00:04Despite humankind having landed on the moon myriad times way back when, the moon still
00:08holds a mystery or two. One of those mysteries revolves around the natural satellite's magnetism.
00:13Specifically, it still has some, despite being a dead frozen rock. But now, experts studying
00:18the lunar material brought back by the unmanned Chang'e 5 probe might finally have answers.
00:23In that material, scientists have found magnetite, a material that is strongly magnetic, yet not
00:27common in lunar regolith. Magnetite, like the name might indicate, can be permanently magnetized.
00:32But how does that happen on the moon which doesn't have magnetic poles? Researchers from
00:35the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geochemistry say it likely happened when meteors
00:40crashed into the moon. Writing in their paper, quote, the iron sulfide grains morphology features
00:45and the oxygen's distribution suggest that a gas melt phase reaction occurred during large impact
00:50events, which they say accounts for why astronauts and probes alike continue to find small pockets
00:55of magnetic material on Earth's closest neighbor.
