When Zach Sharp sent me a copy of his paper in yesterday’s Science Express, I only had to get to the words “moon rocks” to decide to do a story. I mean, they’re moon rocks.

Zach, a stable isotope geochemist, is a bit of a mad scientist. So even without moon rocks, his work is pretty universally fun. But in this case, it played into a theme I’ve been trying to explore lately in my newspaper copy- science as a process of dealing with things we don’t know. Ergo (sub/ad req.):

It would be wrong to say the blowtorches, liquid nitrogen and moon rocks in the third floor labs of the University of New Mexico’s geology building have clarified our understanding of how the moon formed.

More accurately, perhaps, would be to say that Zach Sharp and Chip Shearer have confused things a bit. But of such confusions is scientific progress often made.