Scientists have discovered a mysterious lump on the moon's far side, and it's 5 times bigger than Ha
Scientists have discovered a mysterious lump on the moon's far side, and it's 5 times bigger than Hawaii's Big Island
Dave Mosher 1m
The mysterious lunar lump exists below the surface of the lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin (in blues and purples). NASA/LROC/Arizona State University
The far side of the moon is hiding a colossal secret beneath its airless, pockmarked surface.
No one is quite sure what it is — the most precise wording researchers can muster is a "large excess of mass."
The feature lurks dozens of miles beneath a 1,550-mile-wide impact crater called the South Pole-Aitken Basin, which we can't see from Earth. Ideas for what the mysterious lump may be include the splattered core of a giant metallic asteroid or an ocean of red-hot magma that slowly froze in place.
"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground," Peter B. James, a geoscientist at Baylor University, said in a press release. "That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected."
James is one of a handful of US scientists who announced their discovery in a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
More:
https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-crater-anomaly-south-pole-metal-asteroid-core-2019-6
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