Water on the Moon originated from Earth - US Scientists reveal

A recent study of the Moon rock samples brought by the Apollo mission has forced scientists around the world to reconsider the formation of our only natural satellite, the Moon. The new theory states that the Moon and the Earth were involved in a giant collision around 4.5 bn. years ago. Earth was already damp by that time and this collision led to the transfer of water from our planet to the Moon.

The currently accepted theory about the formation of the Moon is that a heavenly object the size of Mars crashed into the proto-Earth, thus resulting in the formation of the Earth and the moon. Till date it was believed that all water would have boiled of in space, leaving the Moon completely dry. But the recent study of the Moon rock samples suggests otherwise.

“Some of the water survived the impact, and that’s what we see on the moon”, said Alberto Saal, associate professor for geological sciences at the Brown University.

A group of scientists studied the 1970s samples from the moon and revealed this result on Friday. They studied the melt inclusions in the samples. These inclusions are very tiny bubbles of volcanic gas formed during the formation of igneous rocks.

Melt inclusions are very tiny volcanic gas bubbles in mineral crystals

Another research in 2011 reveled that these melt inclusions contain plenty of water – comparable to that present in lavas forming on Earth’s ocean bed. “In order to find the origin of this water, we needed a fingerprint”, Saal said, “What is used as the fingerprint is the isotopic composition”.

The researchers then measured the amount of deuterium present in the sample. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen having an extra neutron, thus increasing its mass. The amount of deuterium in a thing varies according to the place where it was formed. In general, things formed closer to the Sun have less deuterium than things formed farther out.

Image showing the difference between hydrogen and deuterium atom.

The deuterium-hydrogen ratio of the sample was relatively low, matching that of carbonaceous chondrites (meteorites originating from the asteroid belt near Jupiter, also thought to be the oldest objects in the solar system), which led some scientist to think that the water originated from comet crashes. 

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