The rotating patterns etched into the Moon’s surface ultimately appear to be associated with changes in the shape of that surface. Scientists examining mysterious features known as lunar vortices have discovered that at least two of them are related to the Moon’s surface. This is a clue that may help scientists finally find out what causes these shiny curls, whose origins are still unknown.

“The canonical interpretation of lunar eddies is that topography does not affect the location or shape of the eddies,” explains planetary scientist John Weirich of the Planetary Sciences Institute. “However, Domingue and colleagues found that the bright regions of the lunar vortex in Mare Ingenii had a lower elevation than the dark bands in between. They reached this conclusion by creating and examining topographic data on lunar vortices at a higher resolution than previously possible. Completed.”

Lunar swirls are strange and beautiful. As the name suggests, these are swirling patterns that can be found on the Moon in both dark maras (dark volcanic lunar basalt plains) and bright highlands. They are characterized by bright wavy lines separated by darker spaces between them.

We know something about them. Every lunar vortex detected to date coincides with a magnetic field above the lunar surface; Scientists believe this deflects solar particles and prevents cosmic weather patterns from affecting the vortices and the land around them. There also appears to be a connection between lunar vortexes and the lava tubes buried beneath them.

It was thought that there was no connection between the shape of the surface and the shape of the vortices, but recent research has shown that this may not be true. A team led by planetary scientist Deborah Domingue of the Planetary Science Institute found that the bright bands in the vortex in the region known as Mare Ingenii were about 2 to 3 meters (6.6 to 9.8 feet) lower than the dark bands between them. ).

Finding this once is interesting but not enough to identify a connection. So Weirich and his colleagues set out to study another vortex, most famously known as Rainer Gamma. They took data from the Lunar Orbit Reconnaissance Camera and processed it using a package that incorporates machine learning to produce high-resolution surface topography. And the results were similar to the vortex seen in Mare Ingenii.

“In this paper, we examined the Reiner gamut and found that the bright regions are about 4 meters (13 feet) lower than the dark regions,” says Weirich.

“But it’s not that simple because the bright areas are uniformly lower than the dark areas. If this were the case, this relationship between topography and vorticity could easily be demonstrated by comparing the height map with the appearance of the vortex. This relationship would simply be between the average height of the bright areas and the average height of the dark areas.” can be seen when we compare its height.’

This means that we now see elevation changes in the two vortices; This shows that the Mare Ingenii observations are not a strange coincidence or coincidence. Perhaps a few more need to be examined to establish a model.

The information also doesn’t tell us what causes the eddies; Not yet. But every new piece of information we discover is a clue that could help unravel their mysterious mysteries. There’s nothing like them on Earth, so scientists believe they can tell us something unique about the Moon, its history, and what’s going on beneath its silent surface.

“There are many hypotheses about the process of their formation. Each hypothesis has observations that support it, but there are also other observations that contradict them,” says Weirich.

“Because we don’t have a full understanding of how these vortices form, we don’t fully understand the story they might tell us about the Moon. Their formation may involve a combination of well-understood processes interacting together, or something currently unknown. Unusual objects or events can sometimes lead to deeper knowledge.” “That’s why lunar vortices are so interesting.” Source