Thursday, December 1, 2011

Moon Quakes

A quake when happens at earth is earthquake, if it happens at moon it is known as ' Moon quake'.
Way back 1969-72, instruments installed by the 'Apollo missions' reported about Moon quakes.
There are 4 types of moon quakes:
1. Quakes happen at 700 km depth, known as 'deep quakes',
2. Quakes happen at 20 -30 km depth, known as 'shallow quakes',
3. Quakes due to meteorite strikes,
4. Quakes/Vibrations due to the thawing effect in the frozen crust (when it turn towards Sun during lunar day).
The causes for deep and shallow quakes are not very clearly understood or defined yet.
When quake happens at earth, it hardly last for 2 minutes. Because the interior of the earth is liquid; so it absorbs the vibrations due to the quake. But, this is not the case with moon.  So when a quake happens the whole moon vibrates like a vibrating ball. If it is a shallow quake, the vibrations last long, it may vibrate up to 20-30 minutes.
(Picture courtesy : NASA)


No comments:

Post a Comment