Water Discovered in Moon Rocks Reveals New Clues About Lunar History

Scientists have uncovered some new information about Earth's moon. After analyzing moon rocks, scientists have found that the amount of water in the moon's rocky interior actually varies regionally. The findings reveal new clues about how water originated and was distributed on the lunar surface.

That's not to say that there's liquid water on the moon. Instead, this water is trapped in volcanic glasses or chemically bound in mineral grains inside lunar rocks. Yet some of these rocks, which originated from some areas in the lunar interior, contain far more water than rocks from other places. In addition, the hydrogen isotopic composition of this lunar water varies from region to region.

Understanding where lunar water originated from has important implications for Earth. Currently, there are two theories-either the water was inherited from the Earth during the moon-forming impact, or the water was added to the moon later by comets and asteroids. It could also be a combination of these two processes.

"Basically, whatever happened to the moon also happened to the Earth," said Katharine Robinson, one of the researchers, in a news release.

In order to learn a little bit more about the water on the lunar surface, the researchers compiled water measurements from lunar samples. They measured hydrogen and its isotope, deuterium with ion microprobes. The findings revealed some new clues about the water.

"This was consistent with the idea that blossomed during the Origin of the Moon conference in Kona in 1984-that the moon formed by a giant impact with the still-growing Earth, leading to extensive loss of volatile chemicals," said Robinson in a news release. "Our work is surprising because it shows that lunar formation and accretion were more complex than previously thought."

Currently, the scientists plan to study a new set of Apollo samples from NASA in order to look for additional clues about the early life of both Earth and the moon. This should allow them to narrow down the possibilities of exactly what happened in the moon's ancient past.