Moon-dust cake mix shows early moon had water

• Autores: Andy Coghlan
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3102, 2016, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Water may have been a crucial ingredient of the primordial body that split apart 4.5 billion years ago to become Earth and the moon. The latest evidence for this, from lab simulations of how minerals formed in the early moon. may settle a long-running debate about whether the early moon and Earth contained water from the outset, or whether it arrived later through collisions with water-bearing comets or asteroids. Water has been detected in samples from the moon before, but only in young rock from the surface, which doesn't tell them whether it was there from the beginning or not. To investigate, Wim van Westrenen at Vrije University in Amsterdam and his colleagues made 10 milligram mixtures containing all the basic lunar ingredients: silicon, oxygen and a sprinkling of magnesium, calcium, iron, titanium and aluminium