Read an Excerpt
Chapter OneThe Greatest UFO?One particularly bright, circular object has been observed moving through Earth's skies since the beginning of human history. Every person on the planet has seen this object. We call it the moon.
Although this object is identified--at least we have a name for it and we know it's there--the moon cannot be hastily disqualified as a UFO. Despite six visits by U.S. astronauts between 1969 and 1972, the moon remains a riddle to scientists in many regards. The solutions to these riddles could indicate an alien aspect of our familiar moon.Before the Apollo missions, lunar scientists longed for the time when humans could walk on the moon's surface. By studying the makeup of our satellite, they hoped to resolve some of the mysteries of how our planet and solar system came into existence. Well-known space expert and the first chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Lunar Exploration Committee Dr. Robert Jastrow has stated, "The moon is the Rosetta stone of the planets."
Six moon landings later, the public perception was that we had learned all we needed to about the moon. However, those same lunar scientists were no closer to agreement on how to answer even the most basic questions--such as how the moon was created. Despite the return of some 842 pounds of rocks and soil samples, photos and videotape, and the placement of five nuclear-powered scientific stations on the lunar surface, there are still no clear-cut solutions to the moon's mysteries.
Quite the reverse: what we have learned about the moon in the wake of the Apollo missions has only raised morequestions. Science writer Earl Ubell declared, "The lunar Rosetta stone remains a mystery. The moon is more complicated than anyone expected; it is not simply a kind of billiard ball frozen in space and time, as many scientists had believed. Few of the fundamental questions have been answered, but the Apollo rocks and recordings have spawned a score of mysteries, a few truly breath-stopping."Consider some of these "breath-stopping" mysteries, or anomalies, as scientists prefer to call them.
The moon is far older than previously imagined, perhaps even much older than the earth and sun. By examining tracks burned into moon rocks by cosmic rays, scientists have dated them as billions of years old. Some have been dated back 4.5 billion years, far older than the earth and "nearly as old as the solar system," according to Jastrow. The oldest rocks ever found on Earth only date back 3.5 billion years. It is accepted by scientists today that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old. Harvard's respected astronomy journal, Sky and Telescope, reported that at the Lunar Conference of 1973, it was revealed that one moon rock was dated at 5.3 billion years old, which would make it almost a billion years older than our planet. This puzzle was compounded by the fact that the lunar dust in which the rocks were found proved to be a billion years older than the rocks themselves. Chemical analysis showed that the moon rocks were of a completely different composition from the soil around them. Since dusty soil is usually produced by the weathering and breakup of surrounding rocks, the lunar rocks must have come from someplace other than where they were found. But where?
The moon has at least three distinct layers of rocks. Contrary to the idea that heavier objects sink, the heavier rocks are found on the surface. Stated Don Wilson, "The abundance of refractory elements like titanium in the surface areas is so pronounced that several geo-chemists proposed that refractory compounds were brought to the moon's surface in great quantity in some unknown way. They don't know how, but that it was done cannot be questioned. These rich materials that are usually concentrated in the interior of a world are now on the outside." Ubell, a former science editor for CBS television, acknowledged this mystery, saying, "The first [layer], 20 miles deep, consists of lavalike material similar to lava flows on Earth. The second, extending down to 50 miles, is made up of somewhat denser rock. The third, continuing to a depth of at least 80 miles and probably below, appears to be of a heavy material similar to the Earth's mantle. . . ." Ubell asked, "If the Earth and moon were created at the same time, near each other, why has one body got all the iron and the other [the moon] not much? The differences suggest that Earth and moon came into being far from each other, an idea that stumbles over the inability of astrophysicists to explain how exactly the moon became a satellite of the Earth."
The moon is extremely dry and does not appear to have ever had water in any substantial amounts. None of the moon rocks, regardless of location found, contained free water or even water molecules bound into the minerals. Yet instruments left behind by Apollo missions sent a signal to Earth on March 7, 1971, indicating a "wind" of water had crossed the moon's surface. Since any water on the airless moon surface vaporizes and behaves like the wind on Earth, the question became, where did this water originate? The vapor cloud eruptions lasted fourteen hours and covered an area of some one hundred square miles, prompting Rice University physicists Dr. John Freeman Jr. and Dr. H. Ken Hills to pronounce the event one of "the most exciting discoveries yet" indicating water within the moon. The two physicists claimed the water vapor came from deep inside the moon, apparently released during a moonquake. NASA officials offered a more mundane, and questionable, explanation. They speculated that two tanks on Apollo descent stages containing between sixty and one hundred pounds of water became stressed and ruptured, releasing their contents. Freeman and Hills declined to accept this explanation, pointing out that the two tanks--from Apollo 12 and 14--were some 180 kilometers apart, yet the water vapor was detected with the same flux at both sites, although the instruments faced in opposite directions. Skeptics also have understandably questioned the odds of two separate tanks breaking simultaneously and how such a small quantity of water could produce a hundred square miles of vapor. Additionally, Apollo 16 astronauts found moon rocks that contained bits of rusted iron. Since oxidation requires oxygen and free hydrogen, this rust indicates there must be water somewhere on the moon.
Alien Agenda. Copyright © by Jim Marrs. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
loading...