> Meanwhile, I don’t think we know enough today to conclusively say there are no hostile microscopic lifeforms on the moon (maybe beneath the surface?). We don’t even know the deep sea on earth very well.
Be careful stepping outside your field. I used to work at the NASA Astrobiology and Lunar Science institutes. There is zero chance there is any biology going on or under the surface of the moon.
Particle physics has the advantage of being simple (there are a few fundamental particles, all particles of one type are indistinguishable, etc.), and we had decades of experimental evidence at lower energy as well as heaps of observations of highly energetic cosmic events confirming our simple and consistent theories going into LHC.
Is there anything close to that pile of evidence for life (whatever that means, maybe not necessarily carbon-based) on moon or lack thereof? Now do Mars? Personally I don’t think there’s anything on moon, but the evidence isn’t much. In the 60s it might as well have been nonexistent.
The surface of the moon is 100 m thick blanket of impact debris that has been pulverized over billions of years. Nothing in kind of structure could survive that treatment, regardless of whether it is silicon or carbon based. No plausible metabolic cycle exists for breakdown of lunar rocks, which would not be detectable through outgassing or spectrographically detectable alteration on the regolith. We have actual surface samples and drilled cores that have been thoroughly analyzed. There is no life on the Moon.
> The surface of the moon is 100 m thick blanket of impact debris that has been pulverized over billions of years. Nothing in kind of structure could survive that treatment, regardless of whether it is silicon or carbon based.
Impacts would destroy any conceivable microbes in the immediate vicinity of the impact. But unless an impact was strong enough to sterilize the entire moon all at once, microbes outside the kill radius could subsequently reclaim the impact site. Like plants reclaiming land after a lava flow destroys everything previously living in that spot.
I agree with your other arguments, and believe the moon is sterile.
> microbes outside the kill radius could subsequently reclaim the impact site
And visibly alter it. Even microbes consume matter from the environment, and excrete metabolic byproducts. It would be detectable at a chemical level; with enough time, even visually.
What this guy said. Point is the Apollo samples could even be classified into what impact site they came from, and the samples remained unchanged since the moment they were created. Life intrinsically must change its environment, and no such changes have ever been detected.
Ludicrous. Your models of biology and the moon may predict that, but the chances of your models being significantly wrong are certainly much greater than zero.
Be careful stepping outside your field. I used to work at the NASA Astrobiology and Lunar Science institutes. There is zero chance there is any biology going on or under the surface of the moon.