The moon is the furthest body human feet have ever stepped foot on, but despite having been there and brought back samples, it still holds a lot of mysteries. Now, more than 50 years since humans last set foot on the lunar surface, experts say they might finally know what’s going on inside our planet’s largest natural satellite.
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00:00The moon is the furthest cosmic body human feet have ever stepped foot on, but despite
00:08having been there and brought back samples, it still holds a lot of mysteries.
00:12Now more than 50 years since humans last set foot on the lunar surface, experts say they
00:16might finally know what's going on inside our planet's largest natural satellite.
00:20According to astronomers at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, at the centre
00:24of the moon is a big ball of iron.
00:26This was deduced via both evidence from a seismic monitoring device that is currently
00:30on the moon placed there by the Apollo missions and also by newer data collected from lunar
00:34laser ranging, all of which provides information about the moon's density, gravitational interaction
00:39with our planet, and its variable distance.
00:42They say this all points to a global mantle overturn scenario, where dense elements within
00:46the moon's mantle drift towards its core, meanwhile lesser dense materials in the core
00:50drift upwards, meaning the insides of the moon are remarkably like the core of the Earth.
00:54However, given the moon's much smaller size, its core is much smaller as well.
00:58The research team says the moon's outer core is only 450 miles across, with an inner
01:02core of just 320 miles, which Science Alert reports is only 15% of the moon's radius.