The Moon is shrinking, wrinkling due to quakes: Study
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Cracking and shifting
A survey of more than 12,000 images revealed that lunar basin Mare Frigoris near the Moon's north pole -- one of many vast basins long assumed to be dead sites from a geological point of view -- has been cracking and shifting.
AFP
Tectonic activity causing wrinkling
This in turn causes its surface to wrinkle, similar to a grape that shrivels into a raisin.
AFP
150 feet "skinnier"
As a result, the Moon has become about 150 feet (50 meters) "skinnier" over the past several hundred million years.
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Young surface features
The analysis was published in Nature Geoscience and examined the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo missions, establishing links between them and very young surface features.
Default Agency
Moonquakes
"You don't often get to see active tectonics anywhere but Earth, so it's very exciting to think these faults may still be producing moonquakes."
(In pic: Astronaut James Irwin gives a military salute while standing beside the U.S. flag during the Apollo 15 mission on the moon.)
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