Breaking Discovery: Massive Structure Uncovered 300 Kilometers Beneath the Moon’s Surface by Scientists

Breaking Discovery: Massive Structure Uncovered 300 Kilometers Beneath the Moon’s Surface by Scientists

Scientists have discovered a gigantic metal ‘structure’ up on the moon, and are now trying to work out exactly what it is.

It also rams home the fact that even though we’ve been up to the moon a few times, there’s still plenty up there that might surprise us, and that we know precious little about.

This area of metal is absolutely massive, too.

It is buried underneath the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, which is a massive crater and one of the largest preserved within our solar system.

Here's the area we're dealing with. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona
Here’s the area we’re dealing with. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/University of Arizona

The structure weighs in at more than 2.18 billion kilograms, and measures in at more than 300 kilometers in depth and 2,000 kilometers in length.

That’s 186 miles deep and 1,243 miles long for those working in different measurements.

Sounds cool, right?

Basically, that theory seems to suggest that an asteroid which struck the crater embedded itself into the moon, which is not in the least absolutely terrifying.

The lead author of this research, Peter B. James from Baylor University in Houston, released a statement that 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.”

Discussing the size of the metal area, he added: “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.”

Yikes.

The NASA technology has been mapping the moon's gravitational field. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The NASA technology has been mapping the moon’s gravitational field. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The South Pole-Aitken basin is of particular interest, simply because of the unique nature of it, and – now – the fact that there’s a massive load of metal buried beneath it.

No doubt they’ll be focusing more and more attention on it after this latest discovery.

There’s still a great deal that we don’t know about our closest neighbour in the solar system.

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