Two of Moon's Grand Canyons Were Created in Just 10 Minutes Due to a Powerful Impact 3.8 Billion Years Ago, Claim Researchers
Moon aficionados now have another detail in their kitty about the precious satellite. As per a recent study, two magnificent Grand canyons on the moon were a result of a ten-minute reaction, stated Smithsonian Magazine. This reaction resulted in an enormous energy release, as per experts. Findings associated with the whole phenomenon have been published in Nature Communications.
The study focuses on the grand canyons of Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck. They are located near the lunar south pole and are estimated to be around 160 miles long and two miles deep. The study claims that a powerful impact 3.8 billion years ago, caused a quick rain of debris, that resulted in the creation of the canyons.
The energy released in the whole process was so much that, the canyons were formulated in a matter of ten minutes, according to the researchers. "They truly are extraordinary in scale," said David Kring, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and lead author of the study, stated the New York Times. "These things were carved in less than ten minutes when the Grand Canyon [in Arizona] took five to six million years to carve. I mean that illustrates the energy of an impact event." Researchers speculate that the energy released during the process must be 130 times more than the total nuclear energy in the custody of several global superpowers on Earth.
To explain, how the canyons were created in the debris rain, Kring and his team created a mathematical model. They calculated the speed and direction of the debris by analyzing the photos taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the craters lying along the canyons. "Imagine a kilometer- or a five-kilometer rock hitting the ground at over 2,000 miles per hour," Dr. Kring said about the phenomenon that possibly occurred 3.8 billion years ago. "Each one of these blocks will produce a crater about 20 kilometers in diameter. And they hit the ground — bang, bang, bang, bang, bang."
Researchers concluded from their calculations that after the impact of the asteroid, a huge amount of rocks flew into space. The return of these rocks happened in the form of rain, whose collisions with the surface happened rapidly and caused the canyons. "When the impacting asteroid or comet hit the lunar surface, it excavated a tremendous volume of rock that was launched into space above the lunar surface before it came crashing back down," explained Kring. "Knots of rock within that curtain of debris hit the surface in a series of smaller impact events, effectively carving the canyons. Adjacent to the canyons, the debris would have covered the landscape."
The results have intrigued astronomers and experts all over the world, with some thinking that more findings are needed to validate the conclusions. "The ultimate proof would be someone bringing back a rock from one of these canyons, or some rocks," Mark Burchell, a scientist at the University of Kent said. "Then you just cut them up and there will be grains of minerals in there which have been shocked [by impacts], and some of them have changed their structure as a result."