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SCIENCE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2017
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THE SUMTER ITEM
Good, bad and unknown about pot’s health effects
Scientists say moon over the hill at a ripe 4.51 billion years old CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — It turns out the moon is older than many scientists suspected: a ripe 4.51 billion years old. That’s the newest estimate, thanks to rocks and soil collected by the Apollo 14 moonwalkers in 1971. A research team reported Wednesday that the moon formed within 60 million years of the birth of the solar system. Previous estimates ranged within 100 million years, all the way up to 200 million years after the solar system’s creation, not quite 4.51 billion years ago. The scientists conducted uranium-lead dating on fragments of the mineral zircon extracted from Apollo 14 lunar samples. The pieces of zircon were minuscule — no bigger than a grain of sand. “Size doesn’t matter, they record amazing information nonetheless!� lead author Melanie Barboni of the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an email. She noted that the moon holds “so much magic ... the key to understand how our beautiful Earth formed and evolved.� The moon was created from debris knocked off from Earth, which itself is thought to be roughly 4.54 billion years old. Some of the eight zircon samples were used in a previous study, also conducted at UCLA, that utilized more limited techniques. Barboni said she is studying more zircons from Apollo 14 samples, but doesn’t expect it to change her
AP FILE PHOTO
A full moon rises behind the ruins of the ancient marble Temple of Poseidon, southeast of Athens, on the eve of the summer solstice in June 2016. estimate of 4.51 billion years for the moon’s age, possibly 4.52 billion years at the most. “It would be more a double-checking than anything else,� she explained. She and her colleagues — whose work appeared Wednesday in the journal Science Advances — are eager to learn more about the moon’s history and, in turn, the evolution of early Earth and the entire solar system. Apollo 14’s Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell collected 92 pounds of rocks and used tubes to dig up soil while exploring the moon’s Fra Mauro highlands in February 1971. They conducted two spacewalks, spending nine hours altogether out on the lunar surface. It’s the second major moon study this week. On Monday, Israeli scientists suggested our Earth’s constant companion may actually be a melting pot of many mini-moons. Rather than one giant impact that shaved off a chunk of Earth and formed the moon, a series of smaller collisions may have created multiple moonlets that eventually merged into one, according to the researchers.
NEW YORK (AP) — It can almost certainly ease chronic pain and might help some people sleep, but it’s also likely to raise the risk of getting schizophrenia and might trigger heart attacks. Those are among the conclusions about marijuana reached by a federal advisory panel in a report released Thursday. The experts also called for a national effort to learn more about marijuana and its chemical cousins, including similarly acting compounds called cannabinoids. The current lack of scientific information “poses a public health risk,� said the report, released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Patients, health care professionals and policy makers need more evidence to make sound decisions, it said. Several factors have limited research. While the federal government has ap-
proved some medicines containing ingredients found in marijuana, it still classifies marijuana as illegal and imposes restrictions on research. So scientists have to jump through bureaucratic hoops that some find daunting, the report said. A federal focus on paying for studies of potential harms has also impeded research into possible health benefits, the report said. The range of marijuana products available for study has also been restricted, although the government is expanding the number of approved suppliers. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for a variety of medical uses, and eight of those states, plus the district, have also legalized it for recreational use. The report lists nearly 100 conclusions about marijuana and its similarly acting chemical cousins, drawing on studies published since 1999.
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