{"id":5721,"date":"2025-07-13T03:07:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T03:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/5721\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T03:07:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T03:07:04","slug":"a-year-after-china-returns-rocks-from-moons-far-side-debate-rages-over-ancient-crater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/5721\/","title":{"rendered":"A year after China returns rocks from moon\u2019s far side, debate rages over ancient crater"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year after China returned the first rock samples<\/a> from the moon\u2019s far side, scientists<\/a> are debating whether the mission has answered a central question in lunar science<\/a> \u2013 and whether the country\u2019s rising scientific dominance is challenging who gets to tell the story of the moon\u2019s past<\/a>.While a team of Chinese researchers believes they may have nailed down the age of the moon\u2019s largest and oldest crater \u2013 a colossal impact basin that could hold clues to the early solar system<\/a> \u2013 other scientists, mostly from the West, remain unconvinced.Some say the ancient<\/a> rocks may have come from a different impact and were tossed to the landing site. Others suggest the rocks may not have come from an impact at all, but from magma that cooled slowly underground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the 4.25-billion-year age is 100 per cent certain, but it\u2019s the most credible number we have so far \u2013 more reliable than model-based crater counting or meteorites with unknown origins,\u201d said planetary scientist Yang Wei of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s based on the only direct evidence we\u2019ve ever collected and measured from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin,\u201d said Yang, who was not directly involved in the study but coordinates a nationwide research effort that gave select teams early access to samples from the Chinese lunar mission Chang\u2019e\u20116.<\/p>\n

The findings, which he described as the most important among a collection of five papers submitted to the journal Nature for peer review last September, were rejected twice by a review panel dominated by Western scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year after China returned the first rock samples from the moon\u2019s far side, scientists are debating whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[6125,550,6114,144,6121,6122,6124,6123,6118,6116,6117,79,6115,6120,193,6112,6113,6119],"class_list":["post-5721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-apollo","tag-beijing","tag-change6","tag-china","tag-china-national-space-administration","tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","tag-clive-neal","tag-institute-of-geology-and-geophysics","tag-national-science-review","tag-qian-yuqi","tag-schrodinger","tag-science","tag-south-pole-aitken-basin","tag-spa-basin","tag-space","tag-university-of-hong-kong","tag-university-of-notre-dame","tag-yang-wei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}