There's not a lot, comparatively, going on at the Moon. There's dust. There's rock. There's basalt plains, the product of extensive volcanism over much of the Moon's history.
Where this water might have come from is still something of a mystery. But new research suggests an interesting source, a process we know has occurred on the Moon a lot in the past: volcanoes.
Planetary scientists have been wondering whether there would have been sufficient amounts of water molecules in the ancient Moon's volcanic outgassing to fall back down to the surface and form sheets of ice in permanent shadow. Now it seems that the answer is 'yes'.
"Our work suggests that the volcanically active period of the early Moon would have been punctuated by short-lived, collisional atmospheres that enabled the efficient sequestration of large quantities of water ice at the poles and the temporary diurnal availability of water ice and vapor at all latitudes."The Moon seems pretty serene these days, but once upon a time it was a hot mess.
Tens of thousands of volcanoes spewed lava out onto the Moon, covering the surface with volcanic landscapes (for context, the most volcanic body currently in the Solar System is
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