The moon has been altered by human activity. Are we in a 'Lunar Anthropocene?

[Admin]

Mirroring the Earth's Anthropocene, which describes the age in which humans altered our planet, scientists argue moon advancements place us in a Lunar Anthropocene.

The moon has been altered by human activity. Are we in a 'Lunar Anthropocene? : Read more

 

[Jan Steinman]

We have even seeded the moon with the multi-cellular life form that is most likely to survive such an environment! There are thousands of tardigrades on the moon!

There Are Thousands of Tardigrades on the Moon. Now What?

Did they survive their crash landing? If so, what happens to them now?

www.livescience.com

 

[Maury Wood]

There is brand new wonderful video on PBS SpaceTime about the earth's Anthropocene epoch, in which Matt O'Dowd claims that all of humanity's impact on Earth (everything we know) will be reduced to just few millimeters of sedimentary rock over geologic time, due to subduction and other geologic dynamics :

View: https://youtu.be/vyEWLhOfLgQ?si=wcN-Ch_c8j2ybDoZ

 

[Jan Steinman]

all of humanity's impact on Earth (everything we know) will be reduced to just few millimeters of sedimentary rock over geologic time…

Yes! Almost all traces of humanity will be reduced to a thin, greasy line in the strata. And it won't even have any iridium in it.

Doesn't that make you feel special?

I only hope that whatever comes after us — sentient bonobos, canids, cetaceans, whatever — finds enough human artifacts to serve as a warning sign!

At least, they won't have the benefit of some 200,000,000 years of stored sunlight. We've used all the low-hanging fruit up, and future sentient creatures aren't likely to be able to access "tight" oil without bootstrapping from the early gushers, like humans did.

 

[OrionEridanus]

Lunar Anthropocene is being announced way too early.
Natural processes turnover the lunar regolith on order of once every 81,000 years (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19829 )

That is 180 mi.² per year. Generously assuming human driven regolith turnover is 100 m² /year, humans are altering the surface at a rate much less than < 1 millionth as much.

Announcing the lunar Anthropocene is like calling Amazon clearcutting the Pinewood Derby Catastrophe, from the combined impact on lumber demand by cub scouts making pinewood derby cars

 

[Classical Motion]

What can been harmed or interfered with on the moon? We should take all kinds of life there and see what happens. Try plants and fungi too. Root it in the soil. I'll bet fungi make it. Stubborn stuff.

It might turn out that living on the moon might be quite dangerous for us. There is no shield. We'll never know until we live there a while. And at this rate, it'll be another fifty years before we do.

What better environment----to study "space"? Space with gravity......even. Gravity for us and only space to observe and measure with. What a lab.

We don't need new tech and new engineering, we just need dependable, repeatable engineering.