* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Sunday, August 31, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Erykah Badu Announces ‘Abi & Alan’ Album With The Alchemist Will Be Delayed – yahoo.com

    Erykah Badu Opens Up About the Delay of Her Highly Anticipated ‘Abi & Alan’ Album with The Alchemist

    If You Needed Some BTS Pics Of The Rock’s Tree Trunk Legs To Spice Up Your Day, We Got ‘Em – yahoo.com

    Need a Boost? Check Out These Epic BTS Shots of The Rock’s Tree Trunk Legs!

    Sabrina Carpenter’s pearl-clutching magic? Humor – CNN

    Sabrina Carpenter’s pearl-clutching magic? Humor – CNN

    South Park Is In Trouble And Needs To Change Course, Fast – yahoo.com

    South Park Faces Major Challenges and Must Adapt Fast to Survive

    ‘Netflix House’ entertainment complexes are coming. Here’s when they open – Los Angeles Times

    Exciting News: Netflix’s House Entertainment Complexes Are Opening Soon!

    ‘Big Brother’s’ Rylie Jeffries Finally Speaks Out on Katherine Woodman Controversy – El Paso Inc.

    Big Brother’s Rylie Jeffries Finally Speaks Out on Katherine Woodman Controversy

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

    Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

    Propelling solar technology into a perovskite future – CORDIS

    Propelling solar technology into a perovskite future – CORDIS

    13 Top Technology Trends (2025) – Exploding Topics

    13 Game-Changing Technology Trends to Watch in 2025

    Japan’s legacy LCD and chip technology find new home in India – Nikkei Asia

    How Japan’s Breakthrough LCD and Chip Technologies Are Driving Innovation in India

    ITSWC 2025: Thursday sessions guide – Traffic Technology Today

    Your Ultimate Guide to Thursday Sessions at ITSWC 2025

    MC Machinery Technology Summit Showcases Manufacturing Innovations – Modern Machine Shop

    MC Machinery Technology Summit Unveils Cutting-Edge Manufacturing Innovations

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Erykah Badu Announces ‘Abi & Alan’ Album With The Alchemist Will Be Delayed – yahoo.com

    Erykah Badu Opens Up About the Delay of Her Highly Anticipated ‘Abi & Alan’ Album with The Alchemist

    If You Needed Some BTS Pics Of The Rock’s Tree Trunk Legs To Spice Up Your Day, We Got ‘Em – yahoo.com

    Need a Boost? Check Out These Epic BTS Shots of The Rock’s Tree Trunk Legs!

    Sabrina Carpenter’s pearl-clutching magic? Humor – CNN

    Sabrina Carpenter’s pearl-clutching magic? Humor – CNN

    South Park Is In Trouble And Needs To Change Course, Fast – yahoo.com

    South Park Faces Major Challenges and Must Adapt Fast to Survive

    ‘Netflix House’ entertainment complexes are coming. Here’s when they open – Los Angeles Times

    Exciting News: Netflix’s House Entertainment Complexes Are Opening Soon!

    ‘Big Brother’s’ Rylie Jeffries Finally Speaks Out on Katherine Woodman Controversy – El Paso Inc.

    Big Brother’s Rylie Jeffries Finally Speaks Out on Katherine Woodman Controversy

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

    Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

    Propelling solar technology into a perovskite future – CORDIS

    Propelling solar technology into a perovskite future – CORDIS

    13 Top Technology Trends (2025) – Exploding Topics

    13 Game-Changing Technology Trends to Watch in 2025

    Japan’s legacy LCD and chip technology find new home in India – Nikkei Asia

    How Japan’s Breakthrough LCD and Chip Technologies Are Driving Innovation in India

    ITSWC 2025: Thursday sessions guide – Traffic Technology Today

    Your Ultimate Guide to Thursday Sessions at ITSWC 2025

    MC Machinery Technology Summit Showcases Manufacturing Innovations – Modern Machine Shop

    MC Machinery Technology Summit Unveils Cutting-Edge Manufacturing Innovations

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home Science

Chang’e 6 Lunar Samples Could Solve Mysteries of the Moon’s Far Side

July 21, 2024
in Science
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

“There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark.”

—Pink Floyd, “Eclipse”

On June 25 a piece of the moon fell to Earth.

On supporting science journalism

If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

It was a substantial piece: nearly two kilograms of rock and dust that were drilled out of the lunar crust by the Chinese Chang’e 6 lander, which had touched down on the moon’s surface a few weeks earlier. Stashed in a rocket-launched return capsule, those samples met up with the Chang’e 6 mothership in lunar orbit and then rode an Earth-return module on the 380,000-kilometer journey home, finally parachuting into Inner Mongolia for retrieval and study by eager scientists.

The feat was much the same as the lunar-sample return of the Chang’e 5 mission from 2020, save for one very important difference: this time—and for the first time ever, in fact—the material was from the moon’s far side, which is always turned away from Earth. That required extra steps, such as using dedicated satellites in lunar orbit to relay communications, but the scientific payoff could be worth the trouble. Researchers hope the minerals within these historic samples will help solve a long-standing mystery in planetary science: why the moon’s far side is so very different than its near side.

We only ever see one lunar face because the moon takes about the same amount of time to rotate once as it does to complete a single orbit of Earth. This is no coincidence; it’s linked to our planet’s strong tidal influence on our natural satellite. The result is that, more or less, we can divide the moon into two hemispheres: the side that always faces us—the near side—and the one that always points away—the far side.

Anyone who has gazed up at the moon is familiar with the near side’s most prominent features: many large and roughly circular dark patches against a backdrop of brighter terrain. Ancient astronomers dubbed these dark features “maria” (Latin for “seas”) because of their waterlike appearance from Earth. Yet they’re actually plains of basaltic volcanic minerals—solidified lava—that erupted out from beneath the surface long ago. The near side’s brighter regions are older, heavily cratered and more reflective highlands that rise from the plains.

Astronomers had long assumed the moon’s mostly unseen face was similar. But space-age reconnaissance shattered those expectations in 1959, when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft beamed back the very first image of the far side. Although it was grainy and fuzzy, the photograph was still clear enough to reveal a wildly different landscape. The far side was almost all rugged highland, with the near side’s sprawling maria shrunken to just a few scattered darker spots. Decades of follow-up observations only widened the shocking mismatch between the hemispheres. Gravity data from the two lunar-orbiting GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) spacecraft, for instance, indicated that the far side’s crust was about 20 kilometers thicker on average than that of the near side.

Why were the two hemispheres so different? It’s tempting to think Earth’s tides played a role, yet nothing is ever that simple.

The cause must reach back to the moon’s birth. The current origin story, widely accepted by scientists, is called the giant impact hypothesis (also known as the big splat, which I rather like). In this scenario, a Mars-sized world—which astronomers call Theia, after the Titan who was the daughter of Gaia in Greek mythology—slammed into Earth at a grazing angle shortly after our planet’s formation 4.6 billion years ago. The immense release of energy tore Theia apart, sinking its core down into Earth’s depths and blasting its outer layers—plus lots of terrestrial material—into orbit.

All that superheated rock cooled rapidly in space and became the moon. Scientists still argue over the details, but our satellite may have coalesced from the debris in as little as a few months to a few years! At that time, the moon was much closer to Earth than today, perhaps only about one tenth the current separation—across the eons, tidal forces gradually pushed it farther out.

At that close distance, the tidal interaction between the two was fierce, and the newly created moon’s rotation may have become tidally locked in as little as a year. This is far faster than the crust could have formed and solidified, which means that the hemisphere dichotomy couldn’t be caused by Earth’s tidal pull. Something else must have happened to thicken the far side as the crust initially cooled.

Scientists tossed around a few ideas; none proved to be a perfect fits for the dichotomy we see today, however. Perhaps a second, smaller moon formed from the big splat’s debris as well, and it eventually collided with the bigger moon at slow speed and draped the far side with more material. Maybe physical processes churning inside the newborn moon allowed one side to get thicker.

Then, in 2014, a team of astronomers published a new, arguably better explanation. Their culprit was not our planet’s tides but Earth itself.

In all the models investigating the young moon’s evolution, none had completely taken into account that Earth loomed overwhelmingly large in the lunar sky. Shortly after the moon formed, Earth was so close that it would’ve taken up a staggering 40 degrees of angular diameter in the sky as seen from the moon, covering a celestial area 20 times larger than it does today.

Remember, at that time, Earth was hot. Theia’s impact would have vaporized much of our planet’s surface and melted the rest. For many centuries, if not millennia, the heat from rock boiling at about 2,000 degrees Celsius would’ve cooked the nascent moon’s near side, raising it to about 1,000 degrees C, while the far side would’ve cooled to frigid temperatures.

This has profound implications. Early on, when the moon was still entirely molten, it would’ve had a churning atmosphere of incandescent rock and metal. Hardy elements such as calcium and aluminum have a very high boiling point and would’ve stayed as gas on the moon’s roasting near side, whereas they would’ve easily condensed on the cooler far side. Those windswept elements would have interacted with others on the far side, forming relatively lightweight minerals such as feldspar, which would have floated on the surface to gradually create that side’s thicker crust.

Interestingly, orbital surveys do show more feldspar on the far side than on the near side. Also, this process could have concentrated other minerals on the near side, including radioactive ones that would have acted to heat the crust there and allowed magma to eventually burst forth. This would have flooded much of the near side’s surface to make the dark maria while leaving the far side mostly maria-free.

So does this solve the mysterious lunar dichotomy? It’s the best idea going right now, but of course more evidence is needed to support it. The far side material brought down from Chang’e 6 may provide some clues once scientists perform detailed chemical analyses.

It’s funny: sometimes people call the lunar far side its “dark side,” but this is a misconception. It gets just as much illumination as the near side in the two-week stretches of sunlight that make up half of each full lunar day. In that sense, the assertion in Pink Floyd’s song was right. This phrase can perhaps be redeemed by a more poetic interpretation: the “dark” side is the one we’re more in the dark about. We don’t know it as well because it’s unviewable from Earth and still mostly unexplored.

But that’s not as true as it once was. Soon we should have answers to questions we’ve asked since the start of the space age. We’ve mapped the moon’s far side, and now we even have samples of it to study. Flashes of insight are on the horizon, and a new era of discovery is dawning. Our understanding of the far side won’t stay dark forever.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Scientific American – https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/change-6-lunar-samples-could-solve-mysteries-of-the-moons-far-side/

Tags: changeLunarscience
Previous Post

Stingrays Move Thousands of Tons of Sand on the Seafloor per Year

Next Post

Paris Olympics Will Be a Training Ground for AI-Powered Mass Surveillance

While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight – The Wall Street Journal

While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight – The Wall Street Journal

August 31, 2025

Economists Raise Red Flags: Alarming Warning Signs Emerge Across the Economy

August 31, 2025
Erykah Badu Announces ‘Abi & Alan’ Album With The Alchemist Will Be Delayed – yahoo.com

Erykah Badu Opens Up About the Delay of Her Highly Anticipated ‘Abi & Alan’ Album with The Alchemist

August 31, 2025
Coach Prime 2.0: What’s next for Deion and the Buffaloes – ESPN

Coach Prime 2.0: What’s Next for Deion Sanders and the Buffaloes?

August 31, 2025
How to Reclaim a Politics of Unity – Wake Up To Politics

How to Reclaim Unity in Politics and Ignite Genuine Change

August 31, 2025

Arthur Garrett Reveals a Captivating Lesson on Ecology from His Fishpond

August 31, 2025
Scientists discover armored “goblin monster” in prehistoric Utah – ScienceDaily

Scientists Discover Armored “Goblin Monster” Buried in Prehistoric Utah

August 31, 2025
Space 4 All STEM Day: Where the mind’s eye and science come together – Bay News 9

Space 4 All STEM Day: Where the mind’s eye and science come together – Bay News 9

August 31, 2025
Lifestyle Communities Ltd (ASX:LIC) Full Year 2025 Earnings Call Highlights: Navigating … – Yahoo Finance

Lifestyle Communities Ltd (ASX:LIC) Full Year 2025 Earnings Call Highlights: Navigating … – Yahoo Finance

August 31, 2025
Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

Marvell Technology (MRVL) Loses 18.6% as Growth Outlook Fails to Impress – Yahoo Finance

August 31, 2025

Categories

Archives

August 2025
MTWTFSS
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jul    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (799)
  • Economy (818)
  • Entertainment (21,698)
  • General (16,776)
  • Health (9,859)
  • Lifestyle (832)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (819)
  • Politics (826)
  • Science (16,028)
  • Sports (21,316)
  • Technology (15,798)
  • World (799)

Recent News

While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight – The Wall Street Journal

While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight – The Wall Street Journal

August 31, 2025

Economists Raise Red Flags: Alarming Warning Signs Emerge Across the Economy

August 31, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version