How Much of the Moon Is On Earth?

0:00 Where's the moon? It's a question I scream at the sky in terror every single morning. Most of it, I'm assured, is whizzing around in the sky, but a fair bit is down here on Earth. Mostly in Texas, second mostly in New Mexico, and a little bit, well, just about everywhere else. Today, we're going to provide the best accounting we can of how the surprisingly large amount of moon on our planet got here, where to find it, what it's up to, and how so much of it is low-key lost. And we're going to start our story at the beginning. A long time ago, my mommy hung the moon in the sky because I was scared of the dark. Then in 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin headed up there to grab some rocks. Yeah, many tune out the Apollo 11 footage after one lease for mankind. But if you keep watching, they start taking

0:46 rock samples within just 10 minutes. That's because if something went sideways and they had to get off the moon in a hurry, everyone wanted to ensure that at least something was coming home for study. In the end, Neil and Buzz collected 47 pounds or over 20 kilos of moon, including nine scoops of dirt that Armstrong threw into the box, basically to stop rocks from jostling around. The moon came to Earth in special boxes built by the US Atomic Energy Commission in Oakidge, Tennessee. The rock boxes, actually called this, were made to protect the samples through all the dramatic temperature fluctuations and vibrations they'd encounter on the journey from the moon to the Earth, and to prevent samples from getting contaminated or contaminating anything else. The inside was lined with aluminum mesh and the whole thing was vacuum sealed with temperatureresistant O-rings and a knife edge seal. Also, they had big tea bars

1:32 to open and close them because they'd be used exclusively by guys wearing huge bulky space suit gloves. Over the course of the six Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, a total of 12 moon walkers brought 2,196 samples for a total of 842 lbs or 382 kg of moon to Earth. In Earth gravity, that's about the weight of a horse. A moon horse. There's an idea. When the Apollo 11 astronauts returned those first samples, people were worried that there might be something in there that could accidentally kill us all. So, the samples were quarantined for a while. Post core, they sent 700 g for biological testing and placed bits of moon rock in chambers with tons of plants, single cell organisms, and small animals to see if anything crazy happened. Mutations, new species spawning, that kind of thing. Nothing did, and moon rocks were declared safe

2:18 to study and sent out. So, where'd they end up? About 15% of the Apollo stash is in White Sands, New Mexico, while the rest is in a pristine storage vault at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. 80% of all that, including everything in White Sands, is still completely untouched since their return from their stay on the moon. The vault where all these samples live takes two people to unlock, and nobody is permitted to touch the rocks with their bare hands. To enter the clean room where they're handled, you have to take off all jewelry, put on a whole outfit, cover your hair, and take an air shower to get that horrible earthn dust off of you. The few workers authorized to handle the samples do so through two or even three sets of big chungus gloves, pulling and shaving samples of just half a gram to a gram to send to research labs that request them. And yes, labs do still

3:04 request them. As of 2019, NASA has sent 50,000 moon rock samples to 500 research labs across 15 countries. But why? What are those rocks doing at this point? In short, moon rocks contain evidence of the formations of planets and the whole universe that you can't find on Earth. That's because the moon is geologically inactive, meaning it keeps an unchanging record of impacts, changes in the sun, changes in the radiation of the universe, and tons of other astronomical history. Earth's weather, plate tectonics, and life forms can obscure these things in our geological record. So, moon rocks to this day are the basis for new scientific discoveries about our universe. But we're not here to talk about those discoveries. We're tracking those rocks. Bring up the pie chart. Let's start with what I'm not including

3:50 in this pie chart. Namely, about 60 kg of moon rocks that were shaken off the moon by some kind of meteor strike and landed on Earth due to gravity. Those are around, but having experienced Earth's atmosphere, they're not as pure as the rest. Almost all of the rest is those 842 lbs brought back by the Apollo missions alongside 3.8 lb/.7 kilos China brought back on an uncrrewed mission in 2020 and another.7 lb or.3 kg the USSR brought back in their day. The Chinese samples are traveling the research circuit and I don't know what happened to the USSR ones, but I'm going to guess they are in Russia. Together, those combined to equal about 0% of the moon mass on Earth, so you can't really see them on the pie chart. 70% is based in Texas, but comes in and out for research, and 15% is in New Mexico as designated survivors. Where's the

4:36 remaining 15%? We can account for some of it. After both the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 missions, the US government sends moon bits to each of the 50 states and most of the world's countries as gestures of goodwill for a total of 377 rocks distributed in few gits. If you want to see a moon rock on display, either a loner from NASA or a goodwill Apollo gift rock, there are two great resources at your disposal. The first is this map NASA keeps, and the second is a list this guy keeps. This guy is Robert Pearlman and it's his personal mission to keep track of where all the moon rocks ended up. Hungary's is in the Hungarian National History Museum in Budapest. Costa Rica's is in the Museo National, but it's in storage. China has half of theirs at the Beijing Planetarium. Sam's the plaque it was

5:22 presented on while they took the other part and used it for research. Francisco Franco's mom lost Spain's. Nebraska's went missing in the governor's mansion for a while until a first lady of the state found it during renovations and now it's on display at the planetarium in Lincoln. North Carolina spent a while in a drawer. Yes, as it turns out, a lot of places were kind of whatever about their bits of moon. A scroll through this site reveals over 70 countries, four states, and a Puerto Rico with no location or photo listed for their Apollo 17 rocks. Many gift rocks were stolen. Malta, Sweden, Delaware, etc., etc. And many of them have only been tracked down because of Pearlman and this other guy, Joseph Guthines, a former NASA investigator who got so into locating moon rocks that he started assigning students in his University of Phoenix detective class to track them down. Students had glowing reviews of

6:08 this project, such as quote, "It didn't have anything to do with the class." But hey, I can't fault the guy. After all, this very channel's writers are all technically turning in hi scripts as their final exams in a class I'm teaching called the tautology of tutology. A+, guys. So, yes, a certain amount of the moon on Earth is simply lost. And it's not just the gift rocks. It's actually pretty common for research samples to get lost in the mail. After all, NASA mails them around with FedEx and UPS. And it's not like they label the packages moon do not steal. Some of those few gram shavings just go missing. This is the funny thing about moon rocks. On the one hand, they're in calculably valuable, kept in pristine condition, far from the grubby touching hands of the masses, and still prized by researchers to this day. On the other hand, a lot of them are just floating around out there because who cares. So,

6:54 if you see any of the moon around, say hi for me and maybe send it my way. I'm hoping to build a moon horse. Okay, so I can't get you a piece of the moon because it's expensive and also illegal. What I can get you is a discount to a whole Nebula, aka this video sponsor, Nebula. It's a streaming service I started with some of my creator friends, and it's the best place to support tons of your favorite YouTubers while also seeing and funding our coolest stuff. For example, on Nebula, you can see every HI video ad free and every Jetlag video a week early. And it's the only place you can see abolish everything, the PowerPoint comedy show we produce where New York's best comedians make dumb arguments like this. Abolish the dentist, abolish planes, abolish sunscreen. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can also watch 17 pages, a genuinely insane

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