most of these craters came from meteorites hitting the Moon. The largest crater we can see from our planet is the Imbrian Basin, which is 1100 kilometres across. Moon craters come in various sizes, but almost all were created at about the same time.

Around 4 billion years ago, a chance alignment of the ……………….Jupiter and Saturn changed the shapes of their orbits. This created……………………, hurling asteroids towards the inner solar system, straight at Earth and its young Moon. For millions of years asteroids …………………the entire inner solar system.

 

Dr. David Kring, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory:

“Some of these ……………….would have produced impact craters the size of continents or larger. This type of impact events had the capacity …………………………………….on the surface of the planet and super heat the atmosphere. Life as we have known couldn’t exist on the surface of the Earth.”

This period of intense bombardment is called the…………………... And the Earth’s gravity made it worth, pulling meteorites and asteroids directly towards it. On its own, the tiny Moon might have escaped with…………………. But it was too close to the Earth. So asteroids heading for impact with Earth, hit the Moon instead. The Moon became the first victim of…………………... Most of the craters on the Moon form during the lunar cataclysm. 80 % of the lunar surface was destroyed. Molten [bless hold oozed from vicious] and filled impact craters creating………………….. Over millions of years these cold solid […] and turned into [demario] or sees like the Sea of Tranquility.

It’s the pattern of dark basalt rock that creates the face of the man and the Moon, as we know it today.

David Kring demonstrates exactly what happens to the surface of the Moon if a………………….. He releases a two and half kilogram rock from 15 meters above………………... On impact, sand is fired upwards into the air. During the lunar cataclysm, some impacts was so big, that material which fired upwards never return to the Moon surface.

Instead it was……………………, where it was trapped by the gravity of the Earth, still only one hundred and forty thousand kilometers away. Some of these rocks hurtle towards our planet.

 

Dr. David Kring, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory:

“You actually would have seen a huge……………………, rise up of the lunar surface. This cloud, in fact, would have envelop the ………………………..and out of that cloud there would have been fragments of rock that pelted the Earth. They would have streamed through the atmosphere as ………………………..to land rocky components on the Earth’s surface.”

These lunar meteorites are incredibly rare. This is part one of the only thirty known lunar meteorites ever found.

Dr. David Kring, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory:

“This is the sample that fell in Africa. Now [sees] the samples like this tell us that there was the ………………………..and that number of impact that effected the Moon, repoint 9-4 billion years ago.”

Lunar meteorites contain a record of the ……………………in the solar system, as it was around 4 billion years ago.

These rocks are older than the oldest rocks on Earth. The existence of lunar meteorites on Earth caused experts to wonder: If rocks could …………………………………to Earth, could rocks from the Earth also reach the Moon? And if such Earth meteorites could be found, might they ……………………………..at what was happening on this planet billons of years ago.

To blast anything free from Earth’s strong gravity, requires…………………. Far more power that it takes to lounge a lunar meteorites off the surface of the Moon.

For example, a space shuttle uses 15 million ………………..to escape from Earth’s gravity. A lunar module needs just 6 thousand 3 hundred horse powers to lift off from the Moon. But just how big an impact would it take to blast debris off the Earth.

………………….astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez from Iowa State University has worked out the answer to this question.

 

 

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Iowa State University:

“The crater of northern Arizona, …………………, even that which is really big when you go right up to it is… wasn’t large enough to catapult any …………………………………beyond ours atmosphere. But when you’re talking about, say, the crater that killed the dinosaurs, in Mexico, now that one was probably big ………………….launching some [early] smaller mono material beyond the Earth and had some of them……………………..”

 

Impacts on the Earth during the lunar cataclysm were far bigger than the…………………………... They had so much power that they punched holes in the Earth’s atmosphere. Rocks and debris from [sky would] escape through these holes. And once in the space some of the debris was vacuumed up by the Moon, orbiting just 1 hundred and 40 thousand kilometers away.

 

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Iowa State University:

“ And it eventually makes its way to the Moon where it lands and than when it lands on the Moon, of course, it could be further broken up in smaller pieces, depending on how fast………………………….”

 

Since landing on the lunar surface, they remained perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space.

 

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Iowa State University:

“The earlier of unfortunately erased its early history, but it left the record or at least ……………………………of itself on the Moon. And we can find some fusels or at least ramnets of early life on these Earth rocks on the Moon. They can help us answers these difficult questions…………………………...”

 

Gonzalez believes that close to 20 thousand kilogram of Earth rock could be spread of every hundred square kilometers of the Moon surface.

 

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Iowa State University:

“It’s the only place on the solar system that we can go to ……………………………………because once the Earth rocks gets to the Moon, they are preserved there in a……………………. There is no water cycle on the Moon, there is no more active geology and they get berried relatively quickly from the material from other [impacts] on the Moon. And so they preserve from the solar wind and other things as well.”

 

So far no Earth rocks are ……………….the Moon. Gonzalez will have to wait until the next ……………….and hoped that these priceless rocks may then be discovered.

The first half billion years of the Moons journey from Earth was………………... Over the next million years the Moon continued its escape from Earth and out into space. And this passage changed the …………………beyond all recognition. The power of its gravity created tides hundreds of meters high which stirred up the oceans of the Earth. And this created the conditions for ………………………………to form. The Moon was aiding the creation of life on Earth.

Three billion years ago the Moon was still escaping from the Earth and orbiting around three hundred and twenty thousand kilometers away. The effect of its gravity was now weaker, but it still had power to………………………... The Earth had water and oceans. And the Moon was stirring things up.

It was too far away to have a ………………………on the rocks of the Earth. But the Moon did affect the oceans. As the Moon past overhead, its gravity created tides in the water. But these tides weren’t like the tides of today. They were……………………………...

Astronomer Neil Comins has studied how the early Moon effected the tides.

 

Professor Neil Comins, University of Main:

“………………………………., the tides were something like thousand times harder than they are today. They wouldn’t gone in land, as they as the wall water and ten thousand feet high as high as a huge mountain. They probably would have covered thousand of miles and then they would come back scouring land, taking debris from the surface of the Earth into the oceans.”

 

The material soaked into the seas contained minerals and nutrients. And the tides created by the Moon [gently] into most crucial cocktail in the history of the Earth - the primemodials soop. Different ………………………….were bound together and torn apart. And it was in this violent melting pot that the right combination of minerals was forged into life.

Comins believes that the spark of life might never have occurred had the Moon not chained up the……………………..

 

Professor Neil Comins, University of Main:

“The Moon created those ………………………….back when it first formed. That allowed the oceans to fill with minerals, that allowed live to evolve, that allowed us to be here.”

The tides may even have helped the …………………..to evolve. Some scientists believe that the changes in chemical concentrations, when the tides went in and out, caused the DNA to split and replicate.

And the enormous Moon[…] tides had the further ………………to play in the history of the Earth. They hoped the whole atmosphere of the planet to come down and become a more …………………..[where] more complex life could evolve.

Three billion years ago the Earth was a very different place. The impact that had created the Moon forces that the Earth spinning faster. It span so much faster than it does now, that the day lasted just 6 hours. At this high speed spin had devastating effects right around the Earth. The rotation of our planet is one of the most influential factors determining global climate. The …………………..creates winds and vortexes in the atmosphere. And the faster the spin - the faster and more violent the winds.

Billions of years ago when our planet rotated four times faster the atmosphere……………………….

 

Professor Neil Comins, University of Main:

“When the hurricane occurs today, hundred miles an hour winds, trees are blown over, houses loose their roofs,……………………………….. But in a day or two it’s gone. Things settle back to normal, people get on with their lives. Imagine if we lived on the world in which those kinds of…………………………………...”

 

This was the planet above fast spinning early Earth - a place with ………………………………..winds and giant 3 thousand meter tides. It was far too hostile a planet for life to evolve into more complex forms. But the ……………………………….by the Moon began to classify this……………….. The tides affected the speed of rotation of our planet, eventually lengthening a day from 6 to 24 hours.

As the Earth’s……………………., the atmosphere seized to whip around the globe. Hurricane strength winds were no longer the norm. And more ………………………began to evolve in a relative peace and calm of our planet.

 

Professor Neil Comins, University of Main:

“I really think that we owe the Moon our………………….. Without it the world would have evolved differently and as a result we would have evolved differently, we would not be… is the creatures we are.”

The power of the nearby Moon has …………………………….our planet. Over the last three billion years the Moon has continued its journey out into space. Its influence has veined out, but it hasn’t disappeared. Some scientists believed it……………………………………... While many lay men still believe that the full Moon can effect human behavior in some bizarre and inexplicable ways.

Today the Moon orbits Earth 4 hundred thousand kilometers away, 15 times further from Earth then where it first formed. It now appears as distant and mystical object in the sky. And its gravitational pull is far weaker than it used to be. It’s now so small that it [exerts] the same upward pole as pea, hung about 1 meter above our heads.

But some people believed that even this …………………can affect human behavior. The Moon’s 29 day orbit around the Earth is called the lunar cycle. And during ………………….the appearance of the Moon changes, because its constantly moving relative to the Sun and Earth.

The Fool Moon has long been associated with mystery, …………… and horror. Study show that the behavior of some animals does change during the lunar cycle. Some creatures hold breading cycles are dictated by the Moon. Scientists have also investigated the link between procreation and the Full Moon. Researches think that the increased Moon light help some nocturnal……………………….. Although, the idea that wolves howl more often during the full Moon is nothing more than a myth.

So some mammals do become more active at Full Moon. Could this aggressive lunar trace extend to humans?

Here in San Francisco, officers Gili and Mahoni at the San Francisco police department gear up for another night………………………...

They have been policing the [TendyMoon] district for the last ten years. But his is not an ordinary night. It’s a Full Moon. And on Full Moon nights………………………………...

 

Officer:

“….I think some of the crimes that we deal with…I think it’s Fool Moon every day, I think. But there is……………………………... You can pretty much ask anybody who works in, you know, service jobs like police, fire, paramedics, hospital workers. They’ll all tell you that during the times of the full Moon……………………………….”

But is there any ………………………that human behavior can be affected by the Moon? In 1976 the American journal of psychology studied 34318 crimes and found there occurred more frequently at Full Moon. And the year later researchers studying 18 thousand 495psycietric patients found that ……………………….pit during a New Moon.However a series of more recent studies have ………………………………human behavior and a lunar cycle.

 

 

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