Quizlet: How Did The Inside Of The Moon Alter Throughout Time?

The Moon’s geological history is unique due to its lack of internal activity, absence of air and water, and the absence of air and water. Its formation was influenced by various theories, including the fission hypothesis, sister hypothesis, and the Earth’s active interior.

The Moon’s outer surface cooled to form a crust over its molten interior, resulting in craters and pushing up material closer to the interior like mountains. Large impacts fractured the Moon’s lithosphere, allowing lava to fill impact basins. The Moon’s interior is cold enough that there are no convection currents, and it appears larger and smaller at different times due to changes in its size and shape.

The Moon’s core is mostly inactive at this point in time, with its outer core being partially liquid and molten. As a result, its interior eventually cooled and mostly solidified, eliminating one of the necessary requirements for the Moon’s formation. The Moon’s interior is cold enough that there are no convection currents, and it appears larger and smaller at different times due to changes in its size and shape.

Over the last 3 billion years, the Moon has likely changed little except for the formation of a few craters. It rotates in the same direction as it revolves, and its period of rotation is equal to its orbital period. Understanding the Moon’s geological history is crucial for understanding its unique characteristics and evolution.

Which of the following lunar features were caused by an impact?

Craters are circular, excavated holes formed by impact events, such as those on Mercury and the Moon. They are the most common surface features on solid planets and moons, with Mercury and the Moon being covered with numerous circular holes. When an impactor hits a planet’s solid surface, a shock wave spreads out from the site, fractures the rock, and excavates a large cavity. The impact sprays material — ejecta — out in all directions, which may melt or vaporize. If the force of the impact is great enough, some of the material pushed toward the edges of the crater will slump back toward the center, creating a central peak in the crater.

Craters have various features, including floor, central peaks, walls, rim, ejecta, and rays. Floor refers to the bottom of a crater, while central peaks form in the central area of the floor of a large crater. For larger craters, the excavated crater collapses on itself, pushing up the mound that forms the central peak. Walls are the interior sides of a crater, usually steep and having giant stair-like terraces created by slumping due to gravity. Rim is the edge of the crater, elevated above the surrounding terrain.

Ejecta is rock material thrown out of the crater area during an impact event, distributed outward from the crater’s rim onto the planet’s surface as debris. Rays are bright streaks extending away from the crater, composed of ejecta material.

How is the interior of the Moon different from Earth?

The Moon’s core is a dense, metallic structure primarily composed of iron and nickel, with a relatively small diameter of about 20 of its diameter. It is a differentiated world, consisting of layers with varying compositions. The heaviest materials have sunk into the core, while the lightest materials have risen to the surface. The Moon’s mantle and crust are above the core, with differences in compositions indicating that it was largely or completely composed of a magma ocean in its early history.

As the magma ocean cooled, crystals formed within the magma, with denser mantle minerals like olivine and pyroxene sinking to the bottom and lighter minerals forming the crust. The lunar mantle, with a thickness of 1350 km, is far deeper than the crust, which has an average thickness of 50 km.

Why was the appearance of the Moon change from time to time?

The Moon does not produce light itself, but rather, it brightens from the Sun’s light. The Moon’s changing position as it orbits our planet creates the illusion of changing shape over time, but it never does. The Moon’s shape appears at night, which is the only part facing us and in sunlight. The moon cycle consists of eight phases: four primary phases (new moon, first quarter, full moon, and last quarter), and four secondary phases (waxed crescent, waxing gibbous, waning crescent, and waning gibbous).

The moon changes its shape every day, with the full moon day being the day the entire moon is visible. The crescent moon is when only a small portion of the moon appears in the sky, and the full moon is on the fifteenth day. The time period between one full moon and the next full moon is slightly longer than 29 days (~29. 5 days). The various shapes of the bright part of the moon during a month are called phases of the moon.

What causes the Moon’s phases to change?

The Moon’s phases change over about 30 days due to the changing positions of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. As the Moon moves around Earth, different parts of it are illuminated by the Sun, with some of the illuminated part facing away from us and some facing towards us. This creates different phases of the Moon.

The New Moon occurs when the Moon is between the Sun and Earth, and its orbit is tilted by about five degrees, making it either above or below the Sun. However, it can also line up directly with the Sun, creating a solar eclipse. On average, a solar eclipse happens between two and five times each year.

As the Moon moves in its orbit, a small sliver of the Moon becomes visible, taking a crescent shape due to its roundness. The edge of the part illuminated by the Sun appears curved, and the Moon’s orbital tilt affects the visibility of these phases.

Why does the Moon’s appearance change?

The Moon’s appearance changes every night due to the Moon’s rotation and the sunlight reflected off its grayish-white surface. The moonlight we see on Earth is sunlight reflected off the Moon’s surface, and the amount of illuminated changes over the month, known as lunar phases. The Moon has a day side and a night side, and as it orbits Earth each month, we do not have a continuous view of the entire side facing the Sun. Most of the time, our view of the Moon looks toward part of the sunlit side and part of the dark side at the same time.

A new moon occurs when sunlight illuminates only the far side of the Moon, which we can’t directly see from Earth, while a full moon occurs when sunlight illuminates only the Moon’s near side, which always faces Earth.

What was the first lunar impact?

Luna 1 was the first partially successful lunar mission in 1959, marking the first probe to leave Earth and fly past another astronomical body. Luna 2 and Luna 3 later performed the first lunar landings, with Luna 3 seeing the far side of the Moon for the first time. Luna 9 and Luna 10 were the first to achieve controlled soft landings, Luna 10 entered orbit, and Zond 5 carried terrestrial lifeforms to close proximity to the Moon.

The first crewed missions to the Moon were pursued by the Soviet Union and the United States, becoming the climax of the Space Race. Apollo 8 became the first crewed mission to enter lunar orbit in December 1968. Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, and Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on it. Luna 15 by the Soviet Union was the first robotic sample return mission to orbit around the Moon.

Crewed Apollo missions continued until 1972, and Soviet uncrewed sample return missions continued until 1976. No dedicated lunar missions were conducted until 1990. Since then, various nations and organizations have visited the Moon, including Japan, the European Space Agency, China, India, Luxembourg, Israel, Italy, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, Mexico, and Pakistan.

In 2018, the Chang’e 4 mission landed on the far side of the Moon in the Aitken basin, while China’s Chang’e 6 sample return mission collected lunar samples in Apollo crater in 2024.

What is the lunar impact theory?

The Moon’s formation is a complex process with various theories. Capture theory suggests the Moon was a wandering body, while the accretion hypothesis suggests it was created alongside Earth. The fission theory suggests Earth’s spinning caused material to break away and orbit the planet. The giant-impact theory suggests the Moon formed during a collision between Earth and another small planet, similar to Mars.

The debris from this collision collected around Earth to form the Moon. The lunar meteorite Dar al Gani 400, discovered in Libya in 1998, and moon rocks from the Apollo missions provide further insights into the Moon’s formation.

How did the Moon change over time?

The Moon has been shrinking globally in recent times due to intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors, along with the decay of radioactive elements. As it cools, it shrinks and its brittle surface breaks, forming thrust faults. Scientists estimate that the diameter of the Moon has gotten about 150 feet smaller in the last several hundred million years.

Moonquakes have been observed on the Moon, with deep moonquakes occurring hundreds of miles beneath the surface due to Earth’s gravity pulling and stretching the Moon’s internal structures. Another type of moonquake is caused by the Moon shrinking as it cools, occurring at moderately shallow depths of 20-30 km and registering up to a startling 5. 5 on the Richter scale. Moonquakes originating on or near the surface can be caused by meteoroid impacts with the Moon or thermal expansion and contraction of rock on or near the surface.

Lunar weather is different from Earth’s, as it comes directly from space, with solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, and bursts of high-energy particles showering radiation across the lunar surface.

Why is it believed that the Moon’s interior is different in composition from the Earth’s interior?

The formation of the Moon may have been caused by the impact of Earth, which vaporized lighter materials and cast them into space, leaving heavier elements like iron, which vaporizes only at extremely high temperatures, to sink into Earth’s core.

What causes the changing appearance or phases of the moon quizlet?

The phases of the moon are subject to the influence of the shifting angles of Earth’s shadows and reflected sunlight as it revolves around the Earth for approximately 28 days, forming an imaginary line.

How does the Moon’s surface change?

The diverse topography of the Moon can be attributed to the impact of space debris over the course of billions of years. The South Pole-Aitken Basin, with a depth of 8 kilometers, represents the largest and most ancient impact basin on the Moon.