Moon once had stronger 'magnetic heart' than Earth

Scientists have recently theorized that the moon might have had a "dynamo, or a heart" made out of flowing metal, which generates the magnetic field even stronger than the Earth.

Scientists believe they have solved a 40-year-old mystery about what caused rocks collected by NASA's Apollo astronauts to become magnetized, as they have stated that the moon, despite being only 1 percent the mass of Earth, had a moving, molten metallic core, which could generate a global magnetic field, Discovery News reported.

However, other researchers are not so sure. They suspect the lunar soil picked up magnetic fields from impacting asteroids and other bodies, which spawned short-lived, but repeated, electrically charged plasmas.

The new findings have provided evidence that the moon not only had a magnetic heart, but that it initially beat stronger than Earth's churning core does today.

The study, based on a reanalysis of the Apollo samples, combined with data collected by a host of orbiting robotic probes, raises questions about how electrical conducting fluids came to exist in the moon's core, creating a so-called dynamo that generated a global magnetic field.

The analysis showed that the moon had a dynamo-driven magnetic field 4.2 billion to 3.6 billion years ago.

Additional analysis to look at the direction of the electrons' alignment could help scientists figure out if the dynamo was stirred up by changes in the moon's spin angle, or if other factors were responsible.

The study is published in the Science.