Water on the Moon... as Predicted

Lunar Rock, courtesy NASA

It's not often you find a science fiction novel predicting something scientists later discover, so you'll pardon me taking a moment to say, "I called it!"

All right, it was a guess, but an educated guess. Here's the recent news from Science World Report:

Researchers announced the discovery of tiny amounts of water in the moon rocks brought to Earth by the Apollo missions, which in turn could invalidate the current theory of how our Moon was formed in the first place.

The sample comes from the lunar highlands, which is considered the oldest region of the lunar surface because it's not covered in lava from major impacts. Most current theories of lunar formation say any water that may have been deposited there should have long since disappeared, and yet this new sampling turned up trace amounts of water.

In my novel, Beyond Earth, we find character Neiman Hyatt explaining to some aerospace engineers that he's going to get fuel from lunar ice for his return trip from the Moon:

"Then you need to land at one of the poles to get enough ice," they would say. "That's where the Europeans plan to go."

"No. We're landing at Alphonsus." He pointed toward the lunar highlands at the center of the face of the moon.

"There’s no ice there."

Neiman pulled up the radar scans to prove it.

The engineers remained skeptical: "After a few million years, any ice in the lunar soil would have baked away in the sun. It has to be something else giving those readings."

Neiman insists the ice is there because it wasn't deposited millions of years ago, but in a single, more recent event. While the new discovery is just a trace (6 parts per million), it's enough to throw a wrench in the works of the more favored lunar theories, because water shouldn't be there at all.

On what did I base my guess? I read one the best books on earth and planetary science you can find, In the Beginning, by Dr. Walter Brown. I highly recommend it.