NASA finds moon is shrinking, causing moonquakes

NASA has recently revealed that the moon is gradually shrinking over time, hence causing wrinkles in its crust leading to moonquakes.

Pictures captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showed that the moon’s interior has cooled over the last several hundred million years, leading the surface to wrinkle as it shrinks.

Since the crust is not even flexible as the skin of a grape when it shrinks to raisin, the moon’s crust breaks. This in turn creates stair-step cliffs known as thrust faults, since part of the crust is pushed up and over another close part of the crust, as per CNN.

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There are now thousands of cliffs scattered across the moon’s surface, averaging a few miles long and tens of yards high. Since 2009, the orbiter has taken over 3,500 photos of them. The picture shows that the moon is now 50 meters skinnier due to this process.

Also, as the moon shrinks, it actively generates moonquakes along the faults. As per seismic data gathered from moon, the team found that the 28 moonquakes have been recorded between 1969 and 1977, out of which at least eight occurred due to activity along the faults, rather than asteroid impacts or tremors from much deeper within moon, reported New Atlas.

The images revealed that the quakes are still occurring on the moon, making it actively changing. “Our analysis gives the first evidence that these faults are still active and likely producing moonquakes today as the Moon continues to gradually cool and shrink,” said lead author Thomas Watters.

“For me, these findings emphasize that we need to go back to the Moon,” said co-author Nicholas Schmerr. “With a larger network of modern seismometers, we could make huge strides in our understanding of the Moon’s geology. This provides some very promising low-hanging fruit for science on a future mission to the Moon.”