NASA Research Provides New Details On Mystery of How the Moon Got ‘Inked’

spacecoastdaily.com ^

[BenLurkin]

Lunar swirls can be tens of miles across and appear in groups or just as an isolated feature.

Previous observations yielded two significant clues about their formation:

First, they appear where ancient bits of magnetic field are embedded in the lunar crust (although not every “fossil” magnetic field on the moon has a lunar swirl).

Second, the bright areas in the swirls appear to be less weathered than their surroundings.

The space environment is harsh; many things can cause material exposed to space to change chemically and darken over time, including impacts from microscopic meteorites and the effects of the solar wind – a million-mile-per-hour stream of electrically conducting gas blown from the surface of the sun.

Those clues led to three prominent theories about how the swirls formed. The swirls and the magnetic fields could both have formed from plumes of material ejected by comet impacts.

Alternatively, perhaps when fine dust particles get lofted by micrometeorite impacts, an existing magnetic field over the swirls sorts them according to their susceptibility to magnetism, forming light and dark patterns with different compositions.

Finally, since particles in the solar wind (electrons and ions) are electrically charged, they respond to magnetic forces. Perhaps the magnetic field shields the surface from weathering by the solar wind.

In the new research, teams of scientists created computer models that provide new insights into how the magnetic shield hypothesis could work.

[Fred Nerks]

Is there an odd similarity?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

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Must-have-the-spice!