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Daily Mail: Earth’s moon threw a ‘wobbly’ after it formed: Lunar poles wandered 125 MILES as volcanic bubbles threw them off balance

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Science reporter Richard Gray with The Daily Mail covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Earth’s moon threw a ‘wobbly’ after it formed: Lunar poles wandered 125 MILES as volcanic bubbles threw them off balance,” published March 23. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

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EXCERPT:

By Richard Gray
The Daily Mail

They are among the coldest places in the solar system, covered in deposits of ice that are thought to be billions of years old.

But the moon’s north and south poles may have shifted during its 4.53 billion-year history, according to evidence uncovered in a new study.

A team of astrophysicists claims to have found distinct matching patches of ice at either pole that indicate the tilt of the Earth’s satellite has changed as it has aged.

They said this may have occurred as the interior of the moon cooled and solidified, while other areas bubbled upwards, altering the spin of the rocky world.

The authors explained that volcanic activity in an area known as the Procellarum region around three billion years ago threw the entire moon off balance, causing it to shift its axis by around six degrees.

This caused the moon’s poles to move by around 125 miles (201km) over the course of a billion years.

Dr Matt Siegler, a planetary scientist at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who was part of the team to make the discovery, said: ‘Billions of years ago, heating within the Moon’s interior caused the face we see to shift upward as the pole physically changed positions.

‘It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia. As the pole moved, the Man on the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth,’ Siegler said.

Dr Siegler and his colleagues used data gathered by Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbitor which has mapped the hydrogen deposits around the moon’s poles.

They found the polar hydrogen reserves, which are thought to be in the form of water ice in craters, are spread over distinct but matching patterns on either side of the moon.

The researchers said this suggests the lunar spin axis must have shifted, causing the polar regions to become displaced.
This left a permanent record painted out on the surface in ice.

Relatively few planetary bodies are thought to have shifted their axis after forming.

The Earth, Mars, Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa are the only others known to have done so.

On Earth, polar wander is thought to have happened as the continental plates have shifted the mass of the planet while on Mars it occurred due to heavy volcanic region.

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Wired: The Moon used to spin on a different axis

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Wired reporter Emily Reynolds covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “The Moon used to spin on a different axis,” published March 24. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Emily Reynolds
Wired

The Moon used to “spin on a different axis” that was subject to “polar wander,” a new study into the satellite’s early history has said.

The Planetary Science Institute study, published in Nature, highlights two regions full of hydrogen deposits near the Moon’s two poles. This, it says, suggests the presence of ice — ice that only would have survived if it had remained in permanent shadow.

“If the orientation of the Moon has changed, then the locations of the shadowed regions will also have changed,” the researchers write.

The poles “wandered”, according to the team, because of volcanic activity in the area, which would have warmed. It also would have made them less dense, causing the “wandering” of the axes.

“The Moon has a single region of the crust where radioactive elements ended up as the Moon was forming,” said Matthew Siegler, lead author of the study. “This radioactive crust acted like an oven broiler heating the mantle below.”

“This giant blob of hot mantle was lighter than cold mantle elsewhere, causing the whole Moon to move.”

The shift probably happened over three billion years ago, the team say, and would have meant the Moon showed a completely different face. Overall, the Moon shifted around six degrees over one billion years. Only a few other planetary bodies have been said to shift their axes — Earth and Mars, as well as two moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

“The same face of the Moon has not always pointed towards Earth,” said Siegler. “As the axis moved, so did the face of the Man in the Moon. He sort of turned his nose up at the Earth.”

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Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Agence France-Presse in The Japan Times, Raw Story: Moon’s ‘wandering poles’ shifted long ago: study

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Agence France-Presse covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Moon’s ‘wandering poles’ shifted long ago: study,” published March 24 at The Japan Times and Raw Story, among other news sites. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Agence France Presse
Telltale patches of water ice on opposite ends of the Moon reveal that Earth’s orbiting companion once spun on a different axis, according to a study released Wednesday.

The six-degree tilt, which happened several billion years ago, was likely caused by an ancient volcanic formation on the near side of the Moon, said the study, published in Nature.

The data underlying this startling discovery has been in plain view for nearly two decades, but scientists had failed to connect the dots, one of the researchers told AFP.

“It was kind of hidden because of the way we plotted polar maps,” explained co-author James Keane, a researcher at the University of Arizona.

Two-dimensional representations create a subtle distortion, obscuring the fact that observed concentrations of ice near each pole were exactly 180 degrees apart — and thus on an axis running through the dead centre of the Moon.

“That is my pet hypothesis about why nobody thought about this before,” Keane said.

The man who finally put the top-and-bottom pieces of the lunar puzzle together was co-author Rich Miller of the University of Alabama.

Having located the largest concentrations of water ice near the current north and south poles by detecting hydrogen molecules — the “H” in “H2O” — he rotated a 3-D model to see how they would line up.

“He found a Sigma-8 correlation,” which means that the odds of it being a coincidence were about one-in-a-million, said Keane.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

The Washington Post: Volcanic activity may have shifted the moon’s axis

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Reporter Rachel Feltman at The Washington Post covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Volcanic activity may have shifted the moon’s axis,” published March 23. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Rachel Feltman
The Washington Post

Lots of folks think of the moon as a dead rock that’s orbiting Earth unchanged. That’s untrue — the moon is shrinking and pulling away from us a little bit all the time. But a new study suggests that the moon may have had a much more radical change in its ancient history: The moon may once have spun on a different axis.

In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers point to hydrogen-filled deposits near the moon’s poles as evidence that the satellite’s axis — the imaginary line that crosses through it, around which it rotates — was once in a different spot.

These hydrogen deposits are thought to be ice that formed at the moon’s poles. But in addition to the ice expected on the moon’s current poles, scientists found deposits in a different spot — and these spots were directly across from each other. In other words, the ice patches seem to be sitting on areas formerly known as lunar poles. If that’s the case, the new axis is shifted by 5.5 degrees.

“It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia. As the pole moved, the Man on the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth,” study author Matt Siegler at Southern Methodist University said in a statement.

That’s cold, man on the moon. Real cold.

Scientists call this unusual phenomenon a “true polar wander.” Earth has experienced it several times, and slight axis shifts are common on our planet after earthquakes.

But why on Earth (or on moon, rather) did those poles wander? Volcanic activity may be to blame. A world’s axis is determined by its relative mass, with its lightest regions forming the poles. For the axis to shift so significantly, the mass would have to shift, too. Siegler and his colleagues think that volcanic activity melted some of the moon’s mantle about 3.5 billion years ago, creating a giant, hot blob that was lighter than the colder rock around it. As that magma gurgled around, it slowly shifted the moon’s axis about 125 miles.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Smithsonian: Ancient Volcanoes May Have Shifted the Moon’s Poles

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Science reporter Danny Lewis with Smithsonian covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Ancient Volcanoes May Have Shifted the Moon’s Poles,” published March 24. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Danny Lewis
Smithsonian

The moon may not have always spun at the same angle it does today. According to a new study, patches of water ice that formed in craters on opposite sides of the moon suggest that its axis may have shifted billions of years ago.

While the moon doesn’t have much in the way of geologic activity anymore, about three billion years ago it was pulsing with volcanic activity beneath its surface. A team of planetary scientists say that all that magma sloshing around in the moon may have shifted its axis, moving its poles about six degrees to where they are today, Dani Cooper reports for ABC Science.

“It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia,” lead author Matthew Siegler, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute, says in a statement. “As the pole moved, the Man [in] the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth.”

Scientists have believed that the moon’s surface has patches of water ice in its shadowy regions since the 1990s, when NASA’s Lunar Prospector probe discovered traces of hydrogen. Lunar researchers have theorized that there are ice deposits still located in craters at the moon’s poles, which are permanently in shadow. However, according to the new study published in the journal Nature, when Siegler and his colleagues took a closer look at the poles they couldn’t find any traces of water ice. Because the ice should have accumulated over billions of years, Siegler suspects that some of the craters were at one time exposed to sunlight, Loren Grush reports for The Verge.

“The ice is like a vampire; as soon as it gets hit by sunlight, it poofs into smoke,” Siegler tells Grush.

Meanwhile, Siegler and his team noticed that the water ice at the moon’s modern poles appears to trail off in mirroring directions. Also, Siegler found that each pole had a hydrogen-rich region a short distance away, which could mark the moon’s original, or “paleopoles.” By calculating the geologic changes that it would take to shift the moon’s axis, Siegler pinpointed the shift to a part of the moon called the Procellarum region; the center of almost all of the moon’s volcanic activity, Cooper reports.

“It takes a huge change in the mass of the Moon to do that—something like a giant crater or volcano forming,” Siegler tells Cooper.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.