New Research Sheds Light on the Enigmatic Moon Swirls
Recent research has provided new insights into the origins of lunar swirls, the light-coloured, sinuous features on the Moon's surface. These swirls have been linked to magnetic anomalies, despite the Moon lacking a global magnetic field. Michael J. Krawczynski, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that these anomalies could be the result of underground lava flows cooling in a magnetic field, rather than being caused by meteorite impacts. Experiments conducted by Krawczynski and his team demonstrated that minerals such as ilmenite could form magnetisable iron particles under lunar conditions, suggesting that subsurface magma, particularly rich in titanium, could be responsible for the observed magnetisation. Future missions, including NASA's 2025 Lunar Vertex mission to Reiner Gamma, aim to further explore these anomalies.
In a separate study, researchers have used satellite data for the first time to examine Earth's planetary boundary layer (PBL), a critical region affecting air quality and climate. This research, conducted by the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, employed high-spectral resolution infrared data to analyze temperature variations, facilitating the detection of atmospheric pollutants and improving environmental management and climate modeling. The findings, published in the 2024 issue of the Journal of Remote Sensing, highlight the impact of temperature differences on the detection of pollutants, offering new tools for climate pollution analysis.
