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from the I-feel-the-Earth-^W-Moon-move-under-my-feet-♩-♪-♫-♬-? dept.
Possibly active tectonic system on the Moon:
"There's this assumption that the Moon is long dead, but we keep finding that that's not the case," said Peter Schultz, a professor in Brown University's Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and co-author of the research, which is published in the journal Geology. "From this paper it appears that the Moon may still be creaking and cracking -- potentially in the present day -- and we can see the evidence on these ridges."
[...] A few ridges topped with exposed bedrock had been seen before, Schultz says. But those ridges were on the edges of ancient lava-filled impact basins and could be explained by continued sagging in response to weight caused by the lava fill. But this new study discovered that the most active ridges are related to a mysterious system of tectonic features (ridges and faults) on the lunar nearside, unrelated to both lava-filled basins and other young faults that crisscross the highlands.
"The distribution that we found here begs for a different explanation," Schultz said.
Journal Reference:
P.H. Schultz, A. Valantinas. The origin of neotectonics on the lunar nearside. Geology, 2020; DOI: 10.1130/G47202.1
It's not surprising. Cheese is not as stable a material as many suppose.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @09:30PM
Not necessarily.
But the fact that the moon used to be volcanically active all but guarantees the existence of lava tubes, which are a particularlly useful kind of cave (network). And under the moon's gravity they can be huge - there's evidence suggesting collapsed tubes 10km wide and hundreds of km long - even much smaller ones could easily house a substantial moon base.