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Earth’s moon was long thought to be made of ‘dead’ rock, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
Data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show ridges with newly exposed parent rock on the surface, which are the result of an active tectonic system.
More than 500 patches of exposed rock were found on the near side of the moon that formed during 14 days of darkness.
Upward movement breaks the surface and allows the regolith to drain into cracks and gaps, leaving the rocks exposed.
And because the gaps are generally filled quickly, the team suggests that this cracking should be recent, possibly ongoing today.
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Data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show ridges with newly exposed parent rock on the surface, which are the result of an active tectonic system. More than 500 patches of exposed rock were found on the near side of the moon that formed during 14 days of darkness
The ridges of the bedrock are possibly the echo of a long-ago impact that nearly shattered the Moon 4.3 billion years ago.
Most of the moon’s surface consists of regolith, a layer of crushed rock dust created by the constant bombardment of small meteorites and other impactors.
And areas without regolith where the bedrock is exposed are rare.
A team from Brown University used LRO data to detect strange naked spots in and around the lunar moon, the large dark spots on the near side of the moon.
Peter Schultz, a professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University and a co-author of the research, said: “Blocks exposed on the surface have a relatively short life because regolith accumulation is constantly occurring.”
“So when we see them, there must be some explanation of how and why they were exposed in certain places.”
Shultz, along with the study’s lead author, Adomas Valantinas, a graduate student at the University of Bern, used night observations of LRO’s Diviner instrument to discover the more than 500 patches of exposed bedrock.
Ridges have been seen exposed on the lunar surface before, but at the edges of ancient lava filled impact basins and were the result of sagging due to the weight caused by the lava.
Lunar infrared (top left) and other images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter show points on the moon with ridges and no regolith. These observations could be evidence that there is active tectonic activity on the moon today.
The last study on the new ridges determined that they were related to an active tectonic system.
The team identified all the exposures revealed in the Diviner data and found an interesting correlation.
In 2014, NASA’s GRAIL mission discovered a series of ancient cracks in the lunar crust, which were channels through which magma flowed.
Valantinas and Schultz demonstrated that the block ridges seemed to align perfectly with the deep intrusions revealed by GRAIL.
“It’s almost a one-to-one correlation,” said Schultz.
“That makes us think that what we are seeing is a continuous process driven by things that happen inside the Moon.”
The researchers suggest that the ridges above these ancient intrusions are still rising.
The upward movement breaks the surface and allows the regolith to drain into cracks and gaps, leaving the blocks exposed.
And because the empty spots will recover fairly quickly, the team suggests that this cracking should be recent, possibly ongoing today.
They are calling what they found a Near Active Tectonic System (ANTS) and they believe it was caused by a massive impact on the billions of years of the moon.
Shultz has carried out previous work on the impact, which formed the 1,500-mile South Pole Aitken Basin, wrecked the interior on the opposite side, the near-Earth side.
Magma then filled these cracks and monitored the pattern of levees detected on the GRAIL mission.
The blocky ridges that comprise ANTS now plot continuous adjustments across these old weaknesses.
“This looks like the ridges responded to something that happened 4.3 billion years ago,” said Schultz.
‘Giant impacts have long lasting effects. The moon has a long memory. What we are seeing on the surface today is testimony to his long memory and secrets that he still keeps.
Scientists disagree on how the Moon formed, but many believe it was the result of an impact between Earth and another planet.
Many researchers believe that the moon formed after Earth was hit by a planet the size of Mars billions of years ago.
This is called the giant impact hypothesis.
The theory suggests that the moon is made of rubble after a collision between our planet and a body about 4.5 billion years ago.
The colliding body is sometimes called Theia, after the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the moon.
Many researchers believe that the moon formed after Earth was hit by a planet the size of Mars billions of years ago. This is called the giant impact hypothesis.
But a mystery has persisted, revealed by the rocks that the Apollo astronauts brought from the moon: Why are the moon and Earth so similar in composition?
Several different theories have emerged over the years to explain the similar fingerprints of Earth and the moon.
Perhaps the impact created a huge cloud of debris that completely mixed with Earth and then condensed to form the moon.
Or Theia could, coincidentally, have been chemically similar to Young Earth.
A third possibility is that the moon was formed from earth materials, rather than from Theia, although this would have been a very unusual type of impact.
