Moon Water Discovered

Scientists in the United States have found evidence that water was held in the Moon’s interior, challenging some elements of the theory of how Earth’s satellite formed.

The Moon is thought to have been created in a violent collision between Earth and another planet-sized object.

Scientists thought the heat from this impact had vaporised all the water. However a new study in Nature magazine shows water was delivered to the lunar surface from the interior in volcanic eruptions three billion years ago.

This suggests that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence.

The discovery came from lunar volcanic glasses, pebble-like beads collected and returned to Earth by the US Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In the decades since, scientists have sought to determine the nature of a class of chemical elements known as volatiles in the multicoloured glasses.

In particular, they searched the glass for signs of water but the evidence has remained elusive. This was consistent with a general consensus that the Moon was dry.

The team, from Brown University, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and Case Western Reserve University, used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) technology to detect extremely minute quantities of water in glasses and minerals.

"We developed a way to detect as little as five parts per million of water," explains Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.

"We were really surprised to find a whole lot more in these tiny glass beads, up to 46 parts per million."

The team then confirmed through a series of tests that hydrogen had been present all along, and the samples had not been infused by hydrogen-rich solar winds or tainted by other volatiles.

Alberto Saal, assistant professor of geological sciences at Brown University says, “This confirms that water comes from deep within the mantle of the Moon.”

“It has nothing to do with secondary processes, such as contamination or solar wind.”

The researchers believe the layer was contained in magma which erupted via “fire fountains” on to the lunar surface more than three billion years ago.

About 95 per cent of this water vapour was lost during the volcanic activity.

“Since the Moon was thought to be perfectly dehydrated, this is a giant leap from previous estimates,” explains Hauri.

“It suggests the intriguing possibility that the Moon’s interior might have had as much water as the Earth’s upper mantle. But even more intriguing; if the Moon’s volcanoes released 95 per cent of their water, where did all that water go?”

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