Nano-Bubbles in Lunar Soil Studied

Queensland University of Technology (Australia) soil scientist Marek Zbik has made a remarkable discovery in the Moon's regolith of nano particles inside bubbles of glass in lunar soil that could solve the mystery of why the moon's surface topsoil has many unusual properties.

The Queensland University of Technology's Science and Engineering Faculty member took the lunar soil samples to Taiwan where he could study the glass bubbles without breaking them using a new technique for studying nano materials call synchrotron-based nano tomography to look at the particles. Nano tomography is a transmission X-ray microscope which enables 3D images of nano particles to be made ( as seen in the video above).

Zbik's study results surprised the researcher who was quoted as saying, "Instead of gas or vapour inside the bubbles, which we would expect to find in such bubbles on Earth, the lunar glass bubbles were filled with a highly porous network of alien-looking glassy particles that span the bubbles' interior.

"It appears that the nano particles are formed inside bubbles of molten rocks when meteorites hit the lunar surface. Then they are released when the glass bubbles are pulverised by the consequent bombardment of meteorites on the moon's ...