Scientists believe that the Earth’s moon is shrinking and are concerned for its potential impact on the new competitive era of space exploration.
While the plotline of “Despicable Me” had me wondering at first if a villain was shrinking the moon so they could steal it, scientists have a better explanation for why this is happening.
Why is the moon shrinking?
NASA funded a new study that discovered that the Earth’s moon has decreased in size by about 150 feet in circumference over the last few million years.
Senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution and lead author of the study Tom Watters said that the moon is shrinking in size because the outer core layer is cooling down, causing it to decrease in size as the “crust has to adjust to that change.”
The study that provides evidence for this says that the process of the moon getting smaller is “like a grape as it dries.”
Watters further explained, “This is not to alarm anyone and certainly not to discourage exploration of that part of the south pole of the moon.”
CNN reported that at the heart of a “new international space race,” Russia made the first successful “soft landing in the area” of the south pole of the moon.
NASA reportedly had chosen the area as the landing site for the Artemis III mission and China has also expressed interest in creating “future habitats” in the area.
Watters continued, saying that the study’s release was set “to raise the caution that the moon is not this benign place where nothing is happening.”
Are scientists concerned about the moon shrinking?
The study reported that the seismic activity of the moon could lead to landslides and other hazards to any future robot or human exploration on the surface of the moon.
“Our modeling suggests that shallow moonquakes capable of producing strong ground shaking in the south polar region are possible from slip events on existing faults or the formation of new thrust faults,” Watters said in a news release.
Beyond the effects of this finding on current space exploration, scientists are further concerned that as the moon shrinks, it will be too far away to fully block the sun in fewer than a billion years, according to the National Post.
NASA reported that beyond these concerns, the shrinking is happening at a very slow pace, which means “you probably won’t notice any change in your lifetime,” according to The Hill.