An example of purposely blurred photograph of the moon discovered by Ken Pfeifer.

An example of purposely blurred photograph of the moon discovered by Ken Pfeifer.

Notice: I have spent quite a bit of time adding links to this post, while trying not to add too much of my personal opinion. If you are interested in lunar anomalies, you are well advised to follow these links, where you may find some compelling images and information. Then you can make up your own mind about these phenomena.

There’s a lot we know about the moon: It’s roughly one-sixth the size of the Earth, is about 4.6 billion years old, is approximately 238,000 miles distant from the Earth, has no atmosphere, and is covered with fine gray powder. There is more water in the moon than was once thought. Humans have walked on the moon during six Apollo missions, and we’ve sent many more probes there to map it and study it, but somewhat oddly NASA hasn’t sent humans back there since the 1970s. As I write this, China has an unmanned probe called Jade Rabbit (or Yutu in Mandarin Chinese) on the lunar surface.

But there’s much we don’t know about our nearest space neighbor, too. We’re not sure where it came from. Some think it might be a broken-off chunk of Earth. But this is unlikely because analysis indicates that the amounts of the elements in the Moon’s and the Earth’s compositions are sufficiently different to make it unlikely that the Moon formed directly from the Earth. And there’s evidence that the Moon once had active volcanoes, but we’re not sure if it’s still geologically active. There are so many theories about the origin of our celestial satellite from the prosaic to the bizarre that I could write numerous blog posts on that subject alone. It has been posited that the Moon may be a hollow, artificial spaceship from another civilization. (more…)