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[Narrator] A newly published study using images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal

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tantalizing hints that the Moon has slightly shrunk in the recent geologic past and in fact

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may still be actively shrinking today.  The research,

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lead by Dr. Tom Watters from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

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involved searching thousands of lunar images for specific fault structures called “lobate scarps.”

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[Dr. Watters] We know the moon is shrinking by looking at the lobate scarps in detail.

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They actually reflect the crustal materials of the moon

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moon being pushed together, breaking, and being thrust over one another.

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So that indicates that something has been causing

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the moon to actually contract, or shrink.

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[Narrator] Finding that the lobate scarps are globally distributed indicates that contraction of the lunar surface is

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happening on a global scale and this is critical knowledge to understand the geologic history of the moon.

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The next steps in this research will be to more accurately assess the age of these scarps

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scarps to help determine how geologically active the moon might still be today.

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[Dr. Watters] What’s exciting about these findings for me is that the moon

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is not a dead body.  It’s not

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an object where everything that happened on the moon

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happened billions of years ago.  These scarps

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could be younger than a billion years, they

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could be in fact as young as a couple of hundred million years

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old, or they could be even younger than that.

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And that means in geologic terms, the moon is active.

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[Narrator]
To learn more about this story visit the home page for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter