Shrinking Moon Generates Lunar Quakes

A study has found that the Moon is shrinking as its interior cools — getting over 50 metres skinnier through the last several hundred million years — and causing quakes on the lunar surface. The researchers explained that just as a grape wrinkles as it shrinks down to a raisin, the moon gets wrinkles as it shrinks.

Key Facts

• Unlike the flexible skin on a grape, the Moon’s surface crust is brittle, so it breaks as the Moon shrinks, forming “thrust faults” where one section of crust is pushed up over a neighbouring part.
• These fault scarps resemble small stair-step shaped ....