US SCIENTISTS HAVE announced that the moon is shrinking, after spotting wrinkles on the surface of the satellite.
Meanwhile, scientists say the universe is going to continue expanding until it becomes a cold, dead wasteland.
Contraction marks were spotted by scientists examining photographs of the lunar surface taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).
The moon was formed “in a chaotic environment of intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors”, according t0NASA.
The moon then cooled down as it aged, but scientists believe it has shrank during this process, especially during its early years. But, it could still be shrinking today.
Here’s a video of NASA’s footage.
This NASA image shows:
[A] fault cut across and deformed several small diameter (~40-m diameter) impact craters (arrows) on the flanks of Mandel’shtam crater (6.5°N, 161°E). The fault carried near-surface crustal materials up and over the craters, burying parts of their floors and rims.
About half of the rim and floor of a 20 m-in-diameter crater shown in the box has been lost. Since small craters only have a limited lifetime before they are destroyed by newer impacts, their deformation by the fault shows the fault to be relatively young.
The team calculated that the distribution of dark energy (a force that speeds up the universe’s expansion) in the universe will cause it to continually expand until it becomes a cold, dead wasteland.
How cold? Temperatures will approach ‘absolute zero’ – the temperature at which all atomic motion stops.
