Our Moon Is No More Bone Dry

Pulse

oi-Denise Baptiste

By Denise Baptiste

Friday, August 6, 2010, 11:59

As previously reported that the inside of the moon is watery . But, according to the new study it is said that it isn't as watery as reported earlier. For decades now , it was said that the astronomers had thought the moon to be bone dry inside as well as on the out, it is recently that they have found water ice on the lunar surface and the reanalysis of the rocks that was brought back by the Apollo astronauts showed evidence for significant amounts of water inside the moon in the form of hydroxyl(-OH), which is a hydrogen compound formed by the breakdown of water.

Zachary Sharp, geochemist, at the University of New Mexico and his fellow colleagues measured the moon rocks “ chlorine isotopes", or different forms of chlorine atom at a new study of Apollo moon rocks. In regard to this the chlorine is strongly attracted to hydrogen and as the magma cools and solidifies, the hydrogen and the chlorine which is present in the molten rock tends to bond from hydrogen chloride gas. It is said that on the phase of the earth , the volcanic magma contains more hydrogen than chlorine. So, which is why most of the chlorine bonds with hydrogen.

Now because of nature of the bond, the ratio of chlorine isotopes left behind in the cooling rock is about the same as the ratio that gets released as gas. The moon was analysed and was found that the chlorine isotope values vary by 25 times more than the Earth's and the best way to explain this result is that the rocks, formed as the moon cooled 4.5 billion years ago, are low in hydrogen.
Instead of becoming mostly hydrogen chloride gas, the chlorine in lunar magma was free to bond with other elements and form salts such as iron chloride and zinc chloride, leading to a wider range of chlorine isotopes in the rock.

The study concluded that If the moon lacks hydrogen they it should lack water too.