The Moon sometimes rumbles during “moonquakes.” And according to a recent study in China, those quakes may happen fairly often.
The first moonquakes were recorded by instruments left on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts. Some of the quakes are deep – they’re centered hundreds of miles below the surface. They’re triggered by the tides – the gravitational pull of Earth squeezes and stretches the interior, causing things to clatter about.
The other main moonquakes are shallow – they occur much closer to the surface. These quakes are triggered by the Moon itself. Our satellite world is shrinking as it loses its internal heat. It might have shrunk by as much as 150 feet over the past few hundred million years, and continues to contract even today.
The Chinese study looked at 74 spots on the lunar surface, on both the nearside and farside. Scientists pored over hundreds of pictures snapped from 2009 to 2024. And they found 41 fresh landslides that happened during that period. They ruled out other causes for about 70 percent of the landslides. That left them with one conclusion: the landslides were caused by shallow moonquakes. So the Moon continues to shake and jiggle long after its birth.
The Moon has some prominent companions tonight. It’s flanked by the brilliant planet Jupiter and the star Pollux, the brighter “twin” of Gemini. Castor, the other twin, is to the upper left of the Moon.
Script by Damond Benningfield

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