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New study finds water in moon rocks

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-10 14:17

US researchers have found water in rocks from the moon -- prompting new questions about its origin, said a study published in Thursday's British weekly journal Nature.

Green glass spherules collected from the Apollo 15 landing site at Hadley Rille on the moon are shown in this undated handout photo. [Agencies]

The discovery was made by analysing small glass beads from lunar sand scooped up by Apollo mission astronauts nearly 40 years ago. They used a new method of analyzing elements in the lunar sand samples to show strong evidence of water, dating back 3 billion years.

The standard "giant impact" theory for the formation of the moon assumes that a huge body crashed into the early Earth, sending massive amounts of molten magma into orbit. This disc of magma gradually coalesced and cooled into the moon as it is today.

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But since the moon is too small to maintain an atmosphere, any volatile gases or liquids, such as water, were thought to have bubbled away and escaped into space.

Now a team at Brown University, Rhode Island, has thrown this theory into doubt by finding water in the titanium glass beads that are scattered all over the lunar surface. These are the result of huge lunar volcanic eruptions that occurred billions of years ago.

Importantly, the beads are made from material that originates from deep within the moon -- avoiding any chance that the water could have come from external sources such as comets hitting the surface.

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