Moon Is Blasted By Oxygen Atoms From Earth's Upper Atmosphere

Japan's Moon-orbiting Kaguya spacecraft observes that the surfaces of the Moon are bombarded by oxygen atoms from the Earth's upper atmosphere for a few days every month. According to this new research, this could have been happening for billions of years.

The findings of the discovery were printed in the journal Nature Astronomy. It was led by Kentaro Terada, a planetary scientist at Osaka University in Japan, and other colleagues. The team discovered that about 26,000 oxygen ions per second blasted every square centimeter of the surface of the Moon during the surge.

Like a breath of fresh air.
Earth passes oxygen from plants to Moon.
Fascinating: https://t.co/wAgpbO4jgF #astronomy by @SumnerScience

— Malcolm M. Campbell (@m_m_campbell) February 1, 2017

According to Science News, the oxygen atoms are ionized by ultraviolet radiation. These oxygen ions are accelerated by the electric fields or plasma waves into the magnetic cocoon that covered the planet Earth. It stretches away from the Sun like a flag in the wind and it covers the Moon for five days each lunar cycle. This caused the Moon to be bombarded with Earthly ions including the oxygen.

An estimated of 4 trillion trillion trillion atoms of oxygen have become embedded in the lunar soil https://t.co/OW6Kdc7RRn — Sofía (@Soflofu) February 1, 2017

The researchers believed that these come from the planet Earth. The ions were also found moving slower than those normally arrive through the solar wind. They also discovered that lunar samples contained some oxygen-17 and oxygen-18 isotopes. These are not usually found in space. On the other hand, these could be found in the ozone layer that envelops the planet Earth, according to Phys.org.

Meanwhile, Kathleen Mandt, a senior research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, said that one of the things that appears to have been a mystery is the oxygen isotope composition of the lunar soil. She further said that these observations are providing a potential explanation for it.