<p class="title">The Moon is steadily shrinking, causing wrinkling on its surface and quakes, according to an analysis of imagery captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) published Monday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">A survey of more than 12,000 images revealed that lunar basin Mare Frigoris near the Moon's north pole -- one of the many vast basins long assumed to be dead sites from a geological point of view -- has been cracking and shifting.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Unlike our planet, the Moon doesn't have tectonic plates. Instead, its tectonic activity occurs as it slowly loses heat from when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago.</p>.<p class="bodytext">This in turn causes its surface to wrinkle, similar to a grape that shrivels into a raisin.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Since the moon's crust is brittle, these forces cause its surface to break as the interior shrinks, resulting in so-called thrust faults, where one section of crust is pushed up over an adjacent section.</p>.<p class="bodytext">As a result, the Moon has become about 150 feet (50 metres) "skinnier" over the past several hundred million years.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Apollo astronauts first began measuring seismic activity on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, finding the vast majority were occurred deep in the body's interior while a smaller number were on its surface.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The analysis was published in Nature Geoscience and examined the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo missions, establishing links between them and very young surface features.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It's quite likely that the faults are still active today," said Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland who co-authored the study.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"You don't often get to see active tectonics anywhere but Earth, so it's very exciting to think these faults may still be producing moonquakes." </p>
<p class="title">The Moon is steadily shrinking, causing wrinkling on its surface and quakes, according to an analysis of imagery captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) published Monday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">A survey of more than 12,000 images revealed that lunar basin Mare Frigoris near the Moon's north pole -- one of the many vast basins long assumed to be dead sites from a geological point of view -- has been cracking and shifting.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Unlike our planet, the Moon doesn't have tectonic plates. Instead, its tectonic activity occurs as it slowly loses heat from when it was formed 4.5 billion years ago.</p>.<p class="bodytext">This in turn causes its surface to wrinkle, similar to a grape that shrivels into a raisin.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Since the moon's crust is brittle, these forces cause its surface to break as the interior shrinks, resulting in so-called thrust faults, where one section of crust is pushed up over an adjacent section.</p>.<p class="bodytext">As a result, the Moon has become about 150 feet (50 metres) "skinnier" over the past several hundred million years.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Apollo astronauts first began measuring seismic activity on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, finding the vast majority were occurred deep in the body's interior while a smaller number were on its surface.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The analysis was published in Nature Geoscience and examined the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo missions, establishing links between them and very young surface features.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"It's quite likely that the faults are still active today," said Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Maryland who co-authored the study.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"You don't often get to see active tectonics anywhere but Earth, so it's very exciting to think these faults may still be producing moonquakes." </p>