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Volcanic activity on our moon?

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:00 pm
by wa7uhr
Has there ever been any human witness (photo) of volcanic activity on our moon? Perhaps, like an erupting volcano?
Could a large eruption cause fragments to be hurled into space?

Re: Volcanic activity on our moon?

Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 3:22 pm
by Chris Peterson
wa7uhr wrote:Has there ever been any human witness (photo) of volcanic activity on our moon? Perhaps, like an erupting volcano?
No. The Moon has been volcanically inactive for billions of years. There are reports of transient visual observations on the Moon, but these are attributed to things other than volcanism.
Could a large eruption cause fragments to be hurled into space?
Well, on the Moon you could argue that space begins at the surface. But it seems unlikely that any sort of volcanism such as the Moon once supported could eject material at greater than escape velocity (2400 m/s), so anything that went up probably came back down eventually.