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May 14, 2019 10:00 am

NASA Says the Moon Is Shrinking and Experiencing 'Moonquakes'

The moon is getting smaller, which causes wrinkles in its surface and moonquakes, according to a new study sponsored by NASA. Time Magazine reports: As the moon's interior cools, it shrinks, which causes its hard surface to crack and form fault lines, according to research sponsored by NASA. The moon has gotten about 150 feet skinnier over the last few hundred million years. Astronauts have placed seismometers on the moon over a series of past missions. Scientists, who determined that the moonquakes are close enough to the fault lines to establish causality, published their analysis in a study in Nature Geoscience on Monday, according to NASA. The space agency has also recorded evidence of fault lines in a series of images. "Our analysis gives the first evidence that these faults are still active and likely producing moonquakes today as the Moon continues to gradually cool and shrink," said Thomas Watters, lead author of the study. Watters says that the quakes can register around a five on the Richter scale.

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