Ever since Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong gave former Dutch prime minister William Drees a chunk of moon-rock in 1969, the public has been eager to see it. In fact, the relic has drawn tens of thousands of people to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.
But Houston, we have a problem: Turns out that so-called moon rock (which was insured for 308,000 British pounds, or about $500,000) is really just a hunk of petrified wood—and its actual value is less than 50 British pounds.
Researchers Amsterdam’s Free University were able to tell at a glance that the rock was unlikely to be from the moon, a conclusion that was borne out by tests. “It’s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,” said Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation [of the rock].
Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation, said the museum would continue to keep the stone as a curiosity. “It’s a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered,” she said. “We can laugh about it.”
An investigation is under way to find out how the heck this debacle could have happened (a bait-and-switch, perhaps?). Meanwhile, we bet moon conspiracists will view this discovery as far from a laughing matter—in fact, it may add fuel to their argument that the moon landing never really happened. (For the record, it did.)
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Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum
August 31st, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Finding petrified wood on the moon would be a pretty awesome discovery in itself.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
My first thought was that it was switched by a courier and the real moon rock sold to a collector. What documentation accompanied the sample? I would expect that it should, in principle, be traceable to a particular sample collected at a particular time.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:49 pm
What do we know about the chain of custody since it was given to the Dutch? It could be that they were given the real thing and this was substituted by a thieves later on.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:34 am
Phil,
This may be a misunderstanding caused by two Dutch artists, Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, who organized an artistic event in 2006. This is where this “moon rock” first appeared. The event was very tongue-in-cheek, so maybe they concocted a fake rock” and plaque to test the perceptions and knowledge of the participants, and then the origin of the rock was forgotten. There are quite a few clues pointing in this direction.
For example, why would the plaque of a US gift have such very Dutch mistakes as “Apollo-11″ (with a hyphen) and “Centre” (British spelling)? Why would the US government give a moon rock to a Dutch politician who at the time had not been in office for over 10 years? Why give away a fist-sized moon rock barely three months after the first sample return and before Apollo 12 landed? Why was the rock shown for the first time in an art exhibition rather than a science exhibition?
That’s as far as I’ve got with my research (I’m a consultant for the Italian skeptic association CICAP). Maybe you can pull a few strings and wring more information out of the parties involved? For example, can we get independent confirmation from Ambassdor Middendorf? Are there any Dutch records of this artifact being shown before?
September 1st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
[...] Content: Discoblog: It’s a Hoax! Famed “Moon Rock” Turns Out to Be Hunk of Wood Discoblog: To Track Penguins, Scientists Use High-Tech Satellite Images of…Droppings Discoblog: [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Something’s not right about this. Petrified wood is usually pretty distinctive (what with the biological origin and all…). Moon rocks would have no such lineage. Who would be fooled into thinking that a hunk of petrified wood was a lunar sample??
Casting geology into computing, that’s roughly the equivalent of mistaking a keyboard for a mouse. Yes, they are both input devices, but they can be easily told apart.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:00 am
This is just one of many many fishy things about the moon landings. Apparently, they gave over a HUNDRED of these “moon rocks” to over a hundred nations. Test them all, and I am certain they are all fake….more than likely because they were never on the moon. Bunch of jive muthas~