15,000 years of solar wind in four hours? A Seattle company gives it a go.
"We're living in this world of scarcity with the Moon.".
"We're living in this world of scarcity with the Moon."
The short version
- As part of its nuclear fusion processes, the Sun produces a particularly interesting isotope of helium, known as helium-3.
- Some of this helium-3 escapes the Sun’s gravitational pull as part of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that emanates out across the Solar System.
- Over billions of years, this wind has bombarded every body in the vicinity of the Sun, including Earth’s Moon.
What happened
Lacking a magnetic field or atmosphere, the Moon’s surface has no barrier to prevent the constant flow of this wind. This means that helium-3 has been striking the lunar soil, or regolith, for a long time.
Why it matters
These helium ions penetrate only a little way into the individual grains of this soil, but periodically meteorites have struck the lunar surface to churn the soil, mixing some of this helium-3 a little below the surface.
Summary by Nerd News Network. Read the full article at Ars Technica via the links above and below.