The Moon Is Shaped Like A Lemon

Lemon Shaped Moon

 

We all think that the shape of the moon is round. But what is the real and exact shape of the moon? Do you want to know? Well! The moon is shaped like a lemon slightly. It’s somewhat flattened with a bulge on each side. Early tides heated the Moon’s crust in different places. The variation in heating in different areas gave the Moon most of its shape.

During the moon’s infancy, some 4.4 billion years ago, it was too hot as the result of an impact between Earth and another object. The Earth’s gravitational forces molded the moon’s shape ever so slightly. Later on, those tides (gravitational forces) warped the outside of the moon while it was cooling, and it froze in that warped shape.

After some time, scientists have known that the moon is not perfectly round. But it’s been difficult to determine exactly how the bulges formed, since deep craters on the lunar surface obscure the moon’s original shape. Researchers said that the shape of the moon has changed because of the tidal effects. The tidal forces pulled on the lunar crust, stretching it out and heating it up in places. This process made the crust at the lunar poles to become thinner and the regions that lined up with Earth became thicker. This sculpted the moon into a lemon with two small bulges on each side.

So a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contributed to this study. They created a topographical model that sealed many of the moon’s crevices in order to paint a complete picture of how the moon looked like billions of years ago.

From that model, the team along with Garrick-Bethell determined that the bulges formed gradually in the first 200 million years of the moon’s existence in the lunar thermal evolution. This happened due to the combination of forces between the Earth nd the Moon.

Garrick-Bethell said, “If you imagine spinning a water balloon, it will start to flatten at the poles and bulge at the equator.” The same way the moon was caused to flatten at the poles and bulge out near the equator. And you have tides due to the gravitational pull of the Earth. This is the reason that creates a sort of a lemon shape with the long axis of the lemon pointing at the Earth.

Due to these reasons, scientists declare that the moon is shaped like a lemon. But generally, we all believe that the moon is round in shape.

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