Water from the sun has been found on the moon: ScienceAlert

A new analysis of dust has been retrieved from Moon It is suggested that the water associated with the lunar surface may have come from the sun.

More specifically, it could be the result of hydrogen ions being bombarded by the solar wind, hitting the lunar surface, interacting with metal oxides, and binding to expelled oxygen. The result is water that can hide in lunar regolith in large quantities at mid- and high latitudes.

This has implications for our understanding of the origin and distribution of water on the Moon – and may be relevant to our understanding. The origin of water on Earth.

The moon looks like a very dry ball of dust, but recent studies have found that there is a ball a lot of water over there More than anyone suspected. They obviously don’t float in lakes and ponds. that it confined to the lunar regolithpossibly lurking Like ice in permanently shaded cratersAnd isolate her obsidian beads.

This naturally leads to questions like how much water is there exactly? How is it distributed? From where he came? The last question probably has several answers.

Part of this could come from asteroid effects. Some are down to earth. However, the potential source is not the first thing that comes to mind when imagining cosmic rain clouds.

To be fair, the sun isn’t exactly dripping with moisture, but its winds are certainly a reliable source of high-velocity hydrogen ions. Manual includes Analysis of lunar dirt from the Apollo missions previously raised the strong possibility that the solar wind is responsible for at least some components of lunar water.

Now, a team of researchers led by geochemists Yuchen Xu and Heng Sitian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found the chemistry in grains recovered by the Chang’e-5 mission that support a solar water source on the moon.

They studied 17 grains: 7 olivine, 1 pyroxene, 4 plagioclase and 5 glass. These were all, unlike the low latitude samples collected by Apollo and Luna, from a Mid-latitude region From the Moon, collected from the youngest lunar volcanic basalts known, from a dry basalt bed.

Using Raman spectroscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, they studied the chemical composition of the outer edges of these grains – 100 nanometers wide. grain husk It is the most exposed to space weather and thus changes a lot with regard to the grain interior.

Most of these edges showed a very high hydrogen concentration, ranging from 1,116 to 2,516 ppm, and very low deuterium/hydrogen isotope ratios. These proportions are consistent with the proportions of these elements present in the solar wind, indicating that the solar wind collided with the moon, which led to the deposition of hydrogen on the lunar surface.

They found that the water content derived from the solar wind at the Chang’e-5 landing site should be about 46 ppm. This corresponds to remote sensing measurements.

To determine whether hydrogen could be preserved in lunar minerals, the researchers conducted heating experiments on some of their grains. They found that after burial, the grains could actually contain hydrogen.

Finally, the researchers ran simulations about the preservation of hydrogen in lunar soil at different temperatures. This revealed that temperature plays an important role in the pumping, migration and release of hydrogen on the moon. This means that much of the water derived from the solar wind could be trapped in mid- and high latitudes, where temperatures are cooler.

A model based on these findings suggests that the moon’s polar regions may be richer in water than the solar wind – information that could be very useful for planning future lunar exploration missions.

Polar lunar soil may contain more water than the Chang’e-5 samples. says cosmochemist Yangting Lin Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“This discovery is of great importance for the future use of the lunar water resources. Moreover, by classifying and heating the particles, it is relatively easy to exploit and use the water in the lunar soil.”

Research published in PNAS.