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Apollo Moon Rocks Reveal Brief Strong Magnetic Fields Amid Mostly Weak History
Analysis shows the Moon's magnetic field was weak most of the time but had brief strong spikes linked to melting titanium-rich material, resolving a decades-long debate.
- On Feb. 26, University of Oxford researchers published in Nature Geoscience that Apollo-era moon rocks reveal brief strong magnetic outbursts early on, despite a mostly weak field.
- Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972 landed on large, flat basaltic maria and collected similar low-latitude rocks rich in titanium, forming a limited, titanium-heavy Apollo sample archive of roughly 842 pounds.
- Charting titanium content, researchers found samples under 6% titanium had weak magnetization while higher-titanium rocks preserved strong signals; Claire Nichols said the core-mantle boundary melting caused a strong field for no more than 5,000 years.
- With Artemis aiming for the south pole, NASA-led Artemis program plans to collect diverse samples near the south polar region and permanently shadowed craters to test the moon’s magnetic shield’s role in habitability.
- Scientists say the results address a decades-long scientific debate, reconciling objections about the moon's core size—one-seventh of its radius—and Nichols says the magnetic activity "can be intermittently really strong.
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Old Apollo rocks shed new light on the moon's magnetic field long ago
Old Apollo rocks are providing a fresh take on the moon's magnetic field. The lunar magnetic field is currently weak or even nonexistent, but cranked up to superstrength for short snippets of time more than a billion years ago.
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Breakthrough Study of Apollo Moon Samples Resolves Long-Standing Lunar
For decades, the magnetic history of the Moon has been shrouded in scientific controversy, with conflicting evidence about the strength and persistence of its ancient magnetic field. New research emerging from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, however, now sheds critical light on this debate, revealing a nuanced portrait of lunar magnetism that reconciles seemingly contradictory findings. Published in the journal Natu…
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