Evidence for an Ancient Near‐Equatorial Lunar Dipole From Higher Precision Inversions of Crustal Magnetization

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Maxwell ◽  
I. Garrick‐Bethell
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (9) ◽  
pp. 917-931
Author(s):  
Jafar Arkani-Hamed

The core dynamos of Mars and the Moon have distinctly different histories. Mars had no core dynamo at the end of accretion. It took ∼100 Myr for the core to create a strong dynamo that magnetized the martian crust. Giant impacts during 4.2–4.0 Ga crippled the core dynamo intermittently until a thick stagnant lithosphere developed on the surface and reduced the heat flux at the core–mantle boundary, killing the dynamo at ∼3.8 Ga. On the other hand, the Moon had a strong core dynamo at the end of accretion that lasted ∼100 Myr and magnetized its primordial crust. Either precession of the core or thermochemical convection in the mantle or chemical convection in the core created a strong core dynamo that magnetized the sources of the isolated magnetic anomalies in later times. Mars and the Moon indicate dynamo reversals and true polar wander. The polar wander of the Moon is easier to explain compared to that of Mars. It was initiated by the mass deficiency at South Pole Aitken basin, which moved the basin southward by ∼68° relative to the dipole axis of the core field. The formation of mascon maria at later times introduced positive mass anomalies at the surface, forcing the Moon to make an additional ∼52° degree polar wander. Interaction of multiple impact shock waves with the dynamo, the abrupt angular momentum transfer to the mantle by the impactors, and the global overturn of the core after each impact were probably the factors causing the dynamo reversal.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia S. Bezaeva ◽  
François Demory ◽  
Pierre Rochette ◽  
Ravil A. Sadykov ◽  
Jérôme Gattacceca ◽  
...  

Geophysics ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 56 (8) ◽  
pp. 1153-1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew R. Ochadlick

Magnetic data sets over deep ocean areas may contain clues to the existence of craters formed by the impact of an extraterrestrial body with the Earth’s ocean crust. To aid in the magnetic exploration of the ocean crust for oceanic impact craters, basic but effective computations from an impact model are studied from an aeromagnetic point of view. The main assumption of the analysis is that a sufficiently large impact can excavate large volumes of magnetized basalt, vaporize basalt, and raise basalt to temperatures above the Curie temperature (approximately 500°C) to alter the preimpact magnetization of the ocean floor and result in a magnetic anomaly being associated with an oceanic impact crater. In the absence of an existing theory on the influence of impacts on ocean crustal magnetization, the representation of a crater on the ocean floor by a simple potential provides, apparently for the first time, quantitative estimates of the crater’s magnetic anomaly along a horizontal surface. Numerical results from the model suggest that the detection of the anomaly of a Cretaceous‐Tertiary (K-T) type of impact is well within the capabilities of aeromagnetic technology.


2014 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masahiko Sato ◽  
Yuhji Yamamoto ◽  
Takashi Nishioka ◽  
Kazuto Kodama ◽  
Nobutatsu Mochizuki ◽  
...  

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