A huge asteroid, which hit the moon by billions of years ago, managed to form two canyons in just 10 minutes, both comparable to the big canyon in Arizona, shows a new study.
The impact of an asteroid with the moon had major effects, a new archive photo study shows
The great canyon in Arizona is one of the natural miracles of the Earth, carved over millions of years through the gradual erosion of the Colorado River. Near the southern pole of the Moon are two canyons, comparable in size with the big canyon, but formed by a completely different process, reports Reuters.
Recent research indicates that these canyons, located in the Schrödinger Impact Basin, on the face of the Moon which are always directed away from the Earth, were excavated in less than 10 minutes by the rock debris violently thrown in the air or the impact of an asteroid Comet now about 3.8 billion years.
This impact has released an energy approximately 130 times higher than the entire amount of nuclear weapons currently on the globe, according to geologist David Kring from Lunar and Planetary Institute of University Space Research Association in Houston, the main author of the study published on Tuesday in Nature Communications magazine.
Scientists have mapped the canyons using data provided by the Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA monthly and used computerized models to determine the direction and speed of the flow of debris thrown as a result of the impact. They discovered that the debris went with speeds up to 3,600 km/h.
One of the canyons, called Vallis Planck, is about 280 km long and 3.5 km deep. The other, Vallis Schrödinger, measures about 270 km long and 2.7 km deep.
The impact took place in a period of intense bombing in the interior solar system, caused by the space rocks dislocated after the orbital changes of the gigantic planets-Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
It is estimated that the object that hit the Moon had a diameter of about 25 km, larger than the asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago, triggering the extinction of dinosaurs.
“When the asteroid or comet hit the surface of the moon, it has excavated a huge volume of rock, which was designed in space before collapsed again. Dense pieces of rock in this cloud of debris hit the surface in smaller impacts, actually sculpting the canyons. Around them, the debris would be covered the landscape“, Explained Kring.
The canyons are linear scars on the surface of the Moon, extending radially from a large and round impact crater, surrounded by smaller craters from other impacts.
This was one of the last major impacts on the surface of the Moon and Earth during that bombing period in the early solar system. Although the Moon is still wearing these scars, the earth does not, because its bark is constantly recycled through the process of tettonic plates. Instead, the moon, a less dynamic body, has no tectonic plates.
These discoveries are relevant to the future exploration missions of the Moon. The Schrödinger Impact Basin is near the NASA’s Artemis mission exploration area, which aims to send astronauts on the month for the first time since the Apollo Aselenizations of the 1970s.
“Because the residues of the impact in the Schrödinger basin were thrown to the southern pole of the moon, ancient rocks in that region will be on the surface or very close to it, allowing Artemis astronauts to collect them easily. These tests could provide clues about the earliest era of the history of the moon“Kring said.
These rocks could help scientists to test the hypothesis that the moon formed following the collision of a huge impactor with the Earth, which designed melted material in space, as well as the hypothesis that the early surface of the Moon was an ocean of magma, he added. .
