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Water surprise – Moon is not so dry
When Man first recorded features he saw on the Moon before the first telescopes, he assumed the large, smooth dark regions were seas just like on Earth.
The dark lunar "seas" (Paul Sutherland)
He gave them Latin names like Mare Tranquillitatis (the Sea of Tranquility) and Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms).
But many years later scientists put our natural satellite under proper scrutiny and found that the “seas” were really vast plains of lava that had flowed from within and solidified billions of years ago. Far from being Earth-like, the Moon was a dry, dusty world, drier than the most arrid desert on our own planet.
Now in an astonishing reversal of ideas, new research shows that those Moon rocks are not as dry as was long assumed. There are certainly no rivers, lakes or any other liquid water. But a special form of it – hydroxyls – appears to be locked away in the lava. Experts say it could be converted easily into normal water just by heating it.
The implications are hugely significant for space exploration as well as astronomy. It means that setting up lunar colonies and observatories where astronauts and scientists could develop a permanent presence becomes a real possibility (given a change in political will, of course). There will be no need for the hugely expensive transportation of water supplies from Earth to keep our explorers alive.
Surprisingly perhaps, the new finding comes following a reaxamination of lunar basalt brought back to Earth by Apollo 14 astronauts nearly 40 years ago in 1971. Geologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Tennessee found structurally bound hydroxyl groups in the rock – in other words water.
Jeremy Boyce, main author of a paper about the discovery in the science joural Nature this week, said: “The fact that we were able to quantitatively measure significant amounts of water in a lunar mineral is truly surprising.”
His team took a detailed look at a mineral within the basalt called apatite using an ion microprobe that can analyze grains much smaller than the width of a human hair. Results showed that levels of hydrogen, sulphur, and chlorine in the sample sample were indistinguishable from apatites found in terrestrial volcanic rocks.
The story of water on the Moon has unfolded in a surprising way in less than a year. Last October a US probe fired a missile into a crater near the Moon’s south pole and confirmed that there is water ice in the shadows, dumped by comets over billions of years.
Later a scan from another probe found tons more water around the lunar north pole. Also last year it was found that a form of dew has spread across the Moon, presumably from this ice, penetrating into its topsoil.
And now comes the amazing finding that those supposedly dry lunar seas really do contain water after all.
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[...] Samples of Moon rock brought back by Apollo 14 have been found to contain members of the mineral group apatite. This chemical, when heated, releases water created by combining hydrogen with hydroxyl, or OH. The similarity between the apatite and terrestrial apatites suggest that volcanoes on both worlds were powered by water as well as carbon and sulphur. This in turn suggests that as well as the solar wind generated water and the ice locked up in shadowed craters, there is also water trapped in the rocks of the Moon. [...]
Iam a professional geologist; I read this latest news on water content of our Moon
which was not very long ago thought of to be a sattelite which is dry and perhaps drier
than the driest desert.Now comes the news that the Moon after all is not all that dry and
that it has water entrapped in its surface soil as well as in its deep interior,contributed by
hydroxyl molecules of a mineral like apatite and that the water content is significant.
well Iam surprised to find this so called discovery of water in moon, emphatically told by
some highly held Hindu savants centuries ago in their treatises on vedic astrology where
the moon is described as a moist and cold planet.One may be surprised to know that a
great hindu vaishnava poet of the 7-8 century by name Perialwar in his poetic work
Periathirumozi (psalm 95) clearly describes the Moon as a planet with hidden water
and which throws cold and soothing rays onto the earth.
Now wont you agree with me that these ancient savants had intimate knowledge of
not only earth but the galaxies and stars as well as is reflected in the almnacs they constructed based on astronomy and mathematics.
=Dr.D.Vasudevan, retired Dy.DG,Geological survey of india
In one of the most popular Space Movies of all time Robinson Crusio On Mars,When the Astronaut began to lose the last of his Oxygen supply in his back pack,he discovered,(that by heating the rocks he could replenish the Oxygen in the cave he
had found and by rigging up a funnel and hose he could re-fill his oxygen tank.If you
could Heat The Rocks To Get Water,(you could also mfg a supply of Oxygen and Hydrogen from Moon Rocks,for a trip to Mars) I am a Native American, the one thing
that bothers me most about mankind,is his relentless distruction of his own Inviorment.Everyday 10′s of thousands of acres of Jungle and Forestland are distroyed
everyday 100′s of species of plant life become extinct(Was one of those fallen species
the ultimate cure for all types of Cancer ?)Who Knows? They Are Gone! A long time before my people the Cherokee, converted to Christianity, we belived in One God, A
Creator of All Things,but we also belived that the Earth,is Our Mother ,an old Cherokee
saying older than time its self says(The Earth is your Mother,you do not rape or disgrace your mother).If mankind keeps on at his current speed,he will have to leave this Earth ,in search of another place to live,I predict within no less than 300 years,
because, our seas will be to high, our outside temps to high, and the Air Too Poluted
for him to Live Here. Beaux, in B’ham Al