Space
Mystery Of Bull’s Eye On The Moon Finally Solved
Brooke James
First Posted: Oct 31, 2016 05:40 AM EDT
Among the biggest impact craters on the Moon is a mysteriously-shaped circle that looked remarkably like a three-ringed bull's eye. For decades, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of how the rings came to be - and it seems that today they finally found an answer.
The crater in question, which according to Space.com is called the Orientale impact basin, is located on the edge of the near side of the moon, so it is barely visible from the Earth. It has also been noted that the crater was formed about 3.8 billion years ago. Three concentric rings circle the feature, the biggest of which measures nearly 580 miles across.
Scientists need to look deeper than the lunar surface to be able to look into the moon's interior structure. Thanks to NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission - scientists were able to do just that.
Researchers explained that they used data about the moon's gravity to get a look at its subsurface structure. With this information, they modeled the impact that formed the crater to determine how the rings were formed.
Maria Zuber, a geophysicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead of the study shared, "We use gravity to map the interior of a planet in ways somewhat analogous to an X-ray." Because the interior of the moon contains varied materials and composition, the gravitational field in these objects cannot be the same all around, so studying the variations can help provide clues as to what lies beneath the surface.
As noted by Science Blog, the researchers determined tha the basin was created by an impactor that punched an initial, transient crator into the surface, sending at least 816,000 cubic miles of pulverized lunar crust flying out from the impact site. Based on the simulations made, the team estimated that the basin was carved out by a 40-million-wide object that collided with the moon at about 9 miles per second - or 32,400 miles per hour.
The said impact then pulverized the underlying crust, consequently unloading the shockwave that caused material to rise up, then crash back down, sloshing back and forth before eventually settleing back to the surface in the pattern of the outermost rings that rose several kilometers high.
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First Posted: Oct 31, 2016 05:40 AM EDT
Among the biggest impact craters on the Moon is a mysteriously-shaped circle that looked remarkably like a three-ringed bull's eye. For decades, scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of how the rings came to be - and it seems that today they finally found an answer.
The crater in question, which according to Space.com is called the Orientale impact basin, is located on the edge of the near side of the moon, so it is barely visible from the Earth. It has also been noted that the crater was formed about 3.8 billion years ago. Three concentric rings circle the feature, the biggest of which measures nearly 580 miles across.
Scientists need to look deeper than the lunar surface to be able to look into the moon's interior structure. Thanks to NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission - scientists were able to do just that.
Researchers explained that they used data about the moon's gravity to get a look at its subsurface structure. With this information, they modeled the impact that formed the crater to determine how the rings were formed.
Maria Zuber, a geophysicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead of the study shared, "We use gravity to map the interior of a planet in ways somewhat analogous to an X-ray." Because the interior of the moon contains varied materials and composition, the gravitational field in these objects cannot be the same all around, so studying the variations can help provide clues as to what lies beneath the surface.
As noted by Science Blog, the researchers determined tha the basin was created by an impactor that punched an initial, transient crator into the surface, sending at least 816,000 cubic miles of pulverized lunar crust flying out from the impact site. Based on the simulations made, the team estimated that the basin was carved out by a 40-million-wide object that collided with the moon at about 9 miles per second - or 32,400 miles per hour.
The said impact then pulverized the underlying crust, consequently unloading the shockwave that caused material to rise up, then crash back down, sloshing back and forth before eventually settleing back to the surface in the pattern of the outermost rings that rose several kilometers high.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone