Since the successful landing of the Chang'e 3 lunar probe on the moon, China has explored the lunar surface for more than 8 years, and in these 8 years, a variety of distinctive materials have been found, such as gelatinous substances that reflect bright light, 2100 trillion tons of abnormal materials, and a number of interesting photos have been taken, such as moon rocks that are shaped like rabbits.
On the evening of January 9, 2022, China officially announced a major news about lunar exploration: the lunar Chang'e 5 and Yutu 2 unveiled the water content on the lunar surface, 1 ton of lunar soil 120 grams of water, 1 ton of lunar rock 180 grams of water.
Although the water content of the lunar surface is far less than that of the Earth's surface, this water is enough to make future astronauts living on the moon self-sufficient.
There is no atmosphere on the surface of the moon, it is completely vacuum environment, this has been confirmed, water in a vacuum environment can not exist in liquid state, in other words, as long as the temperature above absolute zero can make the water boiling point, instantaneous evaporation.
The lunar surface can't store water, but it actually has so much water all along, where does it come from?
There are strange "water-making factories" on the lunar surface
Whether it is a photo of the Chang'e 4 moon or a picture of the Yutu 2 moon, the moon always shows a barren and arid alien scene, with high mountains, canyons, and clearly visible impact craters, except that there is no water and life.
However, what we see is not true, in fact, there are strange "water-making factories" on the lunar surface, "water-making factories" are making water all the time, even if the water in the lunar soil is constantly volatilizing, it can still keep the water content in the lunar soil at 120 grams per ton.
As the exploration of the moon continues to deepen, more and more lunar mysteries have been revealed, and the source of water in the lunar soil is one of the mysteries: there is an invisible water-making process on the surface of the moon in a complete vacuum.
The sun is the center of the solar system, its light caress every planet around it, and light is also one of the material conditions for life on earth to survive, without light on earth, life will not be born.
In addition, the sun also blows out a stream of charged particles in all directions all the time, which is mainly composed of hydrogen nuclei, helium nuclei, and also includes a small amount of ionized iron and oxygen, etc., at a speed of 400 to 800 kilometers per second.
In fact, there is a technical term for the stream of charged particles blown out of the sun: the solar wind, which envelops the entire solar system, and every planet is included in it, forming a huge spherical bubble with a radius of about 16 billion kilometers.
When sunspots appear on the surface of the sun, the solar wind suddenly strengthens several times, and the solar wind hits the lunar soil at a super high speed, and the lunar soil will produce a complex chemical reaction to create the substance on which life depends most - water.
The chemical formula for water is H2O, a water molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms (H) and an oxygen atom (O), while a charged hydrogen nucleus in the solar wind interacts with electrons in the lunar soil to become a hydrogen atom (H).
When the high-energy solar wind hits substances such as iron oxide and silicon oxide in the lunar soil, the oxygen bond in the molecule is broken, the oxygen atom (O) is separated, the oxygen atom (O) is extremely unstable, and the encounter with the idle hydrogen atom (H) produces water (H2O).
The silica and iron oxide in the lunar soil are very rich, and the sun continues to blow out the solar wind, and the lunar soil is always producing water molecules (H2O), which is equivalent to a strange "water factory".
Water source in lunar rocks
There is a strange "water-making factory" in the lunar soil, so where does the water inside the lunar rock come from?
Through a large number of lunar photos, it is not difficult to find a very interesting problem, there are few lunar rocks on the lunar surface, it is difficult to find larger lunar rocks, this is because the temperature difference on the moon is extremely large, the high temperature of the moon and day reaches 180 ° C, the low temperature of the moon night is minus 120 ° C, and the maximum temperature difference of the day is more than 300 degrees Celsius.
In this extreme temperature, the lunar rock can not exist for a long time, broken into a powder, if there is a lunar rock on the surface of the moon, then it can only mean that this lunar rock is relatively young, the moon has existed for billions of years, why is there a young lunar rock on the surface?
In fact, this question is not difficult to answer, small bodies hit the surface of the moon, bringing young lunar rock to the moon, at the same time, the answer also explains the source of water inside the lunar rock, small bodies may be small comets with ice cubes, or carbonaceous chondrite asteroids containing a certain amount of water.
At last
1 ton of lunar soil 120 grams of water, 1 ton of lunar rock 180 grams of water, the moon has water is very important for whether you can build a long-term station on the moon, the journey to the moon is long, if the moon can not be self-sufficient, water, food and oxygen transportation costs will be a huge space expenditure.
The space station operates in a low-Earth orbit at a height of 400 kilometers, and the transportation cost of each kilogram of materials is about 70,000 yuan, while the distance between the moon and the earth is 384,000 kilometers, and the transportation cost is at least 4 times that of the space station, and each kilogram of materials requires 280,000 yuan, reaching a terrifying point.
Therefore, studying the water content in lunar soil and lunar rock is of great significance for human habitation on the moon. Interesting and informative scientific content, please pay attention to the only WeChat public account: Interesting Exploration