Orientale could've begun its existence anywhere on the Moon; tumbled quickly after impact to move to a pole; and then reoriented to the equator over time. And Orientale was just the last, most recent of all the big lunar basins, the last episode of reorientation. The Moon has lots of big basins, all of which would've had histories like this. That's where Keane's work ends, for now, at least in terms of what he presented at the meeting, and geologists are left to consider what it means for their own work. I think it's pretty easy to conclude that no polar ice reservoirs would have survived all that reorientation; whatever reservoirs are at the poles today necessarily postdate basin-forming impacts.

I think Keane's work is a lovely example of the creativity required to be a good scientist. Discovering geologic history isn't just a matter of "reading the rocks," as it's often presented. We also have to go through thought experiments, imagine what could be, in order to develop ideas about what might have been. We'll never see what the worlds in our solar system looked like just a few tens or hundreds of millions of years after they formed; it's all in our imaginations. One path to success in science is to have a great imagination, developed through the practice of art.

Here's a small selection of Keane's pen-and-colored-pencil summaries of other people's work. I was relieved to learn on Twitter that he doesn't color these in real time, during the talks -- they're ink drawings, which he colors later as he goes over his notes. I say "relieved" because his ability to produce such work in 5 minutes made him seem superhuman!