It was discovered that a huge meteorite impact heated it to 2,300 degrees and formed part of the moon's crust!

[Mobile software: Bo Ke Yuan] A new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy reveals that a destructive event, which is often associated with disaster movies and the extinction of dinosaurs, may also be one of the reasons for the formation of the lunar surface. A team of international scientists led by the Royal Ontario Museum has found that the formation of ancient rocks on the moon may be directly related to large-scale meteorite impacts. Scientists have conducted a new study on a unique rock that NASA astronauts brought back to Earth during the Apollo 17 moon landing mission in 1972.

The study found that it contains mineralogical evidence that it was formed at incredibly high temperatures (over 2,300 degrees Celsius/4,300 degrees Fahrenheit), which could only be achieved by the melting of the planet's outer layers during a large impact event. Within the rock, the researchers found the former presence of cubic zirconia, a mineral phase that is often used as a substitute for diamonds in jewelry. This phase only forms in rocks heated to over 2,300 degrees Celsius, and although it later reverted to a more stable phase (a mineral called clinodite), the crystals retained evidence of a unique high-temperature structure.

An interactive image of the complex crystals used in the study can be seen here using a virtual microscope. While observing the crystal structure, the researchers also measured the age of the grains, which revealed that the truncatite was formed more than 4.3 billion years ago. The study concluded that the high-temperature cubic zirconia phase must have formed before this, indicating that large impacts were crucial to the formation of new rocks on the early Moon. 50 years ago, when the first samples were brought back from the lunar surface by the Apollo moon landings, lunar scientists raised questions about how the rocks of the lunar crust were formed. To this day, a key question remains unanswered:

How did the moon's outer and inner layers mix after it formed? Now, new research suggests that a large impact 4 billion years ago may have driven that mixing, producing the complex range of rocks seen on the lunar surface today. Rocks on Earth are constantly recycled, but the moon does not exhibit plate tectonics or volcanism, which has allowed older rocks to be preserved. By studying the moon, scientists can better understand the earliest history of our own planet. If large, super-hot impacts formed rocks on the moon, the same process may have occurred on Earth.

Dr Ana Cernok, a Hatch Postdoctoral Fellow at the ROM and co-author of the study, said: "When I first saw the rock, I was struck by how different the minerals looked compared to other Apollo 17 samples. Although less than a millimetre across, the truncatite grain that caught our attention is the largest I've ever seen in an Apollo sample. This small grain still holds evidence for the formation of an impact basin hundreds of kilometres in diameter. This is important because there is no evidence of any of these ancient impacts on Earth."

Study co-author Dr James Darling of the University of Portsmouth said: "These findings completely change scientists' understanding of the samples collected during the Apollo missions, and indeed of the lunar geology, showing that these incredibly violent meteorite impacts helped build the lunar crust, rather than just destroying it."

Bo Ke Yuan | Research/Source: Royal Ontario Museum

The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy

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