Gases trapped in lunar meteorites hint that the moon was formed out of material displaced from Earth after a planetary collision.
Will and her colleagues were able to make the discovery using an advanced mass spectrometer at the Noble Gas Laboratory at ETH Zurich—an instrument that can determine what’s in a chemical substance by measuring the weight of its individual molecules. The instrument at ETH Zurich “has the highest sensitivity for studying helium and neon” in the world, says Will.
We find krypton and xenon in other meteorites that have crashed into our planet: pieces of asteroids that may have been the building blocks of planets like Earth. If we can also find those gases in lunar meteorites, we can compare their compositions “and see the correspondence,” says Burgess. The reason for looking at lunar meteorites, and not just rocks here on Earth, is that they offer a better record of the solar system’s early history.
Henner Busemann from ETH Zurich, a coauthor on Will’s study, says the team saw evidence of krypton and xenon in the lunar meteorite samples they looked at, but they couldn’t be sure of their results. “We cannot make the case yet,” he says. “We will try now to get better precision.”
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