Planetary scientists recently revealed the discovery of a structure that weighs about 2.17 billion kilograms and extends for more than 300 kilometers on the surface of the moon, and researchers suspect that this formation may contain mineral from an asteroid responsible for the formation of one of the largest craters on Earth. System.
This crater, called the Antarctic-Aitken Basin, is located on the far side of Earth’s natural satellite. Since its discovery, the area has been a central area for investigations, such as the one for the first lunar module Artemis 3. The mass anomaly could have been discovered by astronomers hiding beneath the moon’s surface in 2019. This story!
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At the time the strange structure was found on the moon, the study’s lead author, Peter B. James of Baylor University, made some comments about the discovery. “Imagine taking a pile of metal five times the size of the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground,” he said. “That’s the unexpected amount of mass we discovered.”
According to James, the team used data from spacecraft that make up the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, which measures subtle changes in the moon’s gravitational field, to determine the structure. However, the mass the scientists measured would be at the bottom of the Antarctic-Aitken basin.
“When we combined this with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we found an unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of kilometers below the South Pole-Aitken Basin,” said James. As mentioned earlier, the best hypothesis for the existence of this extra mass is that it originated from the asteroid mineral responsible for the formation of the moon’s crater.
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To try to explain this anomaly, the research team ran several computer simulations. It is estimated that when the asteroid struck our natural satellite about 4 billion years ago, it remained embedded in the moon’s mantle rather than sinking into the star’s core.
Another alternative explanation involves the process of solidification of the moon, according to the researchers, it is possible that the concentration of dense oxides formed when the magmatic ocean that formed the satellite cooled and settled. The Antarctic-Aitken Basin has always been of great interest to various space agencies.
The region can be used to better understand the internal composition of the moon and to study its history. Moreover, this place is one of the best natural laboratories for human sciences to find out the effects of a cataclysmic impact on the surface of a rocky planet.
However, it should be noted that the South Pole is not the only part of the Moon that hides strange massive structures beneath its surface. In the past, astronomers reported the discovery of a huge, heat-emitting cluster beneath the Compton and Belkowitz craters, on the far side of the star.
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