Rocks returned by China’s Chang’e-6 mission suggest volcanic activity just 2.8 billion years ago but lack telltale heat-generating elements.
The first samples from the farside of the moon contain signs of surprising volcanic activity near the lunar south pole.
The moon’s two faces are like night and day, with different topography, chemical composition, crater density and evidence for volcanism. Huge solidified pools of lava called mare cover almost a third of the nearside. But only about 2 percent of the farside shows signs of flowing lava. “Imagine having rock samples from maybe 10 locations in North America, and that’s what you know about Earth,” says planetary scientist Stephen Elardo of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new works. “Then all of a sudden you get your first rocks from South Africa or Australia. Now you get to have that as another data point to learn about the whole planet. That’s basically what this is for the moon.
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