from the it's-just-a-big-hole-in-the-ground dept.
A Southwest Research Institute-led team of scientists discovered two geologically young craters—one 16 million, the other between 75 and 420 million, years old—in the Moon's darkest regions.
"These 'young' impact craters are a really exciting discovery," said SwRI Senior Research Scientist Dr. Kathleen Mandt, who outlined the findings in a paper published by the journal Icarus. "Finding geologically young craters and honing in on their age helps us understand the collision history in the solar system."
Key to this discovery was the SwRI-developed Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). LAMP uses the far-ultraviolet Lyman-alpha band skyglow and light from ultraviolet-bright stars LAMP to "see" in the dark and image the permanently shaded regions of the Moon. Using LAMP and LRO's Mini-RF radar data, the team mapped the floors of very large, deep craters near the lunar south pole. These deep craters are difficult to study because sunlight never illuminates them directly. Tiny differences in reflectivity, or albedo, measured by LAMP allowed scientists to discover these two craters and estimate their ages.
Not sure how Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP (LAMP) helps planetary scientists understand collision history in the solar system, but hat's off to them for doing so.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday May 23 2016, @11:38PM
When translating Personals, we already had "Plump" for Really Fat, "Big" for Morbidly Obese, and 8" for anything below 6"...
Now we can add "Fresh" for "So old we can't put it in the title"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Monday May 23 2016, @11:39PM
Scientists Discover Fresh Lunar Craters
C'mooon. Coulda put "fresh" in quotes. I was expecting, like, last week or something.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday May 24 2016, @12:29AM
Actually, wake me when we do have a fresh crater, regardless of how small.
Other than a few man made craters (intentionally crashed spent lunar orbiters), you would expect a small-ish meteor or something might have hit the moon in the last 5 years that left a mark big enough to be detected by the LRO, which was launched in 2009.
I suppose they don't spend all that much time photographing the moon in high-resolution any more, but if the LRO is still capable, it might prove useful to replicate as close as possible the mapping paths done originally by the same camera and use computer analysis to measure differences and discover their cause.
The Moon is a pretty big place. Seems unlikely nothing has changed on its surface in 5 years.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday May 24 2016, @11:27AM
The Fatherland [imdb.com] still has friends in the international cadre of astronomists and cosmologists.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Funny) by anubi on Tuesday May 24 2016, @04:59AM
I will now never see "fresh fish" the same way again.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24 2016, @06:22AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fishybell on Tuesday May 24 2016, @02:24AM
I was fairly certain I've seen videos of craters being formed, which would by definition be the freshest. A quick Google search validated [theguardian.com] my memories.