China's trip to the moon surprisingly reveals recent volcanic activity

This is the first batch of samples brought back from the moon in half a century, and it is also the first sample brought back from the moon by China
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These samples show that volcanic activity is about 2 billion years old, at least 1 billion years younger than those discovered by NASA’s Apollo astronauts or the Soviet Union’s unmanned missions on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s
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China is on a bold lunar rock grab mission

On December 1, 2020, the Chinese "Chang'e-5" lander landed on the moon, collected samples of the moon's surface, and lifted off again two days later, achieving a historic feat
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The goal of this mission is the Oceanus Procellarum on the near side of the moon.

According to the samples returned by the Apollo and Moon Project, scientists have evidence that the time of volcanic eruptions on the moon can be traced back more than 4 billion years ago, most of which occurred between 3.

Moon magma

Like on the earth, volcanic activity on the moon is thought to occur when magma is pushed to the surface and erupted, leaving the "ocean" (Latin for "maria") of basalt on the surface of the moon, which is easy to see from the earth To
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China became the first country to land on the far side of the moon

The "Chang'e-5" lander uses shovel and drill bits to collect samples here.

These discoveries provide important data points not only for the history of the moon, but also for the history of the entire solar system
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By knowing the exact age of the god of the sea and matching it to the number of craters — as impacts occur, the number of craters will accumulate over time — scientists can infer that on other planets On Earth, such as Mars, the locations with a similar number of craters are similar in age
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This process is called crater counting.
So far, it has almost completely relied on the dating of lunar samples collected by the Apollo mission, leaving a huge gap in the timeline between 1 billion and 3 billion years ago
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"Getting more data points is absolutely necessary," said Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at the University of London at Birkbeck
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"That's what this paper does
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Unresolved issues

However, it is not yet clear what caused the volcanic activity on the moon when the Sea Cube was formed
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At this time, the moon has begun to cool, and "the amount of magma produced is rapidly decreasing," Joy said
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One possibility is that the radioactive uranium, thorium, and potassium remaining inside the moon provide the necessary heat for late volcanic activity
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But the samples of Chang'e-5 did not show the abundance of such radioactive elements
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"This is really a mystery," Joey said
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Will increased traffic to the moon contaminate precious ice?

Another explanation may be that the tidal gravitational force of the earth's gravity gives the moon the necessary heat
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"Two billion years ago, the moon was much closer to the earth, probably close to half than it is now," said Alexander Nemchin, a planetary scientist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia and co-author of the study.

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"So this effect may be greatly amplified
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" However, it is unclear why this will cause local heating in areas such as Sea Cube, rather than more extensively on the surface of the moon
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Younger regions may also be found on the moon
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Hiesinger has made a great contribution to the statistical work of meteorite craters.
He said that some areas seem to be only tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years old, which is a difficult problem
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He said: "This means that volcanic activity on the moon was very active until about 50 million years ago
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" This seems "extremely unlikely
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"