A Buried Volcano on the Moon Hints At An Ancient Lunar Dynamo

Scientists know for certain the moon doesn’t currently have a magnetosphere. But they’ve been debating for decades about whether it ever did. Data from both Apollo samples and orbital scientific instruments have proven divisive, and so the debate still rages. But a new paper from researchers at ETH Zurich, DLR, and the Institute of Applied Geosciences hopes to resolve the debate once and for all - by definitively proving that the Moon did, indeed, once have a magnetic dynamo.

To prove this point, they turn to a feature on the lunar surface that can’t be seen from Earth - the Dewar Swirl. Located on the lunar far side northwest of the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin that is so famous for its potential water resources, this area showed promise because it appeared to harbor two different “anomalies”, one magnetic and one gravitational.