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Moon

Radar Images Suggest There's a Tunnel On the Moon (gizmodo.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares a report from Gizmodo: A team of researchers think they've discovered a cave on the Moon in radar images of the lunar surface, which they posit could be a future site for an established human presence on our rocky satellite. The tunnel is in the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) pit, the deepest known pit on the Moon. (If the name is familiar to you, the Sea of Tranquility is where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969.) The pit formed due to a lava tube's roof collapse or a collapse of a void structure created by tectonic processes. To look for potential cave structures within the pit, the researchers studied side-looking radar images taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Mini-RF instrument between 2009 and 2011. The team then conducted 3D radar simulations of potential geometries of the pit and its cave, to determine that the brightness they saw in radar images could be due to subsurface features. Ultimately, the team determined there is a tunnel in the pit that is between 98 feet (30 meters) long and 262ft (80m) long. The tunnel is roughly 148ft (45m) wide and is either flat or inclined with a maximum steepness of 45 degrees. "The exploration of lunar caves through future robotic missions could provide a fresh perspective on the lunar subsurface and yield new insights into the evolution of lunar volcanism," the team wrote in the paper. "Furthermore, direct exploration could confirm the presence of stable subsurface environments shielded from radiation and with optimal temperature conditions for future human utilization."

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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Radar Images Suggest There's a Tunnel On the Moon More

Radar Images Suggest There's a Tunnel On the Moon

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  • "The exploration of lunar caves through future robotic missions could provide a fresh perspective on the lunar subsurface and yield new insights into the evolution of lunar volcanism," the team wrote in the paper. "Furthermore, direct exploration could confirm the presence of stable subsurface environments shielded from radiation and with optimal temperature conditions for future human utilization."

    Stage One of our experiments was conducted in the laboratory. Stage Two of the series will be attempted in a l

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Funny thing is they actually had food replicators by then, so food supply and to a lesser extent population were not big issues.

      I do wonder about robotic exploration. NASA has a series of robotic rovers on Mars, and is in theory headed back to the moon this decade. Japan has demonstrated the ability to do a precision landing in a target area entirely automatically, even if it did subsequently tip over.

  • Build a wall, underground, and make lunarians pay (Score:4, Funny)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @02:23AM (#64628985)

    Fucking far side lunarians coming to take the jobs of hard-working Earth-siders. I am absolutely fed up with our beloved Earth-side being overrun by those far-siders. Our lunar boundaries are a joke, and it's high time we stop pretending otherwise. These people breach our craters, violating our laws, and what do they get? They get pampered by the lunar liberals, who would rather see our colony plunge into disorder than uphold an ounce of order and respect for our regulations.

    Far-siders are a drain on our moon's resources. They come here and take jobs that should be going to Earth-side residents. Jobs that our hardworking lunar citizens desperately need. Instead, these lawbreakers work for crumbs, driving down lunar wages and making it impossible for honest Earth-siders to make a decent living. It's an insult to every lunar settler who follows the rules, contributes to our moonbase, and tries to build a life for themselves and their families.

    And don't even get me started on the crime. How many times do we have to hear about another Earth-side life ruined by someone who shouldn't even be here? The moon liberals will tell you it's just a few bad apples, but that's a lie. The truth is, we have no idea who these people are, where they come from, or what they're capable of. Our lunar habitats are less safe because of them. Our children are less safe because of them.

    Our lunar schools are overwhelmed with non-Earth-side speaking children. Teachers are forced to slow down the curriculum to accommodate them, while our own kids fall behind. It's a disgrace. And who pays for all this? We do. The Earth-side taxpayer. We foot the bill for their education, their healthcare, their welfare. They come here with nothing and expect us to take care of them. It's unsustainable and it's unfair.

    The moon liberals love to paint far-siders as poor, innocent souls just looking for a better life. But what about our own citizens looking for a better life? What about the veterans of the Lunar Wars sleeping in craters? What about the single parents working double shifts in the oxygen farms to make ends meet? What about the millions of Earth-siders who are struggling every day? Why are they less deserving of our help and our resources?

    We need to take a stand. We need to build the dome, enforce our immigration laws, and deport every single far-sider in our territory. No more amnesty. No more sanctuary domes. No more handouts. If you want to come to Earth-side, do it legally. Respect our laws, our culture, and our people. Otherwise, you have no place here.

    It's time to put Earth-side first. It's time to reclaim our moon. Enough is enough. This is our home, and we will not let it be destroyed by those who have no respect for it. We will not be silenced, and we will not be stopped. The era of open craters and unchecked far-side immigration is over. It's time to make Earth-side safe, prosperous, and great once again.

    • You lunarians are welcome to follow our generous laws which allow hundreds of thousands of you to enter our atmosphere annually. Legally. The problem is when you enter the bright side illegally and then expect us to provide you housing, jobs and other resources never provided to anyone else in the past on this or any other planetary body.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        Hold up, Earther. Let's unpack this whole "far-side Lunarians stealing your jobs" thing. You act like we're waltzing in and taking over the regolith mines. Newsflash: those mines are a nightmare. Who exactly is lining up for hours in a dusty, cramped cave chipping away at rocks for a handful of credits? You Earthers wouldn't touch those jobs with your fancy vectran gloves.

        Don't get me started on the crime. You Earth siders act like we're the ones running protection rackets in the hab units. The real problem

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      I was gonna go with lunar alien cartels from Phobos running drugs, but this one is great too.

    • Axxshially - all of this will be completely true for any non-terrestrial human habitats, but "taking our jobs" will be the least important reason. Non-terrestrial habitats are, inescapably, zero-sum closed systems in which every cubic meter of breathable air, every milliliter of potable water, and every source of calories must be rigorously tracked and secured. Anyone entering an unauthorized space is by definition taking air, water, and food-system resources from every other inhabitant, simply by existing

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Probably, but anyone who enters is necessarily bringing with then enough CHON (plus a few other things, like Fe and Ca) to maintain a human body. So if the recycling system is good enough and there is enough spare electricity, then this is just a matter of re-balancing things enough. And if there's a demand for their skill set, then they are a useful pair of hands.

        That said, the system is going to NEED some slack, and is going to need to calculate how much slack is available.

        OTOH, the immigration will nec

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cusco ( 717999 )

          This is the sort of place that the DARPA Subterranean Challenge should send the winners' robots. If you've never heard of it you should check it out, it's incredibly cool.

          https://spectrum.ieee.org/darp... [ieee.org]

          Of course the blimp and quadcopter scouts will be useless, but with minor adaptations for the change in gravity the legged and wheeled rovers should work the same as here. Rather than sealing the joints against water incursion they'll need to keep the dust out of course, but the mapping, sampling, and mes

    • They're not Lunarians - they're Lunatics!
  • How else would you get to the hollow centre?

  • unlikely to be a tunnel (Score:4, Funny)

    by zmollusc ( 763634 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @02:39AM (#64629015)

    It is far more likely to be an old whaling station.

  • Silurian hypothesis? (Score:4, Informative)

    by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @03:06AM (#64629055)
    I'm not saying it's the Silurians who built the tunnel, but, .... it's the Silurians!
  • It's a lava tunnel.
    • Does it say otherwise?

      Yes it's a lava tunnel, i.e. a cave. And that may make it the most valuable real estate on the moon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
        Yes, but we've known about lava tubes on the moon for a long time. They seem to be claiming that this is the first direct evidence, but we've seen collapsed tubes before as well as structures that appear to be intact tubes.
        • The summary does say the Sea of Tranquility was formed by the collapse of a lava tube / cave.

          Also interesting that the discovery of this particular cave (assuming they're right) comes from re-examining 15 year old data.

        • They don't seem to claim any such thing. The article specifically states "A team of researchers think they’ve discovered a cave on the Moon" and then goes on to say how they did it.

          You and the OP, being part of what's killing slashdot, immediately jump on your cynical bandwagon to find something to be needlessly outraged about.

          So good job, you've expressed your pointless outrage and added to the reasons why I can't even be bothered to log into slashdot anymore and only looked at this article because

      • As a caver, and geologist, the two classes of underground cavity are indeed formed in very different ways (which affects their properties, and therefore their potential uses).

        And that may make it the most valuable real estate on the moon.

        That's a popular trope. And as is common with popular tropes, it is absolutely raddled with wildly optimistic guesswork.

        Firstly - the walls will be riddled with porosity (technical term ; in popular language, "holes") on all scales - from "human-can-walk-in" to sub-millime

  • As if he was really seriously building a tunnel under Vegas as an end goal?

    He sent his car into space to be the first vehicle to drive his lunar tunnel.

    This is of course in between stalking drinkypoo and running 2 major companies.
    https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]

  • A 'cave' is not a tunnel. (Score:3)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @04:03AM (#64629129) Journal

    Unnecessary superlatives are unnecessary.

    This discovery is cool enough already.

  • Moon caves are fifties era comic book themes. They went to the moon often before they actually went there. It was cool.

    • Or earlier. The Heinlein short story "Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon" was from 1949 and even earlier Burrough's "The Moon Maid" mentions them in 1922.

      I wonder if kids today read those kind of books anymore. Not great literature but great adventure stories for an 8 year old kid.

      • Pff, I've seen some of the books the kids get to read these days. I wish for the great adventure stories too.

  • Good job. You found Elvis (Score:3)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @05:47AM (#64629221)

    And here he thought he'd finally found a nice quiet place. Instead, you found his front door [youtube.com].

  • If not, then it must be a monster den, not a cave.

  • People have already explored it and they got video!

  • Clickbait.
    A tunnel is an artificial underground passage, I thought they finally found proof of alien activities.

    • Please provide your sources. I just looked at a couple of online dictionaries and a musty old dead-tree dictionary. All of them define a tunnel simply as "an underground passage". None of them said anything about needing to be artificial.

      Just to be sure, I looked up "passage", too. One sense of the definition is used as a caving term, so that's not necessarily artificial either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's odd. The term that bothers me is "cave", which I tend to think of as requiring water eroding stuff. Tunnel seems fine.

      • Yes, they are very different things. Being a geologist, and (footnote) having explored both types of underground cavity, while they have a lot of things in common (underground ; need for light ; rough ; irregular floors littered with trip-hazards) they're also very different (lava tube caves in particular having much sharper "speleothems" of frozen lava compared to the re-crystallised calcite (occasionally gypsum) "flowstone" you find in a limestone (rarely gypsum) "karst" cave.

        "Tunnel" is just a shape des

        • Bugger!

          I forgot that Slashcode doesn't understand "hr" tags either. Just another thing to add to it's litany of abysmalities.

          I'll spell my name correctly (RÃckdÃctor), and Rei's with the necessary thorns (Ã,Ã) and our currencies too (â, £), just to piss Slashcode's non-existent maintainer off.

          Oh, hang on - is .IS on the Euro, or some IS-Crown like the Noggins? ISK rings a mental bell.

  • will live at the top of the incline so the golden shower of propserity can trickle own on future generations of lunar residents.

  • Secret Nazi moon base finally discovered! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chas.williams ( 6256556 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @07:09AM (#64629327)
    Iron Sky was a documentary.

  • Looking forward to the next Bond movie - "Welcome to my underground Moon lair. My henchmen and I will now leave you alone to die in an unnecessarily elaborate contraption that you can escape from quite easily at the last minute due to an obvious flaw in it's design unless you pay us 1 MILLION dollars." I guess that would be more Austin Powers than James Bond but it will be good ether way.

  • "If the name is familiar to you, the Sea of Tranquility is where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969." How in hell is this not familiar to everyone?

  • Swiss cheese?

  • lava tube in Oregon (Score:5, Informative)

    by 602 ( 652745 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2024 @10:24AM (#64629751)
    There's a cool lava tube you can walk through in central Oregon, near Bend. "Lava River Cave, part of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, offers self-guided exploration of a mile-long lava tube. The cave was one of the first lava tubes to be discovered in Oregon and is the longest one in the state. It takes approximately 1.5 hours to tour the entire cave (~2.2 miles roundtrip). Initial access descends 55 stairs to a combination of flat boardwalk, uneven surfaces and stairways."

  • If and when we ever get back to the moon, which isn't certain given how corrupt, ineffective and self-serving NASA really is.

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