NASA/SVS/Ernest T. Wright
They are hundreds of kilometers long and formed in less than 10 minutes. They can help to better understand the impacts of asteroids – even on earth.
“About four billion years ago an asteroid or comet flew over the South Lunar pole, went through the cums of the mountains of Malapert and Mouton and reached the lunar surface. The impact ejected high -energy rock flows that sculpture two canyons that rival the size of the Grand Canyon from the earth ”.
It seems the beginning of a story of fiction, but it is true, according to the astronomer David Kring.
“While the Grand Canyon took millions of years to graduate, the two great Moonlights were carved in less than 10 minutes“, He also tells.
The two canyons are called Vallis Schrödinger e Valley Planck. The first, formed on the outer margin of the South-Aitken (Spa) pole basin, has almost 300 kilometers long20 kilometers wide and 2.7 kilometers deep.
There is also a line of “secondary” craters formed by the fall of rocks that were projected by the impact. The part of the gorge is about 280 kilometers deep27 kilometers wide and 3.5 kilometers deep, says Universe Today.
Schrödinger has an outer ring, produced by the collapse of a central elevation after the impact, which Basaltic Wash Flows – Volcanic activity ended about 3.7 billion years ago.
“The Schrödinger crater is similar, in many respects, to the Crater Chicxulub, on the earth ,. By showing how Schrödinger’s palaodiers were formed, in depth kilometers, this work helped illuminate how energetic the ejection of these impacts can be, ”explains one of the members of the Lunar and Planetary Institute of Houston’s investigation team, Gareth Collins.
The team published one in the magazine Nature On February 4th about these canyons.
And these canyons can be very useful in future lunar surface exploration: its basin is the second oldest on the moon, which allows access to underlying samples of the moon’s primordial crust without being necessary to dig into newer rocks.
Can also hide some secrets on the impacts on earth, and help with its characterization.
