An enormous—and unexpected—lump of granite has been found on the Moon
The discovery sheds light on lunar history, and suggests how other moons might be explored
In “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke imagined a monolith buried beneath the surface of the Moon which turned out to be an alien artefact that set humankind on a path to the stars. The “batholith” that has been discovered below Compton-Belkovich, a volcanic-looking set of features on the far side of the Moon, hardly promises that. But it sheds some interesting light on the Moon’s past, and shows the power of a new way of peering into the crusts of other planets.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Beneath the far side of the Moon”
From the July 15th 2023 edition
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