Swiss cheese moon? More like a raisin.
According to new data and images, the Earth’s moon is cooling, causing it to lose 150 feet in circumference over the past few hundred million years as it slowly shrinks like a grape into a raisin.
How Can the Moon Shrink?
Unlike a raisin, which has pliable skin, the moon’s surface is rigid yet fragile, so changing shape creates faults that rub against one another. These faults result in landforms called scarps, or stair-like cliffs, of which over 3,500 have been found since 2009. However, instead of dehydration, internal cooling within the moon’s core is causing the shrinkage. As the moon shrinks, fault lines appear. The result is moonquake activity that could jeopardize future landings.The Outlook for Human Moon Exploration
The moonquakes could make for a devastating outlook for future human colonization of the moon.“You can think of the moon’s surface as being dry, grounded gravel and dust. Over billions of years, the surface has been hit by asteroids and comets, with the resulting angular fragments constantly getting ejected from the impacts,” said Nicholas Schmerr, co-author of the paper, in the press release. “As a result, the reworked surface material can be micron-sized to boulder-sized, but all very loosely consolidated. Loose sediments make it very possible for shaking and landslides to occur.”
The research team will continue mapping out the moon and recording its seismic activity to identify alternative locations for human exploration. NASA’s Artemis missions hope to establish a long-term human presence on the moon and a way to live and work on another planet through trial and error on moon-based outposts and settlements.
“As we get closer to the crewed Artemis mission’s launch date, it’s important to keep our astronauts, our equipment and infrastructure as safe as possible,” Mr. Schmerr said. “This work is helping us prepare for what awaits us on the moon—whether that’s engineering structures that can better withstand lunar seismic activity or protecting people from really dangerous zones.”