This is why the far & near sides of Moon are different

The composition of the Moon’s near side that is perpetually Earthfacing is oddly different from its far side which always faces away from Earth and scientists think they finally understand why.

These are linked to an important property of rock signature KREEP – short for rock enriched in potassium (chemical symbol K), rareearth elements (REE, which include cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, and other elements which are rare on Earth) and phosphorus (chemical symbol P), according to a study published in the journal Nature

Geoscience.

On the Moon’s perpetually Earth-facing near side, on any given night, or day, one can observe dark and light patches with the naked eye.

Early astronomers named these dark regions “maria”, Latin for “seas”, thinking they were bodies of water by analogy with the Earth.

Using telescopes, scientists were able to figure out over a century ago that these were not in fact seas, but more likely craters or volcanic features.

They also identified a new type of rock signature they named KREEP which was associated with the maria. But why volcanism and this KREEP signature should be distributed so unevenly between the near and far sides of the Moon again presented a puzzle.

These clues are linked to an important property of KREEP. Potassium (K), thorium (Th) and uranium (U) are radioactively unstable elements. This means that they occur in a variety of atomic configurations that have variable numbers of neutrons.