Journal of Oceanography and Marine Research
Open Access

Abstract

Lunar Tsunamis Revisited

Van Dorn WG

Two papers published before the Apollo landings showed that the ring spacing of a plurality of multi-ringed lunar maria precisely fit the pattern for explosion-generated gravity waves in a “liquid” overlying a rigid substrate, if frozen at times related to their respective explosion energies. Liquidity was attributed to transient melting of an initially hot, plastic layer beneath a rubble crust, owing to pressure relief behind the shock fronts from energetic meteoroid impacts, and freezing to subsequent solidification, upon restoration of isostatic pressure. This interpretation was largely ignored; most geophysicists thought the moon too rigid to sustain gravity waves. Here I show that current acceptance of an initially molten proto-moon with a thin crust credibly supports the “tsunami-like” generation of the lunar maria and provides new insight to the moon’s thermal history.