A set of instruments shut off almost 50 years ago are still producing useful results. It’s the seismometers left by the Apollo missions to monitor moonquakes, which as the name suggests are earthquakes but on the Moon. First off, the Apollo seismometers were the first to reveal that the Moon does indeed have quakes, which is an impressive achievement in its own right. And once we realized that the Moon shakes, we’ve been able to use the natural seismic vibrations produced inside the Moon to map out its interior structure.

It’s the same way that we can map out the interior of the Earth. Vibrations travel at different speeds through different kinds of materials, just like sounds are different in the air versus under water.

The reason that the Apollo-era seismometers, which were shut off in 1978, still provide useful results is that even though they’re not producing data, our analysis techniques and understanding have improved. This means we can squeeze more information out of the data we already have, and decades after the seismometers went silent, we were able to use their data to find evidence for the existence of the Moon’s core.

So the Moon’s got a core, that’s nice. What’s the big deal? The big deal is that it’s best to stop thinking of the Moon as merely the natural satellite of the Earth. Instead, think of it as small rocky terrestrial world in its own right. It’s stepping out of the shadow and into the limelight, and it’s got something to say.

I’m reframing this because the Moon is our keystone to understanding how ALL terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, and yes, even Earth – evolved in their early history. That’s because the Moon still retains a record, a memory, of its younger days, frozen in place for billions of years. The Earth doesn’t remember most of its ancient history because of all our plate tectonics. We haven’t landed on Mercury. We’ve technically landed on Venus, but that wasn’t for very long so it doesn’t count. And yes, we’ve landed a lot on Mars, and even collected some samples…but we haven’t figured out how to get those samples back to Earth.

So not only does the Moon retain a memory of what all terrestrial planets go through, it’s right there and we’ve been able to touch it! And bring some back! And, and smell it! By cracking open Moon rocks, by looking at seismometer data, by looking at core samples, by looking at heat flow data, we can piece together what happened on the Moon and use that knowledge to inform what happens to Mars, Venus, Mercury…and Earth.

And what happened to the Moon was, put simply, not very pretty. We now know that there was a phase, shortly after it formed, when the Moon was covered in a single magma ocean with a depth of around 500 kilometers. What we call the Lunar highlands are simply the slightly-less-dense rock that floated to the surface of that magma ocean and then solidified first. What floated to the top and cooled was largely minerals containing oxygen and silicon, with iron sinking down to form the core – hey wait a minute, that’s exactly like the Earth! I told you the Moon could tell us about our own planet.

Shortly after the surface of the Moon largely cooled and the crust formed, it suffered a series of intense impacts, an epoch between 3.85 and 4 billion years ago called the Late Heavy Bombardment. Just strike after strike after strike, like a brutal uneven boxing match that you just can’t look away from. Each of those impacts formed breccias, which comes from the Italian word for rubble. Why we didn’t just call it rubble, I don’t know.

Breccias are formed when you have a bunch of different kinds of rocks and minerals doing their own thing, minding their own business, when WHAM a meteorite comes crashing in, smashing and mixing and fusing everything together, and then all those minerals are forced to cohabitate in the same rocks.

Finally, after the late heavy bombardment, the moon suffered periods of major volcanism, which would explode and pour liquid hot magma across their surroundings, generating the mare, or seas, that we see today.

The UCLA and UC San Francisco medical schools have been given two weeks to submit years of internal documents to a Republican-led congressional committee about alleged antisemitism and how the schools responded, widening the federal government’s far-reaching investigations into the University of California.

The demands from House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) cited reports of Jewish people “experiencing hostility and fear” at each campus and that universities had not proved that they “meaningfully responded.”

Walberg’s letters said the committee would be investigating whether the schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.

The additional investigation comes as top UC officials and the Justice Department have begun negotiations over allegations that the UCLA campus overall has been hostile to Jewish students, staff and faculty. The federal government has suspended more than $500 million in health, medical and energy research grants from UCLA and is seeking $1 billion and major campus changes before restoring the funds.

The Trump administration cited alleged Title VI violations when pulling the money.

The House committee said Monday it wanted “all documents and communications” since Sept. 1, 2021, tied to complaints of antisemitic incidents at UCLA and UC San Fransisco. A similar letter was also sent to the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

Some UCLA medical school faculty are members of a broader campus organization, the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, that has aired complaints publicly for months at UC regents meetings about antisemitism.

The group’s chair, medical school assistant clinical professor of psychiatry Kira Stein, is mentioned in the Monday letter to UCLA as a faculty member who has reported anti-Jewish incidents.

“Federal lawmakers, in their letter released today, echoed what many of us have experienced firsthand: Antisemitism at UCLA is common, corrosive, and continues to be met with silence and inaction from the university administration and local leaders,” Stein said in a statement Monday.

The committee has asked for communications with UCLA’s medical school dean, administrators who work on diversity or restorative justice-related programs, and several other positions as well as data on specific events and courses, including one on “structural racism and health equity.”

It also asked for emails from administrators “referring or relating to antisemitism or the terms Jewish, Israel, Israeli, Palestine, or Palestinian.” And it requests information about a January report focused on the medical school that a UCLA task force on anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism prepared.

That 35-page report said “students, residents and faculty in the David Geffen School of Medicine who express support for Palestinian human rights, and who offer any criticism of Israel’s violation of them, face harassment from within and outside the medical school.”

The House committee has asked for “all documents and communications since October 7, 2023 in the possession of the office of the executive vice chancellor” — UCLA Provost Darnell Hunt — related to that task force. Members of the task force have accused UCLA of not taking complaints of bias incidents against Muslims, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans as seriously as it has reports of antisemitism.

Walberg said that, in addition to Title VI enforcement, he would use the documents to “aid the committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination, are needed.”

The UCLA medical school is also under a Department of Health and Human Services investigation over accusations that it “discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national origin in its admissions.” UCLA denied the charges and the department has not formally announced the results of its investigation that began in late March. But when it canceled hundreds of millions in grants to UCLA last month, the Trump administration said the action was due in part to its belief that the university illegally uses race in admissions.

In a Monday statement, a spokesperson for the UCLA medical school said it opposed antisemitism.

“Antisemitism has no place at UCLA’s medical school. Protecting the civil rights of our Jewish community members remains a top priority,” the statement said. “We are committed to fair processes in all our educational programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws and continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment.”

A spokesperson for UC San Francisco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tense disagreements have erupted at the UCLA medical school between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students, faculty and staff since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. Each has accused the other of discrimination, doxxing and harassment. Incidents at the school have been cited by two UCLA task forces, one that looked at antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias and the other that researched anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism.