Chinese discovery on dark side of the Moon
When Chinese scientists sent a robot down to the surface, they found something exciting in the soil.
A Chinese space exploration robot sent to the dark side of the Moon has found evidence the surface was once peppered with active volcanoes. During the 53-day Chang'e 6 mission, soil was gathered using the lander’s scoop and drill.
The samples were then analysed and testing revealed fragments of basalt, a type of volcanic rock. This provided clear evidence the volcanoes were active 2.8 billion years ago, but one outlying sample was dated at 4.2 billion years, indicating they remained active for a sustained period.
Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and the earliest evidence of life on our planet is fossilised microorganisms from around 3.7 billion years ago.
The Moon is believed to have formed just a few million years after the Earth did. The leading theory is that it was created after Earth and a small planet around the size of Mars collided. The debris was then caught in our orbit, forming a moon.
After its creation, the Moon was a sea of glowing molten rock and its red surface likely appeared much larger in the sky.
By the time the volcanoes had formed, the surface of the Moon had cooled and turned grey. But the large empty lunar seas that we can see today, would have still been filled with glowing lava from the volcanoes.
Moon could have appeared different to dinosaurs
Before the Chang'e 6 mission, it had only been established that volcanoes existed on the near side of the moon between 2 and 4 billion years ago. The most recent mission used lead isotopes to determine the age of 108 basalt fragments.
Evidence gathered during the Chang'e 5 mission in 2020 suggests some volcanoes persisted on the near side of the Moon until 120 million years ago. This means it could have appeared quite different when dinosaurs roamed the Earth during the Cretaceous period.
The research was conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and published in the journal Nature.
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