Nature
News: Talks at the first
Lunar
and Planetary Science Conference, held in 1970, described
an analysis of Moon rocks collected during the
Apollo 11 mission.
Petrologist
Larry Taylor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville,
described how he saw only pure metallic iron in the
samples—a sign that there wasn't any water around to rust
the iron. This and other results that year led to the party
line: the Moon is, and always was, bone dry.Forty years on, at
the same annual conference, Taylor and his colleagues announced
that they have been wrong all along.Three groups presented
evidence that certain crystals in the volcanic rocks collected
by Apollo astronauts contain as much as several thousand parts
per million of water.The results suggest that the lunar
interior has always held some water—challenging theorists
to change their thinking about
how
the Moon formed during a fiery impact, and how the
once-molten body cooled.The work also hints that comets have
played a more important part in delivering water to the Moon
than researchers had previously thought.
