A new study shows that lunar minerals can rust when bombarded by high -energy oxygen particles – a phenomenon known as the “Earth Wind”.
Oxygen particles blown from the earth to the moon can transform lunar minerals into hematitealso known as rust, concludes a new one, published earlier this month in the magazine Geophysical Research Letters.
“The discovery adds data to the investigators about the deep interconnection between the earth and the moonand shows how the moon maintains a geological record of these interactions, ”he says Ziliang JinPlanetary Scientist at the University of Science and Technology of Macao and corresponding author of article., quoted by.
Most of the time, both the earth and the moon are bathed by a flow of PARTICULAR PARTICULAS FROM THE SUN. But during a period of about five days a monthThe earth is positioned between the sun and the moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles.
During this period, the moon is exposed mainly to particles that were part of the earth’s atmosphere before they were thrown into space – a phenomenon known as “Earth Wind”.
This wind contains of various elementsincluding hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. When these charged particles reach the moon, they can be deployed in the upper layers of the lunar soil and trigger chemical reactions.
By 2020, in a science Advances, scientists reported that the mission Chandrayaan-1 From India had detected hematitis near the poles of the moon.
Hematitis is an iron-rich mineral that can form when rocks react with water and oxygen. But the Chemical Environment of the Moon is not favorable To the presence of oxygen, which means that the oxygen responsible for hematitis could have come from another place. The authors of the 2020 study suggested that it could have Arrived through the “wind of the earth”.
Jin and his colleagues decided Test this hypothesis in the laboratory. They simulated the earth’s wind accelerating hydrogen and oxygen ions to high energies. Then they launched these ions against individual iron -rich mineral crystals known to exist on the moon.
The bombing of high -energy oxygen minerals has caused some crystals if they transformed into hematitis. And the bombarding of hematitis with hydrogen caused part of this reverse to iron.
The results show that The moon undergoes many chemical changes and mineralogical when passing through the Earth’s wind every month, explains Jin. Perhaps more important, they reveal that oxygen carried by the earth’s wind can form hematitis on the moon.
