Even before astronauts landed on the moon, they knew the soil would be something special. With no atmosphere to intercept incoming micrometeorites, it has been subjected to a 4.5 billion year bombardment that has produced a layer of dust far finer than confectioner’s sugar. That dust, the Apollo crewmen found when they went out to play in it, did some strange things: it rose above the surface when disturbed and hung there far longer than could be explained by the moon’s weak gravity; it crept deep into the weave and cracks of virtually anything it touched and clung there as if adhesively attached. What’s more, it was filled with exquisitely fine green and orange glass beads — products of the superheated melting and cooling that followed impacts. In 2012, Geologist Marek Zbik of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, used a nanotomograph—which didn’t even exist when the Apollo crews flew—to study a soil sample brought back by one of the missions. He found that those microscopic beads are filled with nanoparticles, with an electrostatic charge that accounts for the soil’s tendency to float. The particles are also chemically active and electrically sticky, which explains why they could never simply be brushed off of an astronaut’s uniform. Even forty years after the great lunar flights, the science just keeps on coming.
Science & Space
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8. Nanoparticles in the Moon’s Soil
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