Meteorite impacts release water from the Moon
Nature Geoscience
2019년4월16일

Small meteorite impacts release water from the Moon, reports an article published online this week in Nature Geoscience. This research suggests that a very small amount of water is pervasive in lunar subsoil, and preserved from early in the Moon’s history.
A decade ago, trace amounts of water were found on the surface of the Moon, and not only in polar ice deposits as previously thought. Researchers have attributed the origin water to solar wind and meteorites. However, the source and extent of these water traces have been debated.
Mehdi Benna and colleagues present detections of anomalously high and episodic amounts of water in the lunar atmosphere by an instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). The LADEE orbited the Moon from October 2013 to April 2014.
The authors find that most of these detections coincide with 29 meteor streams during the study period. By studying the amount of water released by meteor streams of different sizes, the authors determine that the uppermost 8 cm of lunar soil is dehydrated. Below this, they calculate that water is uniformly present at concentrations up to about 0.05%.
The authors estimate that meteorite impacts on the Moon cause the loss of as much as 200 tonnes of water per year. They also suggest that the subsurface water that is being released has been retained since the Moon formed, or soon after.
These findings may lay the groundwork for future investigation into the origin and fate of water on the Moon.
doi: 10.1038/s41561-019-0345-3
리서치 하이라이트
-
3월4일
Environment: Reservoirs account for more than half of water storage variabilityNature
-
3월2일
Evolution: Neanderthals may have heard just like usNature Ecology & Evolution
-
3월2일
Geoscience: Earth’s atmosphere may return to low-levels of oxygen in one billion yearsNature Geoscience
-
2월26일
Environment: Shifting from small to medium plastic bottles could reduce PET wasteScientific Reports
-
2월24일
Environment: European forests more vulnerable to multiple threats as climate warmsNature Communications
-
2월11일
Environment: Global CFC-11 emissions in declineNature