THE MOON IS ALIVE
From the 4-billion-year-old, 230-kilometre (143-mile) wide Clavius impact crater to Neil Armstrong’s 50-year-old, size-nine-and-a-half ‘one small step’, the Moon has recorded momentous episodes across much of our Solar System’s history.
For scientists its surface provides a 4-billion-year-old astronomical archive of events that shaped both its own peppered surface and our planet too. A passive observer, its record-keeping value lies in the fact that things tend to happen to it, rather than it showing signs of its own activity.
And yet it seems we might have missed something. Something small in size but larger in significance. Located right between the eyes of the ‘Man in the Moon’, some scientists believe they have found evidence that lunar volcanoes were erupting when dinosaurs roamed the Earth – and perhaps they are still erupting somewhere on the surface right now. If confirmed such activity would tear up current models of the Moon’s internal structure and how it evolved, as well as rewriting assumptions about other supposedly ‘lifeless’ worlds beyond. As missions are proposed to visit this intriguing site, we ask, is the Moon still alive?
A quick glance of its ancient, battered surface offers little hope. The Moon’s cratered appearance is in stark contrast to not only the planet it orbits,
