A team of international researchers has come up with some exciting and never-before-heard views about the atmosphere of earth and it’s only natural satellite – Moon. According to the fresh study, Oxygen from the atmosphere of earth is slowly moving towards the moon and ended up landing on the lunar surface. After coming across this fact, the scientists now are expecting the byproducts of life to sprinkle onto the lunar soil.
As indicated by the astrophysicists at Osaka University, Moon, because of orbiting around 240,000 miles from Earth, might be sporadically merging with the atmosphere of earth and attracting the air particles from the planet. In this pattern, oxygen from Earth is likely to be taking the trip from earth’s atmosphere to all the way out to the Moon, where it eventually gets wedged inside the soil of moon. As expected by researchers, the process of oxygen shifting from earth to the moon is going on since 2.4 billion years. It means, ever since oxygen configured in the atmosphere of earth, the process of ‘oxygen exchange’ have started and hence scientists believe the lunar soil may hold ensnared particles from Earth’s antique atmosphere.
The scientists have given a detailed description of this mysterious oxygen exchange, in today’s published journal edition of ‘Nature Astronomy’. As mentioned in the study, the process of oxygen exchange supposedly takes place for just a few days throughout the 27-day orbit of the moon around the earth.
Most of the time, the only natural satellite of earth is continually being irritating with solar storm – the super-fast brooks of electric particles originating from the Sun. But for five days of each lunar course, the Moon moves beyond the magnetotail of earth – the segment of earth’s magnetic field that draws outward from the Sun. This extremity protects the Moon from the intense solar storms and enables the charged oxygen ions to travel from Earth to the moon’s atmosphere.
It means the Moon, which earlier believed to be a mere dead rock, lacking the capability of supporting life – is slowly becoming a habitable zone, with loads of oxygen ions. The study also highlights that; Moon is continually freshened up with the derivatives of life here on Earth. As the foundation of most of the earth’s oxygen in particles is biological, generated by plants throughout photosynthesis, it may enable Moon to host lives in the near future.
The biogenic oxygen has infected the lunar surface and it might be soon capable of accommodating lives,” said Kentaro Terada, an astrophysicist at Osaka University.
Since long, scientists are suspecting such a process to going on between earth and moon and hence continually monitoring and observing both the planet and its natural satellite. By experimenting on the lunar soil, the scientists also have found that other atmospheric components like nitrogen and noble gasses are also traveling to the Moon, which is quite surprising.