An ‘Anomaly’ the Size of Hawaii Is Buried Beneath the Moon’s Biggest Crater
by Brandon Specktor June 10, 2019 (livescience.com)
• Professor Peter James and his colleagues at Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences compared maps of lunar topography with data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission and found a mass of heavy metal lodged in the Moon’s mantle that is altering the moon’s gravitational field. The metallic mass is located underneath the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin on the “dark side” of the Moon. The scientists published their finding April 5th in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
• The metallic mass ‘hundreds of miles’ under the Moon’s surface is calculated to be 2.4 quadrillion tons (US) in weight and 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers) wide, five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii. The South Pole-Aitken crater is the biggest impact crater in the solar system. Its towering rim and deep basin are the Moon’s highest and lowest elevations.
• The researchers think that this underground anomaly could be the remnant of a heavy iron-nickel asteroid that blasted into the lunar core some 4 billion years ago. “We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the Moon’s mantle until the present day,” James said.
• China’s Chang’E-4 lander reached the far side of the moon earlier this year and began analyzing soil near the crater which may yield some answers.
• [Editor’s Note] A dispersed mass of metal underneath the mantle on the back side of the Moon? This certainly could be the remnant of a metallic asteroid that plunged into the Moon 4 billion years ago (wherever the Moon was back then). So this could have been the source of the metal used by the Moon’s ancient occupants to build out its underground complex of living space to create a haven for Mars/Malduk refugees some 500,000 years ago. These would be the over-sized rooms and tunnels within the Moon that have been reported by Corey Goode and David Wilcock’s insiders. It would also explain why the Apollo 12 astronauts said that the Moon “rang like a bell” when they crashed a lunar module onto the lunar surface. Modern explorers have reportedly utilized these ancient interior structures in order to rebuild Moon bases, including the Lunar Operations Command, on the dark side of the Moon.
Earth’s moon is hiding an enormous secret on its storied dark side. Deep below the moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin (the largest preserved impact crater anywhere in the solar system), researchers have detected a gargantuan “anomaly” of heavy metal lodged in the mantle that is apparently altering the moon’s gravitational field.
According to a study of the mysterious blob, published April 5 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the anomaly may be the heavy leftovers of the asteroid that crashed into the far side of the moon and created the giant South Pole-Aitken crater some 4 billion years ago. However, all that researchers can say for sure at this point is that the blob is big — likely weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.4 quadrillion US tons (2.18 quintillion kilograms).
“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground,” lead study author Peter James, assistant professor of planetary geophysics at Baylor University’s College of Arts & Sciences, said in a statement. “That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected.” [10 Interesting Places in the Solar System We’d Like to Visit]
James and his colleagues discovered the blob while comparing maps of lunar topography with data collected by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission — a 2011 experiment wherein two satellites orbited the moon in tandem, mapping the precise strength of its gravitational pull at various locations.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. ExoNews.org distributes this material for the purpose of news reporting, educational research, comment and criticism, constituting Fair Use under 17 U.S.C § 107. Please contact the Editor at ExoNews with any copyright issue.