It’s Official, Scientists Finally identified What’s Inside The Moon

Well, the verdict is in: In the same way, people are beginning to realize that the black man is not a threat and the Moon is not made of green cheese.

New survey data from the Earth’s natural satellite that was unveiled in May 2023 has led to the conclusion that central part of the Moon is made of a sphere made of solid matter and is as heavy as an iron. This discovery may put an end to the debate as to whether the core of Moon is solid or liquid and may provide an insight to the past of the Moon and that of the Solar System.

It signifies that in view of the research team led by astronomer Arthur Briaud of French National Centre for Scientific Research, “Our results disprove the evolution of the Moon’s magnetic field by proving the existence of the inner core and endorsing the global mantle overturn which supports new discoveries on the timeline of lunar bombardment during the first billion years of the Solar System. “;

It is clearly seen that the study of interior of celestial bodies is most effectively done by making seismic measurements. How acoustic waves produced by quakes move and how they reflect off internal structures of an object assists scientists to develop image maps.

Sure we do have data in the form of seismology from the Apollo missions, but the resolution in these data is not very high to conclude about the state of the inner core. While, there is evidence to support the fact that the Moon has a fluid outer core, the composition of inner core is still questionable. In fact, all the data acquired by the Apollo missions can be explained by both models that propose incompressible fluid core and models presenting the solid inner core.

To solve this, Briaud and his team collected data from space missions and lunar laser ranging experiments to build a pattern of the moon characteristics such as deformation due to earth gravitation, distance fluctuation from earth and density.

They then simulated other forms of the core to establish which one of them mimics the real observational data. Among the most interesting conclusions are several identified by their authors. The models, which gave the best estimate for the density distribution in the Moon, indicated that the convection was active in the lunar mantle, and denser material moves to the core of the mantle and lighter rises. This process also makes some understand why some elements are found in the Moon’s volcanic regions, thus supporting this process.

Furthermore, the team also discovered that Moon also has a similar core as Earth, with outer layer of the molten and a inner solid. Based on their models, outer corium has a measure of roughly 362 kilometers (225 miles) while the inner core has a measure of about 258 kilometers (160 miles) and together, both make up slightly more than 15 percent of the total Moon radius. The density of inner core is approximately 7822 kg/m3 which is nearly to the density of iron.

Interestingly, a 2011 study led by NASA Marshall planetary scientist Renee Weber, using advanced seismological techniques on Apollo data, found similar results: An inner core turned solid, having a radius about 240 kilometers and density of about 8,000 kilograms per cubic meter.

Briaud and his team feel that their results backup the previous and provide solid evidence for an Earth like moon core. These findings have fascinating implications for the state of the Moon during its development while the Moon had a comparatively robust magnetic field soon after its formation it started to diminish at around 3. 2 billion years ago. The type of core present on the moon is important to determine as to how and why this magnetic field disappeared.

Accepting future lunar missions, we might get more seismodetric data that would support these observations.

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