Reply to post: Re: If elements like oxygen and hydrogen can be found in lunar ice

South Korea's lunar orbiter launches and phones home happily

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Re: If elements like oxygen and hydrogen can be found in lunar ice

I'm wondering whether what they are talking about here is actually the detection of molecular hydrogen and/or oxygen within the matrix of the ice, in other words, tiny bubbles of H2 and O2. I'm guessing they're not looking for neutral atoms of H. or O. because those would be highly reactive, and therefore only likely to be found in interstellar space, and also because neutral hydrogen atoms have a tendency towards weird quantum effects like tunnelling (the reason chemists often refer to the H+ ion as a proton, because that's what it is).

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