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posted by takyon on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the get-yer-pickaxe dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Scientists discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

[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.


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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:03PM (4 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:03PM (#854750)

    > it's entirely possibly

    I would correct that typo you missed in your correction, but that would guarantee a typo in my message, and this thread would extend into infinity.

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  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:09PM (3 children)

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:09PM (#854755) Homepage Journal

    Meh. It's just a vowel. It's not like it's a real letter or anything.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:14PM (2 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:14PM (#854759)

      Please don't get me started on Americans somehow not considering Y to be a vowel...
      It's almost as flabbergastingly dumb as the whole 11PM-12AM-1AM mess.

      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:33PM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Wednesday June 12 2019, @06:33PM (#854767) Homepage Journal

        'y' is most certainly (in most cases, at least according to the Limeys [lexico.com]) a vowel, except when it's not. In the case at hand (the word 'possibly'), 'y' is absolutely a vowel.

        As for the clock bit, I don't worry about that much myself, as I pretty much always measure time via the 24 hour clock (e.g., 2300, 0000, 0100 in your example).

        I do find the whole "I got up at eight AM in the morning" or "I'm meeting my favorite fellatrix at ten PM tonight" really annoying, as it's redundant.

        But really, that stuff isn't so bad. It's the use of US Customary Units [wikipedia.org] rather than SI Units [wikipedia.org] that really chaps my ass.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @02:55AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @02:55AM (#854978)

        I am an American, and when I went to first grade on a California air force base in 1965, I was taught the vowels are A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y and sometimes W.

        Yes. W.

        Cwm, Cwrth. ...

        (Cwm is used in one of the chapter names of Darwin's Origin of the Species.)

        I know, other than Darwin, it's generally a Welsh thing. But don't remember the old woman having an accent.