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Planetary science

Carbon in the Moon

Nature Geoscience volume 8, pages 747–748 (2015)Cite this article

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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.

The abundances and distributions of volatile elements in a planetary body at birth influence the outcome of its evolution. Volatile elements can influence the existence and operation of plate tectonics, determine the composition and evolution of the atmosphere, and are important for the potential emergence of life. Among the rocky bodies in our Solar System, the Moon has long been considered the archetypal example of a volatile-free body. Such a dry Moon is consistent with the hypothesis that it formed from the debris of a giant collision between the early Earth and a Mars-sized body1. However, the detection of water at terrestrial-like abundances in lunar volcanic glasses has overturned the notion of a volatile-depleted Moon2. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Wetzel et al.3 analytically determine the carbon contents of the same lunar glasses and find that the small, but detectable, abundances of carbon and the degassing patterns they display are similar to those of Earth's mid-ocean ridge basalts — further evidence that the Earth and Moon may share a common volatile source.

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Figure 1: A fire-fountain eruption in Iceland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bruno Scaillet is at Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans, CNRS/Université d'Orléans/BRGM, 1a Rue de la Férollerie 45071, Orléans, France,

    Bruno Scaillet

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  1. Bruno Scaillet
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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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