The Meteor Shower Nobody Saw-Revisited

摘要

The placement of seismometers on the Moon's surface by the Apollo astronauts yielded evidence of ahuge event during the dates of June 20-30, 1975. Previous research has assumed that this event was alunar meteor storm. In 1992 this author presented a paper at the Central States VHF Society Conferenceon the supposed lunar meteor storm in which text from the “The World Above 50 MHz” column in theSeptember 1975 issue of QST was used to determine whether or not there was support for the theory of alunar meteor storm. Results of that examination were inconclusive.Recent research into the Earth's magnetotail has caused this author to reexamine the original premise,that the seismometer activity of June 20-30, 1975 was a lunar meteor storm. This reexamination hascaused this author to form the hypothesis that this activity was not a lunar meteor storm after all, butrather a series of events that were caused by the influence of the Earth's magnetotail on the Moon'ssurface. This author has further hypothesized that certain events occurring at the same time were whatexacerbated the effects of the magnetotail on the lunar surface, thereby contributing to the overallintensity of the sandstorm. Finally, this author has hypothesized that these same events will occur at thesame time during a similar period in June 2016. Should the resultant intense sandstorm occur as it didduring June 20-30, 1975, it could be very problematic for any astronauts that might be on the lunarsurface during this time frame.