Scattering the ashes of a deceased loved one into the air or throwing them into the water is a beautiful way to say goodbye and pay a posthumous tribute to him or her. However, for some time now, this has been restricted in some countries by the authorities due to the fact that some uncivilized people abandon the funeral urn without further ado, with the aggravating circumstance that they are often made of non-biodegradable materials. For Eugene Shoemaker’s remains there was no such problem; his ashes were scattered across the Moon.
The truth is that if we had to make a selection of appropriate people to rest ad aeternam in our satellite, Shoemaker would be one of them. He was an American, from Los Angeles, the city where he was born in 1928.
As a child, he became interested in geology, visiting the Buffalo Museum of Education and taking courses on the subject, which led him to train as a lapidary, that is, a cutter of gems and precious stones.
He was intellectually precocious – he also played the violin – so, after finishing high school in three years, he entered college at sixteen. To be exact, he entered Caltech, short for the California Institute of Technology, a prestigious private institution located in Pasadena and dedicated to the study of natural sciences and engineering that had recently become a university center. It was 1944 and by 1948 he had his bachelor’s degree, enrolling in the doctoral course at Princeton.
There he had a fellow student named Richard Spellman whose sister, Carolyn, he began dating. She had a degree in History and Politics but, in addition, had taken a course in geology, so, although she found the subject rather boring, they had a common interest.
The relationship was long distance, epistolary, more than anything else, given the distances that separated them (Princeton is in New Jersey and she lived in Chico, California) but they still married in the summer of 1951.
They had three children and Carolyn devoted herself to caring for them, as the father often worked away. Years later, when they grew up, she wanted to return to the job market but as she was not attracted to teaching -which she had tried before her marriage-, her husband suggested that she study astronomy and join his team. She did so and would become a reputable professional in that specialty.
In the meantime, Eugene, who had been hired in 1950 by the USGS (United States Geological Survey) to look for uranium deposits in Utah and Colorado, realized that these deposits were usually in volcano craters, so he began to investigate them in Arizona.
He paid special attention to the Barringer Crater, so called because it was the geologist of that name who suggested in 1903 that its origin was not the result of an eruption of volcanic steam, as the scientific community maintained until then, but of the impact of a meteoroid.
The nature of these phenomena would be decisive in Shoemaker’s work, for in 1960 he embarked precisely on a doctoral thesis on the Barringer Crater, noting that it had similar characteristics to two others produced by atomic tests in the Nevada desert corresponding to operations Buster-Jangle (1951) and Teapot Ess (1955).
In fact, that same year he found coesite in the crater and extended his findings of coesite in the Nördlingen Ries, one of the best preserved meteorite impact craters on Earth.
Coesite is a type of quartz originated by a temperature and pressure so extremely high that a volcano lacks sufficient strength for it and suevite is a molten rock by impact, all of which showed that the origin of the Barringer was not an eruption but a meteorite that hit our planet at that point a long time ago (today it is believed to be in the Pleistocene, about 50,000 years ago).
Thus began the second part of Shoemaker’s scientific work. Since until then it was thought that craters were due only to extinct volcanoes, including those on the Moon, the satellite became his object of study. Thus, he began to map its surface with the aim of making the first lunar geological map. To this end, he founded the Astrogeology Research Program, with which he developed a new field of research, astrogeology, which showed that all the craters on the Moon were impact craters.
Since he was already a specialist, he participated in the Lunar Ranger missions (the first American lunar missions in the 1960s), collaborated in the training of the Apollo astronauts in the Barringer and Sunset craters (his mission was to reach the Moon and, in fact, he was the first scientist designated to set foot on it, but he was excluded because he suffered from Addison’s disease, an adrenal gland disorder, so he had to content himself with commenting on television the flights of the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions) and was the director of lunar geology on the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 missions.
In 1969, with the Moon conquered and back at Caltech, Shoemaker embarked on another project: the systematic search for asteroids crossing the Earth’s orbit. Thus he discovered several groups of them that were baptized with the generic name of Apollo. It was then that his wife joined the team from the Lowell Observatory. Thanks to this work Shoemaker enunciated that sudden geological changes can be due to asteroids and that the fall of these is a relatively frequent phenomenon on a geological scale.
He also discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, of extraordinary value as the first to be observed during its collision with Jupiter in July 1994. By then, the geologist had already won the National Medal of Science, persisting in his worldwide search for unknown impact craters. Ironically, it was precisely an impact – albeit of a different kind – that ended his life on June 18, 1997.
It happened in a car accident on the Tanami Track road in Alice Springs, Australia, during one of these trips. It was a head-on collision in which he was killed instantly and his wife was seriously injured. Then came the time for posthumous honors; among other things, a crater on the Moon and another on Mars, an asteroid and a space probe were named after him.
However, there is no doubt that the greatest compliment that could be paid to him consisted in what we mentioned at the beginning. In 1998, part of his ashes were taken to the Moon by the Lunar Prospector, a space microprobe of only 158 kilos (296 including fuel) destined to study the surface of the satellite. They were in a capsule wrapped in bronze with images of the Hale-Bopp comet (the last one Shoemaker observed with his wife before the accident), the Barringer Crater and some moving verses from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which came as a perfect fit:
“And, when he shall die
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun“
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on January 25, 2019. Puedes leer la versión en español en Eugene Shoemaker, la única persona cuyos restos reposan en la Luna
Sources
Shoemaker by Levy. The Man Who Made an Impact (David H. Levy)/Eugene Shoemaker (1928.1997) (Susan W. Kieffer)/Introduction to Planetary Science. The Geological Perspective (Gunter Faure y Teresa M. Mensing)/Dynamics of Comets and Asteroids and Their Role in Earth History (VVAA)/Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences. From Heresy to Truth (James Lawrence Powell)/Wikipedia
- Share on:
Discover more from LBV Magazine English Edition
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
A Shipwreck from the 6th Century BC, Stone and Iron Anchors, Found Off the Southern Coast of Sicily
A highly significant archaeological discovery has come to light in the waters of Santa Maria del Focallo, in the municipality of Ispica, Ragusa province, Sicily. During an underwater excavation campaign,…
A heroon with intact tombs filled with luxurious jewels and lions sculpted in Pentelic marble, found in the ancient Greek city of Ripes in Achaea
At the beginning of October, the systematic archaeological excavation season concluded on the Trapezá plateau, located eight kilometers southwest of Aigio, Greece. This site is identified with the ancient city…
Statue Possibly Representing Cleopatra VII and Numerous Coins Featuring Her Effigy Found at the Temple of Taposiris Magna, West of Alexandria
The Egyptian-Dominican archaeological mission, led by Dr. Kathleen Martínez in collaboration with the National University Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU), has made new discoveries at the Temple of Taposiris Magna, located…
Roman Soldier Flaccus’ Tomb Discovered in the Netherlands, Dating to the Late 1st Century BCE
In late November 2024, during archaeological investigations conducted in Heerlen (Netherlands), an exceptional discovery was made: the tomb of a Roman soldier named Flaccus. This find, dating to the late…
The Mystery of the Mardaites: The Christian Highlanders Who Maintained Their Autonomy Between Byzantium and the Caliphate
In the province of Hatay, in southern Turkey, there is a mountain range locally known as Nur Dağları. Arabs call it Jabal al-Lukkam, and in Spanish, its Greek name, Amanus,…
The Jaxartes River, the Battle Where Alexander Defeated the Scythians Using Catapults, Wounded and with Nearly His Entire Army Sick with Dysentery
As its name indicates, the Spanish Cape of Finisterre (finis terrae) was considered in Antiquity as the westernmost limit of the known world. But where was the eastern border located…
Nature of the Enigmatic “Armas de la tierra” of the Coronado Expedition in the 16th Century Revealed
Recent research has unveiled the nature of the weaponry used by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition (which crossed the present-day U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas),…
A Megalography Depicting a Rare Mythological Scene of Achilles and Bronze Statuettes Found in a Roman “Domus” in Reims
The urban organization of Durocortorum, the Gallo-Roman city now known as Reims in France, faithfully adhered to the principles of Roman urbanism. The city was divided into blocks bounded by…
Neolithic Rondel Found in Poland Reveals These Ceremonial Centers May Have Been Managed by Organizations Similar to Secret Societies 7,000 Years Ago
An archaeological discovery in the locality of Nowe Objezierze, in the northwest of Poland, has led to a significant breakthrough in understanding the Neolithic societies of Central Europe. An interdisciplinary…
New Geoarchaeological Evidence Challenges the Identification of Kalkriese Hill as the place of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
Kalkriese Hill, located in northwestern Germany, has been identified for decades as a potential site of the historic Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, a decisive confrontation between…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
