Dear follower,
the water inside the Moon’s mantle came from primitive meteorites. The Moon is thought to have formed from a disc of debris left when a giant object hit the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, very early in Earth’s history. Scientists have long assumed that the heat from an impact of that size would cause hydrogen and other volatile elements to boil off into space, meaning the Moon must have started off completely dry as depicted on the following video .... or not finally ...
However, new research finds, the same source thought to have supplied most of the water on Earth. The findings raise new questions and lead to rethink the models about the forming of the Moon.
Actually, +NASA spacecraft and new research based on samples from the Apollo missions have revealed that the Moon has water both on its surface and below. In order to find the origin of the Moon’s water, scientists looked at melt inclusions found in samples brought back from the Apollo missions. Melt inclusions are tiny dots of volcanic glass trapped within crystals called olivine. The crystals prevent water escaping during an eruption and enable researchers to get an idea of what the inside of the Moon is like.
The researches were performed by Erik Hauri of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, James Van Orman of Case Western Reserve University, and Malcolm Rutherford from Brown and have been published.
The researchers say, that there are some important processes we don’t yet understand about how planets and satellites are formed: “Our work suggests that even highly volatile elements may not be lost completely during a giant impact,” . “We need to go back to the drawing board and discover more about what giant impacts do, and we also need a better handle on volatile inventories in the Moon.”
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