To Study The Sun, Go To The Moon
or “On The Surface Of The Moon, a Four-billion-year Record of Solar Activity Awaits Us”
[UPDATE : More evidence of the “imprint” of solar wind into lunar soil]
In her 2007 article “The Sun and the Earth’s Climate” published in “Living Reviews in solar physics” (Living Rev. Solar Phys. 4, (2007), http://www.livingreviews.org/lrsp-2007-2 cited on Sep 25, 2009), Professor Joanna D. Haigh writes in the Conclusions:
One important issue is to establish the magnitude of any secular trends in total solar irradiance (TSI). This may be achieved by careful analysis and understanding of the satellite instruments [and] continued [with] current and new satellites. For longer periods it requires a more fundamental understanding of how solar magnetic activity relates to TSI. This would not only facilitate more reliable centennial-scale reconstructions of TSI, from e.g. sunspot records, but also advance understanding of how cosmogenic isotope records may be interpreted as historical TSI.
Actually, there is another source of information for the history of solar activity, and it could open possibilities of discovery and understanding of an almost unheard-of scale.
I am talking about the surface of the Moon.
As per my notes about my (yes, peer-reviewed!) 2005 article “W.W.W. MOON? The why, what and when of a permanent manned lunar colony” (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 58(3-4):131-7):
The […] lunar soil’s regolith contains also an at-least-billion-year-long record of the solar activity [22] [23] [24] that would help a lot in the understanding of the behaviour and evolution of our star. Just as well, buried regolith deposits are expected to preserve traces of the very young Sun [25].
These are the references for the above
[22] H Y Mc Sween, Jr., ‘Stardust to Planets‘, St. Martin’s Press, 1993, p136
[23] P D Spudis, ‘The Once and Future Moon‘, Smithsonian, 1996, p196
[24] P D Spudis, ‘The Once and Future Moon‘, Smithsonian, 1996, p106
[25] P D Spudis, ‘The Once and Future Moon‘, Smithsonian, 1996, p115
One doesn’t need to be a hardcore skeptic or AGW believer to understand the enormous worth of getting such information, awaiting us at a distance that can be covered in a mere 3 days.
The Unbearable Nakedness of CLIMATE CHANGE 
PKD asks, “how does the moon hold billions of years worth of data?”
The solar wind is continuously embedded in the surfaces of lunar soils. The elemental and isotopic composition of the photosphere and the solar wind change as the degree of mass fractionation in the Sun changes. The degree of mass separation in the Sun varies as the magnetic activity at the solar surface changes because:
1. Solar cycles are cycles of surface magnetic activity. We “see” sunspots when deep-seated magnetic fields protrude through the photosphere.
2. These magnetic fields are deep-seated and ancient, probably coming from the neutron star at the core of the Sun or from superconductivity in the iron-rich material that encases the core. See: “Superfluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate,” Journal of Fusion Energy 21 (2002) 193-198 http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0501441v1
3. The Sun is a plasma diffuser [See: “The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass,” Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) 1847-1856; or Yadernaya Fizika 69 (Russian, November 2006) number 11 http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0609509v3%5D. The carrier gas that maintains mass separation in the Sun is a steady stream of protons (from neutron decay) that are accelerated upward from the core by these deep-seated magnetic fields.
4. When sunspots wane, the upward flow of the carrier gas drops, and the abundances of heavyweight elements and the heavyweight isotopes of each element increase in the photosphere and in the solar wind. See isotope data for Kr and Xe released from lunar soil #15601.64
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1972Data1.htm
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09
Maurizio,
Good stuff! Needless to say, I am in nearly complete agreement – the Moon is a great place to study the Earth.
Also saw your “W.W.W. Moon?” paper. Very good. I have recently summarized my current views on lunar return here:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1349
Keep up the good fight!
Paul
Out of curiosity as someone only starting to get into Astronomy how does the moon hold billions of years worth of data. I can only imagine ice being laid down each year to get Vostok type ice-cores. How is it meant to work on the Moon???
PKD – I hope this link from Google Books works fine:
Lunar sourcebook: a user’s guide to the moon
edited by Grant H. Heiken, David T. Vaniman, Bevan M. French
– 1993
Cap&Trade will be established all around the world long before samples of moon rocks could be retrieved and examined. And even if the the sun is proved beyond doubt to control our climate, and CO2 is shown to be a red herring, nothing will come of it. Cap&Trade will never be dismantled. Cap&Trade is forever, bro.
That’s part of the complaint of the climate skeptics; CO2 has never been shown conclusivly to be responsible for controlling the climate so why are we bringing in this new tax system to control CO2. It might not be CO2 after all.
But as they say, the politicians have arrived at a consensus. So Cap&Trade it is, and once this genie is out of the bottle it will never go back.
Exactly right!
See for example: http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1972Data1.htm
Data from measurements on lunar dirt first showed us that the Sun sorts atoms (elements and isotopes) by mass.
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
http://www.omatumr.com or
http://myprofile.cos.com/manuelo09