Scientists published findings this week based on NASA's GRAIL mission which conclude certain giant features on the face of our moon may have formed differently than previously assumed. Researchers have for a long time posited that the formation on the moon referred to as the Ocean of Storms was due to a large impact from another celestial body. The Ocean of Storms, or Oceanus Procellarum, appeared to be an impact crater resulting from that collision, and is some 2,000 miles long.

But when NASA's GRAIL mission demonstrated that the 'Oceanus' wasn't round--the normal shape expected from an impact crater--which led scientists to consider the next most likely explanation for its formation. Scientists now know that the Ocean of Storms is actually "surrounded by a strange giant rectangle beneath the [moon's] surface." This idea would seem to suggest then that the moon's surface, at one time, was drifting apart from itself.

So, in other words, the moon may have actually contained lava and plate tectonics--not unlike what scientists say we have on Earth. 

The lead researcher and author of the study that announced these findings, Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, stated of the new theory, "As a solid cools and contracts, fractures and faults can form, and these fractures will commonly take on a polygonal pattern." The faults on the moon apparently took on a rectangular formation, but they are still quite different than what scientists would have ever predicted.

"The observed pattern of gravity anomalies on the moon is so strikingly geometric and in such an unexpected shape that it is forcing us to think in new and different ways about the processes operating on the moon and planets in general," stated Andrews-Hanna.

The study was published online this week in the journal Nature.

NASA also has extensive coverage of the GRAIL mission on its site, which features very detailed imagery of all sorts. We highly recommend you check it out.