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[A] Baylor University study [DOI: 10.1029/2019GL082252] [DX], published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, combined data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) missions and found the huge blob lurking over a hundred miles beneath the South Pole-Aitken basin.
The mass, which isn't immediately obvious on the surface, appears to be dragging down the lunar landscape above it by around half a mile. In terms of size, lead author of the paper, Peter B. James, compared it to a pile of metal five times the size of Hawaii's big island.
[...] The scientists have a number of theories for where this mass could have come from, including one that involves the solidification of an ocean of lunar magma.
The leading theory posits the mass comes from an asteroid with an iron-nickel core that smacked into the lunar surface four billion years ago. Scientists calculated that a sufficiently dispersed impactor core could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle rather than sink to the core.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:48AM (3 children)
HAH! It's the space nazi base.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @09:41AM (2 children)
> Sudden particle emissions, in which our star repeatedly hurls large amounts of charged and uncharged particles into space, are still a mystery. Some of these particle flows are accompanied by violent solar flares, a sudden and local increase of the Sun’s brightness, and contain up to 10,000 times more helium-3 and up to 10 times more iron than the Sun's atmosphere. Why is this extremely rare helium isotope accelerated into space so efficiently? And why iron? How does the Sun supply these particles with the necessary energy to catapult them into space?
https://www.mps.mpg.de/Magnetic-coil-springs-accelerate-particles-on-the-Sun [mps.mpg.de]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:04AM (1 child)
It's called the Electromagnetic (EM) Force. It's really strong. Billions of times stronger than gravity, in fact.
Atoms are actually mostly empty space, yet we perceive collections of atoms as "solid." That's the EM force at work.
I know you don't believe in such things, but I can prove it to you.
Go up to the top of a tall building and jump off. The whole mass of the earth has distorted space-time to pull you to the center of it. But, as you'll find out just before you die, a few hundred pounds of mostly empty space held together with the EM force will stop your descent to the center of the Earth.
Why don't you go do that now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @10:07AM
That question was asked by solar physicists at the max planck institute, not me. Go back to Reddit.