A massive asteroid that slammed into the moon around 4.3 billion years ago wreaked havoc in the moon's mantle, and researchers finally know why.
According to the International Astronomical Union, the moon has been hit by meteorites, asteroids and comets over billions of years. The craters are not evenly distributed. The far side of the moon, which is tidally locked, has a higher concentration of craters than the visible nearside.
There are fewer pits on the near side of the moon because the surface is covered in lava. The craters that would have marked the moon's nearside were covered by lava fields. craters are still visible on the far side of the moon because it has almost no lunar maria.
Scientists have long suspected that lunar maria formed after a massive collision around 4.3 billion years ago. The largest impact crater on the moon is the Aitken basin, which has a maximum width of 2,574 kilometers and a maximum depth of 5.1 miles. Researchers have been unable to explain why the nearside of the moon has lava fields.
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The new study shows that the impact created a unique phenomenon inside the moon's mantle, the layer of magma below the crust.
Matt Jones, a PhD student of planetary science at Brown University, said in a statement that they know that big impacts like the one that formed SPA would create a lot of heat.
The lunar samples brought back by the Apollo missions contained radioactive, heat-generating elements such as potassium, phosphorus and thorium, which are all suspected to be found in abundance within the lunar mantle.
The simulations show that the impact would have created a heat wave within the mantle that pushed the radioactive elements towards the crust. The simulations showed that the mantle impacts would only affect the near side of the moon, regardless of how the asteroid hit.
When a space rock collided with the moon, it caused lava from the mantle to pour out on the nearside, burying many of its older impact craters.
The heat-produced elements on the nearside are what we show, and we expect that this contributed to the mantle melting that produced the lava flows.
According to the statement, the researchers are pleased to have solved one of the most significant questions in lunar science.
The SPA impact is one of the most significant events in lunar history. Being able to better understand how it shaped the moon is really exciting, he said.
The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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