[meteorite-list] THE MOON IS NO LONGER A DRY COUNTY?

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:17:51 -0500
Message-ID: <008901c8e2d2$6a085680$db5de146_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Carl, List,

    The samples are the famous "orange soil" from
Apollo 17, found by Harrison Schmidt. The soil was
orange because of tiny orange glass beads in it. The
beads are one of the few indicators of ancient lunar
volcanism.

    You get glass beads in volcanoes because tiny
drops of molten ejecta cool so fast they can't recrystalize.
Volcanic glass on Earth is often "wet" and gassy rock
because it's ejected into an atmosphere that retards
the loss of water. On the Moon, lava will lose more
of its water, being ejected into a vacuum.

    You can "back-calculate" how much water there
was in the lava before it reached the lunar surface.
Guess what? The lunar lava was as wet as terrestrial
lava, or maybe only half as wet, but WET.

    Since lava is just the pressurized melt of whatever
is down there, that says the deep rock of the Moon
has a similar amount of water in its make-up as the
Earth. And the Earth is one wet planet.

    You can expect a flurry of argument and repeats
of the measurements and the usual flap. If it holds up,
it has a theoretical and a practical implication. It makes
the "Big Crash" Theory of the Moon's origin more
complicated and problematical; it will generate new
"modeling." (I've already thought of a theory but
I have no supercomputers to find out if it's silly.)

    In practical terms, it means there may be deep water
on the Moon, a very handy thing to have if you could
reach it by drilling at some point in the future. The total
absence of accessible water is (or rather will be) the
chief limitation to human expansion on the Moon in
the short term.

    Otherwise, you've got everything you need: free
real estate, a supply of constant and virtually unlimited
solar power, untouched natural resources, abundant
vacuum -- what more could anyone want?

    Water.


Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Historical note: the water content they measured is
consistent with the very low end of the water content
of tektites, so if there's anybody still alive out there
that believes in the "lunar volcano" origin theory of
tektites... hang in there.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Esparza" <carldebtucson at yahoo.com>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
Cc: "list" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] THE MOON IS NO LONGER A DRY COUNTY?


Sterling,
If these samples truly originated on the moon. doesn't this mean "back to
the old drawing board"? Carl

--- On Wed, 7/9/08, Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb at sbcglobal.net>
Subject: [meteorite-list] THE MOON IS NO LONGER A DRY COUNTY?
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 3:19 PM

Hi,

    The absence of water in the bulk composition
of the Moon is a long-held truism -- the driest body
in the Solar System. We've always believed, and the
evidence has supported, the notion that due to its
violent origin all water (and volatiles) were lost.

    Now, someone's found water in "Moon Rocks."

Water is discovered in Moon Samples
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080709-moon-water.html


Sterling K. Webb

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Received on Thu 10 Jul 2008 05:17:51 PM PDT