The huge mass buried beneath the surface on the dark side of the moon is rarely found outside Earth.
Since the Moon has no atmosphere to regulate the Sun’s heat, the surface temperature reaches 110°C during the day and -170°C at night. That’s why a group of scientists made a fascinating discovery: there is a massive rock mass releasing heat in the far side of the Moon.
This mysterious hot spot appears to be caused by natural radiation emanating from a hidden granite deposit buried under the surface of the Moon, a type of rock that is rarely found in large quantities outside of Earth.
According to research conducted by a group of international planetary scientists working for NASA, This heat-emitting mass of granite may have come from a long-dead volcano that last erupted more than 3.5 billion years ago.
The study’s lead author, Matt Siegler, of the Planetary Sciences Institute in Tucson, Arizona, said in a press release : “It’s about 50 km wide, and the only solution we can think of that produces so much heat is a large body of granite, a rock that forms when a body of magma cools, lava without an eruption , under a volcano”.
The stain was an unexpected discovery, as it granite is almost completely absent from our known solar system, except on Earth, wrote the team in Nature .
The discovery of a large amount of granite opens the possibility of similar discoveries elsewhere under the surface of the Moon. “It looks more like Earth than we imagined it would look like on the Moon. which lacks the water and plate tectonics that help granites form on Earth,” Siegler said.
The discovery of the mass that emits heat on the far side of the Moon
The researcher and his colleague and wife, Dr. Rita Economos of Southern Methodist University, discovered heat using a new technique that uses microwaves to measure temperatures underground thanks to the collaboration of Chinese lunar orbiters Chang’E 1 and 2, with data from the Lunar Prospector and NASA. Lunar reconnaissance orbiters.
The findings revealed a high geothermal gradient where the temperature is about 10°C warmer than its surroundings and that it coincided exactly with a large silicon-rich surface 20 km wide, thought to be an extinct volcanic caldera on the far side of the Moon.
Although the volcano has been dead for 3.5 billion years, the magma it contains is likely still below the surface, still emitting radiation. “We interpret this heat flow as the result of a radiation-rich granitic body beneath the caldera. To tell the truth, we were a bit surprised when we found it: Fortunately, my wife, Dr. Rita Economos, is the family geochemist. Thanks to his advice, we were able to reconstruct the probable geological cause of the thermal anomaly,” explains Siegler.
The mass is actually a 50 km wide batholith, it is a type of volcanic rock composed mainly of granite which forms when magma penetrates the earth’s crust and slowly solidifies at great depth.
The researchers reported their first results in the journal Nature on July 5 and presented additional details in the July 12 review. goldschmidt conference on geochemistry in Lyon, France.
Reacting to the research, Stephen M. Elardo, a University of Florida geochemist who was not directly involved in the study, expressed his appreciation for the find, calling it “incredibly interesting.”
“We have tons of granite in different flavors all over the Earth. People don’t mind having a granite countertop in their kitchen. But geologically speaking, it’s quite difficult to make granite without water and without plate tectonics, which is why we don’t really see this type of rock on other planets. So if this finding by Siegler and his colleagues is confirmed, it will be of great importance for how we think about the inner workings of other rocky bodies in the solar system.”
Source: Latercera
I am David Jack and I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years. As an experienced journalist, I specialize in covering sports news with a focus on golf. My articles have been published by some of the most respected publications in the world including The New York Times and Sports Illustrated.
