Rock from 4,200,000,000 years ago confirms something we wondered about the moon

Table of Contents

Billions of years ago, new research validates.

Chang'e-6 belongs to the first spacecraft to bring back samples of rocks and dirt from the lesser-explored far side of the moon.

Two separate teams discovered fragments of volcanic rock that dated back an incredible 2.8 billion years. One piece was especially ancient, tracing its origins to an astonishing 4.2 billion years.

"It's really crucial to get a sample from this region because, otherwise, we don't have any data for it," said Christopher Hamilton, a planetary volcanology expert at the University of Arizona.

Scientists have found evidence of volcanoes on the part of the moon we can see from Earth that were active around the same time period.

Previous research, including data from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, indicated that the far side may have also had a volcanic past.

Scientists have confirmed that the area facing away from Earth in that region has an active past. They announced the findings in the scientific journals Nature and Science on Friday.

China has launched several spacecraft to the moon.

In 2020, the Chang'e-5 spacecraft brought back moon rocks from the near side of the moon, the first since those collected by NASA's Apollo astronauts and Soviet Union spacecraft in the 1970s.

The Chang’e-4 spacecraft made history by becoming the first to visit the far side of the moon in 2019.

The far side of the moon is characterized by numerous craters and a lack of the dark, flat plains seen on the near side, which were formed by lava flows.

The reason why the two halves are so different remains a mystery, a co-author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences stated.

He said the new discoveries show more than one billion years of volcanic activity on the far side of the moon.

Future research will decide how the activity endured for such a long time.

.

.

's News Updates newsletter