The other side of the moon – the part that is always far from the earth – is strangely different from close. It is pockmarked with more craters, with a thicker crust and less Maria, where lava was once formed, or with fewer plains.
Now, scientists say the difference can be more than the depth of the skin.
Using samples from the moon obtained last year, Chinese researchers believe the inside of the moon is potentially drier than its near it. Their discovery, Published Wednesday’s Nature Journal will provide a clearer picture of how pearly orbs we admire in the night sky have formed and evolved over billions of years.
The difference in moisture in the distant side of the moon and its nearby appears to be “accidentally consistent” with variations in the surface features of the two hemispheres of the moon, said Senfu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and author of the new results. “It’s very interesting,” he said.
Until the 1990s, when scientists began to discover tips on water on its surface, the moon was believed to be “dry bones.” These tips were confirmed in 2009 when NASA denounced the rocket stage to the moon’s Antarctic.
One of the goals, including this mission, was to estimate the amount of water that lies deep within the moon. The interior of the moon is not changed much by the process of weathering the surface.
Returning to Earth with a Chang’e-6 sample in hand, researchers looked for hardened particles of lava erupted from the female entrance or within the lunar mantle. Some of these basalts were 2.8 billion years old, and contained olivine, a crystal that had ancient magma cooled in the moon and stored information about the composition of the mantle early in the history of the moon.
The amount of hydrogen trapped in olivine allowed scientists to estimate the amount of water present in the mantle at the time. 1-1.5 grams of water for every million grams of the moon rock.
Previous measurements from samples collected near the moon – the US, the Soviet Union, and most recently 200 times wet.
The harsh difference between the range of nearby lunar ranges between nearby and far side samples could suggest that the parts of the moon that we don’t see on Earth are generally much drier, Dr. Hu said.
Shuai Li, a planetary geologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who studies water on the moon, described the results as “very interesting.” However, he pointed out that limited information can be extracted from a single sample.
“It’s hard to say if the far side is definitely dryer than the nearest side,” said Dr. Lee, who was not involved in the job.
One scenario the Chang’e-6 team proposed to explain the internal differences is that the impact of creating the Antarctic-Aitken basin is strong enough to throw water and other elements near the moon, depleting the amount of water beyond.
Another idea is that the basalt in the Chang’e-6 sample comes from a much deeper, dry part of the lunar mantle.
“For me, that’s a little more realistic,” said Mahesh Anand, a planetary scientist at the UK Open University. Estimate the moisture content inside the moon From near-side samples from China collected by the Chang’e-5 mission in 2020.
Dr. Anand also praised the researchers’ careful selection of hundreds of particles from Chang’e-6 samples, less than 16 inches in size, to estimate water abundance.
“The ability to do that is extremely laborious and requires a lot of sophisticated and careful work,” he said.
More samples from various locations collected by future moon missions will help scientists determine whether the inner interior of the width is uniformly dry, and whether it changes throughout the hemisphere.
Source: www.nytimes.com
