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September 7, 2018
Lunar swirls (click here) are beautiful optical anomalies on the surface of the moon that occur without any defined shape and exist in various sizes. These peculiar delights have puzzled scientists who tried to figure out their exact origin story. Scientists at Rutgers and University of California Berkeley have now investigated the origin of these anomalies and come back with new insight into the history of the moon.
The most famous lunar swirl is Reiner Gamma. Around 40 miles long and visible through most telescopes on a clear night, it's a popular spot for backyard astronomers.
Like many lunar swirls, Reiner Gamma has powerful, localized magnetic fields. Scientists believe the patterns of brightness and darkness intermingling seen within Reiner Gamma stem from magnetic fields deflecting particles from the solar wind. Over an extended period of time, this deflection would cause some parts of the lunar surface to weather more slowly.
"But the cause of those magnetic fields, and thus of the swirls themselves, had long been a mystery," says Sonia Tikoo, coauthor of the study recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Planets and an assistant professor at Rutgers, in a press statement. "To solve it, we had to find out what kind of geological feature could produce these magnetic fields—and why their magnetism is so powerful."
The researchers examined the geometry of lunar swirls. From there, they built out a mathematical model on the idea that each swirl was standing above a narrow magnetic object. Through that model, they found an image consistent with the appearance of lava tubes and lava dikes. Lave tubes are long, narrow structures by flowing lava in volcanoes, while lava dikes are vertical sheets of magma injected into the lunar crust. These are known geologic entities, but they're not typically seen as magnetic....
