Laboratory investigations of impact-generated plasma

The characteristics of plasma that was produced in laboratory by hypervelocity impacts were investigated to demonstrate the feasibility of generation of magnetic fields by meteoritic impacts and to explain the presence of paleomagnetic fields on the lunar surface. The impact-generated magnetic fields were found to exhibit spatial and temporal complexity that depended on the impact angle, the velocity, and the projectile/target composition. The results suggest that crater-related paleomagnetism associated with this mechanism should exhibit similar complexity with spatial wavelengths on the order of a fraction of the crater radius.