The Moon is not hollow

There have been several threads recently that have included some wild speculation based on an off the cuff statement from 1969 that the Moon "rang like a bell" when the Apollo 11 seismometer recorded the impact of the jettisoned lunar module. Scientists have recently applied a new technique called "array processing" to the Apollo era data to tease out more information about the lunar core.

The team's findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles.

The research indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the presence of light elements - such as sulfur and oxygen - in a layer around our own core.

Moon Daily
More Here.

Given that the core is rich in iron, the absence of a lunar magnetosphere remains a mystery.

reply to post by DJW001


I'd also ask that those who believe the moon to be hollow come up with a valid explanation on just how the empty ball manages to have such gravitational force so as to affect the earth's tides.

Oh what have I just asked for... I'm going to get all the super duper secret alien technologicalyical answers now..

8[

As is well known, and was shown in the documentary Wallace and Grommit: A Grand Day Out, the moon is made of cheese, mostly Wensleydale. Nuff said!

Originally posted by DJW001
Given that the core is rich in iron, the absence of a lunar magnetosphere remains a mystery.

Is it really that mysterious?

The moon's iron core is what, 1% of the moons mass, and the Earth's iron core is what, 33% of the Earth's mass? Can't that explain why the lunar iron core is relatively insignificant compared to the Earth's core?

The latest size estimates agree pretty much with this 1999 article:

www.psrd.hawaii.edu...

They also tackle the question you raised:

The question lingers: what shut off the Moon's magnetic field? The best guess is that the core, like the rest of the Moon, cooled enough to cause the core to solidfy, at least partway. The magnetic field would have shut down when the flow of molten metal in the core ceased.

The biggest difference I see in the latest studies is they seem to now know how much of the moon's core is molten whereas that was unknown in the 1999 article. I wasn't sure how much if any of the moon's core was molten so this is the most interesting part of the article to me.