<p>Given that the rocks of the solar system mostly travel on the disc, is there any considerable probability that impacts on the moon coming straight up and down can be interstellar rocks?</p>
<p>If axis-aligned meteorites are very rare, then perhaps there is a chance that a significant number of axis-aligned impacts come from interstellar objects.</p>
<p>It would be fun to search the polar regions of the moon for meteorite impacts that were axis aligned in the hope that the impactor would be interstellar. How unreasonable is it? If I put a square of foam on the moon for 20 years, and I checked afterwards which objects had hit the foam at high speed from an axis aligned vector, perhaps I could find a rock from elsewhere in the galaxy?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-18T17:44:19.443Z
That sounds feasible. On a related note, Brian May's PhD thesis, *A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud*, contains good info on the interstellar component of the zodiacal dust. "One of the great ‘surprises’ in space observations, as noted by Sykes et al (2004), was that the detectors on board the space vehicle Ulysses, once past the orbit of Jupiter,
began to register particle impacts from the opposite direction to that expected from
interplanetary dust particles, and at high velocities,"
PM 2Ring
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-04-18T17:44:48.497Z
(cont) "clearly indicating an interstellar
component to the dust cloud, which predominates at these distances from the Sun, but has been now detected, by the Hiten detector, even at 1 AU (Grün et al 1993). If my
interpretation paper had been published as planned around 1975, this discovery might
have been less of a surprise!"
PM 2Ring
<the-moon><solar-system><meteorite><interstellar>
Are interstellar meteorites more common on the moon's polar regions?
bandybabboon
# Are interstellar meteorites more common on the moon's polar regions?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-04-18)

Given that the rocks of the solar system mostly travel on the disc, is there any considerable probability that impacts on the moon coming straight up and down can be interstellar rocks?

If axis-aligned meteorites are very rare, then perhaps there is a chance that a significant number of axis-aligned impacts come from interstellar objects.

It would be fun to search the polar regions of the moon for meteorite impacts that were axis aligned in the hope that the impactor would be interstellar. How unreasonable is it? If I put a square of foam on the moon for 20 years, and I checked afterwards which objects had hit the foam at high speed from an axis aligned vector, perhaps I could find a rock from elsewhere in the galaxy?

**Tags:** the-moon, solar-system, meteorite, interstellar

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: That sounds feasible. On a related note, Brian May's PhD thesis, *A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud*, contains good info on the interstellar component of the zodiacal dust. "One of the great ‘surprises’ in space observations, as noted by Sykes et al (2004), was that the detectors on board the space vehicle Ulysses, once past the orbit of Jupiter, began to register particle impacts from the opposite direction to that expected from interplanetary dust particles, and at high velocities,"  
> **username_1**: (cont) "clearly indicating an interstellar component to the dust cloud, which predominates at these distances from the Sun, but has been now detected, by the Hiten detector, even at 1 AU (Grün et al 1993). If my interpretation paper had been published as planned around 1975, this discovery might have been less of a surprise!"  

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## 0 answers

