The lunar core revealed by reflected seismic waves: constraints on the deep Moon seimic structure

Details The lunar core revealed by reflected seismic waves: constraints on the deep Moon seimic structure The lunar core revealed by reflected seismic waves: constraints on the deep Moon seimic structure

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmdi33b..04g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #DI33B-04

Mathematics

Logic

[5430] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Interiors, [6250] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Moon, [7203] Seismology / Body Waves, [7207] Seismology / Core

Scientific paper

The Apollo passive seismic experiment deployed on the Lunar surface during the seventies brought us a great amount of information on the interior structure of the Moon. However, a key piece of the Earth-Moon planetary differentiation is missing: the direct seismological detection of the lunar core. This study presents a reprocessing of Apollo deep moonquake records in order to detect S waves reflected on the Lunar core, and the construction of a consistent deep Moon seismological model that fits additional observations such as the Love numbers, the moment of inertia and the mass of the Moon. Because of their total reflection at the surface of a fluid core, transversely polarized S waves should have amplitudes similar to direct S waves. In order to detect these ScS arrivals inside the S wave coda, the phase information should be preserved in the stacks of Apollo records. An error propagation study first demonstrates than only 3 or 4 deep moonquakes are sufficiently well located to allow us to keep the phase information during the summation of records. Stacks of deep moonquake event clusters are used as input data. A new data pre-processing method is applied in order to inter-calibrate components of the same seismic station and seismic stations in order to keep the phase information. Then, data are low pass filtered and aligned on direct S wave arrival before summation of records. We perform a systematic grid search on event depths and core radius. A maximum of ScS wave energy is found for a core radius around 375 km, using a simple seismological mantle model. Bootstrap places this maximum at a 2 standard deviation level. Additional constraints on the seismological model are used to build a consistent deep Moon model. Finally, the implications of our new seismological model regarding the composition of the core and the thermal state of the lunar interior are discussed.

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