Earths Air Is Leaking into Space Scientists Are Worried

Did you know that the Moon is rusting? No, not rustic, rusting! Well, that sounds impossible because rust needs oxygen, and the Moon, well, it doesn't have it. Or so we thought. Apparently, Earth is leaking its air, and it's marinating the Moon. It might've been like that for billions of years. What does this mean, and why do scientists say it's great news for a future lunar base? Well, let's find out. A few years ago, the Indian Space Research Organization sent a probe called Chandrayaan-1 to orbit the Moon. Its mission was to take some nice pictures, but it also was carrying a NASA-built instrument designed to chemically map the surface. The readings came back showing something scientists didn't expect on the Moon – hermetite. It's an iron oxide, or in plain words, rust. It's the same red, rusty material that eats through your garden fence or a forgotten bicycle chain. Finding rust on Earth is normal because our planet is wet and airy. You need a strict recipe to make it happen. You need iron, you need water, and you need oxygen. The Moon already has the first ingredient for rust because its surface is rich in iron from billions of years of asteroid impacts. But the other two ingredients are missing. There is no atmosphere to provide oxygen, and there is no liquid water gathering on the surface. But it goes beyond that. Space actually hates rust. The Sun constantly blasts the Moon with the solar wind, a stream of fast particles made mostly of hydrogen. Well, these particles tend to strip oxygen away from rocks instead of adding it. All of that makes it obvious why hermetite doesn't belong anywhere near our satellite. But these results don't lie. The presence of hermetite means that, somehow, despite the vacuum in the Sun's particle stream, the Moon is getting a steady supply of oxygen. It's not coming from deep space or the lunar core. Also, the rust isn't spread evenly. The data showed that the hermetite is more concentrated on the side of the Moon that faces Earth. The far side is mostly clean. The only oxidizer close enough to do the job is Earth. We learned at school that Earth's atmosphere ends at the Kármán line, about 62 miles up. That's where space officially begins. But that's just the thick part. In reality, Earth is wrapped in a gigantic invisible cloud of hydrogen called the geocorona. It's enormous. It glows in ultraviolet light, and it stretches almost 400,000 miles into space. That's farther than the Moon's orbit. This means that, despite being very far away, the Moon is still within the outer edges of Earth's atmosphere. If you were standing on the Moon, looking back at Earth with a telescope that can see ultraviolet hydrogen, Earth wouldn't look like a blue marble. It would look like it's wearing a huge fuzzy glowing halo. When we picture Earth and the Moon, we imagine a huge, clean gap between them. Two worlds separated by… nothing. But that nothing isn't actually empty. The two are already connected by gravity, tugging on each other non-stop. But there's another kind of connection most people never think about. Earth is surrounded by an invisible force called a magnetic field. It's created deep inside the planet and stretches far out into space. We don't see it, but it's the reason compasses work and the Sun doesn't strip our atmosphere away. This magnetic field doesn't just stop at Earth's surface. It doesn't sit there like a perfect bubble, either. The solar wind pushes on it non-stop, stretching it out behind Earth into a long magnetic tail that reaches hundreds of thousands of miles into space, like a tail trailing behind a moving comet. That tail is how Earth's oxygen ends up on the Moon. The Sun slams into Earth's upper atmosphere, knocking oxygen and nitrogen atoms loose and turning them into charged particles. Normally they drift off into space, but because they're charged, Earth's magnetic field grabs them and sends them backward, down the magnetic tail. Most of the time, the Moon is off to the side doing its own thing. But once a month, right around the full Moon, it slides straight into Earth's magnetic ponytail. Inside that tail, Earth blocks the harsh solar wind and gives the Moon a few days of calm. But it's still moving straight through particles leaking from Earth. Those particles collide with the surface and react with the iron in the soil. Repeat that long enough, and it adds up. Earth loses tiny traces of its air, and the Moon quietly collects them, using its weak gravity like a slow, patient net. It's like driving behind a dirty truck. Dirt flies off of it, but you don't really notice until it starts sticking to your windshield. The same thing happens on the Moon. Except, y'know, no windshield. We actually have proof of this happening in real-time. A Japanese probe called Kaguya was hanging out in lunar orbit, and its sensor spiked when the Moon passed through Earth's magnetic tail. It detected a surge of high-energy oxygen ions. Scientists call it the Earth Wind. It acts like the solar wind, except instead of being hot particles from a star, it's made from leftovers of our own atmosphere. And this suddenly makes the Moon part of a much bigger story. Scientists think this kind of atmospheric escape can help explain what happened to planets like Mars. The Red Planet doesn't have a global magnetic field today, but long ago, it probably did. When that shield failed, its atmosphere had a much easier time leaking away. Studying Earth and the Moon is like watching a version of that process on replay, just in slow motion. And it's not unique. Near the edge of the solar system, Pluto's thin atmosphere is slowly being stolen by its moon, Charon. Ooh, larceny in space! Pluto's gravity is so weak that its atmosphere stretches far into space. When those gas particles drift close enough, Charon's gravity simply grabs them. No magnetic field needed, just a leaky planet and a nearby moon pulling the material away. When the Apollo astronauts brought lunar soil to Earth, it was already loaded with hydrogen from the solar wind. The Sun sprays the lunar surface with hydrogen, and over time, that hydrogen gets baked straight into the dust. That's the H, but you still need the O2 to create water. The regolith may already contain trace amounts of oxygen locked into minerals and dust, not as ice, but as something that can potentially be processed. It would mean that regolith is not just a nuisance that destroys gear and rovers. For a future lunar base, even small amounts matter. Water is heavy. Launching it from Earth is a nightmare. If the Moon could supply even part of what astronauts need, it could make a difference. Another cool side effect of this discovery is that drilling into the Moon could tell us more about Earth's history. You see, our planet is terrible at keeping records. It's like a giant recycling machine. It's always changing. Tectonic plates grind the crust down and melt it into magma. Winds and rains erode rocks. The air that we breathe now is different from the one that was around 2 billion years ago. We can guess what the ancient atmosphere was like, but we don't have a physical sample. The Moon is the complete opposite. It's cold and static. When those Earth particles land on the Moon, they get buried under dust and stay there. They're trapped in the crystal lattice of the soil. Think of the lunar surface like an ice core in Antarctica. The deeper we dig, the further back in time we go. If we drill a coarse sample on the Moon, we might, theoretically, find layers of oxygen and nitrogen from 2.5 billion years ago. That is right around the Great Oxidation Event when microbes first started pumping oxygen into our atmosphere. That could tell us something we don't know. It could prove that life started earlier than we thought. It could show us exactly how a dead planet turns into a living one. That's another answer you can give the next time somebody asks why we should go back to the Moon. Also to find the green cheese. Hey, just Google it! That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!