Moon's Interior Wet As Earth's, Rocks Indicate

We seem to be learning more and more about our neighbor everyday.

Just goes to show theres more water than we assume, could be more water on other bodies in our solar system
than we thought possible.

www.space.com... +Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo

Edit: lol you have a source... ok

reply to post by DaMod

Sorry i hit post before i added the source, my mistake.

Originally posted by Cohort
Just goes to show theres more water than we assume, could be more water on other bodies in our solar system
than we thought possible.

Except the Earth doesn't have much water in it's interior. Most of the water on Earth is on the surface.

Originally posted by Pimander

Originally posted by Cohort
Just goes to show theres more water than we assume, could be more water on other bodies in our solar system
than we thought possible.

Except the Earth doesn't have much water in it's interior. Most of the water on Earth is on the surface.

www.sciencedaily.com...

Originally posted by Cohort

Originally posted by Pimander

Originally posted by Cohort
Just goes to show theres more water than we assume, could be more water on other bodies in our solar system
than we thought possible.

Except the Earth doesn't have much water in it's interior. Most of the water on Earth is on the surface.

www.sciencedaily.com...

While I don't doubt that some water might be locked up in minerals within the Earth, Smythe looks like he (and the writer of that article) may well be over-egging the significance of his own findings. He doesn't seem to have talked on the subject since 2004 for example.

That said, I also don't doubt that there is more water on other bodies in the Solar System than was previously thought - including on the moon.

reply to post by Cohort


Ummmmm.....it isn't liquid water:

.......Professor Joseph Smyth discovered that a mineral called wadsleyite, located 250 miles to 350 miles below the earth's surface, could contain water. The wadsleyite does not contain liquid water, but the elements needed to make water bound up in crystals in solid form.

reply to post by weedwhacker

As I say, the research is being taken out of context if you ask me.

Hydroxate minerals contain a hydroxide group. Hydroxide is a hydrogen bonded to an oxygen (HO). These minerals can undergo a chemical reaction called dehydration and the hydroxide group combines with another hydrogen to give water (H2O).

However, you are right, the HO group is bonded chemically to the rest of the crystal lattice and isn't strictly water.

True chemical water can also be trapped within a crystal lattice but appears to be extremely rare on the moon although recently that has been questioned.

The Moon has long been thought to be highly depleted in volatiles such as water, and indeed published direct measurements of water in lunar volcanic glasses have never exceeded 50 parts per million (ppm). Here, we report in situ measurements of water in lunar melt inclusions; these samples of primitive lunar magma, by virtue of being trapped within olivine crystals prior to volcanic eruption, did not experience post-eruptive degassing. The lunar melt inclusions contain 615 to 1410 ppm water, and high correlated amounts of fluorine (50 to 78 ppm), sulfur (612 to 877 ppm) and chlorine (1.5 to 3.0 ppm). These volatile contents are very similar to primitive terrestrial mid-ocean ridge basalts and indicate that some parts of the lunar interior contain as much water as Earth's upper mantle.
Hauri et al. High Pre-Eruptive Water Contents Preserved in Lunar Melt Inclusions

Much bigger news is surely this old news from 18 months ago.

India's inaugural Moon mission has been hailed as a "grand success" by the head of India's space agency, after helping find evidence of water on the Moon.

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief G Madhavan Nair said a spacecraft probe found more water on the Moon "than was expected."
news.bbc.co.uk...

The Indians intend to be more ambitious in the future and could even beat NASA to an official Mars manned flight.

The ISRO now wants to land a craft on the moon by 2013 and has reaffirmed its commitment to sending a mission to Mars by 2015. ISRO wants to garner a larger share of the increasingly competitive commercial satellite launch market. On Thursday, it launched six European and Turkish satellites from its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. "[The] returns, in terms of the science, the technology, inspiration, stature, prospects for international cooperation... are immense," K. Kasturirangan, former ISRO chairman who conceived Chandrayaan-I, told TIME before the launch. It doesn't hurt that the country's celebrating too.
www.time.com...

Surely this is more worthy of discussion. You could contribute to some old threads although the moderators might even allow you to revive the topic if you included any more recent findings too. See below for the surprisingly short discussion.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Question for any mods reading this: As the discussion regarding water on moons surface is so short - would you allow a new thread on the topic presented to trigger a real debate?