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The moon may not have been as desolate as today – and could have supported life on its surface after its formation four billion years ago.
This revelation comes a few days after the anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin putting a foot on the Moon, a first for humanity, July 20, 1969.
An article published in Astrobiology has Monday described two periods in the history of the Earth's natural satellite, during which conditions may have been ripe for life to develop. . The first window of opportunity was shortly after it was forged from a gigantic impact between Theia, an ancient planet, and the Earth's 4.5 billion years ago. , and the second window was 3.5 billion years ago. formed would have retained water and a low concentration of volatile substances. After the accretion process, where the disc grows en masse, the Moon should have melted with the oceans flowing with magma.
These oceans would have spewed large volumes of hot gaseous volatiles, including water vapor. Water basins and liquid atmospheres could be formed during these fertile periods.
"Living Transient"
"If liquid water and a significant atmosphere were present on the primitive moon for long periods, we believe that the lunar surface were at least temporarily habitable", Dirk Schulze-Makuch, co-author of the paper and professor at Washington State University in the United States
There is evidence that the Moon has retained this water In previous studies, scientists have found hundreds of millions of metric tons of water ice on the moon.There are also more water concentrations of several hundred parts per million hidden inside its mantle.
The primitive moon can also have been protected by a magnetic field to protect it from the incessant solar wind that has stripped away any atmosphere.Although the conditions may have been good for life, the researchers believe that it is more likely that it would have been brought by a meteorite.
Fossilized cyanobacteria were found in stromatolites – sedimentary rocks made of layers of bacteria stacked on one another – on Earth. The earliest samples were between 3.5 and 3.8 billion years old, during a tumultuous period in the solar system where it was filled with giant meteorites thrown up and down between the planets.
Meteorites could have picked up some of the cyanobacteria on Earth from its surface, and landed on the moon. Some of the bacteria could have survived the impact.
"It seems that the moon was habitable at that time," said Schulze-Makuch. "There could have been microbes that thrived in the water basins on the moon until the surface became dry and dead."
To gather evidence of their theory, astrobobins will need scraped rock deposits on the lunar surface. water, and any other indication of other ingredients necessary for life. Scientists could also conduct laboratory experiments to see if cyanobacteria can survive in conditions that reflect the environment on the young moon. ®
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