According to the reports of British media, sharply comparing with the prior reports that water existed on the moon, British scientists recently discovered that the moon might be quite dry.
The study was published in Magazine Science. The U.S. researchers have gone through chlorine isotope analysis of the samples brought back to Earth by the "Apollo" for many times. They found the sea of magma during the formation of the Moon was of no or almost no hydrogen, which meant that the Moon might be too dry to sustain life.
Dr. Sharp from University of New Mexico was responsible for this study. According to one of the theory of the formation of moon, several billion years ago, a Mars-sized object collided with the young Earth, and led to the formation of moon. After that, till about 45 billion years ago, the Moon cooled and come into being. There were so-called molten rocks on the lunar surface which was able to contain a lot of water. Dr. Sharp said: "As the Earth's cooling and forming, the volcanic gases appeared whose steam might form lots of the marines. Our marine came from the water dissolved in the rock. The same thing could happen on the moon, but the moon is too small with too weak gravity to keep the water. "
At the initial stage, the geologist didn’t find any evidence of water when they studied the samples brought back by "Apollo" space mission. Hence they declared that no water existed on the moon. However, in recent years, the scientists re-examined these rocks and reached a different conclusion. Earlier in 2010, an American research team led by Francis Michael studied the apatite in the lunar rocks again. And they found that compared with the previous estimation, the water contained in the lunar rocks was at least 100 times more than that. In addition, Indian lunar satellite also found the thick arctic ice deposits. However, Sharp pointed out that these sediments might come from a comet hitting the lunar surface
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