The Shrinking Moon

Astronomers over the past couple of years have been noticing wrinkles on the surface of the moon. further studies suggest that these are actually massive cliffs formed by a planet of moon shrinking. this leaves scientists to believe that the moon has been continuously shrinking for the past 1 billion years.

Scientists have been observing these wrinkles for the past thirty years, they are called lobate scarps. they are formed when a planet or moon cools and contracts. as things contract they get smaller so when the core of a moon contracts the shell sqeezes together so much that they crush each other, forming cliffs. the moon has only shrunk about 100 meters in the past billion years so there is not much to worry about it disappearing. scientists tell how old these scraps are by looking at the craters around them. if the craters have been disrupted by the scarps then it is younger, if there are craters in the scarps then it is older. scientists have used this method to get an idea of how old the scraps are.

Even though the moon's shrinkage is so small that you could not tell by looking at it, the scarps have proven some ideas of what the moon was like a billion years ago. there are theories that the moon had a slightly molten core and that the moon had a totally molten core. scientists are not sure which is true, however these scarps have proven that the moon had some from of molten core billions of years ago.