PAPER 5 OF THE LEF SERIES
The Maria
Openings over Feed Domes
Abstract
We propose that the lunar maria are openings in the shell of a Moon fed from within while attached to the Earth. Each stands over a feed dome, a dense body pushed up from a subsurface focus. Through most openings material rose, was thrown out and returned as the material that made the craters; Imbrium and Serenitatis, the maria of the contact, passed material and pressure into the Moon. The basalt plain is only the last frozen layer of such an opening. In the GRAIL Bouguer field a feed dome shows as a round high. Of 73 highs of 100 km and more, 25 lie under an open mare and 44 under highland, 36 of them on the far side. Over the buried domes, iron and thorium equal those of the surroundings and the crust is 8–13 km thicker. Of 34 maria identified on the gravity gradients, 33 sit on a dome. Every floor holds one level, a median 3.4 km below its rim. On 10 of 12 open maria the centre stands lower than the margin, the more so the stronger the dome beneath (ρ = −0.59). The ground around six maria carries their iron, falling from 6.9 to 3.1 wt% FeO within 150 km. The contact disc, 17.5% of the surface, holds 95% of the thorium above 3 ppm. Read as impact basins, the maria would leave a foreign mass that their melts do not carry. The paper ends with predictions and their tests.
Keywords: Moon; lunar maria; GRAIL; Bouguer gravity; mascons; mare basalt; thorium; lunar origin
How to cite
Duran, Z. (2026). The Maria: Openings over Feed Domes. Paper 5 of the LEF series. https://lef-model.com/paper05.html