Yep, I'm back again from the "Dark Side" of the Internet, so bear with me, guys.

This "Russian scientist says planets' atmospheres are changing" manifesto is going around the Internet, in part and in whole. Apparently its premise is that the entire solar system is moving into some kind of super-energetic trans-dimensional plane of existence (it makes it sound for all the world like the planets are being given Marvel Comics-type superpowers), which means that the Sun and the planets are *changing* (cue the Twilight Zone music), and of course we (and our DNA) are changing with them, blah blah blah, but that's another thread...and another website, I think...

Anyway, so I'm reading along, "hard facts unreported in America", "Russian scientist research", blah blah blah--and then I run into this remarkable statement:

And I was, like, "Whoa!" And then I was, like, "Well, how would we know?"

So I thought I'd come over here and ask.

1. Is anybody still checking the Moon periodically to see if it has an atmosphere? Or is it like, "Been there, done that, got the moon rocks, no atmosphere, go back to playing with the Hubble"...?

2. Would we be able to tell from Earth if the Moon did start developing an atmosphere? If so, how? It doesn't have to be thick enough to be like Venus or something, just thick enough so that you could say, "Yep, that's an atmosphere all right..."

3. Also, as long as you're here, is it true, as mentioned in the article, that Mars' atmosphere is growing thicker? I did find one serious science article, Mars climate may be changing, that if you squint your eyes and look at it just right, does seem to confirm it, although it's talking about thousands of years, not the few years that elapsed between one Mars probe and the next one, as the article puts it:

Yes, Jigsaw; it has been known for some time that the moon, amazingly, has a sodium atmosphere, rather rare density but detectible through spectroscopy, and its extent is quite extensive, and if I'm not mistaken during eclipses it can be seen to be trailing the moon opposite the solar wind like a comet tail.

G^2

Okay -- but has the moon's rather tenuous atmosphere been changing at all, as the linked-to nutcases in the OP claim?

I'm pretty sure the Moon will never have an 'appreciable' atmosphere at its' current mass, so while it may be changing - I would not expect any noticable effects.

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A common fact is that the Moon atmosphere was affected by the Apollo missions- the Moon has so little atmosphere that the rocket exhaust created a noticable increase.
I would imagine that "someone" is measuring any changes in the Moon atmosphere, but I don't think it's systematically done by some govt agency. But it might a good idea to have this done in a precise systematic way, as a way of detecting impactors hitting the Moon.

Or at least, not by any government agency that we know about. [cue spooky paranoid background music]

According to the American Geophysical Union, August 17, 1998
release no. 98-26, Apollo missions have detected atoms of helium and argon in the moon’s extremely thin “atmosphere,” and observations from Earth have detected sodium and potassium ions. The sodium is believed to perhaps be a result of the Moon's regolith.

I was wondering, if ice is present in the shadows of lunar craters near the poles, would hydrogen or oxygen, or even water vapor temporarily exist above the surface in an extremely tenuous state just after a meteor impact nearby?

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

Aside from the tenuous "atmosphere" that has already been mentioned, if the Moon were to start developing a significant atmosphere, amateur astronomers would be among the first to detect it. Amateurs organize observations of grazing occultations of stars by the limb of the Moon. If there were any appreciable atmosphere on the Moon, it would affect these observations. 8)

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T. Anderson

Cool stuff. Thanks, guys.

I did not know that about the sodium and other atoms in the moon's atmosphere, or indeed that it had anything at all other than deep empty space surrounding it, so that's good to know. I would guess that possibly the conflation of "sodium atoms exist in a sort of atmosphere on the moon" and "Apollo rocket exhaust increased the moon's atmosphere" could explain both Dr. Dmetriev's "natrium found on moon!" (the symbol for sodium being Na), and also the whole "moon's atmosphere is increasing!"

It's fascinating how people can get hold of a tiny scientific kernel of truth and get real creative with it.


Would anybody care to take an educated guess as to how thick the Moon's atmosphere would have to be before amateur astronomers would start noticing, "Hey, it looks kinda--foggy--on the moon today?"