

Scientists can't explain mysterious large mass discovered on Moon

Scientists are struggling to explain a large mass of unknown material discovered in one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system.
The material was discovered on the Moon’s Lunar South Pole-Aitken basin, which is 2500km in diameter and takes up one-fourth of the celestial satellite’s surface.
Published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers predict the mass could contain metal from an asteroid that collided with the Moon’s surface some four billion years ago.
The ultra-HD image is 9000px by 9000px. Andrew McCarthy
The crater is on the far side of the moon and cannot be seen from Earth. (Instagram)
"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected," lead author Dr Peter James said in statement.
"Whatever it is, wherever it came from, [it's weighing down the basin floor ]."
As the oval-shaped crater cannot be seen from Earth because of its location on the far side of the Moon, researchers analysed data from spacecrafts used for NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.
"When we combined that with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we discovered the unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin," he said.


"One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon's mantle."
Using computer simulations of large asteroid impacts, researchers could recreate conditions where an iron-nickel core of an asteroid could be dispersed into the layer between the Moon's crust and core during an impact.
"We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle until the present day, rather than sinking to the Moon's core," he said.
Another possibility is the mass might be a concentration of dense oxides associated with the last stage of lunar magma ocean solidification.

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