(Phys.org) -- Scientists from RAL Space at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have solved a lunar mystery and their results might lead the way to determining if the same mechanism could be artificially manipulated to create safe havens for future space explorers. Their work focussed on the origin of the enigmatic "lunar swirls" - swirling patches of relatively pale lunar soil, some measuring several tens of km across, which have been an unresolved mystery - until now. In the Apollo era it was realised that lunar swirls were associated with localized magnetic fields in the lunar crust (so-called lunar 'magnetic anomalies'). Several unmanned spacecraft, like NASAs Lunar Prospector, JAXA Kaguya and India’s Chandrayaan-1 have taken a special interest in the regions of magnetic anomalies. Lunar Prospector first identified magnetic anomalies that had created fully formed but miniature “magnetospheres” similar to what the Earth’s planetary wide magnetic field does on a much larger scale. Using a combination of the space data and laboratory scale experiments using a “Solar Wind Tunnel” – the team were able to identify how such small scale magnetic “bubbles” were more efficient in deflecting the solar wind particles bombarding the moon.