BUZZ Fam, it’s 2020 so anything is possible.

Scientists have discovered rust on the moon. Now, this is surprising because rust is an iron oxide, and requires both oxygen and water to occur naturally. And since the moon is mostly dry and completely absent of oxygen, it should not have rust.

So now scientists are trying to figure what’s up with that. But since they discovered water on the moon, the speculation is that there could be other undiscovered minerals there as well.

The rust on the moon though, is completely Earth’s fault.

The current theory is that dust particles that often hit the moon are helping release water molecules, mixing those water molecules with iron on the surface.

Then there’s the oxygen part. That’s where Earth comes in.

Thanks to the fact it exists in such close proximity to Earth, the moon plays host to trace amounts of oxygen, traveling from Earth’s upper atmosphere all the way to the moon. Lead author of the study, Shuai Li found that the side of the moon that faces Earth has more rust than the areas that don’t face Earth.

The study was published  in Science Advances