Home › News › Science & Health › New evidence suggests the Moon has a “rib” from EarthGases trapped in lunar meteorites suggest that the Moon was formed from material displaced from Earth after a planetary collision.About 4.5 billion years ago, a primordial version of Earth covered in molten lava orbited the Sun.Shortly after it emerged, it was hit, in an explosive event, by a smaller object — the size of Mars — called Theia.Upon impact, Theia was shattered, and at the same time, a huge chunk of Earth was sent into space.Gravitational pull kept most of what was left of Theia and the piece of Earth spinning around our planet.In a very short time — less than 100 years — some of this debris aggregated and formed the Moon.This, at least, is the popular theory about the origin of the Moon.Now, new evidence suggests that the Moon was indeed created from the debris of this cosmic impact.Underpinning this idea is the discovery of certain gases inside the Moon, which also offers important new details about how this might have happened.Patrizia Will, a PhD student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, recently analyzed six lunar meteorites recovered by NASA from Antarctica in the early 2000s,In the course of this study, Will and colleagues found helium and neon trapped in tiny glass particles, which formed in volcanic eruptions on the lunar surface when magma was pulled from the moon's interior.Known as noble gases because they are unreactive, these gases appear to have originated on Earth and were likely inherited by the Moon "during its formation," Will explained.The study was published in the journal Science Advances this month.The discovery was made with the help of an advanced mass spectrometer at ETH Zurich's Noble Gas Laboratory.This instrument can determine what is in a chemical substance by measuring the weight of its individual molecules.The spectrometer, according to Will, “is the most sensitive in the world for studying helium and neon”.Thus, the researchers were able to study the composition of the glass particles in the meteorites – separated by small tweezers under a microscope – and find tiny traces of helium and neon trapped inside.The glass particles themselves were “really tiny, tiny grains,” describes Will.The next step in this investigation is to understand how the Earth got its noble gases.There are two possible theories.One is that the gases were delivered via comets and asteroids that collided with the first version of Earth.The other is that Earth absorbed them into its atmosphere from the nebula of gas and dust that surrounded the Sun at that time.According to Wired, to reach a conclusion, scientists will have to look for nobler gases, namely krypton and xenon, in lunar meteorites.Krypton and xenon have been found in other meteorites that have collided with our planet — chunks of asteroids that may have been the building blocks of Earth-like planets, explains Ray Burgess, a geochemist at the University of Manchester and reviewer of Will's study.According to the geochemist, if we can find these gases in lunar meteorites, we can compare their compositions and see compatibility.The reason that lunar meteorites and not just rocks are observed here on Earth is that they offer a better record of the early history of the Solar System.“If the krypton and xenon found in lunar meteorites are similar to those found in meteorites elsewhere, it would support the theory that our noble gases originated from asteroids and comets.If this is not the case, then the idea of ​​the gas and dust nebula would gain more traction,” says Burgess.On the other hand, “if we don't find krypton and xenon, that would be an interesting puzzle that we would have to solve”, adds the geochemist.According to Burgess, "if the moon is wetter than we thought, it adds more possibilities to find resources that we might want to use."That is, finding noble gases on the Moon can also give us information about their water content.If hydrogen and neon managed to survive their turbulent formation, then so could water inside the Moon.“We could produce new models of this process of planet formation in the Solar System and beyond,” says Will."This could be a piece of the puzzle of how Life came to be on Earth - and perhaps on other planets as well."Henner Busemann of ETH Zurich, co-author of Will's study, explains that the team saw evidence of krypton and xenon in the lunar meteorite samples they analyzed, but could not be sure of their results.He clarifies that “we can still present the case.Let's try now to get better accuracy.”Artist's concept of the collision of a Theia-like celestial body with EarthMost scientists agree that Earth's rendez-vous with Theia was a massive collision.Sujoy Mukhopadhyay, a geochemist at the University of California, who was not involved in this study, says, "We're pretty committed to the giant impact hypothesis."He further believes that “this is the best hypothesis on the table”.After the impact, a disk of material displaced by the collision may have formed around planet Earth.The amount of neon and helium discovered in the lunar samples supports the theory that the Moon was born that way, since the relative abundance of these gases suggests that they are from the Earth's mantle and were projected into space by the impact, before merge inside our satellite.If these gases had been transported through space to the Moon by solar winds, one would expect much smaller amounts to be present in the analyzed meteorites.Given that no other study has been able to find evidence of indigenous gases in moon rocks before, Mukhopadhyay praises the research as "a really interesting work".In turn, Burgess explains that “the concentrations are very low, so it is very difficult to detect”.He adds that "it's a big step forward."Your email address will not be published.Save my name, email and website in this browser for the next time I comment.©2021 Cool Beans |AEIOU Ad Networks Editorial Status |Technical Sheet |Privacy Policy |Advertising