If, as seems to be the case with the Earth (Stenberg, 2012), the Moon was initially created to be cool throughout and was heated by radioactive decay to its current internal temperature, we can calculate the amount of thermal expansion that it would experience, and we can compare the increased circumference to the overall size of the thermal expansion cracks. Although it’s hard to exactly measure the width of the cracks, it appears as though the total circumferential expansion of the Moon was approximately 200 km. Using this figure, the total radial expansion of the moon would have been about 32 km, which would require an increase of the average internal temperature of the Moon of about 1000 K. This corresponds to approximately three quarters of all radioactive decay heat that would have ever been produced on the Moon, assuming the equivalent of 4.5 billion years of decay. (Appendix A) This heat pulse needed to occur fast enough inside the Moon so that the lunar crust was not able to thermally expand to the same degree as the interior due to conductive heat transfer from the interior. The lunar maria basalts are relatively enriched in radioactive materials such as Uranium and Thorium compared to the rest of the lunar crust, meaning that a disproportionate amount of the heating would have taken place deeper inside the moon. If all 4.5 billion years of decay equivalent occurred in one year-long event, then the other 25% of the heat would have to be accounted for. One possibility is that some of this missing heat escaped the interior of the moon when volcanic explosions blasted molten materials and water vapor into space around the Moon where they could have cooled more quickly due to radiative cooling. Some of those materials would have re-fallen to the lunar surface as regolith, ice, or even small meteorites. Another possibility is simply that the assumptions that were made in arriving at the total inventory of radioactive isotopes on the moon that are being relied on for this calculation resulted in a value that is 25% different than the actual value. Finally, it is also possible that 200 km of circumferential expansion is a slight overestimate. However, even a 75% match between decay heat and heat needed to thermally expand the moon to its present size is quite close given the uncertainties in some of the values used in the calculations. The situation appears similar on Mars. Its gravity map shows a number of large cracks to the east of the Tharsis region – the region that contains Olympus Mons and the three other prominent Martian volcanoes which lie is a line from northeast to southwest. Most of the cracks are largely filled in on Mars, too, with the major exception of Valle Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system by far. (Figure 4) Although some have proposed that this canyon was carved by water, it is a local minimum in elevation, and it appears as though it would receive incoming water from any direction with no obvious outflow that would enable a megaflood to carve it. This is unlike the Grand Canyon, for instance, which has a downward pitch that allows the Colorado River to keep flowing, eventually to the Gulf of California. So a better explanation is that there was some kind of internal heating event for Mars that caused the interior to expand relative to the crust, leading to the formation of this series of thermal expansion cracks and also to the relatively rapid formation of these Tharsis volcanoes – among the largest in our solar system. Indeed, other creation scientists have already proposed that many of the features on Mars can be explained by a period of accelerated radioactive decay (Samec, 2014). If, as we did for the moon, we assume that Mars was initially created cool throughout and the heat from accelerated nuclear decay heated it to its current temperature, we can again compare the change in size, inferred by the size of these cracks, to the amount of thermal expansion we would predict from the heat of accelerated nuclear decay. It appears that adding the width of Valle Marineris with the other cracks discovered by its gravity mapping mission yields an approximate increase in the Martian circumference of about 400 km, which implies a radial expansion of about 64 km. This would require an increase of the average internal temperature of about 1400 K, which would have required about 90% of all the radioactive decay of Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium-40 that would have occurred over the equivalent of 4.5 billion years to have occurred in one relatively rapid event. Perhaps the other 10% would have radiated into space as the lavas that formed Olympus Mons and the other Tharsis volcanoes cool radiatively in the thin atmosphere (Appendix B), or perhaps the real value is 10% different than the one used in this calculation, or perhaps 4.5 billion years equivalent is off by a similar small percentage. In any case, it is significant that the calculated values for heat needed for thermal expansion are quite close to the calculated heat released in an accelerated nuclear decay event. Figure 3. Uranium map of the Moon showing that the maria are likewise enriched in Uranium Figure 4. Gravity Map of Mars showing a series of fairly straight cracks that have mostly been filled in. Note that Valle Marineras, the largest canyon in the solar system, appears to be connected to the other apparent cracks, but is not filled in. STERNBERG Craters and cracks 2023 ICC 13
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