Aug 5, 2024 04:13 AM
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-moon-ha...its-source
INTRO: The Moon, for most intents and purposes, is naked, bare, and exposed to the vacuum of space. But Earth's satellite does indeed have a blanket of gasses; thin and tenuous, but persistent enough to be considered a kind of atmosphere called an exosphere.
Exactly how the Moon sustains that diffuse shell of gasses has been something of a puzzle. Earth's magnetic field acts as a confining influence its atmosphere, but the Moon has nothing of the sort, so its exosphere should have been stripped away by solar activity long ago.
It's clear the Moon's deplenishing gasses are constantly being topped up, and now scientists have discovered the source of that replenishment. Tiny micrometeorites, barely the size of grains of dust, are constantly smacking into the lunar surface, kicking up and vaporizing lunar dust, and releasing atoms into the space around the Moon.
"We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere," says geochemist Nicole Nie of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"The Moon is close to 4.5 billion years old, and through that time the surface has been continuously bombarded by meteorites. We show that eventually, a thin atmosphere reaches a steady state because it's being continuously replenished by small impacts all over the Moon." (MORE - details)
PRESS RELEASE (no ads): https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1052911
RESEARCH PAPER: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adm7074
INTRO: The Moon, for most intents and purposes, is naked, bare, and exposed to the vacuum of space. But Earth's satellite does indeed have a blanket of gasses; thin and tenuous, but persistent enough to be considered a kind of atmosphere called an exosphere.
Exactly how the Moon sustains that diffuse shell of gasses has been something of a puzzle. Earth's magnetic field acts as a confining influence its atmosphere, but the Moon has nothing of the sort, so its exosphere should have been stripped away by solar activity long ago.
It's clear the Moon's deplenishing gasses are constantly being topped up, and now scientists have discovered the source of that replenishment. Tiny micrometeorites, barely the size of grains of dust, are constantly smacking into the lunar surface, kicking up and vaporizing lunar dust, and releasing atoms into the space around the Moon.
"We give a definitive answer that meteorite impact vaporization is the dominant process that creates the lunar atmosphere," says geochemist Nicole Nie of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
"The Moon is close to 4.5 billion years old, and through that time the surface has been continuously bombarded by meteorites. We show that eventually, a thin atmosphere reaches a steady state because it's being continuously replenished by small impacts all over the Moon." (MORE - details)
PRESS RELEASE (no ads): https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1052911
RESEARCH PAPER: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adm7074