1 km wide and tens of kilometers long! Who dug the huge cave on the moon? Can make a human base?

Since the space age, humans have launched numerous probes to the Moon, which in turn have yielded a large amount of measured data that are of great importance to our exploration of the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system and the solar system.

In the process of exploring the Moon, people also found a lot of mysterious phenomena, such as the existence of several strange "holes" on the Moon, further research shows that these "holes" can be considered some underground caves of the "skylight", and the size of some underground caves is quite huge, its width can reach 1 km, the length of tens of kilometers.

The photo above, taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC), shows the "skylight" of an underground cave located in the area near the Marius Hills on the lunar surface. The measurements show that it has a diameter of about 65 meters and a depth of about 120 meters.

Who dug these huge caves on the moon? See here, I believe that many people have been associated with the legendary prehistoric civilization with highly developed technology, after all, with the current strength of mankind, it is impossible to do such a thing.

However, prehistoric civilization is ultimately illusory, so far, we have never found any evidence to confirm that prehistoric civilization existed, so we need to explain it from the perspective of nature. The scientific community has explained that these huge caves on the moon should be a special kind of cave called "lava conduit" (Lava conduit).

As the name suggests, "lava conduit" is the flow of lava formed by the pipe caves, but the question is, lava is usually on the surface of the flow, why "lava conduit" is underground caves? This can be explained, the formation of "lava tubes" can be simply divided into four stages.

1, in the process of volcanic eruption, the lava from the crater will flow with the terrain to the low, and gradually converge into a "river", which we can call "lava flow".

2, as the volcanic movement continues, new lava will continue to flow in the natural channel opened up by the "lava flow", in the process, the lava located on the outside will be exposed to the colder surface environment, and the first solidification, and gradually formed a "hard shell" Over time, this "crust" will become thicker and thicker, gradually forming a closed "pipe".

3, in the role of gravity, hot lava will continue to "cut" down, this process is also known as "thermal erosion", the effect is to make the "pipe" deep underground, and also let the "pipe" down. The effect is to make the "pipe" deeper into the ground, but also to make the "pipe" narrower.

4, due to the "pipe" insulation, the lava can flow for a long time, after the volcano stopped erupting lava if the "pipe" in the flow of lava is eventually smoothly discharged, then the "pipe " will be empty, and thus formed special underground caves, that is, "lava tubes.

In fact, on our planet there are quite a few such caves, the longest of which is an underground cave called "Kazumura" in Hawaii, its length is about 68 kilometers.

But compared to the huge caves on the Moon, the "lava tubes" on Earth are very narrow, for example, the widest part of "Kazumura" is only about 21 meters because the Earth's surface gravity is much greater than that of the Moon.

Scientists believe that although the moon is now a dead planet, billions of years ago the moon has a hot core, at that time, the moon also had a lot of volcanic movement, so of course, the moon also formed "lava tubes", as for those "skylights As for the "skylights", they are the result of the gravitational collapse of the more fragile parts of the cave structure.

According to scientists' estimates, in the low-gravity environment on the Moon, "lava tubes" can reach 1000 times the diameter of the Earth, so some huge caves on the Moon are also within the normal range. In other words, the huge caves on the moon are not dug by anyone but formed naturally.

So the question is, these "lava tubes" on the moon can be a human base? The answer is yes, exploration data show that these caves are generally very strong structure, and the future of mankind only need to make appropriate modifications, such as sealing, reinforcement, the configuration of energy and ecosystems, etc., you can survive in these caves for a long time.

The natural environment on the lunar surface is very bad, with huge temperature differences between day and night, high-intensity solar radiation, micrometeorites, cosmic rays bombardment, and other unfavorable factors, all forming a huge threat to the human base, and if the base is built in these deep underground caves, it can be far from the extremely harsh natural environment on the lunar surface, so these caves are also considered to be the future of human construction of the lunar base The ideal place to build a lunar base in the future.

So far, humans have found more than 200 "lava tubes" of a certain size on the Moon, so we have reason to believe that such underground caves should be widespread on the Moon, and it is conceivable that, perhaps shortly, humans will make some of them into permanent bases, thus taking a solid step towards exploring the universe. a solid step forward in deep space.