The mysterious lunar swirls, one of the solar system's most beautiful optical anomalies, may be a relic of the Moon's ancient volcanic activity and an internally generated magnetic field, scientists say.
Lunar swirls resemble bright, snaky clouds painted on the Moon's dark surface. The most famous, called Reiner Gamma, is about 40 miles long and popular with backyard astronomers.
Most lunar swirls share their locations with powerful, localised magnetic fields. The bright-and-dark patterns may result when those magnetic fields deflect particles from the solar wind and cause some parts of the lunar surface to weather more slowly.
"But the cause of those magnetic fields, and thus of the swirls themselves, had long been a mystery," said Sonia Tikoo, an assistant professor in Rutgers University in the US.
"To solve it, we had to find out what kind of geological feature could produce these magnetic fields -- and why their magnetism is so powerful," said Tikoo, coauthor of the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Working with what is known about the intricate geometry of lunar swirls, and the strengths of the magnetic fields associated with them, the researchers developed mathematical models for the geological "magnets."
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