The Magma inside the Moon (& facts)

Richard Koys

Mr. Youell

Science 28/3/15

            The moon is the small rock that orbits our earth and the rock that is over 4.527 million years old. It is said that a huge comet has hit the earth and was then destroyed into hundreds and hundreds of pieces. After the collation, an asteroid belt was created around the earth, but after years have passed, the rocks then began to collide until they created a massive rock which was then given a name: the moon. But last year in 2014, scientists have discovered something very amazing. Like when earth has molten metal (not magma), it has been revealed that the moon ALSO has a core! The only difference is that the moon only contains magma.

Several kilometers below Oceanus Procellarum (Latin for Ocean of Storms is the largest and darkest spot on the moon), scientists have discovered in a rectangular shaped area that there was spilled lava that was flooding across the moon. It has been said that the moon could have experienced some volcanic activity that was accosted with bigger planets. This must explain it when the moon has crashed on our planet. The work of the data gathering was done by GRAIL which stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory which is a pair or part of a NASA spacecraft that orbited the moon back in 2012.  Below known impact basins, GRAIL has found ring like patterns but underneath the Procellarum region, the mysterious rectangle emerged. It is also said that the Procellarum region is rich in radioactive elements that billions of years ago would have produced excess heat. The scientists have said that as this region cooled, the rock would have cracked in geometrical patterns, like honeycomb patterns seen on earth in basalt formations (basalt is an aphanitic igneous rock).

There is only one question remaining, if the moon has magma deep inside its core, why is it not erupting? Just like oil on water, less dense magmas are buoyant (it means that it is able or tending to keep afloat or rise to the top) and will percolate up above the solid rock. But, if the magma is too dense, it will either stay where it is or it will sink. “The moon is not big enough to have the same strong convective cooling process that Earth has in its interior” said Herbert Frey who is a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

So what caused the rifting remains unclear? The moon just keeps on surprising us and is also scaring some people. I mean what would happen if the entire moon would erupt? I would suggest that it would be blown to pieces just like that day when the moon has crashed on our planet and it could destroy part of earth and kill many lives. Who knows, this didn’t happen yet but it could happen. Since the Moon has no active volcanic activity, the melt currently located at the bottom of the lunar mantle must have a high density (look at image#1 below).

Images #1

When we cut ¼ of the moon and ¼ of earth, we can see that they are both the same. They both have 4 cores but they also have different names.

Facts about the moon:

1.     The surface temperature of the moon measures about -233 to 123 °C

2.     The moon’s length of orbit is 27.3 earth days.

3.     In China, the dark and shadowy parts on the moon are called “the toad in the moon”

4.     When Alan Sheppard was on the moon, he hit a golf ball and drove it 2,400 feet away, nearly one half of a mile.

1.     You will not believe this, but more than 400 trees come from the moon! Now you might be saying: “But there is no way that seeds come from the moon! That’s impossible! Well In 1971, in 1971, Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa took a bunch of seeds with him while Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell were busy sauntering around on the surface.

2.     Is the moon a planet? Since the moon is much bigger than Pluto, it is then and also it also received the name “double-planet” because it is close to earth and orbits it a lot.

3.     The tides that we see when we go to the beach are all caused by the moon’s gravity. The more the earth spins underneath, the bigger the tides become. Also when there is the full moon, and new moon, the Sun, Earth and moon are lined up, producing the higher than normal tides (called spring tides, for the way they spring up). When the moon is at first or last quarter, smaller neap tides form.

4.     The moon’s gravity is also stealing the earth’s rotational energy which is then causing our planet to slow about 1.5 milliseconds every century.

5.     The moon is also moving away from our planet. How? The moon doesn't only steal the earth’s rotational energy to slow our planet down but is also using that energy to move 3.8 centimeters higher in its orbit. Researchers say that when it formed, the moon was about 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) from Earth. It's now more than 280,000 miles, or 450,000 kilometers away.

Here are the sources that I have used:

http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2014/10/ancient-magma-plumbing-found-buried-below-moons-largest-dark-spot

http://www.universetoday.com/93696/if-the-moon-currently-has-liquid-magma-why-isnt-it-erupting/

http://www.space.com/19619-top-10-moon-facts.html

http://space-facts.com/the-moon/

http://www.universetoday.com/20050/10-interesting-facts-about-the-moon/

And of course I used Google images for the pictures.