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Evidence of Past Life on the Moon Raises New Questions
About the Origin of Life on Earth
by
Steve Troy

While the scientific controversy regarding the presence of microfossil life in the so-called "Martian meteorite" continues, new questions about microbial life have recently been raised in an even more inhospitable locale +

The Moon.

Two biologists at the Russian Academy of Sciences recognized strong similarities between lunar fossilized microorganisms returned from Soviet Luna 16 and Luna 20 mission core samples and familiar, spiral filamentous microorganisms found on present day Earth. The findings of biologists Stanislav Zhmur and Lyumila Gerasimenko were announced at an astrobiology conference in Denver in July 1999 and published in December of that year. Their findings regarding biological microfossils in carbonaceous meteorites from the Moon were announced but were passed off by some critics as contaminants from terrestrial examination.

However, a close reading of the presentation indicates that it is extremely unlikely that the microfossils are the result of contamination. The Luna samples were robotically accessed drill-cores that were hermetically encapsulated on the Moon. They survived re-entry and when the Russian biologists received them, they were opened and examined immediately in a laboratory. According to Zhmur "The lithified remnants ...are tightly conjugated with the mineral matrix, removing the possibility that they are contaminants." In other words, the microfossils are intertwined with the rock itself, meaning that they were entombed within the rock very shortly after it was formed or ejected. Most likely, they were frozen in time and place on the Lunar surface after originating elsewhere in the solar system.

This theory, called "panspermia," was first proposed late in the last century by Swedish chemist, S. A. Arrhenius. As a result of some highly controversial recent space discoveries (the Martian "rock"), it lately has enjoyed a high-profile revival -- but in a significantly altered form from Arrhenius' original ideas. Currently, its most vigorous proponents are the well-known British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle, and his co-author, Sri Lankan mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe. Essentially, the theory claims that we all could be "aliens" -- that we all could well have microbial ancestors from somewhere across the universe. Exactly how these microbes managed to make it to Earth (or from Earth to other bodies in the solar system) is a subject of enormous current conjecture, but usually focuses on the idea of the microbes "hitching a ride" on comets or meteors. Beyond the Martian meteorite, there is some other evidence to support the panspermia concept.

There have been papers claiming to have found and revived bacteria on Earth that were dormant in the form of spores within salt crystals for 250 million years. Geophysicist Jay Melosh from Lunar and Planetary Institute has stated that such organisms could endure 10-100 million year sojourns between Mars and Earth or vice versa. It therefore stands to reason that the Luna fossils could have survived such a journey to the Moon from Earth as well.

Given that the Apollo astronauts brought back lunar rocks and core samples from only 6 regions out of 15 million square miles and the two Luna Soviet missions took their buried cores from separate regions of Mare Fecunditatis 120 miles apart, an intriguing possibility is implied. If such a discovery can be made from only few samples taken by NASA and the Soviets - literally amounting to survey of less than 1 millionth of the total lunar surface area - then the lunar surface (and just below) must be literally teeming with such fossilized life!

Which raises an even bigger question - how the heck did it get there? What processes could have occurred to explain terrestrial-like microorganisms from a 10" lunar drill core?

Tom Van Flandern's Exploding Planet Hypothesis (EPH) readily explains planetary explosion mechanisms and provides the propulsion system for the debris to be carried to and from one body to another throughout the solar system (including our Moon or Mars). In his theory, blast waves propagate surface crust and organic material across that system impacting other bodies and moons like our own. Bacteria, having survived the blast and the interplanetary journey would be deposited in the lunar vacuum and then be fossilized. 'Luna fossils' could therefore indeed be there as a result of impact-travel. The fact that the Luna fossils resembled modern terrestrial coccoidal bacteria could mean that our Moon and Earth might have experienced such a dynamic process.

But there is another, even more interesting possibility that this new data presents and it must be said that in the event record, it is common knowledge that evidence of past lunar life on a much grander scale than microbes was discovered many years prior to the Luna fossil announcement. Richard Hoagland's application of the Hyperdimensional concepts (originating from mathematical explorations of Cydonia) correlated explicitly to the 'astrophysical origins and role of our Moon' in relation to the evolution of Earth.

And as Hoagland's previous lunar investigations have suggested, there is reason to suspect that the Moon has not always been the uninhabited rock it is today. Hoagland sifted through many NASA archives of lunar photography and discovered numerous examples of geometric, orthogonal arcologies, structures, and glass domes, many exhibiting somehow familiar design elements and all obviously constructed by sojourners from a past epoch. This site has followed up with these initial studies, and found many examples reinforcing the notion that the Moon was once a very active habitat. Glass domes in Mare Crisium, organized installations in Hortensius, and rectilinear structures in the region of Kepler crater have all revealed evidence of a vast (though ruined) civilization there.

The Luna fossil information therefore helps verify what we already know. The Moon could have very well been inhabited by space-farers who had physical contact with Earth and returned to the Moon and perhaps other places, bringing with them the "contaminating" terrestrial organisms as well as the technological ability to exist there. Fossilized microorganisms did not after all construct what Hoagland (and we) have found on the Moon.

In reality, the microfossil findings tend to support both the EPH/Panspermia idea, and Hoagland's "prior habitation" model. There is simply no way to know under which scenario "Earth-like" bacteria made it to the Moon. Millions of years have passed since the cessation of the Copernican crater era. Incessant meteoric rain has battered the Moon for eons. The dinosaurs saw the Moon (mostly) as we see it. But if you consider the political developments both before and after the samples were brought back - over thirty years ago - you can perhaps get a clearer picture.

The Soviets race to and exploration of the Moon was closely shrouded in secrecy and even denied for over 25 years. We've gotten snippets of information about it here and there, like the fossil-announcement. There was indeed strangeness in their attitudes toward the Moon, just as there was (and still is) in NASA. They scheduled and then cancelled their first planned circumlunar Russian flight of cosmonauts in December of '68 just before Apollo 8's historical flight around the Moon. It was cancelled after a major USSR robotic mission returned its high- resolution films back to Earth. Why? Could they have found something on the film that "paralyzed" their lunar program? After several major catastrophic booster and rocket failures, political leadership at the Kremlin terminated the head of the Soviet lunar program. His successor then proceeded to destroy most of the evidence of it in much the same way that much of our own Apollo legacy was disposed of, including photography, blueprints, etc. We know that NASA's lunar program was abruptly and prematurely cancelled. What went wrong with our space programs 30 years ago? We never went back after 1972. It was as if both space programs had been quarantined.

Was this the real reason why NASA initially quarantined the Apollo astronauts? Because they might have known that there had been 'forward contamination' of the Moon by people from Earth? Have we really heard all there is to know about what was in the Apollo 15-17 deep cores?

NASA has denied and tried to cover up the existence of lunar artifacts and structures for thirty-plus years. If there were any laboratory results found from returned samples and cores at the Apollo landing sites similar to the Soviet ones at Fecunditatis, they haven't told us about them. Not a word. They're not in the in the Apollo Scientific Reports.

From this perspective, the release of the Luna fossil announcement is crucial. The Cold War is over. They are refusing to 'junk' Mir. In a sense they have broken with NASA and aren't towing the "party-line." They've now disclosed a piece of vital scientific information that could reflect other recently declassified Russian information of its long-hidden and troubled space program.

If life on Earth could have come from a Mars rock, why couldn't a Moon fossil be an indicator of previous lunar terrestrial visitation? Full disclosure of intelligent life elsewhere whether on Mars or the Moon will never come at one time. According to many, including the writers of the Brookings Institution Report commissioned by NASA in 1959, our civilization would be paralyzed. And the desensitizing effect of irresponsible UFO- mania has numbed us to valid and reliable scientific data such as the Luna-story and the structural lunar anomalies that are being researched and reported on today.

Disclosure will come piecemeal, bit- by -bit. Malin released his 57,000 Mars images so that we have to fish further for the truth some already know. For years, NASA has 'hidden the lunar artifacts in plain sight' -- for those who have the ambition and time to delve into the archives to find them. It's just a matter of time before ALL of us will know. And we will. Its when we make the decision to go back to the Moon to really explore and to colonize it, that we will really see that indeed, we were there before.