dlish

water found on the moon by an Indian exploration.


what does this mean for humans? can we really utilise this water for our benefit? will the moon become our junkyard? or will it become our getaway?

who owns the water on the moon? since the americans planted their flag, does the US own the moon?

i can imagine this discovery opening up many legal, scientific and moral questions that not many really think about on a daily basis. and yes, i meant the order in which i put those.

the question that remains is, how much water is a 'large quantity'?

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BadNick

Probably not enough water to surf on, but still quite interesting.

At least to my way of thinking, I disagree with "There was zero accepted evidence that there was any water at the lunar surface, (but) now it is shown to be easily detectable, though by extremely sensitive methods..." Previous explorations have shown that there was water there but the amount and how it's bound up is still to be determined. For example I'll cite this report:
Cassini, which passed by the moon in 1999 on its way to Saturn, provides confirmation of this signal with its own slightly stronger detection of the water/hydroxyl signal. The water would have to be absorbed or trapped in the glass and minerals at the lunar surface, wrote Roger Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey in the study detailing Cassini's findings.

The Cassini data shows a global distribution of the water signal, though it also appears stronger near the poles (and low in the lunar maria).

Otherwise, I hope we don't trash the moon as bad as we're trashing the earth. I don't know how everyone on earth can agree to such a deal, but I'd like to see it go in the direction of nobody owning any part of the moon or any of its resources. Those who use and/or are permitted to extract resources should have to pay into a "global moon fund" that would be used to fund general maintenance operations on the moon. This might all sound crazy, so just chalk it up to my lunacy.

Willravel

Science. Fuck yeah.

FuglyStick

Cannonball!

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Tully Mars

Hey there's water maybe there's gold! Better buy now before all the good lots are gone-

Own a part of the Moon

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SSJTWIZTA

hmm, the moon may soon have an Exxon.

hydrogen fuel anyone?

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MSD

I guess those Apollo samples might not have been contaminated after all. The estimate based on this mission's data is that the moon has 1 gallon of water per ton of surface mass. This comes to about two and a half gallons per cubic yard. That's not nearly enough for sustainable human colonization, but we also have to wait until October 9 for the LCROSS impact data (I'm excited for this because someone I know worked on the project for his PhD.) There may be a lot of water at the poles, which would make it possible to build a colony, and would make it a lot easier to get water to Mars for a manned mission.

rurp

What is really interesting on the scientific side is that they have observed varying levels of water (ice) throughout the daily cycle. Realistically, possible future inhabitants of the moon could not rely on this new found water (ice) to be sustainable.

Meh, we'll all forget about this next week when the next celebrity dies...


LONG LIVE PLUTO!!!!

BadNick

At least it reminded me of Frank Sinatra singing "Moon River" so I listened to that a few times. Andy Williams is still alive.

Fremen

So, is this a September Fool's joke?

How would water come to be on the Moon?

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Baraka_Guru

Yeah, it's totally going to be a mining/research colony. It's not like the moon interests anyone outside of tangible and intangible resources.

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Raghnar -ITA-

It was indeed scientifically interesting the discovering of water in the lunar surface.
The next step, in october, will be to crash a little artificial asteroid and study the reflection of the debris in order to understand how much can it be, on a quite vast area.

Anyway from understanding that there are some water and make it abudant and drinkable there is a gap that is difficoult to bridge.

percy

Sounds like a good excuse to finally put a man on the moon.

MSD

Ionized hydrogen in the solar wind collides with oxygen, water forms. Same way water ended up here.

BadNick

Hydrogen is by far the most abundant element in the Universe, and oxygen is formed inside stars so when they explode in a supernova they "rain" the elements that can eventually make up water all over the place. Is that an erroneous description?

Fremen

That's amazing!
So, these and other elements are out there, just 'floating' through space, ready to 'seed' other worlds/moons?

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MSD

Supernovas are the sole source of every element out there heavier than iron, and most of everything other than hydrogen and helium. Clouds of matter come together to form planets over a very long time scale because when all there is is a big cloud, the gravitational attraction between molecules and atoms is enough to "condense" them into solids. We do still pick up trace elements from space, but most of what's here is from the formation.
Formation and evolution of the Solar System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia gives you a good idea of the basics.

thirdsun

Here is a data image sent back from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper. According to the data, it's layers of water that are only a few molecules thick.

The impactor will be sent into an always-dark crater to see if water or ice has collected there.

Raghnar -ITA-

Not nececcary a Nova, when every normal star die is made of elements lighter then Iron, Oxigen included. And when a star in form of Red Giant burn Carbon it makes Oxigen that can be spread across the universe with solar wind.
At the end of the evolution of this kind of star will form a nebula, rich of Carbon and Oxigen, that evetually re-aggregate to form a solar system.
In fact is much more usual that oxigen comes from "Principal Sequence" stars (like the Sun and from 0.1 lighter to 10 times heavier then the sun), then from Novas.

Novas are the only way that universe have to make great quantities of heavier-then-Iron elements, and spread it across the galaxy when expolde.
In fact, all the gold you have and you carry in yours ring and necklaces once upon a time was part of a brilliant, shiny, Nova. (Saying this when gifting a gold this to a woman have guarateed effect, unless the woman is an astrophysicist like my girlfriend )

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optik_nerve

This just confirms that we need to be pouring money into the space program. We've become stale on this planet.. there is no more exploring on earth.

Raghnar -ITA-

don't tell to a speleology.

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BadNick

Thank you for that explanation. I know just barely enough that it makes sense.

This water on the moon question makes me wonder why we'd expect to find significant water someplace that looks like a dried up cheese ball. We should be looking for another blue planet...after we figure out how to get there in less than a few milleniums.

FuglyStick

Water is nice, but I'm more interested in the Huge Tracts of Land.

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Raghnar -ITA-

First we have to het how to see the color of a tiny little thing like a planet.
Now we don't SEE extrasolar planet, simply we measure some distorsion in gravitational field or peridiodic oscillation of luminosity of the star. In this way we can find only big fat giant planets like Saturn or Neptune...
Maybe someday, maybe with JWST we will track the H concentrations so precisly that we will be able to effectivly see (in infrared) if a planet is an oceanic (or iced) one or another gas giant.

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FuglyStick

Here's the thing--the chances of us ever solving the problem of travelling faster than the speed of light are probably zero, so while it makes great sci-fi, colonizing another planet will never happen, and the only ball of dirt we'll ever have is the one we're living on right now.

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Baraka_Guru

Woah, slow down.... Baby steps!

Do you think we went directly from inventing the wheel to designing the space shuttle? There was some stuff in between that, right?

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BadNick

Whoa! ...I like spelling it "whoa" instead of "Woah"

I know the likelihood of travelling fast enough to get anywhere far away from earth is beyond our understanding at this time, which also applies to our ability to "see" very far away. I'm looking forward to being able to get from one place to another without travelling through all that "space" between the two locations. Probably one of these days we'll do that, and then we can move on to finding another nice blue, wet planet. Until then, or if that doesn't happen, we're pretty much stuck in this immediate neighborhood so I'm all for exploring it.

Fremen

Obviously, we have to fold space.

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raging moderate

I think it's officially time to fake another moon landing!

Seriously, though, think about this from the US government's perspective. We're far more likely to try to use the moon as a base for nuclear weapons launches (if we're not already) than we are to try and populate it. Money is the ever-lasting and all-powerful master of the earth and I don't see anything enormously profitable stemming from a moon colony. I of course am wrong in that viewpoint but I doubt I'll live long enough to be proven wrong! HA!



edit: I too prefer it to be spelled, "whoa!" and so, apparently, does the spell check on my computer

genuinegirly

Yes - water!

What country or corporation do you think will set up the first moon base?

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MSD

What advantages does violating treaties prohibiting nuclear weapons in space give us over nuke-armed submarines whose locations aren't even known to commanders on the surface? Launching something from the moon and hitting a target on earth also requires waiting days or weeks for a window of a few seconds followed by days of waiting for a missile to hit its target. There is no logical reason whatsoever to put nukes on the moon.