“The impact of Lcross punched a hole about 100 feet (30 meters) into the surface of the moon. At first it looked like the debris wasn’t being photographed properly, but now NASA is coming out with results showing that there are more than 100 liters of water was exposed by the impact.”
Couldn’t this water be a breeding ground for certain bacteria, which man could ‘sow’ on the moon? The bacteria could then emit gases and reproduce, which means an exponential growth for both the bacteria and the amount of gas on the moon. The more gas, the more greenhouse effect, which increases the temp, and also allows more complex life.
Now I am not an expert, but the above thought process does not seem completely impossible, apart from the financial aspect.
Answer
I don’t think that would work. The survivability of an atmosphere is determined by two things: on the one hand, the gravity of the planet (or moon). Every planet or moon has an escape velocity. The smaller this escape velocity, the easier the fastest moving particles will be able to escape from the atmosphere to the universe.
On the other hand, the atmosphere is a gas, and in a gas the particles move at an AVERAGE speed determined by the temperature in the atmosphere. But an average is of course only half the story, because not all particles move at the same speed. Due to mutual collisions, a velocity distribution is created in which a small number of particles can really reach velocities that are above the escape velocity.
Now suppose you have a very thin incipient atmosphere on the moon. First, the escape velocity on the moon is only 1.6 km/s2. Secondly, a lunar day lasts two weeks, which means that the surface, and therefore also the atmosphere above it, can really be heated, so that a significant part of the atmosphere will escape. The remaining atmosphere is permanently heated by the sun, so that new particles can constantly acquire the necessary speed. The escape of particles continues like this.
So I don’t think an atmosphere on the moon has a chance to develop. As the atmosphere is forming it will be cooked away by the sun. And the timescale over which the boiling away will probably be much shorter than the formation of the atmosphere.
Incidentally, the moon has an extremely thin atmosphere that is created by outgassing from rocks from the lunar surface. But the density is so tenuous that we can actually speak of a vacuum.
Answered by
prof.dr. Paul Hellings
Department of Mathematics, Fac. IIW, KU Leuven
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/
.