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We know it's there but we don't know where it came from
A Mass-ive Anomaly
The Moon’s largest crater — the 1,240 mile-across and four billion years-old South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin — is hiding something enormous and metallic under its surface, as discovered by researchers from Baylor University and revealed to the world this week.
It’s a discovery that continues to puzzle scientists. Where did this 4.8 quintillion pound growth come from? What is it made of?
“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground,” Peter B. James, author of the paper, said in a press release. “That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.”
A Tale of Two Theories
There are the two reasons why the mass exists, according to the researchers who discovered it.
The first is “that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon’s mantle,” said James. The second is that the Moon’s liquid magma surface solidified billions of years ago, leaving dense oxides of nickel and iron.
Read more
We know it's there but we don't know where it came from
A Mass-ive Anomaly
The Moon’s largest crater — the 1,240 mile-across and four billion years-old South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin — is hiding something enormous and metallic under its surface, as discovered by researchers from Baylor University and revealed to the world this week.
It’s a discovery that continues to puzzle scientists. Where did this 4.8 quintillion pound growth come from? What is it made of?
“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground,” Peter B. James, author of the paper, said in a press release. “That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.”
A Tale of Two Theories
There are the two reasons why the mass exists, according to the researchers who discovered it.
The first is “that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon’s mantle,” said James. The second is that the Moon’s liquid magma surface solidified billions of years ago, leaving dense oxides of nickel and iron.
Read more
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