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| Sorry, not much water on moon! |
| Sorry, not much water on moon!
|
| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 2-April-2014
3:33:26 AM |
| Overturning a long-held assumption, a team of researchers has discovered that the amount of water present on the moon's surface may have been overestimated by scientists studying lunar rock samples.
Led by Jeremy Boyce of the University of California, Los Angeles' department of earth, planetary and space sciences, the study revealed that the unusually hydrogen-rich apatite crystals observed in many lunar rock samples may not have formed within a water-rich environment as was originally expected.
The mineral apatite is the most widely-used method for estimating the amount of water in lunar rocks.
"Our new results show that there is not as much water in lunar magma as apatite would have us believe," Boyce announced.
For decades, scientists believed the moon was almost entirely devoid of water.
However, the discovery of hydrogen-rich apatite within lunar rocks in 2010 seemed to hint at a more watery past.
He and his colleagues created a computer model to accurately predict how apatite would have crystallised from cooling bodies of lunar magma early in the moon's history.
According to Boyce, the high water content within lunar apatite results from a quirk in the crystallisation process rather than a water-rich lunar environment.
"When water is present as molten rock cools, apatite can form by incorporating hydrogen atoms into its crystal structure," he explained.
However, hydrogen would be included in the newly-crystallising mineral only if apatite's preferred building blocks, fluorine and chlorine, have been mostly exhausted.
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