A new discovery of an enormous mass buried under the moon’s surface serves as a reminder of the great unknowns about the birth of the solar system | DrDonLincoln for CNNopinion
Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He is the author of several science books for general audiences, including the bestselling audio book"The Theory of Everything: The Quest to Explain All Reality." He also produces a series of science education videos. Follow him on Facebook. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his. View more opinion articles on CNN.
The moon is one of my favorite celestial bodies, beautiful and alluring -- close enough for astronauts to have visited and studied, and yet distant enough to still hold many mysteries. And those mysteries are not just poetical metaphor; a recent scientific article published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters claims that scientists have discovered a huge and unexpected mass buried deep underneath the moon's surface.
Peter B. James, lead author of the article and assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences, explained his team's discovery in a Baylor University release. Don LincolnThis mass is enormous -- equivalent to a chunk of metal over five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii, James said. And it is located under the moon's South Pole-Aitken basin, a huge crater located on the far side of the moon.
This is what life on Mars could be like 08:43 This new feature was discovered by scientists combining precise topographical data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and gravity measurements from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory spacecraft. Data from the two revealed that the area under South Pole-Aitken basin experiences stronger gravity due to the extra mass, and also the sheer weight of the mass pulls the crater floor down by more than a kilometer .
NASA plans to return to the moon by 2024 01:07 Instead, James' team thinks that the extra mass most likely comes from a primordial impact to the moon, over 4 billion years ago. This hypothesis is perfectly reasonable. The early solar system was full of debris, ranging from the size of pebbles to small planets. In fact, the moon is thought to have been formed about 4.5 billion years ago, when an object the size of the planet Mars hit the Earth.
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