Journal Article

Surges in volcanic activity on the Moon about two billion years ago

Chen, Yi, Tang, Xu, Lin, Yangting, Changela, Hitesh G., Li, Xianhua, Yang, Wei, Xiao, Zhiyong, Du, Jun, Hui, Hejiu, Tian, Heng-Ci, Zhang, Tian-Xin, Mitchell, Ross N., Zhang, Chi, Wu, Fuyuan, Zhang, Di

2023

Overview

The history of mare volcanism critically informs the thermal evolution of the Moon. However, young volcanic eruptions are poorly constrained by remote observations and limited samples, hindering an understanding of mare eruption flux over time. The Chang’e-5 mission returned the youngest lunar basalts thus far, offering a window into the Moon’s late-stage evolution. Here, we investigate the mineralogy and geochemistry of 42 olivine and pyroxene crystals from the Chang’e-5 basalts. We find that almost all of them are normally zoned, suggesting limited magma recharge or shallow-level assimilation. Most olivine grains record a short timescale of cooling. Thermal modeling used to estimate the thickness and volume of the volcanism sampled by Chang’e-5 reveals enhanced magmatic flux ~2 billion years ago, suggesting that while overall lunar volcanic activity may decrease over time, episodic eruptions at the final stage could exhibit above average eruptive fluxes, thus revising models of lunar thermal evolution. This work estimates the eruption volume of the young Chang’e-5 lunar samples using diffusion chronology and thermodynamic simulations, and finds that there was an increase in volcanic eruption flux about 2.0 billion years ago.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 147/135 / 147/28 / 704/445/209 / 704/445/431 / Basalt / Cold Temperature / Crystals / Eruptions / Evolution / Fluctuations / Geochemistry / Humanities and Social Sciences / Lava / Lunar evolution / Magma / Mineralogy / Moon / multidisciplinary / Olivine / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / Thermal analysis / Thermal evolution / Volcanic activity / Volcanic eruptions / Volcanoes