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While Earth took millions of years to form the Grand Canyon, the Moon created two giant scars in just minutes after a colossal impact that still intrigues scientists
The Moon bears impressive marks of an extremely violent past — and a new scientific study revealed that two of the largest scars on the lunar surface were created by an explosion so intense that not even the entire nuclear arsenal currently existing on Earth would be enough to reproduce its full force. The phenomenon happened in a matter of minutes and left gigantic geological structures near the lunar south pole, a region that has now become a strategic priority for future NASA space missions.
According to information published in 2025 by the magazine El País, researchers analyzed in detail two enormous lunar canyons known as Schrödinger Valley and Planck Valley. Unlike the famous Grand Canyon in the United States, slowly shaped by erosion over millions of years, these lunar formations emerged almost instantaneously after the devastating impact of an asteroid or comet.
The case draws attention not only for the size of the structures but mainly for the absurd amount of energy released in the event. According to the study, it would be necessary to detonate approximately 130 times the entire nuclear arsenal existing on the planet to generate a force comparable to that which excavated the Moon’s canyons.
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The gigantic canyons of the Moon emerged in less than 15 minutes after a devastating impact
b- Map of the lunar surface produced from the LRO LROC WAC Global Morphology Mosaic 100 m v3, with a resolution of 100 meters per pixel, centered on the Schrödinger basin. The continuous area affected by the impact debris is highlighted in beige, while the tracks of secondary craters are marked in red. The Vallis Schrödinger and Vallis Planck canyons (see Figure 3 for detailed images) intersect near the southern edge of the basin, indicated by the white dot. The size of the dot represents the margin of uncertainty calculated by the researchers. The estimated trajectory of the body responsible for the impact, highlighted in yellow, crosses the meeting point of the canyons and the center of the basin. The study also identified a third geological structure, still without an official name, that extends in the opposite direction to the impact.
Located near the Schrödinger basin, close to the Moon’s south pole, the two canyons impress with their almost unimaginable dimensions. The Schrödinger Valley is about 270 kilometers long and approximately 2.7 kilometers deep. Meanwhile, the Planck Valley reaches 280 kilometers in length and about 3.5 kilometers in depth.
Besides the monumental proportions, researchers discovered something even more surprising: these gigantic wounds on the lunar surface may have been formed in an extremely short interval.
As published by the scientific study, the excavation process caused by the impact lasted between 4.9 and 15 minutes in one of the canyons and between 5.2 and 15.4 minutes in the other. In other words, tons and tons of lunar rock were violently thrown in a geological event that happened practically in real-time.
Scientists explain that the structures radiate in a straight line from a central point located within the Schrödinger basin. This characteristic reinforces the hypothesis that a gigantic impact was responsible for the formation of the canyons.
Furthermore, the location of these structures has sparked even more interest from the scientific community because the region is relatively close to the area chosen by NASA for future manned missions returning humans to the Moon.
Energy released by the impact exceeds Earth’s entire nuclear arsenal by 130 times
The most impressive part of the study is related to the magnitude of the energy released during the collision.
According to the researchers responsible for the analysis, the force of the impact was approximately 700 times greater than the energy generated by all nuclear tests historically conducted by China, the United States, and the former Soviet Union.
Even more frightening is the comparison with the current military power of the planet. According to scientists, the energy required to produce the two lunar canyons was about 130 times greater than all the energy stored in the world’s nuclear arsenal.
This data helps to gauge the violence of the event that hit the Moon billions of years ago.
Meanwhile, researchers highlight that the speed and power of the collision were capable of completely reshaping the lunar landscape in a few minutes, producing craters, deep valleys, and huge geological corridors visible to this day.
The research results reinforce theories about the extremely chaotic past of the early Solar System, a period marked by constant collisions between planets, moons, asteroids, and gigantic comets.
Lunar impact may help scientists understand the extinction of dinosaurs on Earth
Although the impact responsible for the lunar canyons occurred billions of years before the extinction of the dinosaurs, researchers believe it can help understand similar events that happened on Earth.
According to the scientific team, the phenomenon observed on the Moon represents the “best analogous surface expression” of the Chicxulub crater, located on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.
The Chicxulub crater is considered the main evidence of the asteroid that hit Earth approximately 66 million years ago and caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.
In this sense, studying the lunar canyons can offer important clues about the extreme effects caused by large cosmic collisions. As the Moon has much less geological activity than Earth, its marks remain preserved for billions of years, functioning as a kind of natural archive of space violence.
Furthermore, the study can assist future space missions in understanding the composition of the lunar soil and the risks related to extraterrestrial impacts.
The information was published in 2025 by the journal Nature Communications and originally reported by the site Xataka Spain, later translated and adapted into Portuguese.
Image | NASA/SVS/Ernie T. Wright
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