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Oxygen From Earth's Atmosphere May Be Traveling To the Moon's Surface (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: New research shows that oxygen from Earth could be journeying all the way out to the Moon, where it then gets lodged inside the lunar soil. It's a process that's likely been happening for 2.4 billion years, ever since oxygen formed around our planet, meaning the Moon's soil may contain trapped particles from Earth's ancient atmosphere. This oxygen exchange, detailed in a study published today in Nature Astronomy, supposedly occurs for just a few days during the Moon's 27-day orbit. Most of the time, the Moon is constantly being blasted with solar wind -- fast streams of charged particles emanating from the Sun. But for five days of every lunar orbit, the Moon passes into Earth's magnetotail, the portion of the planet's magnetic field that stretches outward away from the Sun. This tail shields the Moon from the solar wind, and allows charged oxygen ions from Earth to travel to the lunar surface, according to the study. That means the Moon -- a dead rock incapable of supporting life -- is being showered with the byproducts of life here on Earth. In fact, the source of most of the oxygen in our atmosphere is biological, created by plants during photosynthesis. It's a process that experts have suspected for a while but haven't been able to confirm until today. Researchers have also suggested that other atmospheric components, such as nitrogen and noble gases, are getting to the Moon this way based on lunar soil samples.
So since the moon is stealing our oxygen do we nuke it now or later?
All of the oxygen was made in the sun.
-- Newall
Here come the mining operations.
I would do the same thing, rather than be breathed and have to sustain the cretins on Earth.
See!? I always knew the moon had a breathable atmosphere!
Clearly the moon is robbing us of resources without contributing anything back. It poses an existential threat to our way of life. I would like president Trump to look into this personally and takes steps to ensure that this theft of our resources does not happen again. Perhaps a fourth month ban on moon cycles until a reasonable course of action can be decided upon?
think we are all stoopid.
Ah, so Moon was created by aliens that wanted to sneakily mine the Earth! In 2.5B years the mothership will come and pull the Moon to its home system!
Just look at how lunar size/distance perfectly covers Sun area during total eclipse! Those pesky aliens must be laughing out loud at humans thinking that such a perfect placement was a natural coincidence!
go look up what plants do
/dev/zero >
Maybe in some strange parallel universe, this will be the next habitable piece of rock in the solar system.
As the Moon spins out from Earth's gravity, it collides with a large asteroid, heating the Moon, warming up, starting planetary thermodynamics, releasing all this stored "stolen" life giving elements into the space around the Moon, but kept in place by its' new gravitational strength.
Then ultimately picked up by the sun in just the right spot...
How long would it take for an oxygen ion to make that trip? How fast are these particles moving? Wouldn't it have to be within that five day period while the moon is shielded?
Just another day in Paradise
I don't know about that, but there is certainly a lot of gas coming from Uranus
OK, somebody finds a way of sending all our excess CO2 to the moon, fast.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The Monolith needs to breathe too.
It's just the hot air being expelled by the liberal snowflakes.
I was always told that heavier molecules like oxygen tend to stay towards earth's ground and lighter gases like helium are at the top of our atmosphere. How they manage to get oxygen out of this is beyond me.
At some point in the 70's, astronomers believed that normal planetary formation processes, for a planet of similar size and composition as Earth, would inevitably lead to a very dense atmosphere like Venus. Earth ended up with a small atmosphere because it had a giant, close-orbiting moon that "stripped away" particles from the very edges of the atmosphere. Therefore we should be thankful for this giant moon, which is probably very rare for a planet the size of Earth.
(in fact Asimov says in one of his later Foundation books that complex sentient life only evolved on Earth in this galaxy because of a very rare combination of a giant moon and radioactive crust)
Water gets converted into oxygen splitting the water by photosynthesis.
Are there any waterbears on the moon waiting to spawn when there is enough O2?
Oxygen is created by fusion. Likely from a star. Oxygen isn't created by photosynthesis, unless TFA is specifying only diatomic oxygen.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Just one more way we are polluting the environment! The EPA needs to get on this stat!
Actually, maybe NASA could convince people this is a legitimate problem so they will get behind funding a moon base.
The news about the oxygen leaving the atmosphere dated from last September. So, were they expecting that the oxygen leaving would try to avoid the gravitational pull of the moon or something?
Elok