Lunar volcanic eruption was MASSIVE

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – @ParkstBrett

A team of scientists have discovered that a volcanic eruption on the Moon was much larger than previously thought – with debris from the eruption covering an area about the size of South Carolina.

The team, which is presenting their findings at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas today, made the discovery by investigating lunar thorium, a radioactive element spewed out by the eruption.

“Volcanoes were common in the early life of the Moon and in fact the dark ‘seas’ you can observe on the lunar surface were created by runny, iron-rich, lava that flooded large areas, filling in impact craters and low-lying ground,” said team member Jack Wilson, a PhD student in computational cosmology at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

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“Eruption of viscous, light-colored, iron-poor, lava, which creates steep-sided volcanic cones, was rare and observed only at a handful of sites such as this one,” Wilson continued. The explosive eruption of such lava is unknown elsewhere on the Moon, making this volcano unique.”

Molten lava thrown far

To make the discovery, the team utilized data from NASA’s Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which first identified the volcanic site on the far side of the Moon in 1999. The scope of the site had remained hidden by rock debris kicked up by meteorite impacts until the team utilized a “pixon” image enhancement process, originally intended to look into the remote Universe, to hone the map of the site. The process revealed the monumental size of the thorium deposit left behind by the volcanic eruption, which took place about 3.5 billion years ago.

“By mapping the radioactive content of the lava from this volcano we have been able to show that molten, radioactive rock was thrown far beyond the slopes of the volcano, reaching several hundred miles in one direction,” Wilson said.

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The team said they now plan to use their technique to investigate the biggest volcano in the Solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars. However, instead of looking for thorium deposits – the research team will be looking for hydrogen and the potential evidence of water ice from glaciers on the high regions of the Red Planet.

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