How much water is there on the moon? This is a question scientists have tried to answer for years. Scientists from China and the UK have now discovered that the moon may have water “reservoirs (水库)”, said a recent paper.

Over billions of years, space rocks have hit the surface of the moon, causing the soil to melt and go out into space. It then cools down and falls back to the moon’s surface, forming beads (珠子) of glass.

The Chang’e 5 probe, which returned to Earth on Dec 17, 2020, brought back a total of 1,731 grams of rocks and soil from the moon’s surface, including glass beads, reported Xinhua.

The international research team looked into 32 glass beads. They found that about one ton of glass beads may have 500 grams of water. “This ‘water’ wasn’t a liquid but instead took the form of hydrogen (氢气) ... in the glass beads, which can easily be turned into the water we can use,” Hui Hejiu, one of the study’s authors, told Science and Technology Daily. Scientists think that the water in all of the moon's glass beads could be as much as 270 trillion (万亿) kilograms.

The solar wind, which is streams of particles (粒子) let out from the sun, could be where the water in the beads comes from, said the study. The glass beads have many holes inside to catch hydrogen from the wind.

If the water in the beads is easy to get, it will be a “really big deal” for space exploration, Phil Bland, an expert in Australia, told ABC News. Now, water used by astronauts during their long stays in space stations is recycled, said the China Manned Space website. The urine (尿液) produced and water used by an astronaut per day is about 2 kilograms. The liquids are collected and purified (净化) and then provided to astronauts to drink. With this new finding, human life on the moon could have a stable water source in the future.

When you look at the night sky, what you see are actually lots of “power plants” (发电厂). Every star makes a huge amount of energy through nuclear fusion (核聚变). For years, scientists have tried to make this kind of energy. They to make a “mini star” on Earth. Recently, some scientists made a big step forward.

In February 2002, the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK, doubled a world record set in 1997. The machine there, named Jet, used fusion engines (发动机) to make the same amount of energy as four wind turbines (涡轮机) make, reported The Cuardian.

In the past, no experiment could mate more energy than what was used to start the fusion engine. This new experiment, although it only lasted five seconds, showed it’s possible to make more power.

Another good thing about the experiment is that the reaction stopped when the equipment (设备) got too hot. This problem can be solved with cooling systems. Future fusion reactions may last much longer than five seconds, minutes or even hours.

You may wonder why fusion energy is so hard to make. Creating conditions similar to a star is not easy. The machine must reach temperatures as high as 10 times that of the sun’s core (核).

Even so, it’s time to get excited about star power. If it can be successfully rolled out (开展), it will be a landmark (里程碑) in human history.

Temperatures can drop to -225℉ on Mars(火星)，and the air is unbreathable. But around 4 billion years ago, the planet had oceans and seas, and thick air. These conditions could have supported life.

For the past nine and half years, NASA’s Curiosity spaceship has been exploring the planet’s Gale Crater, which was probably once a lake. Curiosity has studied it to find whether tiny life-forms called microbes ever lived there. They could have left chemical signs on the surface. In January, NASA announced that Curiosity might have found what it was looking for.

In a newly published study, scientists have found carbon 12. It is a chemical which is connected with life on Earth.

The scientists give a possible explanation. Long ago, microbes grew on Mars. Those microbes died and produced methane (甲烷) gas. The gas rose into the air, and was broken down into carbon by sunlight. The carbon rained down and dropped on the planet in dust.

Christopher House was the lead scientist on the study. He says Mars may have life as Earth once did. “The Mars rocks are similar to Earth rocks from Australia from 2.7 billion years ago,” he says, “When our air was rich in biological methane.”

______▲______. There are still other ways to explain the carbon on Mars, Paul Mahaffy is a retired member of the Curiosity science team. “We would really need more information to say we’ve similar life.” he says.

Another explanation for the carbon is a change of air on Mars. Energy from the sun could have produced the carbon. It is also possible that a lot of cloud which is full of carbon passed through the solar system (太阳系) and left some behind. Scientists are waiting until Curiosity gets more findings. “All three of the answers fit the information that we have,” House says. “We are told to take our explanations seriously, but that is the right way when studying another world, such as Mars.”