A team of scientists managed to determine the characteristics of the lunar soil from the dark side of the Moon

Sunday, May 31, 2020

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A team of scientists from St. Petersburg State University and some other research institutions managed to determine the characteristics of the lunar soil from the dark side of the Moon, reported Moskovskaya Pravda daily newspaper. A small piece of lunar soil, weighing 751 grams and designated as Dhofar 025 was found in a desert on the Arabian Peninsula five years ago. A tiny spec of zircon in the composition of the lunar stone served as the key to the secret of lunar soil. After studying the isotopic composition of the mineral and comparing it with know and dated samples of soil from the Earth and the Moon, the scientists concluded that zircon had the same age as the earlier studied samples of lunar soil did. It is about 4.3-4.4 billion years old. However, about 2 billion years ago the composition of the mineral changed. The change could have been caused by a meteorite strike, which threw the stone into outer space, the newspaper writes. The meteorite bombardment, which struck the surface of the Moon about 3.9 billion years ago, is, apparently, not well-known among scientists. Therefore, the discovered lunar stone came most probably from the dark side of the Earth natural satellite.

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