{"id":228993,"date":"2026-01-14T01:29:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/massive-impact-could-be-the-cause-of-our-lopsided-moon"},"modified":"2026-01-14T01:29:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:29:40","slug":"massive-impact-could-be-the-cause-of-our-lopsided-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/massive-impact-could-be-the-cause-of-our-lopsided-moon","title":{"rendered":"Massive impact could be the cause of our lopsided moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/massive-impact-could-be-the-cause-of-our-lopsided-moon.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our nearest neighbor, the moon, is still something of a mystery to us. For decades, scientists have wondered why it appears so lopsided, with dark volcanic plains on the near side (the side we see) and rugged, cratered mountains and a thicker crust on the far side. Now we might be closer to knowing why.<\/p>\n<p>Analysis of lunar soil and rock brought back from the far side by China\u2019s Chang\u2019e-6 mission suggests that a massive impact long ago changed the moon\u2019s interior.<\/p>\n<p>The samples were collected from the South Pole-Aitken basin, a massive impact crater covering nearly one-quarter of the moon\u2019s surface. Because it is so deep, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences wanted to see whether the impact had reached the moon\u2019s mantle and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2024-08-geologists-hidden-magmatism-lunar-site.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">changed its chemistry<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our nearest neighbor, the moon, is still something of a mystery to us. For decades, scientists have wondered why it appears so lopsided, with dark volcanic plains on the near side (the side we see) and rugged, cratered mountains and a thicker crust on the far side. Now we might be closer to knowing why. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}