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Planetary science

Carbon in the Moon

The Moon was once thought to be depleted in volatile elements. Analyses of the carbon contents of lunar volcanic glasses reveal that carbon monoxide degassing could have produced the fire-fountain eruptions from which these glasses were formed.

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Figure 1: A fire-fountain eruption in Iceland.

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Correspondence to Bruno Scaillet.

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Scaillet, B. Carbon in the Moon. Nature Geosci 8, 747–748 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2530

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