Water is not just vital to life on Earth – it turns out that it may have been a crucial ingredient of the primordial body that split apart 4.5 billion years ago to become Earth and the moon.
The latest evidence for this, from lab simulations of how minerals formed in the early moon, may settle a long-running debate about whether the early moon and Earth contained water from the outset, or whether it arrived later through collisions with water-bearing comets or asteroids.
“Our study shows that water was there at the time the moon formed, and because that happened soon after the formation of Earth, it shows water was present well before any later addition via comets or asteroids,” says Wim van Westrenen at Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who co-led the team. “We show that the moon, in its initial hot stage, contained a lot of water – at least as much as, and likely more than, the amount we have on Earth today.”
To read more, click here.