Read Heaven at SETI's Doorstep Page 3


  * Hundreds of "moonquakes" are recorded each year that cannot be attributed to meteor impacts. In November, 1958, Soviet astronomer Nikolay A. Kozyrev of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory photographed a gaseous eruption on the moon near the crater Alphonsus. He also detected a reddish glow that lasted for about an hour. In 1963, astronomers at the Lowell Observatory also saw reddish glows on the crests of ridges in the Aristarchus region. These observations have proved to be precisely identical and periodical, in repeating sequence as the moon moves cyclically slightly closer and farther away from the Earth. These do not seem to be natural phenomena.

  * Mascons are large, dense, circular masses, lying twenty to forty miles beneath the centers of each of the moon’s large maria (dried crater-like ocean beds). Some scientists suggest that these are broad, disk-shaped objects that could even be some kind of artificial construction. It is claimed that large circular disks would not appear perfectly centered beneath each huge mare by coincidence or accident.