STRANGE MASS UNDER THE MOON’S SOUTH POLE
Now, before we get started on this one, I have a confession: I wasn't originally going to blog about this story at all. What changed my mind was the fact that so many regular contributors of articles here noticed the story, and passed it along. Clearly, something about it had the readers of this website exercised, and as you may or may not know, when I get large "pattern trends" of emails focusing on a story, I usually do blog about it. So, with a thank you to all of you who sent this story along, let's get started.
Scientists are now confirming that there's a strange mass anomaly under the moon's south pole, and they're attributing it to an iron-and-nickel rich asteroid that crashed into the planet approximately three billion years ago:
Huge mystery blob found under the moon's far side
What is the massive thing under the Moon’s surface?
As the first article notes, mass anomalies have been observed on the Moon since the 1960s, and they are usually associated with craters:
The data give a loose picture of what's happening both on the surface and underground. The more mass there is, like higher topography or denser rocks, the stronger the gravity. These maps highlight a striking difference between most of the moon's large craters and the South Pole-Aitken basin.
Other large craters have what are known as mascons, short for mass concentrations. Discovered in 1968 by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mascons show up in gravity maps as bullseyes—a central circle of strong gravity surrounded by a ring of weak gravity and then another ring of stronger gravity. The phenomenon is a consequence of the way low-density crust and high-density mantle adjust after an impact.
The trouble is, this mass anomaly at the South lunar pole is much bigger than previously thought. In fact, it's some 1500 miles wide. According to the second article, the real problemis not just it's size, but what it is:
"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected." That's Peter B. James of Baylor University talking about a gigantic anomaly found beneath the Moon's surface. He's the lead author of a study published in Geophysical Research Letters describing the odd find. There are a few theories about what it could be.
The thing sits beneath the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin, believed to be the largest intact crater in our solar system. The oval-shaped feature is thought to be about 4 billion years old, and it's big: about 2,000 kilometers across at some points.
Here's where it gets interesting, for in speculating on what it may be, the second article lists a number of possibilities:
The two most likely theories are that it's the iron-nickel core of a long-ago asteroid impact, or that it's a leftover clump of dense oxides from the cooling of the Moon's magma. Or, sure, a giant spaceship or hidden underground civilization, ahem.
It's that last joking possibility that, I suspect, was the center of everyone's attention on this story, and it is a strange thing to mention in an otherwise serious but somewhat dull article about asteroid impacts on the Moon. By mentioning it - even as a joke - I'm sure it was intended to draw people like me to it to speculate about it like flies to honey.
OK, I'm game; I'll bite and speculate. Consider the following timeline:
(1) From roughly February of 1994 to May of 1995, the USA's Clementine mission orbited the Moon, busily snapping pictures for the first complete photogrammetric mapping of that planet since the early days of the space race. Notably, Clementine was a joint mission of NASA and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the re-named institution that was initially President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. In other words, Clementine was a military mission, and given the nature of the sensors and mapping it did, plus the fact of its name - "Clementine" - recalling the mining-gold rush song ("in a cavern in a canyon excavating..." &c &c), one may reasonably speculate that Clementine was also trying to pinpoint those mass anomalies precisely for the purpose of eventual mining operations. Given that one of the images it took was precisely of the southern lunar pole, one may also reasonably assume that the massive mass anomaly was detected by it;
(2) Then, in 2009, we had the launch of the much-ballyhooed NASA "LCROSS" mission, which was to send one of its stages crashing into a crater in the southern polar region of the Moon so that scientists could snap pictures of the resulting plume from the kinetic impact, and determine if there was water lurking in the bottom of lunar polar craters. In fact, NASA played up the mission by hyping the idea that the impact would be visible on Earth. Many people gazed up, waiting for the flash of the impact, and ... nothing. The stage had impacted, but according to an analysis of Richard C. Hoagland, the impact may have occurred in the roof of a hollow chamber, thus confining most of the visible light inside of the hollow. The small visible signature of the impact was consistent with this view. (Mr. Hoagland also maintained that the most sensational picture from the LRO-LCROSS mission was this picture displaying a highly anomalous yellow Lunar LIM: LCROSS LRO Lunar LIM Picture).
So herewith my high octane speculation, which makes two assumptions: firstly, that the Clementine and LCROSS missions are intimately related, with the real mission of LCROSS not simply to detect water, but the presence of high concentrations of heavy metals in the southern polar region via the impact plume of the LCROSS mission. As a corollary of this purpose, one would also be trying to test for the idea that, if heavy metals are present, are they present in such a quality and degree as to indicate and intelligent, rather than merely natural, source for them. Secondly, those two missions are in turn related to this story of the mass anomaly at the southern pole.
In effect, what we may have just seen is that the beginning of the story - the mass anomaly itself, which perfectly connects and rationalizes the Clementine and LCROSS stories - has been deliberately withheld until now, and presented as a bit of unconnected "data" to the earlier events. In short, they've known about this mass anomaly for quite some time because Clementine in all likelihood alerted them to it. And depending on the results of that LCROSS spectroscopy, they may also know what ultimately is the cause of that mass anomaly: an asteroid, or (to quote the second article) "a giant spaceship or hidden underground civilization, ahem."
See you on the flip side...
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Earth’s core is supposedly iron & nickle as well. I think that could be a mundane explanation, maybe the huge mascon is there because of the actual split from Earth? Or could an iron & nickle makeup just be an easy facade for… someone… to hide behind.
I find it strange its at the bottom of a crater, I’d think if it were there since the birth of the moon there wouldn’t be a crater, it would just be a mass difference on that side that never equalized during cooldown for whatever reason. What if the crater is leftover from something getting rid of or bombarding whatever is the real cause of the mascon- long ago?
Lunar blobs? For the moment we can only assess this alleged “data” as a “narrative”, since there is nothing approaching independent corroboration. It is truly extraordinary that, despite being surrounded (and targeted) by an unprecedented amount of high devices, our position vis à vis space news is little different from that of the virtual totality of the European population regarding the Americas in the year 1500. A few wild sailors’ tales, and an ever-changing flow of proclamations, maps and other documents from officially approved sources….
well, this probably explains the deep interest in the South Pole by China and others. Nasa seems to be ignoring or avoiding the South Pole so maybe they know more than they are telling or there is nothing there at all.
Yes, indeed, Clementine does indeed die Glocke läuten. Sorry! ring the bell as well as bring to mind some of the investigative work Linda Moulten-Howe (LMH) discovered, brought to light (with a little help), and has written about.
The Palo Alto C>A>R>E>T> Laboratory findings also make interesting reading, too, where CARET stands for Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology. You know, the stuff you’d like to keep hidden in plain sight or, on occasion, loosely referenced as “stenography” (one prefers:: a seemingly floating reusable/reform-able/repositionable palimpsest that does things as preprogrammed while maintaining its position in Space-time that it is apparent) along with what’s often been referred to as “dragon fly drones” of the early 80’s.
Did one mention initial searches done back when by LMH about the equation like symbology on the wing like extensions that brought up search references of Clementine I, NASA, Moon, that were soon removed from searchable inputs? . . . Some of those dots did not get erased. Well, not before some folks made hard copies because of certain behaviours of other certain three-letter-folks and companies who prefer secrets that ain’t, be kept. Something like that, anyway.
One especially finds the general geophysical position of the Palo Alto Labs particularly fascinating, if not fiery and dangerous a few kilometers away. You know, over there and north a little bit on an otherwise western coastal place. One still does not have one of those other free, hand holdable and hacked accounts, either. No-o-o-o- thank you. Too-o-o-o- dangerous. Even Callahan knows better than to venture forward carrying a GPS tap screen toting a 44. There’s only so much luck one can muster at any given moment in Space-time one is apparent.
Yes, indeed, there are many close relationships that span several decades now and are growing as if closely snagged on an invisible magnetic web of sorts. You know, one of those #G things many folks unawares openly portray as their private connection to the real world. Hardly private.
That magnetic thing has been interesting. The other magnetic thing in Antarctica – you know, around Victoria and Wilkes Lands – can be written off as part of the planetary magnetosphere as it’s close enough to the south magnetic pole, anyway. Bravo for convenience, if not a little chilly most of the time. . . Anyone of note make a recent trip to see the penguins lately?
I had read a similar article over at ExtremeTech:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/292954-gravity-anomaly-at-moons-south-pole-could-be-buried-metallic-asteroid
At the time in 1994-5, I was also puzzled about the Clementine mission to the Moon. It was obviously a military mission, both to demonstrate the ability to reach-outwards to a lunar distance and to control a spacecraft there. But the main objective had to be to prove-out advanced sensors:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/clementine/overview/
“Over the course of 71 days in orbit, Clementine systematically mapped the 38 million square kilometers of the Moon at eleven different wavelengths, from the ultraviolet (415 nm) to the near-infrared (2800 nm) parts of the spectrum (nearly 1,000,000 images). In addition, the spacecraft took 620,000 high-resolution CCD images and about 320,000 near-infrared thermal images, mapped the topography of the Moon with laser ranging equipment, improved knowledge of the surface gravity of the Moon through radio tracking…”
However, the Clementine gravity-mapping was inexact with only one spacecraft. It takes two in similar orbits to get precise results: (from ExtremeTech)
“Researchers from Baylor University in Texas used data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) missions to develop this new hypothesis on the origins of the basin. The twin GRAIL spacecraft mapped the moon’s gravity in 2011 and 2012. Meanwhile, the LRO has been mapping the lunar surface for a decade.”
The age of the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin is estimated at older than 3.9 billion years. One recent study based on a lunar rock ejected to Earth from the SPA impact is 4.25 billion years old:
www dot hou dot usra dot edu/meetings/lpsc2018/pdf/2633.pdf
Since our Solar System only formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago, this puts the SPA impact firmly within the early ‘bombardment’ period. So, any mass concentration is probably natural…
Venturing beyond the twig, one could postulate warring ‘claims’ for a newly-born solar system. If one group established a base on a cooling Moon (the Moon would cool far faster than the Earth, due to much lower mass), another group might have wanted that base ‘gone’. To make sure you eliminated any sub-surface facilities (DUMBs) – and to make a point – just drop a BIG asteroid on that area…
The Moon, that epic satellite. I always pictured the Moon being placed in its perfect orbit by some sort of galactic “tractor beam”, and that a massive crater was left in its wake. Could this mass deposit simply be residual from beam-retraction, or better yet, an inlayed beam-attachment device?
Guess. I will stick with electric discharge residue throry. If that is whatnput heavy metal there, my next questions become why discharge at pole? What about north pole? What other planet or star or body exchanged charge? When? And of course when n who srarts to mine it?
One thing that is interesting is that they immediately jump to Iron-Nickel similarly to how Earth’s core is described. I wonder if this could rather indicate a plasma phenomenon that instead reflexes the wavelength of iron-nickel.
Another anomaly upon the many moon anomalies?
Reminds me of getting back to Wheeler’s MIA desperate puzzlement conundrum. That was concerned w/the quantum world; and the moon as being a metaphor for that puzzlement; leading to a theory about information: a view of reality of what knowability could look like?
What better Matryoshka Moon gravity puzzle…. ?
[Had to laugh. I’m at: “here’s where it gets interesting… “]
2001’s black monolithic slab on the moon… ?
Never did like the alternate close: either or?
Make it three w/ and/or both.
Or, “They” know and are continuing the aliens are coming Von Braun narrative.
Ironically, the Moon itself is artificial.
So an alien spaceship w/in a alien satellite.
Love to be unsettled about it all.
Or, Jonathan Swift’s/If we can’t reason ourselves into it,
we can’t reason ourselves out of it.