The Blob Beneath
Scientists recently discovered a mysterious gigantic blob lying below the moon’s largest crater, NBC News reported.
So far, no one is sure what it is.
Scientists found the anomaly using data from three moon-orbiting NASA spacecraft, which revealed the presence of a “large excess of mass” more than 100 miles beneath the South Pole-Aitken basin.
According to estimations, the blob is believed to have a mass that would weigh at least 4.8 quintillion pounds on Earth and a size that’s five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii.
“This is a very large mass of a scale that is difficult even for geologists to recognize,” said study co-author Paul Byrne.
Researchers have yet to determine what exactly the blob consists of, but they speculate that it’s a metal-rich residue of the asteroid that struck the moon over four billion years ago and created the huge crater.
“It’s the best explanation we have with the data we have,” Byrne said.
The team hopes that further studies of the giant mass can reveal more clues about the formation of the Earth and its satellite.
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