NEW YORK (AP) — Volcanoes on the moon were still erupting when dinosaurs roamed Earth, according to new research.
Evidence: Three tiny glass beads torn from surface of the moon and delivered to Earth in 2020 by a Chinese spacecraft. Their chemical composition indicates that the Moon had active volcanoes up to 120 million years ago, much later than scientists thought.
An earlier analysis of rock samples from the Chang'e 5 mission suggested that volcanoes ceased to exist 2 billion years ago. Previous estimates had extended to 4 billion years ago.
The study was published Thursday in the journal Science magazine.
“It was a little bit of a surprise,” said Julie Stoppar, a senior scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute who was not involved in the study.
Images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2014 also suggested more recent volcanic activity. The glass beads are the first physical evidence, Stopar said, although more research is needed to confirm their origin.
The Chang'e 5 samples were the first moon rocks returned to Earth since those collected by NASA's Apollo astronauts and the Soviet Union's spacecraft in the 1970s. In June, China returned the samples from the far side of the moon.
Study co-author He Yuyang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in an email that the research could help us understand how long small planets and moons, including our own, can remain volcanically active.
Researchers examined about 3,000 lunar glass beads smaller than the head of a pin and found three with signs that they were from a volcano. Glass beads can form on the moon when molten droplets cool after a volcanic eruption or meteorite impact.
Stopar noted that existing time frames indicate that by the time proposed by the new study, the Moon had already cooled after its moment of volcanic activity.
“This should inspire a lot of other research to try to understand how this could have happened,” she said.
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