Persistent but weak magnetic field at Moon's midlife revealed by Chang'e-5 basalt
Abstract
The evolution of the lunar magnetic field can reveal the Moon's interior structure, thermal history, and surface environment. The mid-to-late stage evolution of the lunar magnetic field is poorly constrained, and thus the existence of a long-lived lunar dynamo remains controversial. The Chang'e-5 mission returned the heretofore youngest mare basalts from Oceanus Procellarum uniquely positioned at mid-latitude. We recovered weak paleointensities of 2-4 uT from the Chang'e-5 basalt clasts at 2 billion years ago, attestting to the longevity of a lunar dynamo until at least the Moon's midlife. This paleomagnetic result implies the existence of thermal convection in the lunar deep interior at the lunar mid-stage which may have supplied mantle heat flux for the young volcanism.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2411.13719,
title = {Persistent but weak magnetic field at Moon's midlife revealed by Chang'e-5 basalt},
author = {Shuhui Cai and Huafeng Qin and Huapei Wang and Chenglong Deng and Saihong Yang and Ya Xu and Chi Zhang and Xu Tang and Lixin Gu and Xiaoguang Li and Zhongshan Shen and Min Zhang and Kuang He and Kaixian Qi and Yunchang Fan and Liang Dong and Yifei Hou and Pingyuan Shi and Shuangchi Liu and Fei Su and Yi Chen and Qiuli Li and Jinhua Li and Ross N. Mitchell and Huaiyu He and Chunlai Li and Yongxin Pan and Rixiang Zhu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.13719},
year = {2025}
}