Moon shrinks as Earth shapes its surface, study says

Moon is apparently shrinking slowly in size due to the cooling of its nucleus and its surface sees the appearance of various landforms like hills of several meters in height caused by Earth’s gravitational influence, according to an article published by cnet.com.

full moon

Full moon image (public domain)

While orbiting around the Sun, Earth and Moon are kept together by the balance between centrifugal force that tries to separate them and the mutual gravitational attraction that tries bring them close to one another. Moon’s attraction has observable effects on Earth by producing tides. Furthermore, the existence of the natural satellite, stabilizes Earth’s rotation, enabling thus predictable succession of the seasons.

On the other hand, the terrestrial gravitational force affects lunar landforms even if there are no oceans or seas. Our planet causes the formation of various soil structures such as hills and depressions on the surface of the Moon, as its size decreases slowly.

This decrease in Moon’s diameter is not a concern. It occurs as the lunar nucleus cools gradually, enabling the solidification of partially molten regions in the mantle. As a consequence, the crust is expected to see a change in the relief shapes with formation of hills and valleys of less than 10 kilometers long and several tens of meters high similar to those observed on Mercury.

In 2010 NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has discovered 14 such landforms in addition to 70 already known, which are randomly spread across the lunar surface. Analysis of these forms of relief prompted the scientists to conclude that the moon is shrinking.
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Five years later, LRO has mapped about 75% of the lunar surface, obtaining high resolution images with Narrow Angle Camera instrument. During this time it was discovered more than 3,200 of these ridges on the surface.

“There is a pattern of orientation of these thousands of faults, and their existence suggests that there is another force that influences their formation, a force acting globally”, according to the coordinator of the study, Thomas Watters, a researcher at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

This force is related to the gravitational pull of the earth and is similar to the force affecting Earth’s oceans. Lines of tidal force exerted by the Earth on the Moon are aligned with the orientation of these ridges. And as the lunar core is still in the process of cooling, such new forms of relief are coming forth.

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