Great canyons carved into the moon in the blink of an eye

The Grand Canyon in the US state of Arizona took millions of years to form, while two canyons of similar size were carved into the surface of the moon in just 10 minutes.

Two large canyons in the Schrödinger basin on the moon

The reason for the difference in time length is due to two large canyons on the moon formed when an asteroid or comet crashed into the lunar surface, according to a report published in the journal Nature Communications .

"The violent collision was followed by a series of smaller-scale events that allowed those canyons to form in about 10 minutes," NPR quoted author David Kring of the USRA Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston (Texas, USA).

Two large canyons, called Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck, are located on the far side of the moon in the Schrödinger basin and are not visible from Earth. Each canyon is 265.5 km long and more than 2.4 km deep. The Schrödinger basin is the result of a collision about 3.8 billion years ago.

"These are unusual canyons, but they are hidden and somewhat mysterious because they are located on the far side of the moon, in the South Pole region," said expert Kring.

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To understand more about the story behind the Schrödinger Basin and its two companion canyons, Kring teamed up with PhD student Danielle Kallenborn and Professor Gareth Collins of Imperial College London (UK).

Together, they used images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to map basins, canyons and chunks of rock that returned to the surface after the cataclysmic impact.

When an asteroid or comet hits the moon, it travels at speeds of up to 61,155 km/h and can penetrate to depths of up to 24 km. During this process, debris is thrown up and a huge rain of rocks falls down. Two canyons were formed from this event.

The energy required to carve two canyons into the moon is 1,200 to 2,200 times greater than the explosion that widened the Panama Canal, or more than 700 times the combined yield of the nuclear tests conducted by the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, and 130 times greater than the energy that could be released from the world's nuclear arsenals if detonated simultaneously.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/cac-hem-nui-lon-duoc-khac-len-mat-trang-trong-chop-mat-185250205142623779.htm