The differences were created by the heat generated through the impact. 🌑
“We know that big impacts like the one that formed the South Pole–Aitken would create a lot of heat,” said Matt Jones, a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University and the study’s lead author.
“The question is how that heat affects the Moon’s interior dynamics. What we show is that under any plausible conditions at the time that SPA formed, it ends up concentrating these heat-producing elements on the nearside. We expect that this contributed to the mantle melting that produced the lava flows we see on the surface.”
The researchers stipulate that the impact that created the Moon’s giant South Pole–Aitken basin would have released a massive amount of heat that traveled through the lunar interior, carrying rare-Earth and heat-producing elements to the Moon’s nearside. It is this transfer of elements that would have resulted in the volcanism that created the nearside volcanic plains.The discovery also revealed where another exciting moon feature derived from.
“How the PKT formed is arguably the most significant open question in lunar science,” Jones concluded. “And the South Pole–Aitken impact is one of the most significant events in lunar history. This work brings those two things together, and I think our results are really exciting.”The formation of the largest and most ancient lunar impact basin, South Pole–Aitken , was a defining event in the Moon’s evolution.
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