The South Pole-Aitken Basin, which is on the far
side of our Moon, is one of the biggest intact craters in the Solar System.
Numerous orbiters, including the Chinese lander
Chang'e-4, and other spacecraft are examining the region, which is the focus of
numerous research. Now, scientists have found something strange under its
surface.
A structure that weighs 2.18 billion billion kilos
and measures more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) in deep has been found by
planetary scientists. The team speculates that the mass may have come from the
asteroid that created the crater, as described in the journal Geophysical
Research Letters.
"Imagine burying a mass of metal five times the
size of Hawaii's Big Island underneath. We identified about that much
unexpected mass, "Baylor University's Peter B. James, the paper's
principal author, said in a release.
The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)
mission of NASA, which monitors minute variations in the Moon's gravitational
field, made it feasible to make the finding. The internal structure of our
natural satellite may be investigated using these findings. The mass they
measured, it turns out, is sufficient to pull the whole basin's bottom down by
over a kilometer (more than half a mile). That's quite the pull considering the
crater has a circumference of around 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles).
According to James, "we uncovered the unusually
big amount of material hundreds of kilometers underground the South Pole-Aitken
basin when we merged it with lunar topography data from the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter." The metal from the asteroid that created this
crater is still trapped in the Moon's mantle, which is one reason for the
excess mass.
Computer models were used by the scientists to
explain the phenomenon. It is conceivable that the asteroid, which struck the
Earth some 4 billion years ago, stayed buried in the mantle rather than
entering the core. An alternate theory focuses on the solidification of the
Moon and hypothesizes that the magma ocean's concentration of dense oxides may
have developed when it cooled and settled.
Several satellite organizations are interested in
the South Pole-Aitken Basin because of how unique it is. The area may be
utilized to research the history of the Moon as well as its internal make-up. A
catastrophic impact on the surface of a rocky planet may be studied in this
environment the best.