Rita Parai (@ritaparai.bsky.social)

🚨New Paper Alert!🚨 I've got a new paper out in Science Advances where we show that the 2 byr old Chang'e 5 magma came from shallow depths in the lunar mantle, and that melting was likely driven by top-down heating of the mantle by radioactive decay in a sub-crustal KREEP layer. ⚒️🧪🔭 Check it out:

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A shallow mantle source for the Chang’e 5 lavas reveals how top-down heating prolonged lunar magmatism The chemistry of the youngest lunar lavas and experiments show how the mantle stayed hot enough to melt for billions of years. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr1486