Earlier, organized by the Science and Technology Communication Center of the China Association for Science and Technology and co-organized by Scholarset, the 2019 Chinese Scholarset Science and Technology Forum was held in the China Hall of Science and Technology. During the Forum, the various awards of the Chinese Scholarset Science and Technology Persons of the Year were given out. Associate Prof. Zhu Menghua from the State Key Laboratory in Lunar and Planetary Sciences of Macau University of Science and Technology, received the “2019 Chinese Scholarset Science and Technology Persons of the Year Outstanding Achievement Award”.
Associate Prof. Zhu Menghua
In July of 2019, Associate Prof. Zhu Menghua published a paper titled “Reconstructing the late accretion history of the Moon” in world’s famous journal Nature. The professor was the first author and corresponding author of the paper and Macau University of Science and Technology was the first affiliated institution of the paper. The paper reveals the evolutional history of the Moon since its formation; the research has made major breakthroughs in the field of lunar evolution history and provides new scientific support for the scientific data analysis of Chang’e 4 and the subsequent lunar and Mars probing missions.
Taking advantage of the Supercomputing Platform of the University, Associate Prof. Zhu Menghua performed a series of impact simulations to quantify the impactor-retention ratio to compute the impactor mass accreted into the lunar crust and mantle, investigate the process of different celestial bodies impacting on the Earth and the Moon in different angles, and recreate the impact history of the solar system. The research findings indicate that due to the long time the lunar magma ocean lasted, during the lunar mantle crystallization, the highly siderophile elements (HSEs) retained from the extraterritorial celestial bodies entered directly into the lunar core, leading to the deficit of HSEs in the lunar mantle. Thus, the time variation for magma crystallization of the Earth and the Moon is mainly responsible for the substantial mismatch of HSEs in the two celestial bodies. The research findings provide new understanding for the late accretion history of the Earth and the Moon, bear indirectly on the giant impact hypothesis on lunar formation, provide support for the magma ocean theory in relation to the Moon and the Earth, and offer new perspectives to research on the impact history of the solar system and the discriminated early accretion of the Earth and the Moon.
