The hidden hemisphere of the Moon has long been painted as a quiet, cratered backwater, but a new batch of samples has upended that picture. Material returned from the far side now points to a shockingly odd combination of deep cold, buried heat and exotic carbon structures that no one had ever seen occur naturally. Together, they suggest the far side is not just different from the near side we see from Earth, it is a separate chapter in the story of how rocky worlds form and evolve.
At the center of this shift is China’s Chang’e‑6 mission, which became the first to scoop up soil and rock from the lunar far side and return it to Earth. Those grains, collected from a basin near the south pole, are now revealing a landscape shaped by ancient impacts, unusual magmas and, most startling of all, Tiny carbon nanotubes that appear to have grown without any industrial process.
The far side’s deep freeze, buried heat and strange rocks
For decades, Scientists have suspected that the Moon’s two hemispheres followed different thermal histories after a Mars sized body slammed into the proto Earth and created the Earth Moon system. New analysis of far side material backs that up, indicating that the interior of the New far hemisphere may be colder than the side that constantly faces Earth, a result that helps explain why volcanic plains are so scarce there compared with the near side’s dark maria, according to New. A separate study of fragments scooped up by Chin’s robotic lander and examined in the journal Nature Geoscience found that the far side may indeed be colder than the near side, providing the first evidence using real samples that temperature differences are locked into the crust, as reported through Nature Geoscience. Those findings dovetail with orbital gravity data that had already hinted at a dense anomaly, five times the size of the island of Hawaii, buried beneath the south polar Aitken basin and interpreted as leftover metal rich impact debris, a feature described in detail through anomaly.
Yet that deep chill is oddly paired with a lingering pocket of warmth. Using advanced thermal imaging, Scientists have mapped a Giant unexplained heat source on the Moon’s far side, a strange patch of heat that still emits faint thermal radiation today and may be tied to radioactive elements or ancient magma that once shaped the lunar crust, as described in thermal imaging. A complementary analysis of the same region highlights a strange patch of heat that could be the frozen footprint of a long lived volcanic system, preserved beneath the surface and still detectable in the present day, according to a second report on the strange patch. That combination of a colder interior overall and localized warmth fits with models in which uranium, thorium and potassium rich material pooled on the near side after the Mars impact, leaving the far side starved of heat producing elements, a scenario outlined by Scientists.
The rocks themselves are just as peculiar. Planetary scientists have identified a Rare Granite Body Discovered on the Moon Farside, a block of silica rich material that could not have formed the way granite does on Earth, with large volumes of liquid water, and instead points to small, localized magma pockets that slowly cooled within the crust, as detailed in Rare Granite Body. Video explainers have even likened this outcrop to a granite kitchen countertop that, in principle, could be quarried on the Moon, a comparison popularized in a widely shared Oct clip. The Chang’e‑6 landing site itself sits within a region where Surprise meteorite debris uncovered on the Moon far side has been traced to distant parts of the lunar crust, giving researchers in China and their collaborators a rare chance to compare Near and far materials side by side, as described in Surprise.
Tiny nanotubes, parched soil and what it all means for lunar history
The most startling find so far is microscopic. Tiny carbon nanotubes with walls just one atom thick have been identified in soil from the Chang’e‑6 site, providing the first confirmed evidence that such structures can form naturally in space rather than in a laboratory, according to a detailed account of Tiny. In the study, scientists identified thin, tube like graphitic carbon structures using advanced microscopy technique, then used Further chemical tests to confirm that the tubes were indeed single walled and not contamination, as outlined in Jan. A parallel report notes that, Specifically, single walled carbon nanotubes were identified in the CE‑6 lunar samples and that Chemical signatures found in the surrounding glassy material point to high temperature shock events, likely from meteorite impacts, as described in Specifically. In the broader write up, In the researchers’ view, those impacts may have briefly created the right mix of carbon vapor and cooling rates to assemble nanotubes, and Further experiments on Earth will now try to recreate that process, as summarized in In the.
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