What secrets does the moon "earth" hide?
Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, February 14 (Reporter Wang Jueying) "Yuanxiao" is the first full moon night of the Lunar New Year.
Thousands of years after the ancients looked at the Moon Palace, my country's Chang'e 5 brought lunar soil samples back to Earth, revealing more mysteries of the moon.
Popular science experts from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have compiled an encyclopedia of the "earth" flavor of the moon, allowing you to increase your knowledge of the "earth" of the moon while eating glutinous rice balls.
Why are lunar "soil" specialties so precious?
Wang Kechao, director of popular science at the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that lunar soil is the rock on the lunar surface, and they carry a lot of important information about the formation and evolution of the moon.
After a 23-day lunar exploration trip, Chang'e-5 brought back 1,731 grams of lunar soil samples from a new area that human probes have never set foot on before - the Lumke Mountains in the northern part of the Ocean of Storms.
The new samples provide fresh first-hand information for studying the weathering, volcanism, geological background, and evolution of the lunar surface, which can greatly deepen human understanding of the origin and evolution of the moon.
What happened to the "soil" of the moon?
Wang Kechao introduced that from 1969 to 1972, the United States successfully carried out several manned missions to the moon, bringing back about 382 kilograms of precious lunar soil and lunar rock samples.
The United States once donated 1 gram of lunar soil samples to my country, and Chinese scientists used 0.5 grams of them for research.
Ouyang Ziyuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recalled that with the 0.5-gram sample, the Chinese research team published a total of 14 papers.
Starting from a little lunar soil the size of a soybean, China started its march to the sea of stars in the solar system.
Today, we have retrieved lunar soil from a new area for scientists in China and the world to study. This is a milestone in China's spaceflight history and an important step in human exploration and understanding of the moon.
Using the lunar soil retrieved by Chang'e 5 this time, Chinese scientists have carried out a series of studies.
Scientists "aged" the basalt samples and pushed forward the geological life of the moon by 800 to 900 million years; scientists estimated that the water content in the source region of the lunar mantle was only 1 to 5 micrograms per gram, indicating that the lunar mantle is very "dry" .
The lunar soil samples collected by Chang'e 5 have also greatly refreshed human's previous understanding of lunar volcanic activity: there may be multiple periods of volcanic activity in the landing area, and we may need a new theoretical framework to explain the secret of the moon's geological "longevity".
"Scientists' research on lunar soil is still in-depth. With the development of science, people's cognition of the moon is no longer limited to myths and legends, but the mysterious lunar soil still contains many unsolved mysteries, waiting for human beings to continue to explore. I believe that in the near future, these 'soil' specialties from the moon will certainly help mankind discover more mysteries about the universe." Wang Kechao said.