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Pexels<\/p>\n
When you look up at the Moon in our sky, it\u2019s easy to imagine that that ever-present ball of rock that orbits our planet is just the dusty grey cratered landscape we\u2019ve seen in photos.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s equally understandable if you think that the moon has looked and acted the way that it does now throughout its long history.<\/p>\n
However, just like every other body in our solar system (and beyond!), the Moon has a long and eventful history.<\/p>\n
And as new research published<\/a> in the journal\u00a0Icarus\u00a0proves, little tell-tale signs on the Moon\u2019s present have been waiting billions of years to be discovered.<\/p>\n Katharine Robinson and G. Jeffrey Taylor\/Nature Geoscience<\/p>\n Just like our home planet, Earth, the Moon is thought to be around 4.5 billion years old.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s nuance to that approximation. In fact, Earth is thought to be a little over 4.5 billion years, while the Moon is a little younger. In fact, many hypothesis suggest that the Moon was created by the debris of Theia, a large space body that collided with a very young Earth.<\/p>\n Stuck in Earth\u2019s orbit, the Moon has had a tumultuous past \u2013 and we know this thanks to evidence collected by astronauts on the Apollo missions, who were surprised to collect shiny glass beads from all over the Moon\u2019s otherwise grey and dusty surface.<\/p>\n When returned to Earth, these samples of less than 1mm each, glistened with history of the Moon\u2019s turbulent geology, as Washington University, St. Louis\u2019s Ryan Ogliore explained in a statement<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cThe very existence of these beads tells us the moon had explosive eruptions, something like the fire fountains you can see in Hawaii today. They\u2019re some of the most amazing extraterrestrial samples we have. The beads are tiny, pristine capsules of the lunar interior.\u201d<\/p>\n Pexels<\/p>\n Interestingly, though the samples have been in Earthly repositories for decades, they have been waiting for technology to catch up.<\/p>\n Recent innovations and technological progress has now allowed the research team to fully understand what is going on inside the samples \u2013 which are made of volcanic glass, lava that rapidly cooled after eruption \u2013 as Ogliore continued:<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had these samples for 50 years, but we now have the technology to fully understand them,\u201d Ogliore said. \u201cMany of these instruments would have been unimaginable when the beads were first collected.\u201d<\/p>\n So using equipment and expertise from Brown University and Washington University, St Louis \u2013 including atom probe tomography, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy \u2013 we now have a much deeper understanding of what these beads are, and how they ended up on the Moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n And what the researchers found was astounding. The beads, which range from orange to black in color, contain various minerals and isotopes that prove not only are they all the result of volcanic eruptions, they are also from\u00a0different\u00a0volcanic eruptions, giving researchers minute details about the composition of 3.5 billion year old lava from inside the Moon\u2019s core.<\/p>\n Thus, science has gained the most intimate understanding yet of our planet\u2019s nightly-visiting, natural satellite.<\/p>\n If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious \u201cpyramids\u201d discovered in Antarctica. What are they?<\/a><\/p>\n \n\t\tCategories: NATURE\/SPACE<\/a>, SCI\/TECH<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tags: \u00b7 Apollo missions<\/a>, geology<\/a>, lunar beads<\/a>, lunar mission<\/a>, lunar surface<\/a>, science<\/a>, single topic<\/a>, space<\/a>, space exploration<\/a>, space travel<\/a>, the moon<\/a>, top<\/a>, volcanic glass<\/a>, volcanoes<\/a>, volcanology<\/a>\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pexels When you look up at the Moon in our sky, it\u2019s easy to imagine that that ever-present…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[42588,64,63,10588,42589,42590,42591,128,7969,285,327,42592,42593,4048,42594,42595,42596],"class_list":{"0":"post-50315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apollo-missions","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-geology","12":"tag-lunar-beads","13":"tag-lunar-mission","14":"tag-lunar-surface","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-single-topic","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-space-exploration","19":"tag-space-travel","20":"tag-the-moon","21":"tag-top","22":"tag-volcanic-glass","23":"tag-volcanoes","24":"tag-volcanology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}