The far side of the moon hides the remains of ancient gigantic volcanoes. But how the volcano was formed remains a mystery, even though researchers are certain it was there.
For more than 20 years, it has been known that the region on the far side of the moon called Compton Berkovich is a bit of a strange place. It had a strange terrain, and the top few meters of soil seemed to contain more thorium than the surrounding area.
now, Matt Siegler Using data from China’s orbiting satellites Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2, researchers at the Arizona Institute for Planetary Science have located an unexpectedly hot region 50 kilometers across and several kilometers thick. rice field. The only way to generate all this heat on the moon is through the decay of radioactive elements such as thorium and uranium, and the best way to form such concentrations of these elements is by repeatedly melting rocks through volcanic activity. That’s it.
“Those little pieces of thorium that we saw on the surface are just the tip of the iceberg of a huge underground body that was the plumbing system of this volcano,” says Siegler. “This pushes the boundaries of what we know about how volcanoes form, especially on the Moon.”
The topography of the area suggests that the volcano last erupted about 3.5 billion years ago, and all of its lava has now cooled and solidified into giant granite slabs called batholiths. there will be There are some similar regions on the near side of the Moon, but they are not as large as Compton Berkovich, and none of them are as radioactive as Compton Berkovich. This is probably because they haven’t gone through as many cycles of melting and melting. Cooling – Each melting cycle concentrates radioactive elements within the resulting magma.
Similar basites underlie many of the major volcanic systems on Earth, but we didn’t expect to find them on the Moon. “On Earth, this kind of volcanic activity is driven by plate tectonics and water, but on the Moon we have neither,” says Ziegler. “People really didn’t think volcanic activity of this magnitude could occur on the Moon.”
This could mean that strange wet pockets formed in the moon’s crust, allowing rocks to melt at cooler temperatures. “It’s kind of weird, but it can happen,” says Ziegler. Another option is that there were hotspots caused by intense formation of the Moon, similar to the hotspots beneath Yellowstone in the United States that caused widespread volcanic activity in the region. Solving this lunar mystery will require more detailed data from future lunar exploration missions.
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