Image: Sanja Baljkas via Getty Images
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
The origin of this remarkable distinction, known as the nearside-farside lunar asymmetry, has puzzled scientists for decades. Now, a team led by Matt Jones, a PhD candidate at Brown University, proposes that a cataclysmic impact that created one of the largest craters in the solar system, the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin, may have forged the stark asymmetry, which the researchers note “has remained unexplained since its discovery in the Apollo era,” according to a paper published on Friday in Science Advances. “Giant asteroid impacts deposit huge amounts of heat in planetary interiors,” said Jones in an email. “Awareness of this phenomenon and its consequences have become more widespread among planetary scientists over the last decade or two, but there's a lot more work to be done.”Jones was inspired to dig into this tantalizing enigma by his PhD advisor Alexander Evans, an assistant professor and planetary scientist at Brown, and co-author of the study, who has researched the evolution of these impact basins on the Moon and their potential role in the lunar asymmetry.“When I started my PhD, I was thrilled to take the lead on such an impactful study (pun intended) as explaining the lunar compositional asymmetry,” Jones said. “In my PhD work, I'm eager to contribute to major questions about the early evolution of rocky planets while I develop my analytical and computational skills. The physics-and computing-intensive nature of this project made it the perfect opportunity for me.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
In addition to shedding light on the weird idiosyncrasies of the Moon, the hypothesis could “provide insight to the giant impact origin hypothesis” on Mars, which has been proposed to explain the difference between the north and south hemispheres of the red planet, according to the new study.The mystery of the Moon’s asymmetry may be further unraveled by upcoming missions to the lunar south pole, such as China’s robotic Chang'e 6 mission, which is tasked with returning the first rock samples from SPA, as well as NASA's Artemis program, which aims to send humans back to the lunar surface.With these new endeavors, “lunar science will advance in leaps in bounds,” Jones said. “Chemical analyses of samples returned from SPA will help clarify our model of the lunar compositional asymmetry. Another boon would be to expand the network of seismometers on the Moon. Seismometers allow geoscientists to ‘image’ the interiors of planets, and better seismometer coverage leads to better image resolution.” “Adding seismometers to the farside of the Moon to supplement the three currently on the nearside would give lunar scientists a better picture of the Moon's present-day interior, which we use to constrain certain aspects of the models in our study,” he concluded. Update: This article has been updated to include comments from lead author Matt Jones.