In a new study published on August 2 in the journal Science Advances, researchers announced that they have identified the main process that created the moon’s atmosphere and that still protects it today.
The authors suggest that the moon’s atmosphere was energized billions of years ago by this attack, which caused a phenomenon known as the “impact vacuum.” This process occurs when collisions shake up the lunar soil, causing the evaporation of material that has escaped into space, or is suspended above the moon, thus replenishing the atmosphere. out.
“We have provided a definitive answer that meteorite impact evaporation is the main process that creates the moon’s atmosphere,” said the lead author of the study, Nicole Nee, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. She said in a statement to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: “The moon is about 4.5 billion years old, during that time, its surface was regularly hit by meteorites, it is constantly renewed with “Little Impressions Across the Moon.”
This led researchers to identify two processes that regenerate the outer shell. The first was evaporation due to the impact of meteorites hitting the surface of the Moon, and the second was “ion spray” which occurs when high energy particles are ejected from the Sun, to the called the “solar wind,” hitting the surface of the moon and moving. energy to atoms, also causing these atoms to be ejected to the outer shell.
“Based on the LADEE data, we found that both processes play a role. For example, the data showed that more atoms are observed in the atmosphere during meteor showers, which means that the impact of accidents is protected from the sun, as in an eclipse, also causes changes in the atoms of the atmosphere, which means that the sun also has an effect, so the results were not clear or quantitative,” said the main author of the study.
The team wanted to know the ratios between different isotopes of potassium and rubidium. An isotope is a type of element that has different numbers of neutrons in its atomic nucleus. This means that isotopes with more neutrons are heavier than those with fewer neutrons.
The researchers found that most of the isotopes of potassium and rubidium are in the lunar soil. This helped them to conclude that impact evaporation is the main process by which atoms evaporate and rise to form the moon’s atmosphere. The researchers also found that 70% of the moon’s outer atmosphere was created by meteorite strikes and impact evaporation, with 30% allocated to the solar wind and ion precipitation.
