seismic activity

A Lunar Lander Found the First Seismic Activity on the Moon Since the ’70s

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What could the mysterious moonquake be?

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  • On August 23, the India Space Research Organization’s Vikram lunar lander, carrying the Pragyan rover, soft landed on the Moon’s southern polar region.
  • Onboard the Vikram lander is the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ISLA), which captured Pragyan’s first journey onto the surface as well as this unexpected “natural event”
  • This is likely the first recorded evidence of lunar seismic activity since the Apollo Missions more than 50 years ago

Just recently, the India Space Research Organization (ISRO) completed a years-long mission to be the fourth country to ever land on the Moon and the first to land in the southern lunar polar region. Now that the tricky part involving retro-rockets and orbital mechanics is over, the science can truly begin—and Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander isn’t wasting any time.

Onboard the Vikram lander, which is also carrying the lunar rover Pragyan, is the Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA) based on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology that’s already detecting minute rumblings on the Moon. The most obvious disruptions came from the Pragyan rover itself as it began its mission on the lunar surface, but on August 26, Vikram also “recorded an event, appearing to be a natural one,” according to an ISRO statement. The space agency says it’s investigating the seismic source.

This is the first time that humans have detected new seismic events on the Moon since the Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, which were designed to discern the internal composition of the Moon.

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An image of the Vikram lander with the ISLA experiment clearly marked along with ChaSTE (Chandra’s Surface Thermophysical Experiment), which measures the temperature profile of the lunar topsoil.

Because of the experimental nature of the Apollo 11 mission, it arrived on the Moon carrying an Early Apollo Surface Experiments Package (EASEP) with only two experiments packed inside. Future Apollo missions (excluding Apollo 13 for obvious reasons) arrived at the Moon with a more robust Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (​​ALSEP), which contained geophysical instruments engineered to monitor the lunar surface for one year after the astronauts’ departure. Instead, the instruments operated for 8 years, with the last of the experiments shutting down on September 30, 1977.

Amazingly, the ALSEP seismometers could magnify lunar vibrations by 10 million times, a feat completely made impossible on Earth due to weather and human-induced noise. While most Apollo missions included a passive scientific experiment designed to monitor the entire Moon, Apollo 14 and 16 included active seismic experiments to monitor the local area. Apollo 17, the last of the crewed lunar missions, contained a Lunar Seismic Profiling Experiment designed to dig up data on the physical properties of lunar material near the surface

Although a robust data set, scientists have been hungry for more in the 50 years since the Apollo missions. And Vikram’s data is doubly valuable, as no lunar lander has ever visited the Moon’s southern polar region. This area of the Moon is of particular interest because of its deposits of ice—a vital resource for anyone thinking of setting up shop on the lunar surface. In fact, the lunar south pole is so enticing that the U.S. and China both have future missions planned for the region.

For now, ISRO has placed the solar-powered Vikram and Pragyan into sleep mode during the 14-day-long lunar night. But they should reawaken around September 22, ready to uncover more seismic secrets of Earth’s only natural satellite.

Russian scientist: Slowdown in Earth’s rotation means we’re on the verge of major climatic upheaval.

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The 2011 tsunami in Japan was just part of the warm-up routine. The Really Big Show has yet to begin in earnest…

The world geological community is warning that today’s seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what’s to come.

Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.

These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists – biologists and environmentalists – tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering.

The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.

This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet – a gigantic electrical machine – has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth’s rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.

If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System’s position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.

The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.

The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.

The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.

The transitional process in the electrical machine “planet Earth” can be divided into three phases. During the first – lasting 300 to 500 years – a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth’s magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean.