Lunar Coronavirus
Something strange happened when the Earth was gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, scientists claim: the Moon got substantially colder.
As detailed in a recent article published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, scientists from the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, India, observed that lunar nighttime surface temperatures dipped substantially across six observation sites on the near side of the Moon.
They propose that this “anomalous dip” was caused by a sudden drop in radiation being emitted from Earth as human activity plummeted during global lockdowns, which limited the amount of pollution and overall heat released by our planet at night.
“Therefore, our study shows that the Moon has possibly experienced the effect of COVID-19 lockdown, visualized as an anomalous decrease in lunar night-time surface temperatures during that period,” the scientists concluded in their article.
The results also indicate that studying the Moon’s temperature swings could provide us with a “stable platform to study Earth’s radiation budget and climate change.”
Global Moondemic
During the day, much of the Sun’s light is reflected back into space by the Earth’s atmosphere, while only some of it is absorbed. The Moon is also pummeled with radiation from the Sun during the day.
But at night, the situation is substantially different, as the “Moon receives radiation only from Earth, and thus it can influence the night-time surface temperatures.”
Scientists have previously shown that nighttime temperatures can swing according to the amount of terrestrial radiation released by the Earth.
During the early COVID-19 lockdowns, human activities and associated pollution levels dipped substantially, providing a unique opportunity for scientists to study climate change.
And the effect was so pronounced that we could even measure an “anomalous dip” in nighttime temperatures on the Moon hundreds of thousands of miles away.
That could allow scientists to use the lunar surface as the perfect testing ground to study the effects of climate change occurring back on Earth.
“In this work, we have utilized a rare and unique opportunity of COVID-19 to carry out our study, which may never occur again,” the researchers wrote. “It can also be further substantiated from Moon-based observatories in future as advocated by some researchers.”
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