Image: Raman spectroscopy of a lunar sample collected by Apollo 17 reveals graphite whiskers, shown in yellow. Image credit: Andrew Steele, Carnegie Institution. Larger view In a new analysis of a ...

Whiskers made of graphite have been discovered in meteorites, lending credence to a long-held idea that they may exist in outer space. This in turn may help explain why radiation from some ...

Humans have not set foot on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, but those missions are still producing surprises. An analysis of a collected rock has produced the first solid evidence for graphite, the ...

Washington, D.C.—Up to now scientists thought that the trace amounts of carbon on the surface of the Moon came from the solar wind. Now researchers at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory ...

Analysis of old moon rocks has turned up a special type of carbon that could only come from a massive meteor impact 3.8 billion years ago. The Moon has preserved an essential record of what helped ...

Interstellar space may be strewn with tiny whiskers of carbon, dimming the light of far-away objects. This discovery may have implications for the "dark energy" hypothesis, proposed a decade ago in ...

In a new analysis of a lunar sample collected by Apollo 17, researchers have detected and dated carbon on the moon in the form of graphite -- the sooty stuff of pencil lead -- which survived from ...