Scientists have discovered a mysterious and massive object on the “dark side” of the Moon – Enséñame de Ciencia

Our natural satellite continues to surprise us with new discoveries about the mysteries it hides, this time, beneath its largest hole. Recent research has found that a giant lump of metallic material on the Moon is buried in Aitken, the largest basin on the Moon.

In its vast existence, outer space holds millions of mysteries for us, which humans are eager to solve to better understand the nature of the universe in which we live. To take the right steps toward this goal, we first began studying our closest cosmic neighbors, including the Moon.

The moon is the only satellite of the Earth that was formed naturally, as it has a diameter of more than 3,000 kilometers and is more than 300,000 kilometers away from our planet. The moon has been the subject of many studies, so it came in Spanish Astronomical Society.

It has recently been implemented in Baylor University A study of the moon had amazing results, as a huge object was found beneath one of the most famous craters on this moon.

Led by Dr. Peter B. James in Geophysics from Baylor University and assisted by the space mission Gravity recovery and indoor laboratoryor cup, of The National Center for Aeronautics and Space AdministrationThis research found a metal block several kilometers in diameter on the far side of the moon.

Published under the title “Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole and Aitken Basin” in Spanish in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters of the Platform Advancement of earth and space sciences.

The Aitken Basin is located at the south pole of the Moon. It has a diameter of about 2,500 km and a depth of 12 km. Experts consider it the largest crater in the solar system, which is believed to have been formed by the effects of asteroids millions of years in the past.

Aitken was the area where recent research found a massive metallic object with a mass of about 2 x 1018 km and at a depth of 300 km below the surface. This appears to be made of materials such as nickel and iron, and is located between the upper mantle of the Moon and its core, due to the extension of this mass that does not allow it to sink further.

It is believed that this metal body arrived to the moon in the form of an asteroid that collided with it millions of years ago, and its remains remained on the moon and is responsible for the formation of the Aitken Basin.

But after careful studies, experts came up with two hypotheses about the formation of this massive mineral mass, which is 2,000 kilometers wide, in the Aitken Crater on the Moon.

The first is what was previously mentioned, and this mass, along with its materials, reached the Moon millions of years ago when an asteroid collided with its surface, which in turn formed the largest crater in the solar system.

The second postulated hypothesis is that this concentration of metallic material is actually a remnant, a high concentration of cooled dense oxides, formed in the lunar phase, when it was still a ball of lunar magma.

Looking at the 4-billion-year-old Aitken Basin, Peter B. James described this region of the Moon as “one of the best natural laboratories for studying catastrophic impact events, an ancient process that formed all the rocky planets and moons we see today.”