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What is the Moon made of?
The Moon, orbiting the Earth a quarter of a million miles away (250,000 miles) has fascinated us ever since we could gaze up at the skies. It formed at the same time as the rest of the Solar System condensed out of a swirling cloud of rocks and gas about 4.5 billion years ago. Nine planets formed orbiting the Sun. Many of these planets have their own moons spinning round them just like Earth. Some have more than one moon - such as Saturn which had seventeen at the last count. But the Earth’s Moon is the biggest in the solar system.
There are a number of theories about how the Moon formed. Scientists used to think that it was a huge piece of rock that had been torn out of the Earth - leaving a large hole which is now the Pacific Ocean. We now think that this is unlikely. The Moon probably also condensed out of the swirling gases as a separate mini-planet. This was captured by the gravitational pull of Earth and became our Moon.
Before we finally landed robots and eventually humans on the Moon in the 1960s we were unsure of its composition. Lunar samples which were brought back show that it is a volcanic rock similar to many of the volcanic rocks on Earth. Most of the Moon is made of a volcanic rock called basalt. Basalts form on Earth when volcanos erupt throwing out molten rocks into the air or the sea. These hot rocks (initially at thousands of degrees centigrade) cool very quickly and form dark rocks with small crystals - a typical example is basalt.
Basalts are made of four main elements. They are mainly silicon, but they also contain iron, aluminium and magnesium. Silicon is the most abundant element on the Earth and occurs in many rocks. Sand on a beach is largely silicon. Iron, aluminium and magnesium are all metals that occur in rocks on Earth as well and are used to make things as diverse as cars and drinks cans.
Inside the Moon there is a crust, a mantle and a core, like the Earth. But the Moon has cooled down a lot more than the Earth and its mantle is no longer molten. So there are no active volcanoes on the Moon any more. There are, however, occasional earthquakes, or moonquakes as they are better known.
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