The moon has transformed, turned inside out

The celestial body we are seeing in the sky may not be the original Moon .

According to Science Alert , a new study led by planetary scientists Weigang Liang and Adrien Broquet from the University of Arizona (USA) shows that the Moon's mantle may have been turned upside down in its strange past.

This happened about 4.22 billion years ago, several hundred million years after the satellite called the Moon coalesced from fragments of the early Earth and the planet Theia.

Illustrative diagram showing two ilmenite-containing accumulation flows due to upheaval of the Moon's mantle - (Photo: UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA).

Theia is a hypothetical celestial body the size of Mars that crashed into Earth 4.5 billion years ago, merging and forming today's Earth.

Traces of the upturned mantle were discovered unusually in a region called KREEP Terrane on the Moon, which is surprisingly rich in potassium, rare earth elements and phosphorus.

KREEP Terrane also belongs to a vast basalt plain on the Moon, which is rich in a mineral called ilmenite - made of titanium and iron - which is quite dense like the rocks that contain it.

When the magma finished cooling and crystallized, the dense minerals should have gradually sunk toward the planet's core. If they were brought up a little by volcanic activity, they should have been spread evenly throughout the celestial body.

In fact, today's Moon has a very odd, chemically asymmetric surface. That's another ridiculous point. The Moon should have been more similar to the Earth, since both were also created by the early Earth and Theia.

Analyzing through different models, the team finally determined that the unusual concentration of heavy elements in this area could only be due to the Moon's mantle being completely upset after its formation.

This disturbance overturned materials in the bottom part of the mantle all the way to the top in some places, thereby creating the anomaly.

Of course, a celestial body's shell is also greatly affected by mantle disturbances during a harsh rock recycling process. Therefore, it can be said that the entire early Moon was deformed, very different from the celestial body originally "born" by Earth and Theia.