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Water on Moon
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By:
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bossprym
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Mood:
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in love
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Date:
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06/04/2009 22:10:02
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Music:
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None
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Water on Moon - Now its for real we can see real profs that there is water on moon.The first object in the night sky most of
us ever saw, the Moon remains a mystery. Haunted by poets, looked
upon by youngsters in love, studied intensely by astronomers for four
centuries, examined by geologists for the last 50 years, walked upon
by twelve humans, this is Earth's satellite.
And as we look towards the Moon with thoughts of setting up a permanent
home there, one new question is paramount: does the Moon have water?
Although none has been definitely detected, recent evidence suggests
that it's there.
Above: The Moon, photographed by amateur astronomer
Sylvain Weiller.
Why should there be water on the Moon? Simply for the same reason
that there's water on Earth. A favorite theory is that water, either
as water by itself or as its components of hydrogen and oxygen, was
deposited on Earth during its early history--mostly during a period
of "late heavy bombardment" 3.9 billion years ago--by the
impacts of comets and asteroids. Because the Moon shares the same
area of space as Earth, it should have received its share of water
as well. However, since it has only a tiny fraction of Earth's gravity,
most of the Moon's water supply should have evaporated and drifted
off into space long ago. Most, but perhaps not all.
In ancient times, observers commonly thought the Moon had abundant
water--in fact, the great lava plains like Mare Imbrium were called
maria, or seas. But when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on
the Moon in 1969, they stepped out not into the water of the Sea of
Tranquillity, but onto basaltic rock. No one was surprised by that--the
idea of lunar maria had been replaced by lava plains decades earlier.
 Right:
Billions of years ago, water-bearing comets and asteroids pummeled
Earth and the Moon. [More]
As
preparations were underway in the mid 1960s for the Apollo program,
questions about water on the Moon were barely on the radar screen.
Geologists and astronomers were divided at the time as to whether
the lunar surface was a result of volcanic forces from beneath, or
cosmic forces from above. Grove Carl Gilbert in 1893 already had the
answer. That famous geologist suggested that large asteroidal objects
hit the Moon, forming its craters. Ralph Baldwin articulated the same
idea in 1949, and Gene Shoemaker revived the idea again around 1960.
Shoemaker, almost alone among geologists of his day, saw the Moon
as a fertile subject for field geology. He saw the craters on the
Moon as logical impact sites that were formed not gradually in eons,
but explosively in seconds.
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