Water on the Moon? New research boosts hopes

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — The ancient astronomers once deemed the Moon, like Mother Earth, to be awash with water and gave fanciful names to its "seas."

The space age, of course, revealed these oceans, or Mare, to be desolate, bone-dry basalt plains -- and ever since, the Moon has been saddled with the reputation as a hostile place forever lacking a key ingredient for life.

But this image may need a makeover, if some of the hopes sketched in a new scientific study turn out to be true.

Published on Thursday in the British weekly journal Nature, the paper puts forward evidence that water has been a part of the Moon since its early existence.

And it strengthens speculation that the precious stuff may be found at the lunar poles.

A leading theory is that the...