Geologists Suspect There’s a Trove of Precious Metals Locked Beneath The Lunar Surface

When it comes to knowing what kinds of minerals we might find inside the Moon, we’ve literally just scraped the surface. For one small team of Earth scientists from the US and Canada, that’s enough to suggest there’s treasure hiding deep below.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

Geologists Suspect There’s a Trove of Precious Metals Locked Beneath The Lunar Surface

When it comes to knowing what kinds of minerals we might find inside the Moon, we’ve literally just scraped the surface. For one small team of Earth scientists from the US and Canada, that’s enough to suggest there’s treasure hiding deep below.

more…

Um, well, no.

1. Lunar samples brought back are almost all basalt and breccia, with very small quantities of other minerals such as anorthite and volcanic glass.

2. Further surveying of the surface found only small quantities of interesting metals such as titanium.

3. The Moon’s geology is very similar to that of Earth with one crucial difference – much lower overall density. So going deep into the Moon’s mantle and core isn’t going to yield large concentrations of heavy minable materials.

That said, the article is interesting for many reasons:

> “amount of siderophile, or ‘iron-loving’, elements making up the Moon’s mantle. The measurements were 10 to 100 times lower than expected.

That’s extremely interesting.

> “Our results show that sulphur in lunar volcanic rocks is a fingerprint for the presence of iron sulphide in the rocky interior of the moon, which is where we think the precious metals were left behind when the lavas were created,”

Some sulphur was found on the Moon.

From different papers. “We estimate the H2O, F and S concentrations in the primitive lunar mantle source to be at least 110, 5.3, and 70 ppm, respectively – similar to or slightly lower than those in terrestrial MORB mantle.” “Current S estimates for the lunar core range between 1 and 8 wt% S, based on Fe-S equation of state.”

“a S-rich lunar core seems unlikely given the recently proposed S abundances of 74.5 ± 4.5 ppm in the bulk silicate Moon. This is substantiated with the homogeneous S isotope signature of lunar basalts, which suggests that only minor S degassed during the Moon forming event.”

“Lunar mantle depletions of P, V, Cr, Co, Ni, W, and Mo can only be satisfied by core formation in a hot (2200 K) and deep (4.5 ± 0.5 GPa) LMO, if a S-rich (6 wt% S or X S = 0.10) core with a 2.5% core mass is considered. This temperature is somewhat lower then our modeled temperatures for a 2.5 mass wt% lunar core containing 6 wt% S. Upon considering a less S-rich lunar core, as suggested by the recently proposed low abundance of S in the lunar mantle, we found that the temperatures in the Moon during core formation would have been substantially higher than previously inferred. Although the exact formation mechanism of the Moon still remains debated, there is independent evidence for a hot start of the Moon.”

So, there is still a lot of hot debate about how hot the Moon got when it was forming. Low sulphur and precious metals is consistent with a hot start and the reverse with a cold start.