Give a scientist a technical problem and they'll work at it for years — decades, even — to solve it. It's just the way the scientific mind is ordered.

Case in point: A type of mystery "moonquake" on the surface of the Moon has finally been clarified:

A spacecraft left behind by US astronauts on the lunar surface could be causing small tremors known as moonquakes, according to a new study.

Researchers revealed the previously unknown form of seismic activity on the moon for the first time through an analysis of Apollo-era data using modern algorithms.

Just to be clear, "modern algorithms" is artificial intelligence. NASA scientists had been trying to figure out what the heck was causing these "small tremors" since the Apollo 17 mission in the early 1970s. But every attempt to do so left them scratching their heads.

But by using "a form of artificial intelligence" to comb through the old data, the astronomers figured out that the mystery shakes were being driven by the lunar module left behind by the Apollo 17 astronauts as they departed the lunar surface:

"Every lunar morning when the sun hits the lander, it starts popping off…Every five to six minutes (there was) another one, over a period of five to seven Earth hours. They were incredibly regular and repeating."

Well, there you have it: Simple expansion and contraction, shaking the lunar lander which shook the moon's surface.

The significance of the moon as a scientific subject should not be overlooked; as one scientist noted, it is "the only planetary body other than the Earth to have had more than one seismometer on it at a time," meaning it's our richest source for seismological study in the universe behind Earth itself.

So you can kind of understand why they wanted to figure this out. And thanks to some clever AI, they did.