The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp
• The idea that the
Moon is almost totally
devoid of water has
been around since
the return of the first
lunar samples in 1969
• New analyses of lunar
volcanic glasses
suggest that the idea
is wrong
PSRDpresents
Orange volcanic glass deposit in
field and thin section.
www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Sept08/MoonWater.html
The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp
• H2O is correlated with
S, F, and Cl
• Shows that all have
been lost by diffusion
after eruption, not
added by other
sources such as solar
wind implantation
PSRDpresents
www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Sept08/MoonWater.html
The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp
Calculations show that the volatile loss is best matched by cooling at
2ºC/second and if the initial H2O was 745 ppm—far from a bone dry Moon.
PSRDpresents
www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Sept08/MoonWater.html
The Bone-Dry Moon Might be Damp
The amount of H2O in the Moon
affects our understanding of
processes in the proto-lunar disk,
the result of a giant impact with
the growing Earth.
PSRDpresents
www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Sept08/MoonWater.html