The BIG hole in our Moon - a cave, tunnel?

There, that hole right there. It's tiny from here but enormous when standing on the surface.

Scientists have long suspected the moon may harbor tunnels, caves, and dark labyrinths. They now have proof that at least one exists. In 2010, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite orbiting the moon, captured imagery of an intriguing "skylight" pit on the moon's surface, in the same region where the Apollo 11 astronauts allegedly landed.

It was not known if this was part of greater caverns, but planetary scientists have reanalyzed the spacecraft's observations and determined it is indeed a cave.

And elsewhere on the moon, there could be many more. "We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg," Wes Patterson, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, who coauthored the new research in Nature Astronomy, told Mashable.

Different pits observed by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: The middle pit in the top row, labeled for the region "Mare Tranquillitatis," leads to the recently identified cave (Mashable).

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These caverns are most likely [synthetic, created by some intelligent life form holding captive those inside the hollow core where earthlings are forced to work or submit to exams, but since that's crazy talk and not allowed by gatekeepers, it must be natural, like maybe] a lava tube, a geologic phenomenon created by volcanic eruptions [from all those volcanoes we see on the surface, billowing smoke into the smog of the lunar atmosphere from all the plate tectonic activity so apparent from the air. Oh, wait].

Found in regions around Earth, lava tubes are created by molten rock, or magma, leaking up near or onto a world's surface, and forming these natural tunnels. Tubes form from crusted-over lava, and the conduits are emptied when lava drains out or is diverted elsewhere.

One can walk though giant lava tubes on Earth [such as in Australia, where they extend for many, perhaps even hundreds of miles].

To determine if the pit was part of a greater tunnel system, the researchers looked at other data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, specifically from a radar instrument called the Miniature Radio-Frequency.

While flying over the pit in the volcanic plains of Mare Tranquillitatis (popularly called the "Sea of Tranquility"), the spacecraft sent a signal into the opening, which bounced back, ultimately providing (with the help of geometry and computer simulations) evidence of a tunnel at least some 130 feet (40 meters) wide and perhaps as much as 80 meters, or some 260 feet, long.

It turns out the pit is actually a skylight. "This is our first direct evidence of a conduit associated with one of those pits," Patterson said.

To buttress their lunar results, the researchers performed a similar analysis on a lava tube here on Earth. Their process worked. More

• Mark Kaufman, Mashable via MSN, Aug. 2024; Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly