ICE ON PLUTO: Now frozen water and BLUE SKY found on dwarf planet giving more hope of life

originally posted by: Misterlondon
Also europa has ice/water

As does Saturn's moon Enceladus, and probably Titan (sub surface). Jupiter's moons Callisto and Ganymede, too. The dwarf planet Ceres, and probably many (most?) other asteroids. The clouds of Venus contain a good bit of water vapor. There is ice in perpetually dark craters on Mercury, and of couse water and ice on Mars.

The water on Saturn's moon Enceladus shoots out like a geyser, and the Cassini spacecraft has "tasted" that water and found that it is probably from a saltwater ocean, and it contains complex organic molecules; not life itself (although maybe it does), but the building blocks of life. NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay has suggested sending a probe through the geysers of Enceladus and returning to earth with a sample of that water.

It is thought that much of Earth's water came from asteroids impacts. Years ago it was thought that comets brought water to Earth, considering it has been known for quite sometime that comets consist of water-ice and dust, but it has been found that many comets have the wrong kind of water (water that has an extra neutron) and Earth's water does not have enough of this type of water for the water to have come mostly from comets.

Asteroids are thought to be rich in water, and they are now considered a more likely source for most of earth's water -- although Earth's water in reality came from many sources.

Water (or water ice) is everywhere we look in the cosmos. Huge nebula clouds contain vast amounts of water molecules, and those nebula clouds are the raw materials for new solar systems. Our solar system probably formed out of a cloud that was rich in water molecules.

a reply to: liteonit6969

People are so wrapped up in their lives all they care about is earning some money to buy some food, alcohol, big stupid TV, and other random stuff they are told to buy by the various forms of media.

Ok , guilty as charged.I am sitting here eating chips , drinking a few brewskies , watching my 52"led , all while gaming on my other custom built PC (actually going at Witcher 3 again) . What does that have to do with the discovery of water anywhere in the Universe ? What does the discovery of water really mean to the common person ? Zilch other than a curiosity

a reply to: Gothmog

Read the post I replied to and then you will understand my point.

The gist is...people really don't care. They are too wrapped up in their own world to care if et turned up and did the can can.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Please everyone, read the linked post again. Soylent Green Is People has written a concise and understandable summary of recent astronomical discoveries - a "Water in our Solar System and Beyond" primer - in five action-packed paragraphs.

thanks. that post is a keeper.

The discovery of so much water all over the place in our solar system, and the fact of its existence in such diverse environments (Pluto? Who knew Pluto would turn out to be uber-interesting and popular) gives recent space age reality-tyrnabouts a liquidly twist. Remember the olden days (2014?) when Earth's population thought of the planets and moons (when they thought of them at all, Stone Age people had more knowledge of the heavens than present day in-crowds) as either rock or gas? Our reality has expanded, and now includes an icy and watery geologically active planet and companion moon (yes, planet, I submit that Pluto has done enough to earn the title without clearing its orbit, which, it should be taken into account, is one big arse orbit). Mankind has discovered that H2O seems to have a permanent place in solar system design, and this very recent and very real knowledge brings us, creatures constructed mostly of water who emerged from our planet's water, into a further connection with the universe.

a reply to: darkbake


It scares me that in highschool you were taught this....

High #ing school, I knew about the potential for water on various celestial bodies years before I was in highschool and I'm in my thirties.

What I think is interesting is that we are always looking for similarities between other space objects and Earth when determining the probability of life. We even term other planets in similar orbits to similar suns to be in the "Goldie Locks" zone.

But, that only works for life like ours. And no one can say that our form of life is the dominant one in the universe. Perhaps life thrives more on cold, dark planets more than in this perfect habitable "zone". I would be that there is life everywhere, under every rock in space. We just can't see it yet.

I bet the water of both Mars and Pluto contain life. There is probably life on every other planet as well. Can't wait till we find it...

originally posted by: Bicent76
a reply to: Klassified

Yea our government black projects are about 10 years ahead of current civilian tech... Also their discoveries in space.

Yet another gem from the conspiracy cliche handbook

a reply to: Tardacus


where there's hydrogen and oxygen there's water. 'water' can also mean any clear or flowing substance when dealing with space observations though. the 'water' may not be drinkable, it may be poisonous, it could also be the liquid form of gases under the proper conditions. but frankly, no i dont nor ever thought that earth has a monopoly on all the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the universe. and it goes without saying ive always been a firm believer in alien life in the universe. from ancient cultures like the mayans and dogons with their 'space ships and beings from the sky stories to the bible and the nephillim, sumeria, india,.. ok the short version isl. everywhere and everyone said aliens came here a loooooong time ago and tried to help man evolve because the last stage in his evolution requires a manual switch to be flicked. they gave us some of the documents and teachings of the switch. and afaik, are still here today, overseeing earth's progress.

originally posted by: Misterlondon
Amazing... i always wonder if we are being drip fed this stuff..

I'd guess that was a certainty.

The ignorant 'little' people would never be able to properly comprehend everything being dropped in their laps at once.
(sarcasm).

BTW, wouldn't a blue sky indicate that Pluto has at least a thin Nitrogen based atmosphere, like Earth?

Nice eclipse.
Do you honestly believe that is a real photograph taken by an unmanned spacecraft, and then sent back 4.5 billion miles to Earth?

originally posted by: GalaxyEyes
Nice eclipse.
Do you honestly believe that is a real photograph taken by an unmanned spacecraft, and then sent back 4.5 billion miles to Earth?

Yes. Because it is. Or do you have something other than "Nuh uh" to prove otherwise? Really, it's embarrassing and disrespectful to offhandedly discount the hard and smart work of so many people who do and know so much more than you.

a reply to: MysterX

Nitrogen would probably escape pretty quickly from such a small dwarf planet and be extraordinarily thin. It's most likely heavier carbon molecules (which would also be blue) the precursors to various amino acids, which is quite exciting.

Disclosure of other life is coming soon,

We are slowly being prepared for it with these little findings.

a reply to: neoholographic

What boggles my mind is how some researchers believe that life is exclusive to our planet.

Our sun is not unique. it's birth was not unique. Exoplanets are not unique. To suggest that we are unique is mind boggling in a universe that is mind boggling in size.

originally posted by: darkbake
a reply to: neoholographic

My science teacher at my Catholic high school used to tell me that water only existed on Earth. It was a religious thing, to think that Earth was the center of the universe and the only planet with life on it, which requires water.

Giordano Bruno

Giordano Bruno (Italian: [dʒorˈdano ˈbruno]; Latin: Iordanus Brunus Nolanus; 1548 – 17 February 1600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and astrologer.

He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism). He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center".

...

On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death.

..

he was burned at the stake. His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river.

en.wikipedia.org...

He has always been one of my Science Heros...

originally posted by: Thecakeisalie
a reply to: neoholographic

What boggles my mind is how some researchers believe that life is exclusive to our planet.

Our sun is not unique. it's birth was not unique. Exoplanets are not unique. To suggest that we are unique is mind boggling in a universe that is mind boggling in size.

Our view of the "goldilocks zone" is by it's nature insanely biased toward life just like us...Hell Humanoids might be the minority of life forms in the universe. We are probably so bizarre that some octopus looking alien on some exotic frozen acid planet millions of miles from here is looking at earth through some new telescope and saying...no life could live there with all that water and heat!

The outer Solar System is "icy", this pretty much is a given. But science is science, and every dedicated study and the results it brings is a valuable piece of accuired knowledge that scientists so value and are so keen on anouncing. So, please, bear with them.

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
Yeah, they send us to school and fill our heads full of other people's beliefs. But in all fairness, their beliefs were based on what information was available at the time. I wonder what your teacher believes now, assuming they are still alive and kicking?

All science is eventually proven wrong. Our current body of knowledge stems from thousands of years worth of overturning previously held notions as to how things work. This will almost certainly continue into the future.

originally posted by: KlassifiedI wonder if it's closer to 40 or 50 years. The 64-bit processor was invented 40 years before it was introduced to the public as the latest and greatest the computer industry had to offer.

In the case of the processor it's not a matter of knowing how to do it but rather having the supporting technology in place. We can build 128 bit processors now actually, or for that matter processors of any bit size you want. The advantage to a 64 bit processor over a 32 bit isn't one of speed but rather one of size.

Each block of memory in your computer and spot on your hard drive is referenced by a number, 0, 1, 2, and so on down the line. In a 32 bit cpu the registers on your cpu are 32 digits wide, so your memory addresses range from 0 to 11111111111111111111111111111111 which is 2^32 or just under 4.3 billion, as a result your cpu can't reference anything higher than that. In order to reference a higher number you need to go from 32 bit to 64 bit which doubles the size of the registers. This means the cpu needs to read and write twice the values to each register, but more importantly it means it takes up twice the physical space.

In order to fix that you need better and better miniaturization technology, otherwise you'll see dramatic slowdowns by increasing the number of bits.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: Cobaltic1978
Yeah, they send us to school and fill our heads full of other people's beliefs. But in all fairness, their beliefs were based on what information was available at the time. I wonder what your teacher believes now, assuming they are still alive and kicking?

All science is eventually proven wrong.

Not all of it. If you step off a cliff, you will still fall down, possibly to your death. So, gravity still holds true, despite being a "theory". You might not realise it, but a lot of what makes up your ordinary day-to-day life was made possible by science and its theories. Science is our way to study and explore what makes our reality; some things get proven wrong and get discarded, others stay on and get refined. If all science was eventually proven wrong, our life would be a mess with no working stability to many aspects of our life, such as medicine, engineering, etc.