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Science

22nd Aug 2023

‘Hidden’ structures discovered on the far side of the moon

Joseph Loftus

‘There is no dark side of the Moon really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark’

The Moon is a mad old place. Sure we’ve been there a load of times now but does anybody really know what’s going on up there. Well, of course they do, but it’s still baffling to a man like myself.

The latest Moon related story is that a new study has revealed what could be the presence of ‘buried’ structures located on the far side of the Moon.

The far side of the Moon is the side which is always facing away from us, where apparent structures were discovered by China’s Chang’e-4 rover, unearthing potentially billions of years of the Moon’s geological history.

The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets and states: “The GPR sends electromagnetic pulses into the lunar interior and receives echoes from subsurface layers. We use the high-frequency channel data to detect the structure of the upper 40m along the rover’s path, primarily consisting of rock debris and soil.

“Through this investigation, we have discovered multiple layers in the upper 300m, which likely indicate a series of basalt eruptions that occurred billions of years ago.

“The thickness variation of these lava flows suggests a decrease in eruption scale over time.”

Volcanoes on the moon – who could’ve figured.

It’s still disputed where the Moon actually came from however one theory is that it came into being when the Early Earth and another large planet collided into one another.

This theory, known as the Giant Impact Hypothesis, basis itself off evidence such as the similarities between the Earth and the Moon’s orbits.

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