{"id":112331,"date":"2020-09-02T16:23:35","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T23:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/has-earths-oxygen-rusted-the-moon-for-billions-of-years"},"modified":"2020-09-02T16:23:35","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T23:23:35","slug":"has-earths-oxygen-rusted-the-moon-for-billions-of-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/has-earths-oxygen-rusted-the-moon-for-billions-of-years","title":{"rendered":"Has Earth\u2019s oxygen rusted the Moon for billions of years?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/has-earths-oxygen-rusted-the-moon-for-billions-of-years3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in <i>Science Advances<\/i> led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai\u2019i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH M\u0101noa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).<\/p>\n<p>Iron is highly reactive with oxygen\u2014forming reddish rust commonly seen on Earth. The <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/lunar+surface\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">lunar surface<\/a> and interior, however, are virtually devoid of oxygen, so pristine metallic iron is prevalent on the Moon and highly oxidized iron has not been confirmed in samples returned from the Apollo missions. In addition, hydrogen in <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/solar+wind\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">solar wind<\/a> blasts the lunar surface, which acts in opposition to oxidation. So, the presence of highly oxidized iron-bearing minerals, such as <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/hematite\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">hematite<\/a>, on the Moon is an unexpected discovery.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur hypothesis is that lunar hematite is formed through oxidation of lunar surface iron by the oxygen from the Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere that has been continuously blown to the lunar surface by solar wind when the Moon is in Earth\u2019s magnetotail during the past several billion years,\u201d said Li.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai\u2019i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH M\u0101noa School of Ocean and Earth Science [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}