发现：月球正在缩小

The Man in the Moon has become the latest victim of contraction¹ in the housing market.

“月球人”成为月球“房地产市场”紧缩的最新受害者。

A bird soars in front of a half moon near Glencoe, Ky., Monday, Aug. 16, 2010.

Astronomers² reporting on Thursday in the US journal Science said they had found previous undetected landforms（地貌，地形） which indicate that Earth's satellite has been shrinking... albeit³ by（虽然，即使） only a tiny amount.

The intriguing⁴（有趣的，迷人的） features, called lobate（叶状的，分裂的） scarps, are faults created when the Moon's once-molten interior（内部，本质） began to cool, causing the lunar surface to contract and then crinkle（起皱，卷曲） , they said.

Relative to the Moon's age, estimated at around 4.5 billion years, the contraction is recent, occurring less than a billion years ago, and is measured at about 100 meters (325 feet).

Lobate scarps were first spotted⁵ near the lunar equator（赤道） in the 1970s by panoramic⁶ cameras（全景照相机） aboard the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.

Fourteen new faults have been been spotted in high-resolution images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The new discoveries show that the scarps are globally distributed and not clustered in equatorial regions, and this provides powerful evidence for the contraction scenario⁷.

The investigation⁸ was headed by Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian Museum's National Air and Space Museum, Washington.