Moons interior held water
US scientists 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.
But 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.
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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,” said Erik Hauri, from the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.
Full Article: BBC News
Pretty interesting news on our newest planetary neighbor. What implications this may hold as to whether or not their may have been life on the moon remains to be unseen. The article even points out that the water may have drifted to the poles and may remain there as ice.