An Enormous Cave Was Discovered On The Moon, And It Provides An Opportunity For Future Exploration Into Lunar Volcanism
On the surface of the Moon, there are more than 200 known pits that scientists have speculated are underground cave conduits.
Now, one of those pits, in Mare Tranquillitatis, has been found to be a cave conduit that was created when it collapsed into a lava tube.
The pit is accessible from the lunar surface and provides an opportunity for future exploration into lunar volcanism.
Long ago, the Moon was covered in seas of magma that eventually cooled. It was thought that the Moon could’ve contained other volcanic features, such as lava tubes, like on Earth.
Lava tubes are created when a lava stream cools down and forms a hardened exterior shell. It acts as a sort of pipe for hot lava to flow through.
After some time, the lava will finish flowing out and leave a hollow channel behind that could connect to other chambers or caves.
The researchers of the new study have detected plenty of evidence on the Moon’s surface that suggests the existence of lava tubes. Lunar pits have been the most notable signs pointing to the possibility of the tubes.
The team wanted to find out whether a hidden cave could be mapped using orbital synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments.
They conducted tests on two terrestrial cave systems in Lanzarote, Spain, and the Well of Barhout in Yemen.
athapet – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
Then, they used the SAR data to produce three-dimensional reconstructions of the entrances of the two cave systems.
“We verified that the cave characteristics we were measuring from space matched what the speleologists measured on the ground,” said Leonardo Carrer, the first author of the study and a planetary scientist at the University of Trento, Italy.
So, they decided to employ this technique on the Moon, particularly on the Mare Tranquillitatis pit. The pit is an almost perfectly circular sinkhole that is roughly 328 feet across and 345 feet deep. These measurements were taken in 2010 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The spacecraft also sent a signal down into the pit and received a radar reflection from the bottom that proved an opening and the entrance of a cave, which was likely part of a lava tube.
The research team’s computer model of the potential lava tube suggests that the entrance is around 148 feet wide.
It stretches 98 to 262 feet from the entrance and reaches 443 to 574 feet below the surface of the Moon.
The study indicates that a passage goes deeper beneath the lunar surface than experts have been able to detect.
The next step is to investigate the depths of the pit. And, if one lava tube is found, many others may be waiting to be discovered.
“Studying the rocks there, since they are pristine rocks not altered by the harsh surface, could give a lot of insight about the lunar volcanism and the history of volcanism on the Moon,” Carrer said.
The research was published in Nature Astronomy.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
More About:News
