The Moon certainly ain't made of cheese but it may be made of more metal than previously thought, sensor shows
(2020/07/02)
- Reference: 1593657788
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/07/02/moon_metal_study/
- Source link:
The latest measurements from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggest the Moon contains more metal than previously thought.
The result goes against a widely accepted theory that our home world's natural satellite was born from a cataclysmic collision between a protoplanet named Theia and a young Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. If that theory is correct, the Moon should have roughly the same concentration of minerals as found on Earth.
But the data collected using the LRO’s Miniature Radio Frequency ( [1]Mini-RF ) instrument hints that the Moon is much more metallic below its surface than previous estimates based on Earth's composition. The Mini-RF gadget measures something called dielectric constant, the ratio of the electric permeability of a material to the permeability of a vacuum. A higher dielectric constant indicates the presence of metal, such as iron and titanium oxides.
Scientists led by the University of Southern California in Los Angeles examined the Mini-RF's dielectric constant readings of spots where meteors had smashed into the lunar surface – and found that the deeper the impact, the more metallic material was present. That suggests some areas of the Moon are richer in some metals than the Earth, particularly the darker parts of our satellite's northern hemisphere. Presumably, contamination from the meteors was, or can be, ruled out.
NASA shoves Astrobotic $199.5m to sling water-hunting VIPER trundlebot at Moon [2]READ MORE
“It really raises the question of what this means for our previous formation hypotheses,” said [3]said Essam Heggy, co-investigator of the Mini-RF experiments at the university, and lead author of a paper describing the findings, [4]published in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters on Wednesday.
Their results were also backed up by metal-oxide maps that were collected by previous spacecraft, including Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kaguya lunar orbiter.
“This exciting result from Mini-RF shows that even after 11 years in operation at the Moon, we are still making new discoveries about the ancient history of our nearest neighbor,” Noah Petro, the LRO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, added.
“The Mini-RF data is incredibly valuable for telling us about the properties of the lunar surface, but we use that data to infer what was happening over 4.5 billion years ago.” ®
Get our [5]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/main/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/nasa_signs_up_astrobotic/
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/moon-more-metallic-than-thought
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X2030217X?via%3Dihub
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The result goes against a widely accepted theory that our home world's natural satellite was born from a cataclysmic collision between a protoplanet named Theia and a young Earth some 4.5 billion years ago. If that theory is correct, the Moon should have roughly the same concentration of minerals as found on Earth.
But the data collected using the LRO’s Miniature Radio Frequency ( [1]Mini-RF ) instrument hints that the Moon is much more metallic below its surface than previous estimates based on Earth's composition. The Mini-RF gadget measures something called dielectric constant, the ratio of the electric permeability of a material to the permeability of a vacuum. A higher dielectric constant indicates the presence of metal, such as iron and titanium oxides.
Scientists led by the University of Southern California in Los Angeles examined the Mini-RF's dielectric constant readings of spots where meteors had smashed into the lunar surface – and found that the deeper the impact, the more metallic material was present. That suggests some areas of the Moon are richer in some metals than the Earth, particularly the darker parts of our satellite's northern hemisphere. Presumably, contamination from the meteors was, or can be, ruled out.
NASA shoves Astrobotic $199.5m to sling water-hunting VIPER trundlebot at Moon [2]READ MORE
“It really raises the question of what this means for our previous formation hypotheses,” said [3]said Essam Heggy, co-investigator of the Mini-RF experiments at the university, and lead author of a paper describing the findings, [4]published in the Earth and Planetary Science Letters on Wednesday.
Their results were also backed up by metal-oxide maps that were collected by previous spacecraft, including Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kaguya lunar orbiter.
“This exciting result from Mini-RF shows that even after 11 years in operation at the Moon, we are still making new discoveries about the ancient history of our nearest neighbor,” Noah Petro, the LRO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, added.
“The Mini-RF data is incredibly valuable for telling us about the properties of the lunar surface, but we use that data to infer what was happening over 4.5 billion years ago.” ®
Get our [5]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mini-RF/main/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/12/nasa_signs_up_astrobotic/
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/moon-more-metallic-than-thought
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0012821X2030217X?via%3Dihub
[5] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Funny you should say that...
John Smith 19
Since the original Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the 1960's probe operators have detected orbital anomalies which indicates "mass concentrations" below the surface.
So what could another name for a "Masscon" be?
An ore body of course. And this instrument can give us some of that bodies electrical properties as well.
Thumbs up to the team. They seem to have built it to confirm a theory, but the theory is not confirmed. They have new facts and new questions to ask.
Exciting times.
Density
We know the volume; we know the mass; thus we know the density. As a general rule metals --> more dense than non metals. So does this imply that the moon is a bit like Thompson's Plum Pudding model of the atom? If the data is correct it would appear to suggest that there are sort of submerged pimples of dense metallic mass.
One thing not made clear is how deep the dialetric effect could measure to.