Scientists say for billions of years the moon may suck water from the earth

There are several hypotheses as to the origin of water and ice on the Moon.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, ALASKA — There are water molecules and ice on the Moon. However, how can water and ice exist in moon still a mystery. There is a hypothesis that an asteroid and comet collision may have produced some of the water and ice on the Moon. However, a new study points to another source of lunar water, namely Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists say hydrogen and oxygen ions escape from the planet’s upper atmosphere Earth and then merging on the Moon could create as much as 840 cubic miles of surface permafrost or liquid water below the surface.

The idea is that hydrogen and oxygen ions are pushed to the Moon’s surface through the tail of the Earth’s magnetosphere (a teardrop-shaped bubble around Earth that is affected by its magnetic field). The event occurs five days in each lunar month.

As the solar wind pushes these bubbles, some of the Earth’s magnetic field lines are broken. When the Moon disrupts the tail of Earth’s magnetosphere, some of these broken connections are repaired, causing hydrogen and oxygen ions that previously escaped Earth’s atmosphere to suddenly rush back toward it.

“It’s like the Moon is bathing—a rain of water ions that return to Earth, falling on the Moon’s surface,” said geophysicist Gunther Kletetschka of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. SciencealertWednesday (4/5/2022).

The moon doesn’t have a magnetosphere, so when those ions hit the lunar surface, ice sheets form, the researchers said. Some of that ice, through various geological processes, can be pushed below the surface and turned into liquid water.

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