Is There Water Beneath the Lunar Surface
You can"t squeeze blood from a turnip (萝卜), and
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you can"t squeeze water from moon rocks, either. A new analysis of samples
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by the Apollo astronauts suggests that there is virtually no chance that water ever existed beneath the lunar (月球的)
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.
Scientists have been
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for decades about whether the moon contains significant quantities of water. Theoretically, it should because the moon was once part of Earth—the moon was
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by a disastrous collision between our planet and a Mars-size body over 4 billion years ago. Yet
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chemical analyses in the 1970s and "80s of rocks that had been brought back by the Apollo missions turned up virtually no evidence of lunar water. More recently, using improved
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to examine the molecular constituents (分子构成) of the rocks, researchers have found a very small amount of hydrogen (氢) —an indicator of water. In 2013, scientists also found evidence of water ice on the surface of the moon, but where did that ice come from was unclear. It was even
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deposited by an ancient comet impact. It"s an important riddle (谜) to solve, as researchers would like to use lunar water to
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rocket fuel for future deep-space missions.
A team has
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to solve the mystery. Recently, the researchers reported online in Science that the moon has basically zero subsurface water.
A. apparently E. equipment I. initial M. presumably
B. arguing F. facility J. maintaining N. returned
C. attempted G. hardly K. manufacture O. surface
D. created H. implicit L. potential