A new study finds that our moon has a fascinating history behind it.
Our moon has a much more violent history than most of us realize, an amazing new study concludes.
The study, published in the journey Nature, finds that hydrogen deposits near the poles of the moon suggest that the axis of the moon has shifted greatly in the billions of years of its history, and it may help us understand how water got here on Earth, according to a Southern Methodist University statement.
The findings indicate that the axis may have shifted a total of 5.5 degrees over a period of 3.5 billion years due to volcanoes that possibly melted the mantle of the moon and thus resulted in the shift in axis.
The shift would have been just one inch over ever 126 years, but that shift would have been significant enough over such a long period of time that it would have totally changed the axis of the moon.
In addition, it would provide some clues on where water came from, which could help scientists understand how Earth became covered in water, leading to conditions ideal for life.
“This was such a surprising discovery. We tend to think that objects in the sky have always been the way we view them, but in this case the face that is so familiar to us — the Man on the Moon — changed,” planetary scientist Matt Siegler at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, said in a statement. “Billions of years ago, heating within the Moon’s interior caused the face we see to shift upward as the pole physically changed positions. It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia. As the pole moved, the Man on the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth.”
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