Widespread impact-generated porosity in early planetary crusts.
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Published version
OA Location
Author(s)
Wiggins, Sean E
Johnson, Brandon C
Collins, Gareth S
Jay Melosh, H
Marchi, Simone
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft revealed the crust of the Moon is highly porous, with ~4% porosity at 20 km deep. The deep lying porosity discovered by GRAIL has been difficult to explain, with most current models only able to explain high porosity near the lunar surface (first few kilometers) or inside complex craters. Using hydrocode routines we simulated fracturing and generation of porosity by large impacts in lunar, martian, and Earth crust. Our simulations indicate impacts that produce 100-1000 km scale basins alone are capable of producing all observed porosity within the lunar crust. Simulations under the higher surface gravity of Mars and Earth suggest basin forming impacts can be a primary source of porosity and fracturing of ancient planetary crusts. Thus, we show that impacts could have supported widespread crustal fluid circulation, with important implications for subsurface habitable environments on early Earth and Mars.
Date Issued
2022-08-16
Date Acceptance
2022-07-29
Citation
Nature Communications, 2022, 13 (1), pp.1-6
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1
End Page
6
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
13
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Sponsor
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35974008
PII: 10.1038/s41467-022-32445-3
Grant Number
ST/S000615/1
Subjects
Earth, Planet
Extraterrestrial Environment
Mars
Moon
Porosity
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Date Publish Online
2022-08-16