La Luna se encoge.
Según los expertos, cuando la Luna se contrae, la corteza tiene que responder formando fallas
La Luna se encoge. Lo hace de forma tenue y ralentizada, pero lo hace. Al menos, esa es la conclusión a la que han llegado los expertos: el radio del satélite natural de la Tierra ha perdido 100 metros a lo largo de los últimos 1.000 millones de años, según ha declarado un equipo internacional de astrónomos en la revista estadounidense Science. La sentencia se apoya en las miles de imágenes, nuevas y de muy alta resolución, que ha ido recogiendo la sonda espacial Orbitador de Reconocimiento Lunar (LRO, en sus siglas en inglés) de la NASA mientras orbita alrededor del satélite: sobre la corteza lunar, en los últimos tiempos han aparecido unas fallas y una suerte de acantilados. Son acantilados relativamente pequeños. El más largo mide unos cien metros de alto. El resto de acantilados son mucho menores. …
Read more
NASA’s LRO Reveals Incredible Shrinking Moon (08.19.2010)
Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon’s recent geologic and tectonic evolution.
The moon formed in a chaotic environment of intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors. These collisions, along with the decay of radioactive elements, made the moon hot. The moon cooled off as it aged, and scientists have long thought the moon shrank over time as it cooled, especially in its early history. The new research reveals relatively recent tectonic activity connected to the long-lived cooling and associated contraction of the lunar interior.
“We estimate these cliffs, called lobate scarps, formed less than a billion years ago, and they could be as young as a hundred million years,” said Dr. Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. While ancient in human terms, it is less than 25 percent of the moon’s current age of more than four billion years. “Based on the size of the scarps, we estimate the distance between the moon’s center and its surface shrank by about 300 feet,” said Watters, lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science August 20.
“These exciting results highlight the importance of global observations for understanding global processes,” said Dr. John Keller, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “As the LRO mission continues in to a new phase, with emphasis on science measurements, our ability to create inventories of lunar geologic features will be a powerful tool for understanding the history of the moon and the solar system.”
The scarps are relatively small; the largest is about 300 feet high and extends for several miles or so, but typical lengths are shorter and heights are more in the tens of yards (meters) range. The team believes they are among the freshest features on the moon, in part because they cut across small craters. Since the moon is constantly bombarded by meteors, features like small craters (those less than about 1,200 feet across) are likely to be young because they are quickly destroyed by other impacts and don’t last long. So, if a small crater has been disrupted by a scarp, the scarp formed after the crater and is even younger. Even more compelling evidence is that large craters, which are likely to be old, don’t appear on top any of the scarps, and the scarps look crisp and relatively undegraded.
Lobate scarps on the moon were discovered during the Apollo missions with analysis of pictures from the high-resolution Panoramic Camera installed on Apollo 15, 16, and 17. However, these missions orbited over regions near the lunar equator, and were only able to photograph some 20 percent of the lunar surface, so researchers couldn’t be sure the scarps were not just the result of local activity around the equator. The team found 14 previously undetected scarps in the LRO images, seven of which are at high latitudes (more than 60 degrees). This confirms that the scarps are a global phenomenon, making a shrinking moon the most likely explanation for their wide distribution, according to the team.
As the moon contracted, the mantle and surface crust were forced to respond, forming thrust faults where a section of the crust cracks and juts out over another. Many of the resulting cliffs, or scarps, have a semi-circular or lobe-shaped appearance, giving rise to the term “lobate scarps”. Scientists aren’t sure why they look this way; perhaps it’s the way the lunar soil (regolith) expresses thrust faults, according to Watters.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/shrinking-moon.html
Viaje por el Universo 01 Los Planetas Internos
Viaje por el Universo 02 Espacio Terraqueo
Viaje por el Universo 03 Marte Vida e Impacto
Viaje por el Universo 04 Los Planetas Externos
Viaje por el Universo 05 El Hombre en el Espacio
Viaje por el Universo 06 Pioneros
Viaje por el Universo 07 Enfoque Cosmico
Viaje por el Universo 08 El Espacio Profundo
El Universo
Saturday, August 21st, 2010,
by Manuel and is filed under "Aeronautica, Asteroides, Astrofisica, Astronomia, Ciencia, Cosmologia, Geofisica, Hearth, Historia, Ingenieria, Investigación, Meteoritos, NASA, Rusia, Science, Technology, Tecnologia, Tierra, Universo |
, Agujeros Negros, Asteroides, Astrobiologia, Astrofisica, Astronomia, Ciencia, Cosmologia, EEI, ESA, Geofisica, Hubble, Internacional, Investigación, LCROSS, LRO, Luna, NASA, Science, Technology, Tecnologia, Universo ".
You can leave a response here,
or send a Trackback
from your own site.
