US EditionApollo 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.
29 Articles
29 Articles
Titanium hidden in the moon's depths generated a stronger magnetic field than the Earth's, but only for a few decades.
Apollo rocks reveal the Moon had brief bursts of super-strong magnetism
Scientists at the University of Oxford have finally settled a decades-long mystery about the Moon’s magnetic field — and it turns out both sides were right. By reanalyzing Apollo mission rocks, they discovered that the Moon did occasionally generate an incredibly powerful magnetic field, even stronger than Earth’s — but only for fleeting bursts lasting thousands of years or less. Most of the time, the Moon’s magnetic field was weak.
Associated Press News
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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- 48% of the sources lean Left, 47% of the sources are Center
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