Earth's mysterious large Moon is our nearest neighbor in space, dominating our clear night sky with its beguiling and bewitching cold golden glow.
Earth's Moon is the only body beyond our planet that we have visited, leaving our footprints embedded in its alien dust.
Despite its close proximity to our planet, our mysterious Moon has still managed to keep some ancient secrets from us very well.
However, in October 2014, using data derived from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, a team of planetary scientists announced that they may have solved a lunar mystery almost as old as our Moon itself.
First launched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the two probes, playfully dubbed Ebb and Flow, operated in an almost-circular orbit near the lunar poles at an altitude of about 34 miles until their mission concluded in December 2012.
The distance between the twin probes altered slightly as they flew over areas of lesser or greater gravity that resulted from visible features--such as craters and mountains--as well as by hidden masses secreted beneath our Moon's surface.
The twin spacecraft flew in an almost-circular orbit until the mission ended on December 17, 2012, when the probes were intentionally sent down to the lunar surface.
NASA ultimately named the impact site in honor of the late astronaut Sally K.
Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the GRAIL mission team.
GRAIL's main and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.
The map will provide a better scientific understanding of how our planet and other rocky planets in our Sun's family were born and later evolved.
Earlier theories suggested that the craggy outline of a region of the lunar surface, named Oceanus Procellarum--or the Ocean of Storms--had resulted from a large asteroid impact.
If this theory had been correct, the basin it had dug out would represent the largest asteroid impact basin scarring the lunar surface.
However, mission scientists, scrutinizing GRAIL data, now believe that they have discovered new evidence that the craggy outline of this rectangular region--approximately 1,600 miles across--was actually caused by the formation of ancient rift valleys.
"The near-side of the Moon has been studied for centuries, and yet continues to offer up surprises for scientists with the right tools.
We interpret the gravity anomalies discovered by GRAIL as part of the lunar magma plumbing system--the conduits that fed lava to the surface during ancient volcanic eruptions," Dr.
Maria Zuber explained in an October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
Dr.
Zuber is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
The surface of our Moon's near-side is dominated by the bewildering and unique Procellarum region, and this area is characterized by numerous ancient volcanic plains, low elevations, and a strangely unique composition.
The rifts themselves are buried far, far down, deep beneath dark volcanic plains on the near-side of our Moon and have been spotted only in the gravity data provided by GRAIL.
The lava-flooded rift valleys are not like anything seen anywhere else on the lunar surface--but some planetary scientists think that they may have, at one time, long ago, resembled rift zones on our own planet, Venus, and Mars.
The new findings are published in the October 1, 2014 issue of the journal Nature.
There is yet another theory that planetary scientists have suggested to explain the mysterious Procellarum region.
This analysis is based on recently acquired data, and it indicates that this region formed as a consequence of churning deep within the interior of our Moon.
According to this model, this resulted in a high concentration of heat-producing radioactive elements in the lunar crust and mantle of this unique region.
Planetary scientists studied the gradients in gravity data derived from GRAIL, which showed a rectangular shape in resulting gravitational anomalies.
"The rectangular pattern of gravity anomalies was completely unexpected.
Using the gradients in the gravity data to reveal the rectangular pattern of anomalies, we can now clearly and completely see structures that were only hinted at by surface observations," Dr.
Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna explained in the October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
Dr.
Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL co-investigator at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, is lead author of the paper.
Moons, Myths, Etc.
Our bewitching, and sometimes bewildering Moon, has long been the inspiration for magical myths, weird legends, bedtime stories, and beautiful poetry.
Earth's Moon is a very ancient symbol of femininity, as well as for wild bouts of strange madness and romantic love.
Some ancient, traditional legends and childhood stories tell of a man's face etched out on its shining surface, while others tell strange tales of a "Moon Rabbit.
" Lovely, ancient myths, tales, and bedtime stories aside, Earth's Moon is a very real object.
It has been a companion-world to our Earth almost from that very ancient era, when our Solar System was first forming, about 4.
5 billion years ago.
The need to comprehend and explain our origins--the world of natural phenomena--cannot be properly viewed as exclusively scientific.
Instead, it should be viewed as something generally human.
Through enchanting, magical narratives involving super-human heroes and heroines, as well as anthropomorphic gods and goddesses, ancient pre-scientific societies attempted to explain and make some order out of the mysterious complexities of the Cosmos.
Earth's Moon has always held a place of special fascination for our species, inspiring our human imagination to escape its troubling limitations and--as we search beyond our Earthbound lives--help us to move towards an understanding of who we are, in all our human complexity.
Therefore, ancient gods and goddesses mimic our bewitching Moon's unending, gentle tug on the forces of life.
In this sense, it may be detrimental to completely dismiss these ancient myths--ascribing them to an unsophisticated and archaic past.
There are over 100 moons dancing around the eight major planets of our Sun's family.
Most of them are small, frozen, icy objects, harboring only a relatively scanty amount of rocky material, that circle around the quartet of giant gaseous planets that dwell in the outer, frigid realm of our Solar System--far from the comforting warmth and brilliance of our Star.
The quartet of majestic, giant denizens of our outer Solar System--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--are enveloped with gaseous atmospheres, and orbited by a multitude of dancing, sparkling moons and moonlets.
In marked contrast, the inner region of our Solar System--where our Earth dwells--is almost bereft of moons.
Of the quartet of relatively petite, rocky "terrestrial" planets--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--only Earth is circled by a large Moon.
Mercury and Venus are moonless, and Mars is orbited by a duo of tiny, lumpy, potato-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Phobos and Deimos are probably escaped asteroids, born in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, that were captured by the gravitational embrace of the Red Planet long ago.
A moon is defined as a natural satellite that orbits a larger body--such as a planet--that, in turn, orbits a star.
The moon is kept in its position both by the gravity of the object that it circles, as well as by its own gravity.
Some planets are orbited by moons; some are not.
Some dwarf planets--such as Pluto--possess moons.
In fact, one of Pluto's moons, named Charon, is almost half the size of Pluto itself, and some planetary scientists think that Charon is really a chunk of Pluto that was torn off in a disastrous collision with another object very long ago.
In addition, some asteroids are also known to be orbited by very small moons.
Solving A Lunar Mystery Almost As Old As The Moon Itself! The rectangular pattern, with its straight sides and angular corners, weakens the theory that Procellarum is an old impact basin.
This is because such a mighty impact would form a circular basin.
Instead, the recent study indicates that processes occurring deep beneath the lunar surface dominated the formation of this unique region.
As time passed, the region would have cooled down considerably and contracted--thus pulling away from its surroundings and forming fractures akin to the cracks that form in mud as it becomes dry--but on a considerably larger scale.
The new study also found that there was an amazing similarity between the rectangular structures on Earth's Moon, and those encircling the south polar region of Saturn's icy, mysterious moon, Enceladus.
The patterns observed on both moons seem to be related to volcanic and tectonic processes operating on their respective moon-worlds.
"Our gravity data are opening up a new chapter of lunar history, during which the Moon was a more dynamic place than suggested by the cratered landscape that is visible to the naked eye.
More work is needed to understand the cause of this newfound pattern of gravity anomalies, and the implications for the history of the Moon," Dr.
Andrews-Hanna explained in the October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
The GRAIL mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Earth's Moon is the only body beyond our planet that we have visited, leaving our footprints embedded in its alien dust.
Despite its close proximity to our planet, our mysterious Moon has still managed to keep some ancient secrets from us very well.
However, in October 2014, using data derived from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, a team of planetary scientists announced that they may have solved a lunar mystery almost as old as our Moon itself.
First launched as GRAIL A and GRAIL B in September 2011, the two probes, playfully dubbed Ebb and Flow, operated in an almost-circular orbit near the lunar poles at an altitude of about 34 miles until their mission concluded in December 2012.
The distance between the twin probes altered slightly as they flew over areas of lesser or greater gravity that resulted from visible features--such as craters and mountains--as well as by hidden masses secreted beneath our Moon's surface.
The twin spacecraft flew in an almost-circular orbit until the mission ended on December 17, 2012, when the probes were intentionally sent down to the lunar surface.
NASA ultimately named the impact site in honor of the late astronaut Sally K.
Ride, who was America's first woman in space and a member of the GRAIL mission team.
GRAIL's main and extended science missions generated the highest resolution gravity field map of any celestial body.
The map will provide a better scientific understanding of how our planet and other rocky planets in our Sun's family were born and later evolved.
Earlier theories suggested that the craggy outline of a region of the lunar surface, named Oceanus Procellarum--or the Ocean of Storms--had resulted from a large asteroid impact.
If this theory had been correct, the basin it had dug out would represent the largest asteroid impact basin scarring the lunar surface.
However, mission scientists, scrutinizing GRAIL data, now believe that they have discovered new evidence that the craggy outline of this rectangular region--approximately 1,600 miles across--was actually caused by the formation of ancient rift valleys.
"The near-side of the Moon has been studied for centuries, and yet continues to offer up surprises for scientists with the right tools.
We interpret the gravity anomalies discovered by GRAIL as part of the lunar magma plumbing system--the conduits that fed lava to the surface during ancient volcanic eruptions," Dr.
Maria Zuber explained in an October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
Dr.
Zuber is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge.
The surface of our Moon's near-side is dominated by the bewildering and unique Procellarum region, and this area is characterized by numerous ancient volcanic plains, low elevations, and a strangely unique composition.
The rifts themselves are buried far, far down, deep beneath dark volcanic plains on the near-side of our Moon and have been spotted only in the gravity data provided by GRAIL.
The lava-flooded rift valleys are not like anything seen anywhere else on the lunar surface--but some planetary scientists think that they may have, at one time, long ago, resembled rift zones on our own planet, Venus, and Mars.
The new findings are published in the October 1, 2014 issue of the journal Nature.
There is yet another theory that planetary scientists have suggested to explain the mysterious Procellarum region.
This analysis is based on recently acquired data, and it indicates that this region formed as a consequence of churning deep within the interior of our Moon.
According to this model, this resulted in a high concentration of heat-producing radioactive elements in the lunar crust and mantle of this unique region.
Planetary scientists studied the gradients in gravity data derived from GRAIL, which showed a rectangular shape in resulting gravitational anomalies.
"The rectangular pattern of gravity anomalies was completely unexpected.
Using the gradients in the gravity data to reveal the rectangular pattern of anomalies, we can now clearly and completely see structures that were only hinted at by surface observations," Dr.
Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna explained in the October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
Dr.
Andrews-Hanna, a GRAIL co-investigator at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado, is lead author of the paper.
Moons, Myths, Etc.
Our bewitching, and sometimes bewildering Moon, has long been the inspiration for magical myths, weird legends, bedtime stories, and beautiful poetry.
Earth's Moon is a very ancient symbol of femininity, as well as for wild bouts of strange madness and romantic love.
Some ancient, traditional legends and childhood stories tell of a man's face etched out on its shining surface, while others tell strange tales of a "Moon Rabbit.
" Lovely, ancient myths, tales, and bedtime stories aside, Earth's Moon is a very real object.
It has been a companion-world to our Earth almost from that very ancient era, when our Solar System was first forming, about 4.
5 billion years ago.
The need to comprehend and explain our origins--the world of natural phenomena--cannot be properly viewed as exclusively scientific.
Instead, it should be viewed as something generally human.
Through enchanting, magical narratives involving super-human heroes and heroines, as well as anthropomorphic gods and goddesses, ancient pre-scientific societies attempted to explain and make some order out of the mysterious complexities of the Cosmos.
Earth's Moon has always held a place of special fascination for our species, inspiring our human imagination to escape its troubling limitations and--as we search beyond our Earthbound lives--help us to move towards an understanding of who we are, in all our human complexity.
Therefore, ancient gods and goddesses mimic our bewitching Moon's unending, gentle tug on the forces of life.
In this sense, it may be detrimental to completely dismiss these ancient myths--ascribing them to an unsophisticated and archaic past.
There are over 100 moons dancing around the eight major planets of our Sun's family.
Most of them are small, frozen, icy objects, harboring only a relatively scanty amount of rocky material, that circle around the quartet of giant gaseous planets that dwell in the outer, frigid realm of our Solar System--far from the comforting warmth and brilliance of our Star.
The quartet of majestic, giant denizens of our outer Solar System--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--are enveloped with gaseous atmospheres, and orbited by a multitude of dancing, sparkling moons and moonlets.
In marked contrast, the inner region of our Solar System--where our Earth dwells--is almost bereft of moons.
Of the quartet of relatively petite, rocky "terrestrial" planets--Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars--only Earth is circled by a large Moon.
Mercury and Venus are moonless, and Mars is orbited by a duo of tiny, lumpy, potato-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Phobos and Deimos are probably escaped asteroids, born in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, that were captured by the gravitational embrace of the Red Planet long ago.
A moon is defined as a natural satellite that orbits a larger body--such as a planet--that, in turn, orbits a star.
The moon is kept in its position both by the gravity of the object that it circles, as well as by its own gravity.
Some planets are orbited by moons; some are not.
Some dwarf planets--such as Pluto--possess moons.
In fact, one of Pluto's moons, named Charon, is almost half the size of Pluto itself, and some planetary scientists think that Charon is really a chunk of Pluto that was torn off in a disastrous collision with another object very long ago.
In addition, some asteroids are also known to be orbited by very small moons.
Solving A Lunar Mystery Almost As Old As The Moon Itself! The rectangular pattern, with its straight sides and angular corners, weakens the theory that Procellarum is an old impact basin.
This is because such a mighty impact would form a circular basin.
Instead, the recent study indicates that processes occurring deep beneath the lunar surface dominated the formation of this unique region.
As time passed, the region would have cooled down considerably and contracted--thus pulling away from its surroundings and forming fractures akin to the cracks that form in mud as it becomes dry--but on a considerably larger scale.
The new study also found that there was an amazing similarity between the rectangular structures on Earth's Moon, and those encircling the south polar region of Saturn's icy, mysterious moon, Enceladus.
The patterns observed on both moons seem to be related to volcanic and tectonic processes operating on their respective moon-worlds.
"Our gravity data are opening up a new chapter of lunar history, during which the Moon was a more dynamic place than suggested by the cratered landscape that is visible to the naked eye.
More work is needed to understand the cause of this newfound pattern of gravity anomalies, and the implications for the history of the Moon," Dr.
Andrews-Hanna explained in the October 1, 2014 NASA Press Release.
The GRAIL mission was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
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