Problem of the Week

Chapter 1: Chemistry: The Science of Matter

Problem of the Week

Conspiracy Theory
A television documentary and supermarket tabloid claims that U.S. Missions to the Moon were faked. They support a "conspiracy theory" which states that no one really landed on the Moon and the entire Moon landing was set up in a movie studio. Evidence used to support this theory is allegedly found in the pictures of the Moon landing.

There are three independent sets of lunar rock and soil samples available to test to prove or disprove this theory. The Apollo samples, meteorites from the Moon which were discovered on the blue ice in Antarctica in the early 1980's, and samples collected from the Moon and returned by the Soviet robotic spacecraft Luna 16 are available.

The lunar soil samples consist of angular agglutinates and glass beads with nearly a total absence of quartz. The lunar soil samples show no evidence of iron (III) oxide, which is formed when iron oxidizes or rusts. Iron titanium oxide or ilmenite is found in the lunar soil and is black in appearance. Lunar soil also contains plagioclase feldspars which appear white, olivine, green, or as a yellowish-brown mineral. All three sets of lunar samples are similar in chemistry and mineralogy.

Soil and rock samples from Earth are composed of rounded grains, primarily of quartz. Many samples contain some iron (III) oxide that gives the soil a red, yellow, or brown coloration.