"Honey, have you seen my glue gun?"
The precious share of lunar soil you and your family were going to claim in the first great lunar land grab might have gotten a little smaller. Not because more people want to go farming on the moon as part of the fictional program I just made up, but because the moon has been shrinking.
That’s right, the moon is getting smaller. No longer will it hit your eye like a big pizza pie, now it’s more like a medium pizza pie. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has sent back a series of striking pictures that show 14 new fault lines, or lobate scarps, that run across the moon’s surface and indicate that the moon is contracting. Likely, the contraction will continue, because the moon isn’t likely to get much warmer. In better news, at least it’ll now be easier to find your lost car.
“The surface is pushed together by internal forces,” said lead researcher Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian. “When it breaks, it literally thrusts material upward because the surface is contracting. That contraction, we think, is coming from internal cooling of the moon. We now know that’s a global process, so it means the moon is shrinking globally — very likely because it is continuing to cool.”
And you thought the moon was cold on the outside!
Tags: NASA, astronomy, the moon, the moon is shrinking, shrinking moon, lobate scarps, 14 new faults found on lunar surface, unusual science news, unusual astronomy news, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
