Sofia, Sept. 08, (BTA/GNA) – An international exhibition on the formation of the Moon will be unveiled at the Regional Museum of Natural History in Plovdiv (South Central Bulgaria) on September 9. Moon Impact: A Geological Story will give visitors the opportunity to learn more about the Moon through large-scale posters, 3D models, holograms, videos, samples of minerals, rocks, and meteorites, the museum said on its website.
Among the exhibits is a piece of Allende, the oldest meteorite in the Solar System ever discovered on Earth. It is believed to be 4.567 billion years old.
The Moon Impact exhibition also looks into the interdependence of life on Earth and the presence of minerals, as well as the human impact on the mineral environment, particularly that of plastic waste.
The idea behind the international exhibition was born within the IMPACT research team at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Lyon. The six-member team, led by computational mineral physicist Razvan Caracas, decided to share their discoveries about the Moon’s formation made within their IMPACT project from 2016 to 2021.
As part of the project, the team used some of Europe’s largest computers to study how the atoms behave at extreme conditions of pressure and temperature. Numerical simulations helped them model how the early Earth and Moon came to be.
The Moon Impact exhibition was first presented in Bulgaria at Sofia’s Earth and Man National Museum from January 28 to September 7. In Plovdiv, it will be on until March 9, 2023, with entry being free of charge on the opening evening of September 9.
BTA/GNA