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You are here: Experts > Science > Space and Astronomy for Kids > Astronomy > Lunar rilles
Expert: Courtney Seligman - 11/3/2009
Question
QUESTION: i saw your answer about Lunar rilles but the other expert said "The surface of the moon is replete with long channels or grooves that continue to create unsolved puzzles and contradictions for geologists. Every traditional theory, when tested against the photographic evidence, has failed "
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060317rille.htm
can you give the cleavage theory more time to think about?
ANSWER: I read the answer I believe you're referring to, and the page you linked to. The latter makes a compelling argument that current theories of rill/rille formation may be wrong; but that doesn't mean that the cleavage theory referred to in the question I originally answered has even the slightest chance of being correct.
It is conceivable that collisions between bodies could break them up -- in fact, that happens "all the time" in the asteroid belt, where once every few tens of millions of years, one asteroid or another has chunks broken off it by a collision with another asteroid. But such collisions wouldn't produce features such as rilles -- they would produce immense craters. And all the really big craters on the Moon are at least 4 billion years old (they predate the formation of the lunar maria, which started around 3.9 billion years ago). The Moon probably formed as the result of a gigantic collision between the Earth and some other planetary object around 4.46 to 4.49 billion years ago; but there is no evidence that once the resulting pieces formed into the Moon (within a few centuries after that collision), any subsequent breakup of the Moon has occurred.
Reading my earlier answer, perhaps I should have made it clear why the cleavage theory could not be correct, in addition to explaining what the accepted theory is. I hope this answer takes care of that oversight.
By the way, although the linked article makes a good argument against accepting current theories of rill formation without any question, I am sure the theory of electrical arcing mentioned there is impossible. The details of how the rilles formed may be uncertain, but I am sure they represent some kind of subsidence, and are not due to any external influence on the Moon.
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: thank you for your answer...
can you tell me please hypothetical if the cleavage occurred in the moon before 2000 years.. from your opinion what should we find now as a sign?
Yours sincerely
Answer
If such a thing had ever occurred, we should see immense cracks where things were put back together, or strange juxtapositions of very different terrains, as we do on Miranda (one of the moons of Uranus), which is thought to have been broken apart and put back together at some time in the very distant past (probably 3+ billion years ago, but since we have very little information about Miranda, that is merely an educated guess).
On our Moon, in contrast, there is nothing which looks like cracks, save for the rilles, and those are neither large enough nor extensive enough to require such an explanation. In addition, using the example of Miranda, if the Moon were cracked apart and then put back together, it would be virtually impossible for the features on either side of the cracks to line up with each other, even approximately; whereas the terrain on either side of the rills looks as if, save for the rills, it is an absolutely continuous terrain.
As a result, although we don't know exactly what caused the rilles, it would be more reasonable to suppose that God took a big stick and doodled on the lunar surface, than that the Moon was ever 'cleaved', regardless of the timescale involved. And although I'm sure there are those who might consider that a reasonable explanation, no astronomer would give it any credence, as supernatural events are not considered acceptable explanations of scientific topics (you have to be able to replicate things, experimentally or theoretically, to convince other scientists, and if God did doodle on the lunar surface, we aren't likely to be able to convince him to do it again, just for our edification).
In other words, I feel absolutely certain that whatever the correct explanation of the rilles is, the Moon was never 'cleaved', and that theory is absolutely and completely wrong.
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