Matt Siegler, a planetary scientist at SMU, was digging into old data to figure out how hot it is under the moon’s surface when he came upon something surprising: evidence of a massive, ancient volcano.
The moon has always sparked the human imagination — the first known story of explorers landing on the moon was written nearly 2,000 years ago. In work published in Nature this summer, Siegler and his team have added to that legacy.
The piece of granite Siegler describes in his recent study is much larger than anyone expected, according to Brad Jolliff, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the research. Jolliff and others have, however, suspected volcanic activity at this site for over a decade.
