The water molecules found among the regolith on the surface of the Moon were formed by hydrogen-rich solar winds.
2 Jan
2023
– 11.31pm
(updated 3/1/2023 at 1:13am)
A team of researchers has published a new analysis of lunar dust, known as regulatedsuggesting that the water may have been formed by the Sun – or rather, by the interaction of solar particles with those of the regolith.
The researchers, led by Yuchen Xu and Heng-Ci Tian of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found the chemistry in samples collected and returned to Earth by the Chang’e-5 mission that supports the solar origin hypothesis of water on Earth. Moon.
Until recently, scientists considered our natural satellite to be arid, containing water only in pockets of ice at the poles. However, recent observations have shown that the surface also contains H2O, and even a lunar water cyclewith molecules “jumping” from one region to another.
For this to become possible, the Moon needed a “little help” from the Sun: Its solar winds are rich in high-velocity hydrogen ions that reach the lunar surface, interacting with mineral oxides and binding to oxygen.
The authors arrived at this result by analyzing 7 grains of olivine, 1 of pyroxene, 4 of plagioclase and 5 of glass, finding a hydrogen concentration similar to that of the solar wind. In other words, the Sun was probably responsible for sending hydrogen to the Moon to form water molecules with the oxygen already present.
It was also shown in the study that lunar grains can hold this hydrogen. Furthermore, these particles are also conserved on the lunar surface at different temperatures.
The study was published in PNAS.
Source: PNAS
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