The moon is quietly absorbing tiny fragments of Earth’s atmosphere — and has been doing so for billions of years, a new study reveals. This surprising case of cosmic cannibalism is thanks to supercharged solar winds and, more importantly, our own planet’s magnetic field.
The findings upend a 20-year-old theory about how certain charged particles, known as ions, ended up on the lunar surface, and could have big implications for upcoming moon missions, researchers say.
Ever since NASA’s Apollo missions first returned lunar samples to Earth in the early 1970s, scientists have been puzzled by traces of volatiles — substances that vaporize at relatively low temperatures, including water, carbon dioxide, helium, argon, and nitrogen — that they found within the moon’s soil, or regolith. It soon became clear that some of these substances, particularly nitrogen ions, had originated from Earth’s upper atmosphere and were most likely blown onto the moon by gusts of solar wind. (Recent research has also shown that some volatiles on the moon, such as water, may be created directly by the solar wind and have no terrestrial ties.)
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