Apr. 2nd, 2023

thewayne: (Default)
A Toyota's a Toyota, after all. This is definitely one of my favorite Weird Al songs, and I think the video is fantastic.

thewayne: (Default)
As you may, or may not, remember, in 2020 China successfully landed a rover on the moon, collected samples, and returned them to Earth. They've made a pretty impressive discovery: "...analysed fine glass beads from lunar soil samples returned to Earth in December 2020 by the Chinese Chang’e-5 mission. The beads, which measure less than a millimetre across, form when meteoroids slam into the moon and send up showers of molten droplets. These then solidify and become mixed into the moon dust.

Tests on the glass particles revealed that together they contain substantial quantities of water, amounting to between 300m and 270bn tonnes across the entire moon’s surface."


and further... "“It’s not that you can shake the material and water starts dripping out, but there’s evidence that when the temperature of this material goes above 100C, it will start to come out and can be harvested,” Anand said.

The water appears to form when high-energy particles streaming from the sun – the so-called solar wind – strike the molten droplets. The solar wind contains hydrogen nuclei, which combine with oxygen in the droplets to produce water or hydroxyl ions. The water then becomes locked in the beads, but it can be released by heating the material.

Further tests on the material showed the water diffuses in and out of the beads on the timeframe of a few years, confirming an active water cycle on the moon."


It's been established that there's frozen water on the moon, in shaded craters,

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/27/glass-beads-on-moon-surface-hold-billions-of-tonnes-of-water-scientists-say

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/03/27/2034216/glass-beads-on-moons-surface-may-hold-billions-of-tons-of-water-scientists-say

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