A new Baylor University study has detected an underground mass of metal “five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii” underneath the Moon’s South Pole-Aitken basin, an impact crater on the far side of the moon and the biggest known crater in our solar system.
The researchers believe that the mass consists of “metal from the asteroid that formed [the] crater.” Computer simulations of asteroid impacts suggest that iron and nickel may be the dominant metals making up the mass. However, an alternative explanation could be that the mass instead consists of dense oxides that were produced during the last stage of lunar magma ocean solidification.
Read more: Mass anomaly detected under the moon’s largest crater
