Why a rake on the moon messed up our theories of life on Earth

Astronaut Harrison Schmitt

Astronaut Harrison Schmitt collected samples with a rake during the Apollo 17 mission

NASA

Not all moon rocks are created equal. Minuscule glass beads brought back from the moon by Apollo astronauts seemed to show that there were far more objects smashing into the moon in the last 500 million years than the rest of the moon’s history. Now it turns out they astronauts just didn’t look deep enough, which could spell trouble for some theories about the rise of life on Earth.

When a rock crashes into the moon or a planet, it vaporises …