There's An Enormous, Mysterious Mass Under the Moon's Largest Crater

[left-of-center2012]

Buried under the largest, oldest crater on the moon, scientists have discovered an enormous mass of dense material, possibly the remains of the asteroid that formed the crater some 4 billion years ago.

Astronomers led by Peter B. James from Baylor University discovered the hidden feature by combining data from NASA’s GRAIL lunar orbiter mission and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to look at where regions of high gravity — and therefore mass — overlap with surface features like craters. They found a giant mass weighing down the floor of the South Pole-Aitken basin by more than a half mile.

“Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That’s roughly how much unexpected mass we detected,” James said in a press release.

James and his colleagues suggest that one possible explanation for the underground material is that it’s the remains of a massive asteroid that slammed into the moon soon after its formation, causing the giant impact crater still visible today. The asteroid that made the impact would also have been large, perhaps one hundred miles across.

Alternatively, the mass might be a dense region caused by the moon’s magma ocean solidifying as our satellite cooled and aged. The Chinese lander Chang’e-4 and its Yutu-2 rover are currently exploring the Von Karman crater within the South Pole-Aitken basin, and NASA also wants to target the South Pole for future exploration.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/06/11/south-pole-aitken-crater-moon-lunar-asteroid-mass/

[5X]

1. my theory is the mass is what keeps it facing away from us.

Consider it is the weight at the end of a string you are spinning around your head,
the heaviest portion of that weight will be on the outside.

[Eyeball_Kid]

4. Were the mass at the lower latitudes, I'd go for your hypothesis.

But it's at the south pole of the Moon, where any gravitational pull from the earth that's significant enough would cause a rotation in which the mass is closest to the earth.

[5X]

5. In any case, it does stay in one position,

so I would think it has come to some equilibrium, but who knows if the mass has an effect. just my theory.

[Ohiogal]

2. At first

I thought maybe Trump went there trying to find Mars.

[gay texan]

3. There IS a monolith!!!!! N/t

[Beartracks]

6. Just gotta dig a little.

========

[Javaman]

7. Hey, Mr. Moon, I would get that checked. nt