The Bear Minimum

Especially on the moon!

I find this a fascinating discovery, that there is actually water up there on that satellite of satellites. We’ve thought it a dry and baron rock, if a pretty one, for the last four decades, so it’s a rather large discovery that it’s not so dry. Still baron, though.

Scientists are now thinking that, when a Mars sized item impacted with the earth, roughly 4.5 billion years ago, there was a great deal of molten debris orbiting around the Earth, which eventually coalesced into the moon as we know it. At this point, most of the water contained in that molten debris was pushed out of the moon in fire fountains, and subsequently eroded on the surface, but there was still significant amounts of water molecules left in the rocks both internally, and superficially, of the moon.

Since obtaining new data, scientists revised their notion from earlier this year of just how much water was on the moon, and are now saying it could be as much as 100 times the amount they previously thought there. Scientists are saying there could be as much as two and a half times the volume of water contained in the Great Lakes of North America on and within the moon.

This, of course, isn’t water as we know it. These scientists are talking about the structural form of water, hydroxyl, which is one oxygen atom with one hydrogen atom, rather than our normal, liquid, water which is one oxygen atom with two hydrogen atoms. Very similar, and yet that one little atom makes all the difference between this solid form and the liquid form of water.

This could mean that things like permanent stations could be built and maintained on the moon, with the aid of a continuing water supply. Sure, that might not happen for a very long time, but now it’s far more of a possibility than before hand!