Strange pockets of magnetic field found on the Moon, which are not afraid of the solar wind

In a new study, scientists from the University of Arizona shared a map of the magnetic anomalies of the southern

These are areas of the surface of the Earth's satellite that contain unusually strong magnetic fields.Anomalous regions were first discovered in the 1970s during the Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 missions.These are believed to be the "remnants" of the moon's ancient magnetic shield, which NASA says has probably disappeared billions of yearsBack.

Magnetic anomalies intersect with severallarge polar craters that are in constant shadow and may contain deposits of ancient ice. According to the researchers, they work like tiny magnetic shields, protecting lunar water ice from constant bombardment by the solar wind.

“These anomalies can deflect the solar wind,”Lon Hood, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, told Science magazine. “We think they can go a long way in protecting permanently shaded areas.”

In their study, the authors combined 12 regional maps of the south lunar pole, originally recorded by the Japanese spacecraft Kaguya, which orbited the moon from 2007 to 2009.

With a composite map in hand, researchershave seen magnetic anomalies overlap with at least two permanently shadowed craters—Shoemaker and Sverdrup—at the Moon's south pole. While these anomalies make up only a fraction of the strength of Earth's magnetic field, they can still "deflect ion bombardment" from the solar wind, the researchers said in their presentation. This may explain the nature of the "long-lived" water ice on the Moon.

No one knows exactly where the moon's magnetic anomalies came from, but one theory is that they date back about 4 billion yearsback when the Earth's satellite still had its own magnetic field.

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