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The California Institute of Technology’s NASA Jet Propulsion Lab reports that the moon is rusting. Which looks quite odd on the surface, but becomes even stranger when you consider that the moon has neither oxygen nor liquid water – the two things typically needed to turn iron and iron-rich rocks into rust.
The mystery begins with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that flows from the Sun, bombarding the Earth and the Moon with hydrogen. Hydrogen makes the formation of hematite more difficult. This is called a reducer, which means it adds electrons to the materials it interacts with. This is the opposite of what is needed to make hematite: for iron to rust, you need an oxidizer, which removes electrons. And while the Earth has a magnetic field protecting it from this hydrogen, the Moon does not.
“It’s very confusing,” [Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii] said. “The Moon is a terrible environment for the formation of hematite.” So he turned to JPL scientists Abigail Fraeman and Vivian Sun to help him hit M3data and confirm his discovery of hematite.
“At first, I didn’t believe it at all. It shouldn’t exist given the conditions on the moon,” Fraeman said. “But ever since we discovered water on the Moon, people have speculated that there might be a greater variety of minerals than we realize if this water reacted with the rocks.”
After taking a close look, Fraeman and Sun became convinced M3Data from the latter indeed indicate the presence of hematite at the lunar poles. “In the end, the spectra convincingly carried hematite, and an explanation was needed as to why he was on the Moon,” Sun said.
More research is still needed on this strange phenomenon. But right now, their main theory is that Earth’s oxygen can hitchhike the planet’s magnetic field – also known, no joke, as the magnetotail – with enough momentum to travel through them. 239,000 miles to the Moon. It’s possible that oxygen even made the trip billions of years ago, when the Earth and the Moon were closer to each other.
The current working theory also postulates that the Earth’s magnetotail could sometimes block solar wind currents from parts of the moon, which would otherwise carry hydrogen which would prevent oxidation which leads to rusting. And then of course, while there is no known liquid water on the moon – the third piece of the rusty puzzle – there is ice:
Li proposes that the fast-moving dust particles that regularly bombard the Moon could release these water molecules to the surface, mixing them with iron in the lunar soil. The heat from these impacts could increase the rate of oxidation; the dust particles themselves can also carry water molecules, implanting them into the surface so that they mix with the iron. At the right times – namely, when the Moon is shielded from the solar wind and oxygen is present – a rust-inducing chemical reaction could occur.
The cosmos is wild.
The Moon is rusting and researchers want to know why [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory / California Institute of Technology]
Earth rustles the moon [Jessie Yeung / CNN]
Image: public domain via Pixnio
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