2024-07-30 10:30:23
Tokyo: A major discovery has been made about the moon. A review of decades-old Apollo mission data has indicated thousands of previously ignored moon earthquakes. This disclosure can be useful in preparing for the moon and future human missions. This test has been done by planetary seismologist Keisuke Onodera of Tokyo University, who found evidence of 20000 moon earthquakes. Onodera said in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets on July 5, ‘There have been more tectonic events on the moon. It is more tectonically active than before.’ According to the report of Science News, the Apollo missions that landed on the moon from the 1960s to the 1970s carried two types of seismometers with them. One of the seismometers can measure long seismic waves generated from inside the surface of the moon and the other can detect short seismic waves that carry more energy or are closer to the surface of the moon. These instruments collected data of seismic energy from 1969 to 1977. Evaluated more than 13,000 seismic events.
Untangling tangled data
However, data from the seismometers used to detect the tiny seismic waves was so tangled up with other sources that it was later deemed unusable. Data from seismometers is reported in shapes because the meters create the shapes of seismic waves. Looking at the shapes can help scientists understand the origin of the earthquakes. Last year, Onodera began untangling the data. Until then, no lunar scientist had done so.
22,000 earthquakes detected
After sorting the data, Onodera found 22,000 seismic events, bringing the total number of known events to over 35,000. “The most surprising thing is that I found 22,000 earthquakes. This is a much larger number of events than the original database. This is something that no one expected,” Onodera said. Onodera identified each event by looking at its graph and classified them based on their size.