Friday, August 28, 2009

How Did the Dutch Government End Up With a Fake Moon Rock?


Maybe JimO can put his investigative prowess to some use here.

7 comments:

RonNasty said...

I thought the moon was made of cheese, which would have made sense giving some to the Dutch, but this changes everything.

JimO said...

What's the mystery? Some old retired politician's family remember him telling them he got his own moon rock from an astronaut, decades before. There was no donation of any lunar sample to this guy on NASA's records, and they keep careful records of diplomatic moon chip gifts.

I'm still waiting to continue the discussion about Tom Van Flandern's spheres of influence slip. And before we hear about comparisons of documented expertise, my PhD work was in computational methods of celestial mechanics, and then I worked professionally in that specialty for two decades.

Mike Bara said...

I didn't realize you were a PhD Jim.

JimO said...

Never finished it, although coursework and much of dissertation was done -- my educational leave from the USAF, on the NASA traineeship, ran out of time. Maybe I should have clipped out a boxtop somewhere and sent it in to a PO Box out west.

david nineteenpointfive said...

"trust but verify". Unfortunately we cannot verify that.

Adrian said...

the funny goof of this story is that...up to the moment the discovery was made that the now so called moonrock is actually a piece of petrified wood...is was "believed" to be a genuine piece of the moon and given away as such by the so called astronauts (or what have you) as such...everybody has a laugh...but in the meantime it says it all does it not..petrified wood?!? that cover up and skull and fakery did a better job and lasted longer then all those other skull and fakeryjobs related to the moonlandings.

I say..NASA..well done! Bravo petrified wood..what a joke..and the joke is even bigger on those people who gave it away as genuine "moonpebbles" why not ask Buzzy on this one ay

Unknown said...

Everyone seems to be jumping to the shenanigans conclusion, but what if that petrified wood actually was brought back from the moon? I'm sure NASA would love to have greenhouses up there, so why wouldn't someone else?

I'm not saying this is what I believe but rather pointing out that the article didn't say whether or not the testing confirmed the tree grew in Earth gravity. They just assume it's from here because trees don't grow on the moon.

If it was actually a manufactured object, it would be the same conclusion. It would have to be from Earth because there was nothing artificial on the moon until we put it there!

The article states that NASA *vetted* the rock, presumably before it was determined to be "fake", so I cannot wait to hear NASA's explanation.