Today, the earth is still changing-continents move, now mountains are being made, volcanoes erupt periodically-all forming new rock. For the last three billion years (the age of the youngest lunar rock) the only apparent changes on the moon have been caused by meteorites. Constant impacting by meteorites has broken up the rock to form dust, compacted the dust to form rocks called breccia, and melted the rock sand dust to form glasses.

One of the very interesting forms the meteorite-produced glass takes is as thousands of tiny colored glass beads which are mostly less than 1/32 of an inch in diameter and appear to be splash droplets. Even these tiny objects have micro-craters on them caused by even smaller particles. Most of these beads are slightly transparent and may be colored red-brown, green or blue while others are opaque with a metallic looking surface. They are so numerous that they make up about 1/3 of the lunar dust.

Tektites, those mysterious glassy spheroids seemingly strewn across Asia and Australia from space, were also once thought to be splash droplets from some very large meteor hitting the moon. Now, because no lunar material resembles tektite glass in composition, most scientists agree that the tektites do not have a lunar origin. Instead, Frondel said. "It looks more and more that they may be of terrestrial origin." However, no definite theory such as the splash droplet theory for the glass beads on the moon, has been developed to explain the tektites' origin or formation.

SIMILARLY, new information has shaken formerly well established theories about the origin of the moon itself. Before Apollo II there were three main theories of lunar origin: the fission theory envisioning the moon once being part of the earth and breaking away, the capture theory which said the earth's gravity captured the moon as a satellite, and the accretion theory which maintained that the moon was formed by a ring of matter around the earth, similar to Saturn's rings, accumulating to form one body. These theories can now be tested by evidence from the moon itself.

The moon is now moving away from the earth at such a rate that it would be right next to the earth only 1.5 billion years ago, yet the youngest lunar rock is three billion years old. Since close capture would entail major rock forming disruptions, the capture theory has been pretty much disproved.

Then there are some composition and isotope ratio differences between lunar and terrestrial basalts which seem to indicate that the moon and earth could never be one body, thus disproving the fission theory. However, there is some controversey about the importance of the differences between terrestrial and lunar rocks.

Although the fission theory is not completely ruled out, most lunar researchers seem to favor the accretion theory because it explains the moon's origin with fewest inconsistencies.

Like all scientific research, studying moon rocks doesn't always yield positive results. One of the extensive tests run on the lunar samples-the search for magnetic monopoles-has demonstrated that such particles are very rare if they exist at all. People have never found one, yet think they exist and are willing to spend lots of money and time looking for them. So what is a magnetic monopole?

A magnetic monopole is a magnetized particle which has only one pole-either north or south-rather than both poles as all other known magnetic objects have. Since Dirac first proposed monopoles in 1931, these elusive particles have been surprisingly useful in answering some of the fundamental questions of the universe.

According to one theory, monopoles if they exist are the most fundamental particles from which all other particles and hence all matter can be made. The monopoles would also strongly support the only theory which explains why protons and electrons have a single specific electric charge.

Since the lunar surface has been continually exposed for so long to cosmic rays which might contain or produce a magnetic monopole, the moon samples have a greater chance of containing a monopole than anything on earth.

However, despite their efforts and hopes, the researchers found no indication of monopoles in the Apollo samples.

Unlike the elusive monopoles, ordinary magnetic dipoles are fairly common in the lunar samples. Much matter such as iron can be magnetized by a variety of naturally occurring processes, but all these processes require the presence of a magnetic field. The moon's present field is very small and could not have produced the measured magnetization of the lunar samples. The conclusion must be that either the moon once had a much stronger field or it was much closer to the earth.

PROBABLY the question most often asked about the moon before 1969 was, "Is there life or has there ever been life on the moon?" The answer can now be stated emphatically-No. As Barghoorn said, "The moon is an utterly dead body."

The initial quarantine tests at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and subsequent tests which similarly tried to induce growth of native lunar organisms in a variety of environments established the absence of live or dormant organisms on the moon. Then careful microscopic examination of thin slices of lunar rock failed to reveal any remnants of fossils of once-living organisms. There were some crystal formations which resembled colonies of organisms but they were found to be caused by non-living natural processes.