Welcome back to Pink Moon, ha! It looks like my last post was in 2017. A lot has happened since then including a global pandemic and my family getting chased by a hurricane in the middle of a move across the country during said pandemic (a story for another time). But the reason I'm writing this quarter-post today is that our study on the rapid transition from primary to secondary crust building on the Moon was just published in Nature Communications! In the study we draw upon recent advances made by geochronological studies which have identified a near-congruence of dates for putative primary lunar crust and secondary Mg-suite samples. The near-congruence of dates obtained for putative primary crust and secondary Mg-suite is problematic for establishing a definitive timeline of early lunar evolution. Petrologic context requires that the primary lunar crust formed prior to secondary Mg-suite intrusions. Yet the most robust data collected imply these two events were separated by only tens of millions of years. In sum, we found that overturn of thin (≤ 100km thick) late-stage magma ocean cumulates triggers a rapid and short-lived episode of lower mantle melting which can explain the key volume, geochronological, and spatial characteristics of the earliest secondary crust on the Moon (i.e., Mg-suite) and without contributions from other energy sources, namely KREEP.
Check out the link above to learn more!
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |