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Hauri and Colleagues Discover Moon Water |
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Friday, 18 July 2008 |
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Photo: NASA
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New research on the formation of the Moon by Erik Hauri, visiting investigator Alberto Saal of Brown University, and colleagues, is published in the 10 July issue of Nature. Using the NanoSIMS ion microprobe, the researchers discovered that tiny beads of volcanic glasses collected from two Apollo missions to the Moon contain water, suggesting that—contrary to previous thought—water was not entirely vaporized by the violent events that formed the Moon. The new study indicates that the water came from the Moon’s interior and was delivered to the surface via volcanic eruptions more than three billion years ago. The finding calls into question some critical aspects of the “giant impact” theory of the Moon’s formation and may have implications for the origin of possible water ice reservoirs at the Moon’s poles.
Hauri commented in the CIW press release, “For the past four decades, the limit for detecting water in lunar samples was about 50 ppm at best. We developed a way to detect as little as 5 ppm of water. We were really surprised to find a great deal more in these tiny glass beads, up to 46 ppm. Since the Moon was thought to be perfectly dehydrated, this is a giant leap from previous estimates. 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% of their water, where did all that water go?”
For more information, see the Nature paper.
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