# They found water on the moon!



## Nukoca (Nov 14, 2009)

Remember the LCROSS mission? Well, I didn't. In fact, I forgot about it until today, when I saw a whole bunch of news stories that shouted "THERE'S WATER ON THE MOON!"  Ahahaha!
Google even changed its logo:





I suspect they had it ready to post when NASA got the results back.


News stories about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html
http://www.examiner.com/x-5181-Jack...y2009m11d13-NASA--discovers-water-on-the-moon
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/11/13/science-us-sci-shoot-the-moon_7120918.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091113/ts_afp/sciencespaceusmoon\
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/11/13/water.moon.nasa/index.html


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## Ranzha (Nov 14, 2009)

Whoopie.


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## Edward (Nov 14, 2009)

Big whoop.


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## JTW2007 (Nov 14, 2009)

Edward said:


> Big whoop.



Uh... excuse me, but that is a fairly apathetic response to a discovery of this magnitude.


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## Edward (Nov 14, 2009)

JTW2007 said:


> Edward said:
> 
> 
> > Big whoop.
> ...



I really mean it, its a big whoop. *whoops largely*


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## JTW2007 (Nov 14, 2009)

Edward said:


> JTW2007 said:
> 
> 
> > Edward said:
> ...



Okay, I have just normally heard that phrase used in a sarcastic manner, and wasn't sure what tone accompanied it, as I was reading it.


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## KubeKid73 (Nov 14, 2009)

I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?


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## Ranzha (Nov 14, 2009)

^ +1.


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## JTW2007 (Nov 14, 2009)

KubeKid73 said:


> I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?



1. What is the basis of your opinion that people are "not meant to" leave Earth?
1a. What tells you that people are "meant to" be on Earth?


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## blade740 (Nov 14, 2009)

KubeKid73 said:


> I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?



Because one day there won't be room for us on this planet and we'll need to move out eventually.

If water exists on the moon, and on mars, it seems (to me at least) that it's a bit more common than we first thought, and chances of finding it elsewhere look good.


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## IamWEB (Nov 14, 2009)

Nukoca said:


> Remember the LCROSS mission? Well, I didn't.



Oh thanks. 




I was about to make this thread around the same time you did, but I was/am busy. anyway this is AWESOME, I'll read up on things more later in the weekend.


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## Twofu2 (Nov 14, 2009)

We might go to other places if people mess up this earth more. We might have to go to the Moon. Hmm... I wonder if Nasa or someone will heat up and melt the ice, to make it livable...


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## raymondhfeng (Nov 14, 2009)

i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.


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## blade740 (Nov 14, 2009)

raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.



You're right. NASA is probably lying.


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## Nukoca (Nov 14, 2009)

raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.



So? Just because water contains oxygen doesn't mean that they found oxygen and not water.


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## isaacthecuber (Nov 14, 2009)

raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.



Hahaha, epic WIN!


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## LewisJ (Nov 14, 2009)

KubeKid73 said:


> I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?



Why didn't the Europeans just stay where they were "meant" to be...

It's called curiosity, and it is the force that drives mankind.


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## qqwref (Nov 14, 2009)

raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.


...wow.


To be honest I don't see why this is so cool. Yes, I know scientists have been trying to find water in space for a long time, and looking for microscopic life and so on, but why? There's clearly not enough water on the moon or Mars to sustain any kind of colony or expedition of humans, so for me its existence is a mere curiosity. It's not interesting to me to look for microbes in space because there are probably still microbes on Earth we haven't discovered (so space is not the best place to look if you just wanna discover more species) and because the only kind of extraterrestial life most people are interested is the kind they could interact with (i.e. organisms that are at least big enough to hold or look at).

I feel the same way about this as about the particle-colliding experiments in physics. I know a lot of scientists get really excited about this sort of stuff, but even in the best case all we're going to discover is something tiny and unimportant. (Disagree? Compare the number of particles we know about to the number of particles that are found in matter or have any applications to technology. It's a pretty significant ratio.) It would be OK if this was just a bunch of scientists working in a lab, but I'm talking about stuff we spend billions of dollars on, and if there are no results that matter outside of pure science then I don't approve sinking so much money into it.

Space expeditions are not cheap, but perhaps the best example of this kind of waste of resources is the Large Hadron Collider. It cost over 3 billion Euros ($4.5 billion) and what are they doing with it? Trying to find extremely rare particles in order to determine which of a few quantum physics theories (all of which have _the same predictions about everything we've ever observed_) is correct. The knowledge gained from this thing has literally no known applications. Do you really think this is a better use of $4.5 billion than, say, giving 45 million laptops to poor children?


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## aronpm (Nov 14, 2009)

@ qqwref:

From an economic standpoint, you're right. Space programs and the LHC are massive wastes of money. That money could go to giving poor children laptops (or better yet, food). But from a scientific standpoint, money shouldn't trump discovery. When computers were first made, didn't people say that they were a waste of money and had little practical use?

Finding water on the moon lets us now that there are other bodies in space that contain water other than Earth, so it's more likely that life may exist elsewhere in our solar system. Even if we do only find microbes, the question about whether Earth is the only life-bearing body in the universe is answered. 

With the LHC, they're trying to discover if the Higgs-Boson particle exists and gives particles mass. Whether it exists or not has no practical application I can think of, but it does let us humans know a little bit more about the universe. Answers to questions are what humans ultimately seek, right?


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## qqwref (Nov 14, 2009)

aronpm said:


> When computers were first made, didn't people say that they were a waste of money and had little practical use?


Probably not anyone who knew what they were talking about. All of the early computers were just ways to speed up arithmetic calculations, which is clearly useful if you have to do it all by hand. And besides, this analogy makes no sense because the LHC is by design only capable of finding particles that are so rare (and thus are so unimportant outside of theoretical physics) that all of the previous colliders couldn't find them.



aronpm said:


> Even if we do only find microbes, the question about whether Earth is the only life-bearing body in the universe is answered. [...] [The LHC] does let us humans know a little bit more about the universe. Answers to questions are what humans ultimately seek, right?


So, we answer one question - one which has no applications - at a cost of some billions of dollars. Is this reasonable? I really don't think it is.

For comparison, imagine spending $4.5 billion on a bunch of supercomputers. A supercomputer can calculate pretty much anything you want it to. Want to simulate weather patterns, fold proteins, try to prove important mathematical theorems by brute force? Want to compute God's Algorithm? There is no excuse for spending $4.5 billion on a machine that does one task well when you could spend the money on ten machines (supercomputers apparently cost from $50 to $500 million each) that will each do any task well.


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## Me Myself & Pi (Nov 14, 2009)

Nukoca said:


> Remember the LCROSS mission? Well, I didn't. In fact, I forgot about it until today, when I saw a whole bunch of news stories that shouted "THERE'S WATER ON THE MOON!"


Yay! It's neat because I actually got up at 5 in the morning to watch the live broadcast of it crashing in the moon. (Which had rather disappointing footage.) Glad to hear the mission was successful. I wonder how the fishing would be. 



KubeKid73 said:


> I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?


I've heard that there are resources that can be harvested on the Moon. Several companies are interested in sending missions to get them. 



raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water because water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.


 You know, light has a different signature as it passes through different substances. I'm sure oxygen has a very different signature then water does. If a recipe for cake asked for a half cup of water, (not sure if it would ask for water, but bare with me anyway) do you think you have a cake in the end?  (If it oxygen was able to stay liquid at room temperature that is )



qqwref said:


> There's clearly not enough water on the moon or Mars to sustain any kind of colony or expedition of humans, so for me its existence is a mere curiosity.


The first link Nukoca posted says:


> The 5,600-miles-per-hour impact carved out a hole 60 to 100 feet wide and kicked up at least 26 gallons of water.


 It kicked up 26 gallons of water. I don't think that was only water on the moon. If they were able to find that much from just one impact, there's GOT to be a lot more!


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## V-te (Nov 14, 2009)

raymondhfeng said:


> i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.



Water has oxygen bonded with hydrogen in a compound with completely different properties than oxygen itself. It's simply frozen water. That's it.


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## esquimalt1 (Nov 14, 2009)

KubeKid73 said:


> I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?



YES! I 100% agree with you. Humans have already in a way damaged the Earth. (Pollution, and other crap) Just leave the moon alone.


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## Zane_C (Nov 14, 2009)

Well, In my opinion, they should continue with moon projects. It's good to understand the universe we live in.
You can get pretty good stuff just out of water.
1. water
2. Oxygen-fuel oxydizer 
3. Hydrogen for fuel.
Moon isn't as boring as it may appear.
Astronomical research is SWEET!
~Leonid meteor shower on 17th November


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## BeautifullyDecayed. (Nov 14, 2009)

Yay, a science thread!
..The moon is exciting but before we go off living there we should put plans in order so that we don't wreck the moon as much as we have wrecked earth!

@ qqwref: You can't put a price on knowledge.
You cannot predict what these experiments may uncover, it could be beyond anyones wildest dreams, and if not, we still have a better understanding of our universe. If there was water on the moon, this could lead to a resolution to poverty, war over resources, etc. This may seem far fetched but it is all possible.
I see where you are coming from and can agree with you in a way, but to me knowing about our planet and where we are from is very important.. It is almost the ultimate human goal to solve the mystery of where we came from. And this knowledge may fix other things, so the billions of dollars already spent on them can go to better use.
Money isn't everything, and can be lost.. Knowledge cannot.


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## ChrisBird (Nov 14, 2009)

I think this discovery is a great discovery for a multitude of reasons.

First: Knowledge is power, we know that.
Second: The fact that there is water on the moon, indicates its possibility of supporting human (and possibly other) life.

Setting aside the fact that we have 'damaged/destroyed' earth, the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
SO, with that being said, regardless of the fact that we may or may not cause the ultimate death of our planet, the moon being able to allow life to continue is an escape route for the human race.

Ok, so there is a homeless person, he has no way of getting food, no one will give anything to him (don't try to find loopholes in this, this is an analogy.)
So he will die of starvation if he does not get food.

So someone comes along and offers him a sandwich, which will keep him alive.
IF he does not take the sandwich, he dies. If he does, he lives.

How does this enter into this conversation?
We are the homeless person, starvation is the end of the earth (which could be soon or in a million years, who knows), and the moon is the sandwich.

If water is on the moon, and therefore has the potential to hold human life, we will be able to colonize it (take the sandwich) and save humanity from dying with the earth.

This is why I believe it is a great discovery that we found water.

And another reason it's a good thing we did, is it shows that there are other plants other then the earth that can be inhabited, which means there could be other creatures/things out there. Much like the earth, that do not know of our existence yet.

Please do not try to say we should not colonize the moon because we will pollute it, this argument does nothing in a life or death of humanity question.


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## Nukoca (Nov 14, 2009)

MonkeyDude1313 said:


> and the moon is the sandwich.



Ahahaha....
Good analogy though.


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## 4Chan (Nov 14, 2009)

Hurr.

Even if we colonize the moon.
Entropy will be the end of all of us. Billions of years from now.

Unless there's a way around thermodynamics.

EDIT: I sound too pessimistic, I think this is an interesting discovery.


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## qqwref (Nov 14, 2009)

MonkeyDude1313 said:


> the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
> SO, with that being said, regardless of the fact that we may or may not cause the ultimate death of our planet, the moon being able to allow life to continue is an escape route for the human race.



This is a pretty ridiculous argument. You know how they've been looking for water on the moon (and mars, too) for a while now and haven't found anything until now? Yeah. They had to look in a 'permanently shadowed' crater, and even then, "one ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water". As a point of reference we're told we need about 8 cups (64 ounces) of water a day. There may be water on the moon, but it's not gonna be enough to support human life.

Also: When is the earth going to "end"? We're actually doing a lot better than people say, so I can't see it happening within the next two or three hundred years even in the worst case, unless some kind of global thermonuclear war breaks out, in which case we clearly don't have time to send people to another planet. But if the planet does end... why the moon? Do you really think this is gonna be the best option when it took them 40 years to find any water at all, and when we would have to mine through TWO TONS of the moon's surface per day per inhabitant? How about Europa, which we already know is covered with a huge layer of water ice, and which might even have a layer of liquid ocean underneath? That's not the only so-called "icy moon" in our solar system either. Water may exist on our moon, but if you want to support humans, that's not where we are going to be setting up camp.


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## Nukoca (Nov 14, 2009)

qqwref said:


> This is a pretty ridiculous argument. You know how they've been looking for water on the moon (and mars, too) for a while now and haven't found anything until now? Yeah. They had to look in a 'permanently shadowed' crater, and even then, "one ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water". As a point of reference we're told we need about 8 cups (64 ounces) of water a day. There may be water on the moon, but it's not gonna be enough to support human life.



Of course we can't set up a colony on the moon with that amount of water. If the Earth comes to an end, the Moon probably will too anyway. The magnitude of this discovery isn't that we'll be able to live on the Moon without any additional resources... it's that it brings up the question that if there's water on the moon, where else could it be? As you mentioned, there's already plenty of water on Europa. And if there's water in this kind of abundance in the universe, couldn't life also be at least fairly common?


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## theretardedcuber (Nov 14, 2009)

yayayay water on the moon 
who cares


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## Twofu2 (Nov 14, 2009)

theretardedcuber said:


> yayayay water on the moon
> who cares



If you read the whole thread, you will see...


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## theretardedcuber (Nov 14, 2009)

Twofu2 said:


> theretardedcuber said:
> 
> 
> > yayayay water on the moon
> ...


it just doesnt bother me because if you know how the moon was created then youd expect there to be water


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## TioMario (Nov 14, 2009)

Now there will be a war between Russia and the USA up there in the moon to see who keeps it.


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## Nukoca (Nov 14, 2009)

TioMario said:


> Now there will be a war between Russia and the USA up there in the moon to see who keeps it.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty


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## ChrisBird (Nov 14, 2009)

MonkeyDude1313 said:


> How does this enter into this conversation?
> We are the homeless person, starvation is the end of the earth *(which could be soon or in a million years, who knows)*, and the moon is the sandwich.
> 
> If water is on the moon, and therefore has the *potential to hold human life*, we will be able to colonize it (take the sandwich) and save humanity from dying with the earth.
> ...





qqwref said:


> MonkeyDude1313 said:
> 
> 
> > the earth will undoubtly end. It will, don't be optimistic here, NOTHING lasts forever. If it was made, it can be destroyed simple as that.
> ...



Please refer to my bolded statements in my previous posts in order to see the answer to your questions.

Potential means it is a possibility, not 'for sure'.
The world will end, that is all I know, not when, how, or why. But it will. It's a given fact.

I never said the moon was the best possibility, I merely said it IS a possibility.


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## qqwref (Nov 15, 2009)

MonkeyDude1313 said:


> I never said the moon was the best possibility, I merely said it IS a possibility.



I know what you said, and I disagree: having a colony of people living off the moon is not a possibility, or at least not any more now that we know there are small amounts of water there.


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## Chuberchuckee (Nov 15, 2009)

theretardedcuber said:


> Twofu2 said:
> 
> 
> > theretardedcuber said:
> ...



Yes, this was probably in the back of the minds of NASA scientists and engineers when they orchestrated the LRO/LCROSS mission.

LCROSS was designed to check for water in a particular crater in the south pole of the moon. This crater has not seen any light for eons. The south pole area is a candidate for the site of the next moon landings because of almost constant bright sunlight (for solar power). The discovery of water nearby strengthens the choice of the south polar area.

Also, water can be used to create not only drinking water, but rocket fuel and maybe breathable oxygen. The lunar outpost can be used as a stopping point for further missions, both manned and unmanned, to other heavenly bodies within our solar system. The weak gravity (gravity of the moon = 1/6 of the earth) and lack of an atmosphere on the moon makes it easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface. Astronauts heading to Mars in the future could make a stopover at a lunar outpost to refuel or gather supplies before making the long journey to Mars. Unmanned missions to, say, Europa could stop at the moon to be assembled/tested/supplied/fueled before heading off.


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