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Data from Chandrayaan-1 also suggests that water is still being formed on the Moon. Scientists said the breakthrough — to be announced by Nasa at a press conference today — would change the face of lunar exploration.
Originally posted by BluePillOrRedPill
"Science will lift its embargo at 2 p.m. EDT, Sept. 24." I know by embargo they probably meant that they are jut releasing the normal data when all the information is collected and won't drop a cool bombshell, but the way they worded it, i was smiling.
www.nasa.gov...
RedPill
Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.
The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.
The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.
Originally posted by SpaceGoatsFarts
I'm interested. You have a link for that ? All I can find is :
Q: That translates to what in volume?
A: We were very conservative in the press release, but if you take basically 100 square kilometers by roughly 50 feet, you get a volume of something like a quarter of a cubic mile, I think it's on that order. It's a considerable amount, but it's not a huge glacier or anything like that.
Q: Can you compare that with something you know?
A: It's a lake. A small lake.
Exuberant : "The fellow could have said "a small lake's worth" - but he didn't..
...He said "It's a lake. A small lake. "
TheLivingMoon.com : "Okay, so we have a lake on the Moon that is a hundred sqaure kilometers in area and 50 feet deep... "
What do you think this would look like if you could go right down and see it? Would you see a fairly large pond here, other ponds all over the place, some ice in crevices and rocks?
A: You would probably see... First of all you wouldn't see anything because you'd be in the dark. But if you had a flashlight and you illuminated the surface, you would see a surface that looked not unlike any place else on the moon, but if you were to dig down into that and pull it up, you would find that there would be ice crystals contained in the interstices between the dust grains. So it's not a sheet or a pond. It's not an ice rink on the moon. It's basically ice mixed into the dirt.
Q: What's the presumptive volume of it then, and how did you discern that?
A: As I mentioned, what we can tell from looking at the radar return is roughly the area that is covered by this. Assuming it reflects ice like ice on Mercury -- making that assumption. That's been well looked at. Then in order to see this back scatter effect, this roadside reflector effect; it's estimated that we have to see some number of wavelengths of our radar into the ice. In reviewing the paper, several of the reviewers posited we probably need to see somewhere between 50 and 100 wavelengths. So our wavelength is about six inches. So at the thickest case, it's roughly 50 feet.
Q: That translates to what in volume?
A: We were very conservative in the press release, but if you take basically 100 square kilometers by roughly 50 feet, you get a volume of something like a quarter of a cubic mile, I think it's on that order. It's a considerable amount, but it's not a huge glacier or anything like that.
Q: Can you compare that with something you know?
A: It's a lake. A small lake.
Q: But it's a dirt lake.
A: Right, mixed in. (Laughter) A dirty lake.
Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
Well apparently they are saying that water is everywher above and below 10 degrees of the equator and not just at the poles.
In light of this it seems a little silly to continue to argue about wether some article called the water a small lake or just a lake.
It's all over the place!
Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
Well I still think that in this particular case you are being overly critical.
This is from the post you made about three or four above this one.
"Q: Can you compare that with something you know?
A: It's a lake. A small lake. "
It says what they claimed it said
If the charged hydrogens, which are traveling at one-third the speed of light, hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, Taylor, the M3 team member suspects. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form.