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For decades, the prevailing view of the Moon was that it was dry. Then, two years ago, a NASA probe crashed into a deep crater near the Moon’s south pole and confirmed large amounts of water ice within the shadows. Meanwhile, measurements by an orbiting Indian spacecraft suggested that a veneer of water, generated by the bombardment of solar wind particles, covered much of the Moon’s surface.
Now, scientists analyzing tiny fragments of hardened lava from long-ago lunar eruptions report that the fragments contain about as much water as similar magmas on Earth, meaning there is plenty of water inside the Moon too.
“I have to admit, we were a little surprised,” said Erik H. Hauri, a staff scientist in geochemistry at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and lead author of a paper published Thursday in the journal Science. (here)
Awesome. Maybe one day, we can colonize the moon and seen all the bibliobloggers there.
Related articles
- Moon soil hints at water bonanza (bbc.co.uk)
- Moon’s Interior Wet As Earth’s, Rocks Indicate (space.com)
Joel L. Watts holds a Masters of Arts from United Theological Seminary with a focus in literary and rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. His interests include exploring the role of mimesis in human civilization, specifically in the study of religion and media, as well as science fiction and the way in which it has allowed mythology to be explored in light of scientific discoveries of the past century. He is the author of Mimetic Criticism of the Gospel of Mark: Introduction and Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2013) and a co-editor and contributor to From Fear to Faith: Stories of Hitting Spiritual Walls (Energion, 2013).
Website: → Unsettled Christianity
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