- Scientific Discovery: Groundbreaking Find - A Hidden Lane on Moon's Lunar Surface
A visit to the Grand Canyon should be a top aspiration for anyone undertaking a US road trip.
It's not the only location where an ambitious explorer can find a grand canyon.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured images of two massive basins on the moon's surface.
These canyons, named Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck, stretch for approximately 168 miles and are 1.7 miles deep, and 174 miles in length, with a depth of 2.2 miles respectively
They are as long as the Grand Canyon and more than three times as deep at their lowest points.
Researchers say these ancient river valleys, which date back over six to seven million years, were formed in a remarkably short period of about 10 minutes.
The moon's canyons extend from the Schrödinger impact basin, a crater that is 200 miles wide, located near the south pole of the moon, which was created when a meteor hit the lunar surface.
Scientists believe that these lunar valleys were formed by a flow of ejecta 3.81 billion years ago, resulting from a violent impact that excavated the region.
The Schrödinger impact basin is situated on the outer edges of the moon's 1,500-mile-wide (2,400 km) South Pole–Aitken basin.
Experts think it was created after a substantial meteor slammed into the lunar surface, producing a powerful explosion and ejecting debris up to 310 miles ( 500km ) from the crater edge.
to form the crater.'
This resulted in debris falling in long, straight lines called ejecta rays which created deep channels of overlapping craters like Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck.
"These types of rays are frequently seen on the Moon. For instance, amateur astronomers may be familiar with the rays surrounding Tycho and Copernicus craters on the Moon's near side," states Dr. Kring.
Scientists have utilised photographs from NASA's space probe to create a three-dimensional representation of these valleys and simulate the path and velocity of the debris flow.
The researchers, whose paper appears in Nature Communications, calculate that the debris had to have been traveling at speeds ranging from 2,125 to 2,863 miles per hour (3,420 to 4,608 kilometers per hour).
Accordingly, this velocity implies that the fragments that created the canyon would be between two and five percent the size of the original meteor.
What this means is each fragment could have been as wide as 1,250 metres - that is more than 60 times larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded over Russia in 2013.
Dr. Kring says, "The energy required to create the two vast craters on the moon's surface was equivalent to 130 times the combined energy of all the world's nuclear weapons.
Research indicates that lunar canyons the size of Earth's Grand Canyon can be formed in minutes, not millions of years. Streams of rock created by impacts on the Moon are significantly more effective at carving out canyons than the water on our planet.
The researchers have also been able to pinpoint the meteor's likely impact site by tracing the ejecta rays back to their point of intersection.
Interestingly, this location is not at the center of the Schrödinger crater as you might expect, but rather further to the south at 78.2° South latitude and 143.7° East longitude.
This detail suggests that the meteor likely collided with the lunar surface at a fairly mild angle, dispersing debris away from the Moon's South Pole.
This is an interesting geological aspect, and it carries significant implications for NASA's upcoming plans.
The volcano is approximately 77 miles (125 km) away from the edge of the Schrödinger basin.
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According to this research, it appears that these concerns are not necessarily justified.
Dr. Kring says: 'The research indicates that the majority of the debris ejected from the Schrödinger basin landed outside the Artemis exploration zone.'
Astronauts on the Artemis mission will find it more convenient to collect rocks dating back to before the Schrödinger impact.
'The Schrödinger crater was created near the end of a period of intense asteroid and comet collisions in the early Solar System. Geological samples collected by missions to the lunar south polar region will likely provide valuable information to help determine the scope and duration of that asteroid and comet bombardment.'
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