The common belief that the Moon is a completely dry place seems to be shattered by recent studies which claim to have found evidence of water on Moon. The team of researchers that made the discovery used a device capable of tracing very tiny amounts of substances in rocks and found that glass pebbles brought back to Earth by astronomers from two Apollo missions contain hydrogen.

According to the scientists, this is a very strong proof that water existed below the Moon’s surface. The same technique was successfully used to find out whether water exists in the Earth’s upper mantle. It was found that the quantity of water found in Moon pebbles was about the same as the one found in the upper mantle. This raises serious questions regarding how correct the theory regarding Moon’s formation actually is.

Until now it has been believed that the Moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, when a proto-planet about the size of Mars collided with Earth.

The impact would have resulted into molten debris orbiting Earth and eventually forming the Moon. However, the heat that would have been generated by the impact would have evaporated the water that could have existed into the debris and by the time the Moon would have had a sufficiently strong gravitation field to hold it onto its surface, the evaporated water would have been lost in space.

The largest concentration of water found in the pebbles was in their core, suggesting that water was present on the Moon since its formation, and wasn’t brought to Earth’s natural satellite by comets. NASA has already planned two missions on the Moon that hope to find ice, which NASA hopes to use in future manned mission on the satellite.