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When the first astronomers looked at the moon, they took his dark spots for the sea. By the time astronaut Neil Armstrong ascended the sea of tranquility in 1969, the scientists knew that he was not going to Was acting only from terra firma.
Most researchers concluded that the moon was "dry to the bone," a celestial desert devoid of water or ice. But in a series of articles published from 2008, Erik Hauri, a Richmond-Burton graduate and geochemist, helped demonstrate that water existed on the moon, and that the interior of the moon could hold as many water than the Mediterranean Sea.
Dr. Hauri played football in the 1982 and 1983 teams in Richmond-Burton.
Dr. Hauri, who was 52 years old when he died on September 5 at his home in North Potomac, Maryland, contributed to a new era in our understanding of the moon, an astronomical object known for its ice and its deep water. his coat. He had cancer, said his wife, Tracy Hauri.
A long-time researcher at Washington's Carnegie Institution for Science, Hauri has been recognized for his work with highly sensitive instruments called ion microprobes, which he has pushed "to their absolute technical limits," said Larry Nittler, a cosmochemist colleague and Carnegie.
Using techniques he developed in the 1990s, Hauri used instruments to examine fragment fragments, rock portions the width of a human hair or smaller. He detected trace amounts of elements such as hydrogen and carbon, up to a few parts per million, which allowed him to obtain key information about the Earth and the Moon.
Hauri, a former student in marine biology, began studying rocks after deciding that marine animals were fickle and uncooperative. But he spent much of his career outside the lab collecting volcanic samples from Hawaii, Iceland, Alaska, and Polynesia, which allowed for a better understanding of the movement of elements and minerals in the world. inside the Earth.
He focused on water, which has a major impact on volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate movement, when his friend Alberto Saal suggested measuring hydrogen, water, and other volatile substances at the same time. using lunar samples from the Apollo program.
"When people measured these lunar rocks, they never found anything," said Saal, a geochemist at Brown University who attended high school with Hauri at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. . "We had a good technique. Nothing has been done on hydrogen for a long time. We said "Why not try?"
It took researchers three years to get their samples from NASA, which twice rejected their research proposal, said Saal. But when Hauri and he reviewed their findings, "it was as if a bomb had exploded in our hands."
Their work was centered on orange tinted soil pods, which included tiny volcanic glass beads collected by astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt in 1972. Described by Hauri as a "team capsule Geologically, when the lava was ejected from the volcanoes and cooled so quickly, it turned into glass before falling to the ground.
In an article published in 2008 in the scientific journal Nature, scientists said that some of the beads contained traces of water, about 50 parts per million. Three years later, in a Science article, Hauri and his colleagues reported finding much more – about 100 times more water than previously thought. Their research indicated that the mantle of the moon, a warm and dense region just below the surface, contained about as much water as the Earth's upper mantle.
"If you take our measurements and use them to estimate the water content of the interior of the moon, you arrive at a volume of water equivalent to the Mediterranean Sea. Now it's a little water, "Hauri told NPR in 2011.
Their discoveries have also raised new questions about the origin and the evolution of the moon. Scientists have long believed that the moon had formed during a massive collision about 4.5 billion years ago, when an object the size of Mars hit the moon. Earth, destroying a piece of material that has fused to form our lunar neighbor. Under this theory, however, the heat of the collision was supposed to have vaporized water.
"Our terrestrial planetary formation models involve these types of major collisions, which has led to the prevailing wisdom that all terrestrial planets have dried up," said Richard Carlson, director of Carnegie's Department of Earth Magnetism. "A number of observations, particularly Erik's detection of water on the moon, have forced scientists to consider more complicated but probably more accurate models.
Erik Harold Hauri was born in Waukegan on April 25, 1966. He grew up in Richmond, where his mother was a housewife. His father was a mechanic and a passionate fisherman. Erik went on a journey with a permanent interest in nature.
None of the parents had attended college. But Hauri studied geology and marine science at the University of Miami, where he graduated in 1988 and gained an unusual level of confidence for a student of his age. In interviewing for the Ph.D. program at MIT, his future adviser, Stanley Hart, told him that he could leave the school in two years.
"Oh, that's fine," Hauri replied. "I think I can learn everything you need to teach in two years." He received his Ph.D. in four years, in 1992, and joined Carnegie in 1994.
Hauri received early honors, including the Houtermans Award from the European Geochemistry Association and the Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union. He was elected a member of both organizations.
Outside the lab, he played the guitar – worshiped church music and progressive metal at home. He has also become a self-taught luthier, making more than a dozen guitars and guitars by hand after being unable to acquire a 12-string Fender Stratocaster in a store.
In addition to his 31-year-old wife, former Tracy Spears of North Potomac, the survivors include three children, Kevin Hauri of College Park, Maryland, Matthew Hauri of Silver Spring, Maryland and Michaela Hauri of Pittsburgh; his father, Lawrence Hauri of Sarona, Wisconsin; a sister; and a brother.
Hauri and Saal have continued their lunar work in recent years, discovering that the water on the moon and on Earth seemed to come from the same source, a class of meteorites known as carbonaceous chondrites.
Others have begun to hunt lunar waters, which took off after NASA announced in 2009 that they had found the equivalent of 26 gallons of water after the intentional crash of a satellite at the Pole. south of the moon.
In 2017, two Brown researchers published a study suggesting that water extended over the lunar mantle rather than into some water-rich areas. In August, a new study revealed "direct and definitive evidence" of water ice on the surface of the moon's poles. Scientists have noted that it may one day be possible for this ice to be used as a resource for a station or colony on the moon.
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