Water Discovered in Moon Samples

Water has been found conclusively for the first time inside ancient moon samples brought back by Apollo astronauts. The discovery may force scientists to rethink the lunar past and future, although uncertainty remains about how much water exists and whether future explorers could extract it.

link:www.space.com...


I am suspicious of the release of this information of course, that it would take this long to make this discovery, but nonetheless they have announced it. I once heard that the older a planet is, the more marks it has due to being hit by meteors and since then I just can't believe that the moon came along after the earth did, it just doesn't add up. Wonder what NASA will plan for the moon next, maybe it will become a giant food growing planet.

Interesting post. Could water have gotten there via asteroid, in the form of ice? Just an idea.

What you said about determining comparative age by the number of marks is only somewhat valid. Compared to the moon the earth has a thick atmosphere that causes anything falling in to burn up a lot more, meaning smaller craters, also on earth weather would erode craters away and so they would appear less defined than on the moon. Also things are more likely to hit water than land on earth meaning that we cannot see a lot of the impacts. I would imagine there are more reasons why at a casual glance earth appears to have less collision marks.

Certainly we have not seen or found all the meteor markings on earth, but the moon' s are so abundant, every area seems pelted by them. I can't wait to hear though, more about this find and I would love to hear that we are going back to the moon!

Hey there Space,

I find this most unusual as well. After all this time??? Guess they forgot to do that test some 40 years ago!!!

I have heard that meteors could be responsible as well. Water ejected from our own impacts of the past and from roving comets and such could be the cause. Also, water blown there from a Mars impact is not that far of a stretch.

It's as though NASA is trying to get the pubic more informed and excited about the "new moon race." Why now?

According to some dubious threads here on ATS, we already have a permanent base there, and bases on Jovial moons, interplanetary shuttles and so on and so on.

So why all of the sudden is the moon top priority??

Originally posted by wolf241e
Hey there Space,

I find this most unusual as well. After all this time??? Guess they forgot to do that test some 40 years ago!!!

Why is everyone finding this so hard to believe? I don't get it, I just don't understand why people always assume "NASA" has been "hiding the truth" (in fact, NASA gives the samples they bring back to independent researchers to study, so don't even start with blaming them) when they don't have a shred of proof deception has occured and haven't even bothered to properly research the matter first. Guilt is just assumed.

This isn't the first time they did this test, but in the past it's been inconclusive due to the techniques and technology at our disposal. In the past we've only been able to detect as little as 50ppm of water in the samples. The amount present was 46ppm, so no, they didn't "forget to do the test 40 years ago," they were incapable of detecting it 40 years ago because it's such a small trace amount. The technology used to detect this tiny amount wasn't even introduced until the 1960s and is still being refined. That's like being suspicious of modern CG as a "disclosure" because computers have been around for 60 years, so surely they've had the capability to do it for all 60 years. It's insane.

reply to post by ngchunter

Actually, the water was detected the first time, but as you said the amount of water detected was below the accuracy of the instruments and techniques used. So, being good scientists, they could not rightfully say they found water, since the test was inconclusive. To say water DID exist in those samples would be performing bad science

Knowing that the tests were inconclusive (but not negative, either) the first time, and knowing that they now have more precise equipment, the scientists tried again to detect water nad this time it WAS conclusive.

Just like you said, ncghunter, there's no conspiracy here -- some people seem to forget we are talking about miniscule amount s of water molecules that are very difficult to detect.

Besides, why would NASA hide this information? They never hid information about discovering water elsewhere in space before. For many years now, NASA and NASA related scientists have been saying that water exists on many bodies, such as the atmosphere of Venus, on Mars, on Europa, on Ganymede, in Jupiter's atmoshpere, and in comets & Saturns rings (they've been saying this for decades). NASA also says there is water in nebulas is deep space.

So NASA has been saying for years that they think water is abundant in the Solar system and evevn in the galaxy in general -- so why would they try to hide the fact that there are minute traces of water molecules in some vocanic glass beads on the Moon? That just doesn' make any sense.

[edit on 7/11/2008 by Soylent Green Is People]

I do realize that the technology to determine if water is in a rock may have just become a reality, but if my memory serves me right I learned in elementary school that this was possible, we studied rocks here on earth and found where lakes and oceans have been, I really didn't think that looking at a moon bead would take so many years of study and technology.

Originally posted by space cadet
I do realize that the technology to determine if water is in a rock may have just become a reality, but if my memory serves me right I learned in elementary school that this was possible, we studied rocks here on earth and found where lakes and oceans have been, I really didn't think that looking at a moon bead would take so many years of study and technology.

Well, everything we know about the moon says that there were not any oceans of water there, so you can't just apply your expectations of the water content of earth rocks to moon rocks. Once again, the technology "to determine if water is in a rock" has been around for a while, but it's not as simple as "either you can detect any amount or you can't detect it at all." The amount of water present is vital to whether a test will come back positive or not. Until now a tiny amount like 46ppm has not been enough to fall within the threshold of certainty. Just because you could test rocks 40 years ago and find out whether they have water in them in amounts greater than that does not mean you can expect to detect the presence of water in amounts less than that, at least not with any reasonable amount of certainty.

Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Actually, the water was detected the first time, but as you said the amount of water detected was below the accuracy of the instruments and techniques used. So, being good scientists, they could not rightfully say they found water, since the test was inconclusive. To say water DID exist in those samples would be performing bad science.

Oh no, don't you realize? To say it was inconclusive was to cover up the evidence that there was water in moon rocks! It's a conspiracy: the test indicated it could be there and they ignored the evidence!
/sarc
I should have said "inconclusive" but I figured someone would see fit to latch onto that word and try to create a conspiracy made out of whole cloth.

reply to post by ngchunter

Oh, I agree -- there are some people who just don't understand how the scientific process works. If a test was inconclusive, but showed some positive results for water, any good scientist would not say that he MAY have found water -- he's better off biting his tongue if he can't prove his hypothesis, even if he thinks his hypothesis may be right.

In this case the scientists did the right thing. They did NOT say that water existed the first time, even though the samples provided some interesting but inconclusive results. They later re-tested their hypothesis using new methods and conclusively found water. Only then did they publish.

Some people on this board expect scientists to publish every result they get -- even the ones they can't verify. Those people are the ones that cry "conspiracy!" when they catch wind of the unproven hypotheses.