Lunar samples show previous magma activity

Chinese scientists discovered that there was magma activity on the far side of the moon between 4.2 and 2.8 billion years ago that lasted for at least 1.4 billion years, further strengthening our understanding of the evolution of the moon.

Two related studies, based on samples taken from the far side of the Moon by the Chang’e 6 mission, were published simultaneously in the international academic journals Nature and Science on Friday.

There are significant differences in morphology, composition, and magma activity between the near and far sides of the Moon, and the formation of these differences is an important topic in lunar research.

“Uncovering the volcanic history of the far side of the Moon is crucial to understanding the moon’s hemispheric dichotomy,” said Li Qiuli, a professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Previously, scientific understanding of the far side of the Moon relied mainly on remote sensing studies. In June, China’s Chang’e 6 lunar probe returned nearly 2 kilograms of samples to Earth for the first time.

These samples were collected from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest, deepest and oldest basin on the Moon.

Since 2021, using lunar soil samples returned by the Chang’e 5 mission, Chinese scientists have shown that significant magma activity was still present on the near side of the moon 2 billion years ago, and minor volcanic activity continued until 120 million years ago.

In the study published Friday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics and the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences showed, through dating, that magma activity on the far side of the Moon occurred from 4.2 billion years ago to 2.8 billion years ago. Research on 108 basaltic rock fragments taken from 5 grams of lunar soil.

The study, conducted by a team led by Xu Yigang, a CAS scholar and researcher at CAS’s Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, and published in the journal Science, also confirmed magma activity on the far side of the Moon 2.8 billion years ago.

The study also shows that the lunar basalt eruption is affected by the composition of the moon’s interior, which explains why there is not abundant volcanic activity in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon.

“As these samples are the first collected from the far side of the Moon, they provide a unique insight into the global geological history of the Moon. The results are novel and deserve to be published in the journal Science. They will be of interest to a wide readership.” Science critic Katherine Joy said: