The Shrinking Moon

26 Aug 2010 - It sounds like a joke, but it is not: the moon is shrinking. In making the announcement, scientists were quick to add that the moon has not shrunk by much, and that shrinkage may have occurred over a billion years. We also do not have to be afraid that the moon will shrink out of view in the future. It was explained that as the moon's core has cooled and contracted, the outer crust fractured into faults, forming ridges as one side of the fracture slid on top of the other. The same cooling and shrinking occurs with all planetary bodies. Nasa's messenger spacecraft recently observed similar - and much larger - fractures on Mercury. The scientists also added that the findings were evidence that the moon is much livelier than its reputation as a cold, unchanging world makes us believe.