As Apollo 17 Astronaut Harrison Schmitt poked around a lunar crater last December, he suddenly shouted, "Hey, there is orange soil! It's all over!" Schmitt's excitement was shared by scientists back on earth. Because the soil looked remarkably fresh and the crater resembled volcanic vents on earth, they speculated that volcanic activity might well have occurred on the moon as recently as 200,000 or 300,000 years ago. That would have upset the widely held view that the moon has been largely dormant for more than 3 billion years. Said NASA Geochemist Robin Brett: "If the material is indeed so young, we...
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