Scientists find gasses from Earth in rocks from early Moon
Moon meteorites found on Earth contain trace gasses that lend further support to the widely held belief that our largest natural satellite formed from chunks of our planet that were ejected in a massive impact.
Patrizia Will, a doctoral research student at ETH Zurich, studied six separate Moon rocks picked up by NASA in Antarctica, and discovered traces of helium and neon trapped inside the chunks of lunar basalt.
The discovery, Will said, is a first: “Finding solar gases… in basaltic materials from the Moon that are unrelated to any exposure on the lunar surface was such an exciting result.”
Will and her fellow scientists concluded that the helium and neon traces found in the rocks were of Earth origin because of how they were likely involved in the Moon’s formation. As it formed, the scientists said, the Moon pushed magma up to its surface, where it rapidly cooled into rocks, like the ones later found on Earth.
Additional basalt formed over the top of the earliest hardened magma, protecting the older rocks and their gasses from cosmic rays and solar winds.
The gasses themselves were trapped in particles of glass, leaving behind isotopic signatures indicating that they were present from the earliest days of the Moon’s formation. While some noble gasses are present on the Moon’s surface, the ETH Zurich team said the presence in lunar basalt indicates the gasses came from the interior of the early Moon, not external sources like solar winds.
According to the team, the noble gas mass spectrometer used to test the rocks confirmed that fact.
Dubbed “Tom Dooley” for the Appalachian folk song known to the team through The Grateful Dead’s recording of the tune, the instrument was able to detect helium and neon in much higher quantities than expected, suggesting it didn’t come from chance gusts of interplanetary wind.
“The research team was able to measure sub-millimeter glass particles from the meteorites and rule out solar wind as the source of the detected gases,” ETH Zurich said.
Professor Henner Busemann of ETH Zurich’s Earth sciences department said he believes the discovery will lead to a race to find heavy noble gasses and isotopes in other meteorites. He speculates future experiments may look for xenon and krypton, which are harder to identify, as well as volatile compounds like hydrogen and halogens.
Busemann is interested in learning more about how such gasses survived the “brutal and violent” formation of the Moon, which may help shed light into the origins of life.
“Such knowledge might help scientists in geochemistry and geophysics to create new models that show more generally how such most volatile elements can survive planet formation, in our solar system and beyond,” Busemann said.
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Heretic Jones
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So the story goes:
Impact – chunk of earth becomes moon – debris from impact falls to earth – debris called moon rocks despite previously mentioned shattering of earth.
So pieces of earth have characteristics of pieces of earth.
What the story means: humans have no idea how the moon formed and have never been there to collect actual rock samples for comparative study (except the moon rocks that turned out to be petrified wood).
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Joseph Olson
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“Scientists Find WHATEVER They Are Paid to Find” ~ another corrected headline
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VOWG
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Did they come from earth or from the moon to earth? We sure do think a lot about nothing.
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Wisenox
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Seems like a theory based on assumptions to me.
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Herb Rose
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Let’s see. The moon meteorites with traces of helium and neon started out on Earth where they got theses gases. There was an impact that blasted the moon into orbit where it existed in a vacuum for 4 billion years with the surface rocks were constantly expanding and contracting due to the sun. They retained the helium and neon and when something (probably another impact) ejected them from the moon they then fell back to Earth. During their journey home they not only were exposed to the vacuum and expansion in space but also most of the meteor burning up in our atmosphere with only a small part making it to Antarctica. It is not possible for this hot fragment to capture neon and helium from the atmosphere as it went through it, it had to retain these gases from its origin and keep them throughout it journeys.
This is another example of looking for evidence that can be used to support beliefs, which is common in modern physics. The study of physics in todays schools has become training in how not to think and become stupid.
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Robert Beatty
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I think the moon rocks were very hot after they exploded from earth. So no surprise in finding vesicular remnants of that event. The full sequence might have gone something like this: Stage 1. is the protoplanet orbiting the sun in tidal lock. See https://bosmin.com/PSL/23.htm
Stage 2 moon explodes from the protoplanet surface which results in earth axial spin, moon returning to orbit earth, and a higher solar orbit for earth due to acceleration from escaping gasses. The earth enters its giant gas phase that lasts for several hundred years..
See https://bosmin.com/PSL/25.htm
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NecktopPC
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Kinda looks just like a pumice rock that would have been ejected from a volcano, here on earth.
How did it end up on the moon?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumice#/media/File:Pumice_stone_detail444.jpg
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