Scientists have found a new source of water on the moon
Miscellaneous / / April 03, 2023
It is possible that it is on many rocky planets.
scientists knownthat there is water on the moon. But they still have questions about how she got there and where she is. In the new work Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have described impact glass balls in the lunar soil, in which it can hide.
The researchers reached this conclusion after examining lunar rock samples collected by a Chinese rover during the mission.Chang'e - 5(Chang'e 5) in 2020. Among them, 32 tiny granules were found, each containing up to 0.002 grams of liquid. There may be billions or even trillions of such particles on the Earth's satellite, which, according to the most conservative estimates, store up to 297.6 billion tons of water.
And it is a renewable source. Scientists believe that tiny granules are formed as a result of collisions with meteorites, which is not such a rarity for our satellite. And when interacting with hydrogen molecules in the solar wind, they constantly release water, the study found. And this is a fairly fast process - such glass beads accumulate liquid in just a few years.
“Such a short diffusion time indicates that water produced by the solar wind can be rapidly accumulated and stored in glass beads formed as a result of a [meteorite] impact on the lunar surface and preserving signs hydration».
Hejiu Hui
Co-author of the study, a scientist from Nanjing University (China)
Samples from Chang'e 5 continue to be analyzed, so scientists do not rule out new discoveries in the near future. But most importantly, the data they already have gives reason to hope for the presence of water on other rocky planets.
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