According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Tyler Horvath, a PhD student in planetary science at the University of California, Los Angeles, they discovered pits on the Moon that stay at 63 °F all year and could be a place to visit to escape the heat.
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You might want to think about going to the Moon to cool off if the heat wave is making you miserable. On the lunar surface, there are pits that are constantly cool at 63 F (17 C).
The Moon’s surface temperature varies dramatically over its 30-earth-day day/night cycle, rising to 260 F (127 C) and subsequently falling to minus 280 F (-173 C), but the pits are very stable.
The pits, some of which most likely lead to empty lava tubes or caves, could be the site of a future moonbase, according to scientists. In addition to the comfortable temperatures, the pits and any prospective caves would offer defense against cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and solar radiation.
Tyler Horvath, a PhD student in planetary science at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted the study, which was just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “About 16 of the more than 200 pits are probably collapsed lava tubes,” Horvath said.
Horvath used a thermal camera to examine the pits, which were discovered for the first time in 2009. He concentrated on a depression in the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon, 328 feet deep, about 100 yards long, and 30 yards broad. Then, he and his coworkers utilized computer modeling to ascertain the rock’s thermal characteristics and tracked the temperature changes in the pit over time.
The pits could provide a large area that would be much more habitable than the rest of the lunar surface if they do, as scientists anticipate, include caves or collapsed lava tubes.
On Earth, lava tubes also exist. They develop when lava flows over cooled lava or when a crust develops on top of a lava river. These tubes’ collapsed roofs result in depressions similar to the pits the researchers are researching. It has long been known that the Moon experienced major volcanic activity, but Chinese samples returned to Earth from its Chang’e-5 lander this year showed it happened much more recently than previously believed, at around 2 billion years ago.
Additionally, some regions of the Moon look darker to human eyes because of the old lava flows that once covered its surface.
“Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the Moon,” said David Paige, one of the paper’s co-authors.
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