Finally! Waiting for them to find living beings.
AP/WSJ – A spacecraft intentionally crashed into the moon last month showed that there is a significant amount of water on the moon, at least near the lunar south pole, scientists said Friday.
“Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit, we found a significant amount,” said Anthony Colaprete, the mission’s principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The lunar impact kicked up at least 25 gallons of water and that is only what scientists can see, Mr. Colaprete said.
Having an abundance of water on the moon would make it easier to set up a base camp for astronauts by providing drinking water and an ingredient for rocket fuel.
Eons of solar wind bombardment will as likely make that water heavy.
I didn’t think you could have liquid water when there is no atmosphere.
I forget isn’t heavy water considered H202? or H30?
Water on the moon!!! Thats insane! Nasa have been saying it for years but I never believed them. It’s very exciting news! Who knows, in 20 years time I may have a condo on the moon!?
Don’t worry. NASA will find a way to squander it so there’s none left to make a decent glass of Tang for thirsty colonists.
Isn’t NASA violating the Clean Water Act?
#2–Hopper==interesting. Let me analyse with my High School physics: states of matter are determined by temperature and pressure. Now, with “no atmosphere” I think there is often “less pressure” but the presence or absence of atmosphere is not part of the equation?
Thats “my” answer PLUS the assumption the article was dumbed down for general readership? Water being a stand in for H2O.
#2 hopper
Its water ICE … of course there is no liquid water on the moon. Any water that got direct sun light would sublimate.
#3 FRAGaLOT
Heavy water refers to water that has deuterium (stable heavy isotope of hydrogen) atoms instead of regular hydrogen. It is also known as deuterium oxide, D2O or ²H2O.
This finding only confirms the obvious: comets and some asteroids are dirty snowballs, comets and asteroids strike the moon over thousands of years, hence, the moon has collected water (snow) from space.
Your tax dollars at work.
@ Father
I am sure you mean billions not thousands. You wouldn’t be in Congress would you?
Isn’t that the photo that the NYT used for their nano-tech cover story two months ago?
This is awesome news. I hope they find some life form in there somewhere. Imagine the ramifications of that. The Christians will have to AGAIN edit the bible!
#9–Improb==surely billions are made up of thousands? Centuries, Decades, Weekends, Full Moons, and seconds as well?
I remember some statistical reporting rules about decimal places used in relationship to degrees of reliability, but in common parlance such as here – - – . Anybody know the term for whats at issue here? NO not that. When you use the “wrong” measuring unit. Academics love that shit.
I thought the Europeans already discovered water there BEFORE we did. This is old news.
The future of human space exploration looks bleak. After making great leaps 50 years ago, stagnation has taken over. No human has left Earth orbit in 37 years, and NASA’s current unambitious goals look to be further delayed or scaled back.
http://www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/future-of-space-exploration.html
You have to give them credit for at least remembering where the moon is.
Great find! (groan). Now we’ll have to endure manned space flight advocates telling us that Dubya actually was right about a glorious return to that blank gray desert in the sky. Can you imagine the cost and effort establishing an outpost up there? For what? “Because it’s there”? I guess some brave characters would want to go…and then, for an encore…”Mars Or Bust!”
Oh I realize astronauts are pretty good at fixing local satellites, but the optimist in me hopes that our excellent robots will eventually demonstrate the folly of our trying to move ourselves to those unimaginably lonely and radiation-drenched places.
I’m still waiting for them to find cheese, then moon people will have something to eat.
I’m with JCD on this. They are priming the public for new moon mission money.
No matter what the story is we know this:
pedro is retarded.
He is the product of two morons who bred and created an idiot spawn that should have been killed at birth.
Improbus, by using the quantity “1000s”, I’m reaching out to the lowest common denominator with the greatest common factor. It’s the new PC literacy, give it a try!