Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Suavet, Clément
• Weiss, Benjamin P.
• Cassata, William S.
• Shuster, David L.
• Gattacceca, Jérôme
• Chan, Lindsey
• Garrick-Bethell, Ian
• Head, James W.
• Grove, Timothy L.
• Fuller, Michael D.

Titel

Persistence and origin of the lunar core dynamo

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2013-05, Vol.110 (21), p.8453-8458

Ort / Verlag

Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The lifetime of the ancient lunar core dynamo has implications for its power source and the mechanism of field generation. Here, we report analyses of two 3.56-Gy-old mare basalts demonstrating that they were magnetized in a stable and surprisingly intense dynamo magnetic field of at least ∼13 μT. These data extend the known lifetime of the lunar dynamo by ∼160 My and indicate that the field was likely continuously active until well after the final large basin-forming impact. This likely excludes impact-driven changes in rotation rate as the source of the dynamo at this time in lunar history. Rather, our results require a persistent power source like precession of the lunar mantle or a compositional convection dynamo.