* Cold, Dead, and Inactive: The laws of physics move objects inexorably toward equilibrium. So Michael Seeds, professor of physics and astronomy and popular textbook author of the 1997 Foundations of Astronomy 6th Edition, wrote, "The Moon is now a cold, dead, geologically inactive world", p. 453. Except that it's not. (Post-show update: The 13th edition published in 2015, on page 492 was still describing the Moon as "geologically inactive".)
* Moon Keeps Pace with Solar System Action: The list below describes the broad range of types of transient lunar phenomena (TLP). Hundreds of events that last for only a short time, especially as compared to the moon's claimed 4.5 billion-year existence! Similarly, a tremendous number of transient events in the solar system (rsr.org/tess) have surprised astronomers because they contradict billions-of-years expectations.
* RSR's List of Transient Lunar Phenomena: All secular astronomers believe the moon to be billions of years old. Therefore they expect it would be "geologically" inert. However still today, as expected by young earthers, the entire solar system sees many transient events and yet TLP surprises the astronomers and cosmologists who are not biblical creationists. For example:
- Explosive Outgassing: NASA reports that though, "lunar volcanism was supposed to have ceased billions of years ago... outgassing... a rapid release of gasses, blowing off surface deposits" may have been happening recently "and may still be happening today". This is not unlike the many magma-less eruptions on Earth that release only volcanic gasses. The related 2006 journal Nature paper, Lunar activity from recent gas release, describes a three-square-mile region on the Moon called "Ina" which presents evidence, including Ina's colors, lack of craters, and sharp edges, of "recent, episodic out-gassing from deep within the Moon."
- Fast Lunar Recession: An "anomalously high" lunar recession rate measured in 2007 of the Moon moving away from the Earth by 1.5 inches per year would amount to an unworkable 24,000 miles per billion years, leading to repeated int'l conferences for this "lunar crisis" and then a desperate "dark matter" lunar recession proposal to try to defend the alleged 4.5 billion year age of the moon.
- A Thousand Annual Moonquakes: The "tectonically active" Moon has "young thrust faults" and about a thousand moonquakes per year quaking at up to magnitude 5 and even 5.5 according to 2019 Nature Geoscience and NASA, meaning it's still shrinking.
- Recent Lunar Volcanism: As reported in 2006, a three-square-mile region called Ina suggests recent volcanism by its colors, lack of craters, and sharp edges (in addition to the hundreds of "relatively young craters with crisp outlines and freshly-excavated crustal material [that hasn't] had time to darken from the effects of solar ions and cosmic rays...").
- Molten Outer Core: In 2011 the Moon's small molten outer core was discovered, yet such lunar heat should have dissipated over the last billions of years.
- Moon Still Radiating Heat: As reported in the 1970s, heat is still flowing out of the Moon contrary to old-age thermal models. See Planetary Geology.
- Unequal Hemisphere Temperatures: The hemispheres of the moon surprise astronomers by radiating heat unequally, with the near side being 30 degrees warmer than the far side, from 280 to 310 degrees below zero, according to 2019 reports at LiveScience and phys.org from China's Chang'e-4 probe that landed on the far side.
- Photographic Evidence of Surface Changes: The most scientifically verifiable observation project, with photos taken every 20 seconds in 2014, confirming centuries of claims of transient phenomena in particular lunar regions.
- Young Craters: Astronomers have identified scores of "relatively young craters with crisp outlines and freshly-excavated crustal material [that hasn't] had time to darken from the effects of solar ions and cosmic rays...".
- Rapid Dust Buildup: As reported in 2013, dust accumulates on the Moon at the rate of a millimeter per thousand years, which is an unworkable rate for the secular model, especially considering its even greater dust buildup expectations in its early solar system.
- Minimal Overall Dust: Assuming a Moon sweeping up space debris for billions of years, NASA feared deep moon dust as documented in their own history of the Apollo missions and by an astronaut who walked on the moon and a lead equipment scientist, both of whom we interviewed here on RSR. So the rapid buildup of dust and the Moon's overall minimal few inches together indicate that the dusting itself must be a recent transient event, as shown in straighforward calculations available at rsr.org/moon#dust.
- New "Enormous" Number of Boulder Tracks: Unlike lunar crater chains (which are astounding in themselves), boulder tracks averaging five meters and as narrow as a single meter in width appear across the Moon's surface. As with the ubiquitous micrometeorites apparently covering every square centimeter of the Moon (see below), millions of years of space dust and impact debris should cover such shallow tracks. Yet the less than 1% of the surface imaged at "high" resolution by the Lunar Orbiter contains scores of such tracks. Now with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter currently orbiting the moon, "the number of boulder tracks on the lunar surface is ENORMOUS!!!"
- Outgassing of Radon: As reported in 2008, "every lunar orbital mission capable of sampling a large fraction of the Moon’s surface in terms of [Radon] sources has detected episodic emission of this short-lived, radioactive gas", including Japan's Kaguya mission, and see the 1999 observation that radon outgassing may be the source of the moon's tenuous atmosphere and result of tectonic activity.
- Photogenic: Note the 1953 photo of a genuine TLP to the right. :)
- Outgassing of Helium & Oxygen: The AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research reported in 2014 the direct measurement of oxygen and helium in the Moon's exosphere. Oxygen is a highlyy reactive element which readily forms compounds (notably oxides) with almost all other elements, adding additional pressure against claims of great age.
- Still Visible Ubiquitious Micrometeorites: As reported in 1975 and never contradicted, micrometeorites cover "every square centimeter of the lunar surface" in the opinion of the 2012 Shoemaker Distinguished Lunar Scientist Award winner. Yet if they were from the turbulent "early solar system", by now they would have been covered by craters. So their visibility is itself a transient event showing that they were recently deposited.
- Temporary Space Dust Clouds: Gravity tenuously holds major dust clouds in two of the Earth/Moon Lagrange points as reported by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. These "temporary" clouds were mostly ignored for six decades until 2018. First found in 1956, photographed and publicized in 1961, and then, as reported in Physics Today (and in the LA Times, Feb. 25, 1966) in 1966 amateur astronomers at the Lockheed Employees Recreation Association corroborated the existence of these (debris) dust clouds. RSR asserts that these were overlooked because, like dinosaur soft tissue, etc., they don't fit well in the old-earth paradigm. For if the dust is the debris that is assumed to have filled the early solar system, gravitational disturbance from the Sun should have dissipated these clouds billions of years ago. And by the same uniformitarian assumptions, the inner solar system has become relatively dust-free over the last billions of years, and so there wouldn't be enough dust to populate these clouds faster than they would dissipate. Hence, they are temporary.
- Cambridge in 2014; CMI in 2003: See more TLP in chapter 9, The Inconstant Moon, from Cambridge University Press, The New Moon, and back in 2003 from Dr. Don DeYoung's argument in Creation Ministries International's creationist Technical Journal, Transient lunar pheonomea: a permanent problem for evolutionary models.
- Etc.
* Earth's Own Transient TLP-Related Feature: Earth's atmosphere extends beyond the Moon! NASA reports on a 2019 paper in Journal of Geophysical Research that our exosphere extends beyond the orbit of the Moon. (RSR predicts that simulations would show that Earth's gravity, lunar gravity, and the solar wind would not permit a long lasting geocorona and therefore it's luminescing presence indicates a recent disturbance to Earth's atmosphere.)
* Sunrise, Moonrise, Earthrise, Questions Arise:
- "Are transient events anomalies?"
- "How many anomalies must occur before they are no longer anomalies?"
- "Does the tremendous number of observed short-lived events on the moon and throughout the solar system contradict the expectations of the billions of years paradigm?"
* A Few Lunar Features Known for TLP:
- Tycho crater
- Aristarchus crater
- Grimaldi crater
- Plato crater (father of geocentrism)
- Copernicus crater
- Kepler crater
- Grimaldi crater (flashes, color patches, hazy visibility, gaseous emissions)
- Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises)
- Etc.
You can expand this list by emailing Bob@rsr.org and include literature references for the locations to add.
* "Spectacularly Preserved" Impact Melt Flow: Yes. Except for the alleged timeframe, 48 million years ago, NASA's 2010 explanation for this flow is undoubtedly accurate: "Spectacularly preserved viscous flow on the NE rim of Byrgius A (19 km diameter) crater. This flow has a form similar to lava flows on Earth, however it formed as a result of an asteroid or comet [RSR: or unconsolidated debris field] slamming into the moon at hyper-velocity (speeds exceeding 16 km/second, or 35,791 mph). So much energy was released in the impact, that solid rock was melted and thrown out of the crater where it flowed down the crater flanks." At the 2010 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Cameras' team described Byrgius A as a "very fresh" crater with an age estimate of 48 million years and its "spectacular leveed flow" no longer thought to be volcanic but "now known to have originated by high shock pressures... at the impact site." Yet with the warm, living, and geologically active Moon described in the list of transient lunar phenomena above, should this melt flow be this "spectacularly preserved" after all that time? Rapid dust buildup accumulating on the Moon at the rate of a millimeter per thousand years? That discovery alone makes their 48 million year date unworkable for the flow would be hidden under 48 meters of dust. Further, the entire flow should have completely broken apart by now, considering temperature variation and earthquakes. In its alleged lifetime this flow would have experience more than half a billion hot to cold temperature swings, from days of more than 200 degrees F to nights of less than minus 200 degrees F. Add to that the Moon's measured "earthquake" rate, at over a thousand per year, suggests that this hardened flow, parts of which are "thin veneers... draped on the crater rim", hasn't completely broken apart through billions of moonquakes! Yes, there are a handful of "cracks in the veneer concentric to the crater rim" but these can be attributed to simple gravitational "downslope tension after emplacement." And some "mass wasting of fragmented rim veneer" was caused likely from nearby "small impacts or seismic activity". But for the entire edifice to survive more than 50 billion moonquakes without breaking apart? No wonder the researchers think this (obviously vastly younger) flow has been "spectacularly preserved".
* If You Know any Moon Hoax Folks: Feel free to send them along to rsr.org/moon. They'll find resources there like this...
* Have You Tried RSR's Multiple Creation Site Search? Our listeners are telling us that this Real Science Radio service, a customized multi-creation-site Google search, is AMAZINGLY effective and a fabulous time saver! And, it's a Google search! Only customized to save you time and make you smarter! Let's say you want to learn about the creationist explanation for the origin of comets to expose the secular model's inability to account for their olivine and other earth-like minerals. By using RSR's Multiple Creation Site Search, powered by Google, you'll be simultaneously searching the four largest and most popular creation sites and our own RSR pages! This tool bypasses the confusion and noise of Wikipedia and the Internet generally and let's you search simultaneously (including countless articles written by friends of Real Science Radio) the websites of Creation Ministries International, Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, Dr. Walt Brown's creationscience.com site, and our own RSR resources (at kgov.com, 360dayyear.com and youngearth.com). Enjoy!
* Science Predictions: Creationist predictions have an uncanny record of confirmation (rsr.org/predictions), whereas many of the most fundamental predictions of atheistic scientists fail (rsr.org/big-bang, rsr.org/big-bang-predictions, rsr.org/genetics, rsr.org/not-so-old-things). Just sayin'.
* Program Note: China's announcement that the Moon's far side is 30 degrees colder than the near side prompted Bob and Fred to air this transient lunar phenomena program instead of continuing, as planned, last week's discussion of news headlines.
* Our Annual Telethon: The guys also mention that we're in our annual February BEL/RSR Telethon and it's vital goal of raising $40,000 so that more and more people can be reached with the creation-based Christian worldview and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Please help by calling 1-800-8Enyart (836-9278) or clicking on over to the store at store.kgov.com. Thanks so very much!