{"id":60289,"date":"2025-07-12T19:03:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-12T19:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60289\/"},"modified":"2025-07-12T19:03:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T19:03:09","slug":"a-year-after-china-returns-rocks-from-moons-far-side-debate-rages-over-ancient-crater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/60289\/","title":{"rendered":"A year after China returns rocks from moon\u2019s far side, debate rages over ancient crater"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year after China returned the first rock samples<\/a> from the moon\u2019s far side, scientists<\/a> are debating whether the mission has answered a central question in lunar science<\/a> \u2013 and whether the country\u2019s rising scientific dominance is challenging who gets to tell the story of the moon\u2019s past<\/a>.While a team of Chinese researchers believes they may have nailed down the age of the moon\u2019s largest and oldest crater \u2013 a colossal impact basin that could hold clues to the early solar system<\/a> \u2013 other scientists, mostly from the West, remain unconvinced.Some say the ancient<\/a> rocks may have come from a different impact and were tossed to the landing site. Others suggest the rocks may not have come from an impact at all, but from magma that cooled slowly underground.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the 4.25-billion-year age is 100 per cent certain, but it\u2019s the most credible number we have so far \u2013 more reliable than model-based crater counting or meteorites with unknown origins,\u201d said planetary scientist Yang Wei of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s based on the only direct evidence we\u2019ve ever collected and measured from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin,\u201d said Yang, who was not directly involved in the study but coordinates a nationwide research effort that gave select teams early access to samples from the Chinese lunar mission Chang\u2019e\u20116.<\/p>\n

The findings, which he described as the most important among a collection of five papers submitted to the journal Nature for peer review last September, were rejected twice by a review panel dominated by Western scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year after China returned the first rock samples from the moon\u2019s far side, scientists are debating whether…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[3294,9710,43666,74,25816,9191,43674,43673,43670,43668,43669,159,43667,43672,783,67,132,43664,43665,68,43671],"class_list":{"0":"post-60289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-apollo","9":"tag-beijing","10":"tag-change6","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-china-national-space-administration","13":"tag-chinese-academy-of-sciences","14":"tag-clive-neal","15":"tag-institute-of-geology-and-geophysics","16":"tag-national-science-review","17":"tag-qian-yuqi","18":"tag-schrodinger","19":"tag-science","20":"tag-south-pole-aitken-basin","21":"tag-spa-basin","22":"tag-space","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-university-of-hong-kong","26":"tag-university-of-notre-dame","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-yang-wei"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114841819759482846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}