Apollo rocks reveal the Moon had brief bursts of super-strong magnetism

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The Moon wasn’t steadily magnetic — it had brief, explosive magnetic “heartbeats” that fooled scientists for decades. The Moon’s magnetic field was mostly weak — but occasionally flared to strengths even greater than Earth’s. Apollo samples exaggerated those powerful moments because astronauts unknowingly collected rocks from rare, titanium-rich hotspots. Credit: Shutterstock Scientists at the University of Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences have settled a decades long argument over the strength of the Moon's magnetic field. For years, researchers have questioned whether the Moon generated a powerful magnetic field or only a weak one during its early history (3.5 -- 4 billion years ago). A new study published February 26 in Nature Geoscience concludes that both views were partly right. By reexamining rock samples returned by the Apollo missions, the team found evidence that the Moon did experience periods of extremely strong magnetism, at times even surpassing Earth's. However, these intense phases were rare and brief. For most of its history, the Moon's magnetic f
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