Electric Sparks from Storms May Alter Evolution of Moon's Cold Lunar Soil

First Posted: Aug 22, 2014 09:02 AM EDT
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The moon may not be as peaceful as once thought. NASA scientists have found that over the eons, periodic storms of solar energetic particles may have significantly changed the properties of the soil in the lunar craters through the process of sparking.

Sparking is essentially electrostatic breakdown, and it's this breakdown weather process that has likely changed the very nature of the moon's polar soil. In fact, permanently shadowed regions of the moon may just hold clues to the past history of our solar system.

This sparking occurs when high-energy particles from large solar storms penetrate the moon's frigid polar regions. The storms electrically charge the soil and then cause the sparking, which is when the particles build up charges faster than the soil can dissipate them.

"Decoding the history recorded within these cold, dark craters requires understanding what processes affect their soil," said Andrew Jordan, lead author of the paper, in a news release. "To that end, we built a computer model to estimate how high-energy particles detected by the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument on board NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) can create significant electric fields in the top layer of lunar soil."

Currently, the researchers are looking at whether other instruments aboard LRO could detect evidence for sparking on lunar soil. In addition, they hope to improve the model they created in order to better understand the process and its consequences.

"If breakdown weathering occurs on the moon, then it has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of planetary surfaces in the solar system, especially in extremely cold regions that are exposed to harsh radiation from space," said Timothy Stubbs, co-author of the new study.

The findings are published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

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