From: dk@imager (Dave Knapp)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Moon Dust
Date: 25 Jan 93 22:17:37 GMT
Organization: Laboratory for Experimental Astrophysics

In article <1k1a58INN3d1@dmsoproto.ida.org> rlg@omni (Randy garrett) writes:
>One piece of evidence advanced for a young universe concerns
>the depth of dust on the moon.  In my younger years, I remember
>quite a bit of concern about the depth likely to be encountered
>on the moon.  Many people expected 20 - 40 feet of the stuff
>based on calculated accumulations.  Fortunately for Neil 
>Armstrong, there turned out to be much less -- of order
>a few inches.  Anyone know what the accepted reconcilation
>of the discrepancy is?

   I actually went to and did some serious research to find out where
this "expected 20-40 feet" number came from.  As far as I can tell, this
is a young-Earth creationist fabrication; there was some thought that
dust might "flow" from the lunar highlands into the marias and make isolated
"pools" of dust that thick, but I could find no reference prior to the
moon expeditions that made a prediction of a uniform deep covering of
moon dust.

   Here is a relevant quote, from "The Moon," by Ralph Baldwin, in Ann. Rev.
Astron. Astrophys. vol. 2 pp. 73-93 (1964):

"The extremely ingenious deep-dust theory by Gold is no longer accepted in
its original form by most scientists who have analyzed it, but certain
features of it have led to important advances.  One of Gold's key points
is that there is a means of transporting dust particles over the lunar
surface by the equivalent of a nonviscous flow.  Gold favored electrostatic
forces.  Singer & Walker find that a very much smaller amount of dust could
be "floated" if there is a lunar "electronosphere."  This dust could
accumulate in shadow zones to depths of perhaps a meter over the life of
the moon."

   Please note that this reference, in a review article 5 years prior to
the Apollo 11 landing, made no reference to a layer of dust 20-40 feet thick.

   Gold (referred to above) does make one reference to the Petterson measurement
of micrometeorite flux, which is the basis of the young-Earth creationist
claim.  I found it in a paper from 1955: "The lunar surface," by T. Gold,
Proc. R.A.S. v.115, p.585:

"Petterson and Roschi estimate from the nickel content of deep oceans that the
quantity of material currently deposited on the Earth is of the order of one
million tons per year.  This estimate would imply that the Moon is acquiring
a layer one centimeter in thickness every 10^7 years, at the present time...
The amounts of eroded material missing on the high ground are large, and the
absence of any signs of this material on the filler, especially around the sharp
edges of the maria, or the sharp injuction between crater walls and flat
surfaces, requires in any case a special hypothesis whatever origin of flat
surfaces is assumed... we shall therefore pursue the consequences and 
requirements implied by the hypothesis that all the flat regions are beds of 
dust whose origin lies in the erosion of the high ground as well as perhaps
in newly acquired meteoritic material."

   Clearly, Gold didn't expect a uniform layer of meteoritic dust to be the
dominant source of the dust for his "deep dust" theory.

   Even Petterson didn't consider his nickel-derived data to be the last word,
and since they were subsequently shown to be in error, I fail to understand
how Morris, Gish, et al. can continue to present this "evidence" for a young
Earth.

   Indeed, it was in doing this research for myself that I finally reached the
conclusion shared by so many others in t.o., namely that the ICR people are
basically lying.

  -- Dave
-- 
  *-------------------------------------------------------------*
  * David Knapp        dk@imager.llnl.gov       (510) 422-1023  *
  *            98.7% of all statistics are made up.             *
  *-------------------------------------------------------------*