A quarter of water for every cubic yard of soil

[Jairo]

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090924-water-moon-confirmed.html

I suppose it's a reporter's mistake. If there's so much extractable water on Moon's soil, how come they didn't find that with previous samples?

What do you know about that?

[Jason]

It's a quart per cubic yard, not a "quarter". How much water is there in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil, I wonder?

A cubic yard of just water would be around 807 quarts of water, as a comparison. One quart per cubic yard is not all that much, really.

[Bob B.]

Sept 24, 2009 16:20:45 GMT -4 Jason said:

How much water is there in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil, I wonder?

The in-situ moisture content of soil varies wildly (consider a swamp versus a desert). A better way of thinking about it might be to consider the plastic limit (PL) and liquid limit (LL) of a soil. The PL is the moisture content at which a soil begins to exhibit plastic behavior, and the LL is the moisture content at which a soil begins to exhibit liquid behavior. This varies from one soil type to another, but sample numbers might be in the neighborhood of 15% PL and 25% LL (percent by mass). In earth compacting operations (such as for a foundation) we are concerned about the optimum moisture content, which is where a soil can be compacted to its maximum dry density. Again we might be looking at around 15%. For soil tillage the optimum moisture content is, for many soil types, around 0.9PL.

Soil density varies, but an average of about 100 to 110 pounds per cubic foot is the norm. Therefore, a soil containing about 2 gallons water per cubic foot is a good workable soil. This works out to 216 quarts of water per cubic yard.

[Jairo]

Sept 24, 2009 16:20:45 GMT -4 Jason said:

It's a quart per cubic yard, not a "quarter". How much water is there in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil, I wonder?

Is that too little water to be detected in a scientific analysis on the very 382 kg of lunar samples?

[PhantomWolf]

Sept 24, 2009 23:04:13 GMT -4 Jairo said:

Sept 24, 2009 16:20:45 GMT -4 Jason said:

It's a quart per cubic yard, not a "quarter". How much water is there in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil, I wonder?

Is that too little water to be detected in a scientific analysis on the very 382 kg of lunar samples?

The Apollo samples were "damp" but it was unsure as to if this was due to water being present on the samples on the lunar surface, or if they had been contaminated during the return, or after arriving on Earth.

[Jason Thompson]

Sept 24, 2009 23:04:13 GMT -4 Jairo said:

Is that too little water to be detected in a scientific analysis on the very 382 kg of lunar samples?

The problem with analysing lunar rocks on Earth is that, however careful you are, you can't guarantee that contamination has not occurred, especially if you're looking at tiny amounts of water. The analysis by orbiting probes is not subject to contamination as the rocks and soil they are analysing have never left the Moon or been handled by any earthly means.

What was more notable about the Apollo rocks, if I recall correctly, was the lack of hydrated minerals in them, meaning they formed in the absence of water and were not subjected to a lot of water during their lifespan, which is quite consistent with the suggestion of water forming slowly in situ by interaction between solar radiation and oxygen in the soil and rocks.

[tkw251070]

Sept 25, 2009 8:18:15 GMT -4 Jason Thompson said:

The problem with analysing lunar rocks on Earth is that, however careful you are, you can't guarantee that contamination has not occurred, especially if you're looking at tiny amounts of water. The analysis by orbiting probes is not subject to contamination as the rocks and soil they are analysing have never left the Moon or been handled by any earthly mean.

Exactly. Anyone with any experience in surface physics will tell you about the problems of the science and removing contamination. Surface physicists work in ultra high-vacuum, spending all there time baking their chambers to get rid of unwanted species. Water is their biggest enemy as it sticks to pretty much everything. I would assume that when the moon rocks were originally analysed, they would have been very concerned about water, not only primary contamination, but any secondary contamination from the testing method they were using. If I am correct, the NASA scientists who tested the Apollo rocks found water, but dismissed the results as contamination [BBC this morning]. Is this correct?

Of course, the animals at ZooTube have gone mad. They say this is the final nail in Apollo's coffin, as the original rock analysis said there was no water. Of course, they work on the assumption that the water found recently is uniformly distributed, and I have yet to see evidence of this.

[Jason Thompson]

They also ignore the likelihood that the analysis was not carried out on the surfaces of the rocks, precisely because they believed it was contaminated, but inside the rock. Since the water is theorised to be the result of interaction between solar particle radiation and the oxygen in the rock, the water would only really be formed on the surface. The pristine interior of the rock almost certainly is devoid of water.

The scientifically illiterate hear 'water' and assume everything is wet and water is permeating the entire Moon somehow.

[Jason]

Also, the estimate from the original story is 1 quart per cubic yard of lunar soil, not lunar rocks.
It's still less than 1/200th of the amount of water we could expect in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil.

[tkw251070]

Sept 25, 2009 11:26:09 GMT -4 Jason said:

Also, the estimate from the original story is 1 quart per cubic yard of lunar soil, not lunar rocks.
It's still less than 1/200th of the amount of water we could expect in a typical cubic yard of Earth topsoil.

Also, the original article states they are unsure if they have found hydroxyl or water.

While I understand that writing a precis on the testing of the Apollo rocks might be slightly tricky because of the volume of information on the subject. Does anyone have any links or information regarding the testing of the Apollo rocks so the conclusions that the rocks do not contain water can be brought into scientific context. I can only make educated guesses to why that conclusion was drawn. It would be nice to establish the full facts.

[PhantomWolf]

Does anyone have any links or information regarding the testing of the Apollo rocks so the conclusions that the rocks do not contain water can be brought into scientific context[/i]

Note here the difference between "Contains water" and "has water on their surface". Lunar rocks don't have water in them, but they do have small amounts of water on them.

[tkw251070]

Sept 26, 2009 2:25:51 GMT -4 PhantomWolf said:

Note here the difference between "Contains water" and "has water on their surface". Lunar rocks don't have water in them, but they do have small amounts of water on them.

This is exactly what needs clarifying. The hoax proponents have clung onto the original research that concluded the Apollo rocks were absent of water, whereas more recent observations have reported water on the moon. Hence they claim proof of a hoax.

HBs deal in headline science and draw wrong conclusions as they do not understand the nature of the detail. It would be interesting to understand the original research used to ascertain the composition of the Apollo rocks. The devil is in the detail.

Was it surface testing of the rock exposed to the lunar environment? Was it to take a rock, cleave it in vacuum and then test the cleaved surface for hydroxyl content, and therefore determine whether water processes were involved in forming the moon rocks? What techniques were used to assess water presence, and what were their limits at the time? Is is correct that NASA scientists found water on/in the Apollo rock but dismissed it as contamination? There are lots of questions here, and I feel a rebuttal is required as the HBs run round like the cat who has got the cream with the recent news.

TK

[toseek]

I emailed one of the lunar geologists quoted in articles about the findings, Larry Taylor, about this very issue and got the following response (I have permission from him to post this):

Water was found to be present in all the lunar soils examined way back in Apollo days ('70-'73). Everett Gibson and his team performed step-wise heating experiments on the soils and always observed water - some more recent lunar enthusiasts may not be so familiar with the Apollo literature in the Proceedings of the Lunar Conferences, where Gibson's papers occur. However, largely because of the fear of contamination from terrestrial water or even the "dry" LN2 (with 20 ppm H2O), the subject of lunar water was not pursued.

When "rust" was found in Apollo 16 rock 66095 in 1973, I went to great pains to show that this rust, which I observed in some additional 40 Apollo 16 breccias, was the mineral akaganeite, FeO(OHCl), formed by the oxyhydration of lawrencite, a meteoritic mineral, with a composition of FeCl2, which is a tremendous getter of water. I showed that the kinetics of oxyhydration of FeCl2 was so rapid in terrestrial air of various humidities that crystals of akaganeite of 100 microns and larger could easily form overnight from lawrencite. But, some of the rust was in rocks in boxes that had not completely leaked back to 1 atm Houston. I reasoned that based upon the relatively long 'mean-free-path of HOH versus O2 and N2, that water selectively leaks thru knudsen-size holes. Rust from the Moon? No way.

In retrospect, perhaps some of the rust may have started on the Moon, just as some of the water detected in all lunar soils may have a lunar origin. I have been quoted in the New York Times yesterday as saying that "I have had to eat my shorts," or something like that. Meaning I have had to admit I was wrong based upon the M3 data. What Alberto Saal reported was ~40 ppm water, but I am still not completely convinced. Several groups have been examining Cl-F apatites in mare basalts and finding water, and this should make the light of day any time now. We have also recently found water in other lunar materials.

Enough education on the history of lunar water, much of which today's Google searches miss. Anyone can easily find the Gibson or Taylor references in the Lunar literature.

Hope this helps.

Larry

[Jairo]

Even with all this water found from the start, are the lunar samples much drier than terrestial samples to justify the fame of "no water"?

[PhantomWolf]

The answer is already in the thread. The interior of the rocks shows that they formed without the presence of water. As to the soil, lunar soil has less than 0.5% the water that of Earth soil.