Did a large impact reorient the Moon?

according to this abstract, the far side of the moon was once the near side.

dx.doi.org...

The Moon is currently locked in a spin–orbit resonance of synchronous rotation, of which one consequence is that more impacts should occur near the Moon's apex of motion (0° N, 90° W) than near its antapex of motion (0° N, 90° E). Several of the largest lunar impact basins could have temporarily unlocked the Moon from synchronous rotation, and after the re-establishment of this state the Moon would have been left in either its initial orientation, or one that was rotated 180° about its spin axis. We show that there is less than a 2% probability that the oldest lunar impact basins are randomly distributed across the lunar surface. Furthermore, these basins are preferentially located near the Moon's antapex of motion, and this configuration has less than a 0.3% probability of occurring by chance. We postulate that the current “near side” of the Moon was in fact its “far side” when the oldest basins formed. One basin with the required size and temporal characteristics to account for a 180° reorientation is the Smythii basin.

IOTA (The International Occultation Timing Association, Inc.)
has an interesting logo and
interestingly enough, a link
for a list of occultations of UCAC2 stars that will be occulted by either Pluto or Charon (or by both) from 2004 to 2020, computed by David Herald with Occult using the latest ephemeris for Pluto, and orbital elements for Charon relative to Pluto is available by hyperlink from IOTA, or click the link "a link" above.
Note the increase in expected activity in 2012?

If true, the moon has had 180 degree about face in the past.

[edit on 30-3-2009 by imd12c4funn]

[edit on 30-3-2009 by imd12c4funn]

It is intresting, and I think the moon has alot of skeltons in its closet.

The moon is also older than EArth, and I think that only shows it could only be an leftoever from some events happening in the past..
Apperantly our solarsystem has been going thru some heavy changes since its original creation and the proof lyes in the Kupier belt..

Hell, J.Lear even sayd it was towed into orbit by emv's, I think he is talking in code, but thats just me !

reply to post by ChemBreather


The moon is part of the earth, it was formed from a collision with another planetoid.
It is now thought that the earth had already cooled and maybe even had oceans and the begginings of life.
The impact was so violent that the earths surface was remelted.
The material blasted into space and the remander of the object are what the moon formed from.
The mathematical model for this event matches current motions of the earth and moon system.
The earths precessional wobbble and the fact that the moon is very slowly moving away from the earth, are the last remanants of the collision.

These after effects also fit exactly with the mathematical model.

reply to post by imd12c4funn


I could totaly see the bigger impacts on moon re-oreienting it.
There have been some hellishly large impacts on our neighbor.

I seem to remember reading a study that the the moon has re-oriented several times in the past, and that the"far side" used to be the leading side.


Ive always wondered what it would be like to witness such an event on the moon.