Crawford Ian A, Joy Katherine H, Pasckert Jan H, Hiesinger Harald
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK.
Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2021 Jan 11;379(2188):20190562. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2019.0562. Epub 2020 Nov 23.
The lunar surface has been exposed to the space environment for billions of years and during this time has accumulated records of a wide range of astrophysical phenomena. These include solar wind particles and the cosmogenic products of solar particle events which preserve a record of the past evolution of the Sun, and cosmogenic nuclides produced by high-energy galactic cosmic rays which potentially record the galactic environment of the Solar System through time. The lunar surface may also have accreted material from the local interstellar medium, including supernova ejecta and material from interstellar clouds encountered by the Solar System in the past. Owing to the Moon's relatively low level of geological activity, absence of an atmosphere, and, for much of its history, lack of a magnetic field, the lunar surface is ideally suited to collect these astronomical records. Moreover, the Moon exhibits geological processes able to bury and thus both preserve and 'time-stamp' these records, although gaining access to them is likely to require a significant scientific infrastructure on the lunar surface. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Astronomy from the Moon: the next decades'.
月球表面已经暴露在太空环境中数十亿年，在此期间积累了各种各样天体物理现象的记录。这些记录包括太阳风粒子和太阳粒子事件产生的宇宙成因产物，它们保存了太阳过去演化的记录，以及由高能银河宇宙射线产生的宇宙成因核素，这些核素可能记录了太阳系随时间变化的银河环境。月球表面还可能从当地星际介质中吸积了物质，包括超新星喷发物以及太阳系过去遇到的星际云的物质。由于月球相对较低的地质活动水平、没有大气层，并且在其大部分历史中缺乏磁场，月球表面非常适合收集这些天文记录。此外，月球展现出能够掩埋这些记录从而保存并“标记时间”的地质过程，尽管获取这些记录可能需要在月球表面建立重要的科学基础设施。本文是“月球天文学：未来几十年”讨论会议文集的一部分。
