That clearly implies that life is fully and deeply entrenched throughout the universe. The more serious question remains just how did it get started in thev first place.
These words used in the conclusion to this biochemical analysis indicate just how hopelessly contrived the whole Big Whack theory is. They go on to say: ‘This [hypothesis] has arisen not so much because of the merits of [its] theory as because of the apparent dynamical or geochemical shortcomings of other theories.’ In other words scientists hang onto the Big Whack theory, even though it has more holes than a rusty colander, simply because no other logical explanation has been found. It is just the least impossible explanation for a celestial body that has no right to be there.
Not only is the Big Whack theory discredited on a number of grounds by the scientific fraternity itself, it also singularly fails to deal with the anomalies thrown up by our own research, as outlined throughout this book. Big Whack cannot explain the extraordinary ratio relationship between the Moon and the Sun or the Moon and the Earth. The Moon could, by pure chance, end up being exactly 1/400th the size of the Sun and occupying an orbit that allows it to stand 1/400th the distance between the Earth and the Sun – but the odds are, quite literally, astronomically against it.
The Moon is proportionally bigger in relation to its host planet than any other in the solar system apart from Charon, Pluto’s moon, which is more than half the diameter of Pluto. These two bodies are essentially twin planets or may be asteroids orbiting each other at close range although they are believed to have an unrelated origin. Mercury has no moons at all and neither has Venus. Mars does have two moons but they are tiny in comparison with our own. A close examination of the many samples of Moon rock brought back by the American Apollo missions and the Soviet unmanned missions has thrown up what turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of all. It has been observed that the oldest of the rocks collected from the Moon are significantly more ancient that any rock ever found on Earth. The most venerable rocks to be found on the Earth date back 3.5 billion years, whilst some samples from the Moon are around 4.5 billion years old – which is very close to the estimated age of our solar system. When radioactive dating techniques are applied to meteorites they are uniformly found to be 4.6 billion years old. Yet even these rocks have the same oxygen isotope signature as those on Earth, another indication that the Moon has occupied its present distance from the Sun for an incredibly long time.
We came to realize that many reputable experts across the world have significant misgivings about current theories concerning the Moon’s origins that, as we have shown in this chapter, they were quite willing to voice publicly. No matter how much the advocates of the Big Whack theory may claim they have solved the puzzle that is the Moon, it is quite obvious that this claim is far from being true.
The Moon remains, to borrow the words of Winston Churchill, ‘a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’. ‘We choose to go to the moon.’ President John F Kennedy: September 12th , 1962 After the end of the Second World War, rocket scientists from Germany were ‘liberated’ by both the United States and the Soviet Union, and by the beginning of the 1950s these experts were put to work on creating weapons of various sorts that would fuel the Cold War between the Eastern communists and the Western capitalists. On the American side the most famous of the German experts was Vernher Von Braun who had created the V1 and V2 rockets for Nazi Germany and who eventually went on to design the Saturn V rocket that would take people to the Moon.
At the outset the USA focused its attentions on developing new types of small but immensely powerful hydrogen bombs based on nuclear fusion whilst the USSR continued to refine the older and much heavier fission bomb. The Soviets therefore had to develop more powerful rockets and the R-7 missile, capable of carrying a five-tonne warhead, was the result. Their Chief Designer, Sergei Korolyov, realized that these rockets would also be capable of putting a one-and-a-half tonne satellite into Earth’s orbit and he put forward his plan for such a mission. Korolyov’s project was well under way when news came that the US was developing its own satellite launch, known as Project Vanguard. This new challenge set up a ‘race to space’ and Korolyov’s Main satellite project was temporarily suspended as all efforts became focused on the early launch of a smaller artificial satellite that could be built far more quickly. Sputnik lifted into the skies on October 4th 1957. This first spacecraft was a forty-pound sphere that carried a simple transmitter so that it could make meaningless, but technical sounding, bleeping sounds at which the world could marvel.
The first two Sputniks were therefore politically inspired projects carried out by Sergei Korolyov under orders from the Kremlin and it was not until May 15th 1958 that his original spacecraft was launched – now designated Sputnik 3. This was a serious piece of equipment that was an automated scientific laboratory. It carried twelve instruments providing data on pressure and composition of the upper atmosphere; concentration of charged particles; photons in cosmic rays; heavy nuclei in cosmic rays; magnetic and electrostatic fields; and meteoric particles. And it was Sputnik 3 that first detected the presence of the outer radiation belts that surround the Earth.
The United States was highly embarrassed by the Soviet achievements, and particularly so because it was having little success with its own rocket launchers. So many of them blew up on the launch pad or during takeoff that the world’s press variously dubbed the American space mission ‘Kaputnik, Flopnik, and Stayputnik’.
NASA responded quickly by sending the astronaut Alan Shepherd on a ballistic trajectory sub-orbital flight to an altitude of 116 miles, returning to Earth at a landing point just 302 miles down the Atlantic Missile Range. America’s first manned space flight was a fifteen minute sky rocket event that was nowhere near the same league as Yuri Gagarin’s 25,000 mile, high-speed voyage into Earth’s orbit.
The race to get a man into space had been won by the USSR but there was a second, more ambitious competition running in parallel. Reaching for the Moon! It first these were half-hearted attempts to get some metal, any bit of metal, onto the Moon. It had started with the first Pioneer rocket launched in 1958 by the United States – which lasted a full seventy-seven seconds before disintegrating into a giant fireball. A few months later the USSR launched Luna I, which performed beautifully but unfortunately missed the Moon and headed into solar orbit. In September 1959 the USSR managed to hit the bull’s-eye when Luna 2 became the first craft to land on another celestial body, slamming into the Moon’s surface just east of the Sea of Serenity. Before the impact Luna 2 was able to report back that there was something very odd about the Moon – it did not seem to have a magnetic field.