Asteroid found close to Moon's surface?

Some conspiracy theorist will come along, no doubt, and claim it's an underground alien base used to monitor the Earth.
 
mosaix said:
Some conspiracy theorist will come along, no doubt, and claim it's an underground alien base used to monitor the Earth.
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Got seriously confused by your comment and the thread title...how could an asteroid (which I assumed must be orbiting or close to the moon) also be underground :)

I mean is an asteroid that is part of the crust an asteroid? I think at best you could call it the remains of an asteroid! (If it's that, they also posit an alternative right at the end...) Interestingly, there is speculation that a great deal of precious metals and rare earth metals that we can mine on the Earth must have come from asteroids in the heavy late bombardment, as most of the heavy metals originally on the Earth would have sunk towards the core when the Earth was molten.

Anyway it's sitting underneath a crater, doesn't say exactly how far into the crust, but mentions 'hundreds of miles'. So I would not expect it to be top of our list of things to mine. Especially within a gravity well. Still better to go and find a nice metallic asteroid and nudge it into Earth orbit, when we need metal to make lots of things in space...

...and if it is an underground base. That is seriously deep. A bit overoverkill on secrecy. ;)
 
It's a spaceship like in the 1951 movie The Thing. They'll blow it up like they always do and no one will get to see what it looked like.
 
Sorry, I haven't time to read the article now, but are they saying that this "vast chuck of metal" is somehow unusual?

I have to go out but given that asteroids/meteorites are generally of two types - Stoney or Iron/Nickel - a large meteorite that is mostly Iron doesn't strike me as very strange on its own. That is the basis of all the many science fiction stories containing future 'Belter' miners. Nor does it seem that strange that it could have hit the Moon at some angle that meant it that stayed in one piece, and there is no atmosphere to cause it to burn up as it would on Earth.
 
Dave said:
Sorry, I haven't time to read the article now, but are they saying that this "vast chuck of metal" is somehow unusual?

I have to go out but given that asteroids/meteorites are generally of two types - Stoney or Iron/Nickel - a large meteorite that is mostly Iron doesn't strike me as very strange on its own. That is the basis of all the many science fiction stories containing future 'Belter' miners. Nor does it seem that strange that it could have hit the Moon at some angle that meant it that stayed in one piece, and there is no atmosphere to cause it to burn up as it would on Earth.
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Essentially the article is that they've found an anomalous chunk of something a couple hundred of kilometres under the southern pole that lines up with a huge crater. Probably a iron asteroid deep in the moons crust. Unless you are planning on seriously strip mining the moon or breaking it up, unlikely ever to be touched by human hand.

Third main type of asteroid is the 'carboniferous' one, which is mainly water and carbon based.
 
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