A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) might have solved a decades-old mystery regarding how the Moon lost its magnetic field with a recent study published in Science Advances. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of the Moon and how this could have influenced the formation and evolution of the Earth.
For the study, the researchers use computer modeling to build upon past studies that discovered Moon rocks near the lunar south pole and on the far side of the Moon contain traces of magnetism, whereas the rest of the Moon appears non-magnetic. In the end, the researchers determined that a large impact resulted in ionized particles being created and surrounding the entire Moon, with rocks on the opposite side of the Moon from the impact becoming magnetized from the impact.
“There are large parts of lunar magnetism that are still unexplained,” said Isaac Narrett, who is a graduate student in the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) and lead author of the study. “But the majority of the strong magnetic fields that are measured by orbiting spacecraft can be explained by this process — especially on the far side of the moon.”
While the Moon is geologically dead today, things were much different billions of years ago, as researchers have long hypothesized that the Moon’s internal geology produced a large magnetic field. However, as the Moon cooled due to its small size, its internal processes slowly dissipated, resulting in losing its magnetic field.
What new discoveries about the Moon’s ancient magnetic field will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Science Advances, EurekAlert!
Featured Image Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University