Scientists find moon whiskers
Up to now scientists thought that the trace amounts of carbon on the surface of the Moon came from the solar wind. Now researchers at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory have detected and dated Moon carbon in the form of graphite - the sooty stuff of pencil lead - which survived from the late heavy bombardment era 3.8 billion years ago. The researchers found instances of graphite and a form of rolled graphite called graphite whiskers that could only form in very high temperature reactions initiated by an impact. The discovery also means that the Moon potentially holds a record of the meteoritic carbon input to the Earth-Moon system, when life was just beginning to emerge on Earth. The research is published in the July 2, 2010, issue of Science...