During its mission in 1998 and 1999, NASA’s Lunar Prospector orbiter identified the Reiner Gamma swirl as one of these mini-magnetospheres. Armed with this information, scientists at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in England created a scale experiment in 2014 that may have shed light on this brilliant feature. The results showed how a small-scale magnetic “bubble” can efficiently deflect solar wind particles from bombarding the Moon, therefore shielding the soil and preserving its youthful appearance. It’s like magnetic sunscreen!
Actually, according to Ruth Bamford of RAL and the Center for Fundamental Physics, the force that’s deflecting the solar wind particles is electric, not magnetic. The electric field, she says, is created naturally by the edges of the Moon’s magnetic bubbles.
What we see, then, when we look at Reiner Gamma is lunar soil untainted by the effects of the solar wind, which otherwise would darken the lunar soil over time.
Of course, without darkness, it would be hard to appreciate the light. As always, let me know what you see and think at
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