University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
researchers have studied the existence of water on the moon and discovered its
Taylor, study leader and a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary
Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, along with a team of
researchers, have found where the water on the moon originated.
was not only able to trace the lunar water's origins, but he was the one who
discovered that the moon even had water in the first place. This lunar water
discovery he made last year changed all beliefs that the moon was completely
this discovery, researchers also found that the moon has an abundance
of water. So much, in fact, that humans could possibly live on the moon.
Now, Taylor has found the origins of all this lunar water.
and his team believe the water came from comets crashing into the moon shortly
after it formed. They came to this conclusion after studying rocks that were
retrieved from the Apollo mission. The team then measured the rocks' water
signatures through the use of secondary ion mass spectrometry, which could
allow researchers to tell where and when the lunar water originated.
turns out, water on the moon is different from water on Earth. This discovery
led to the belief that comets supplied the moon with a majority of its water
back when it originally formed.
believed that the
moon formed when the nascent Earth and Theia collided, sending
materials out into space. These materials created the moon, and according to
Taylor's theory, comets were hitting both the moon and Earth. But because the
Earth already had an abundance of water, it was not affected by these comet
collisions and did not acquire enough of the comets water for it to be
integrated into its original water system. But the moon, which was dry at this
point, received a majority of its water via comet collisions.
discovery forces us to go back to square one on the whole formation of the
Earth and moon," said Taylor. "Before our research, we thought the
Earth and moon had the same volatiles after the Giant Impact, just at greatly
different quantities. Our work brings to light another component in the
formation that we had not anticipated - comets."
new theory of how the moon formed suggests that water has been present
throughout the moon's entire history. While comets supplied the moon's internal
supply of water, solar winds supplied the moon's external supply of
makes the water on the moon different from water on Earth is that it contains
the ingredients for water - hydrogen and oxygen - but is not yet water. If the
rocks on the moon were heated up, the ingredients would turn into water.
water could allow the moon to be a gas station in the sky," said Taylor.
"Spaceships use up to 85 percent of their fuel getting away from Earth's
gravity. This means the moon can act as a stepping stone to other planets. Missions can
fuel up at the moon, with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen from the water, as
they head into deeper space to other places such as Mars."
study was published in Nature Geoscience.