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I keep furiously consulting my bible but I can't find any mention of water anywhere else in the universe.

Anyway, amazing discovery. Check out the NASA app for the iPod or iPhone, it is engrossing to leaf through all the photographs.
 
Let me tell you, it took me a moment to return to a state of mind where I could reply. The amount of problems with this post is truly stupefying.

Rather than repost everything you said and go to endless links that say the same thing over and over I’ll simply return to the “stupefying” article I quoted:
Given present knowledge, water in space is believed (again) is believed (once more for those whom truly have difficulty in reading comprehension) IS BELIEVED to exist only as ice,
That is not my interpretation that is the conclusion made by scientific research from data collected since exploration into space which begin before I was born. “Is believed" is not evidence. In simple terms for non scientist that means... that is their best guess. This experiment was supposed to determine that and to that end it is inconclusive, therefore adding no new knowledge.

As far as oxygen being anywhere else in the universe besides Earth I don’t see how since the process of Photosynthesis, which produces oxygen cannot be determined where there is no life and scientist have not discovered life anywhere other than Earth. But that argument I’ll leave alone.
 
Rather than repost everything you said and go to endless links that say the same thing over and over I’ll simply return to the “stupefying” article I quoted:
Given present knowledge, water in space is believed (again) is believed (once more for those whom truly have difficulty in reading comprehension) IS BELIEVED to exist only as ice,
That is not my interpretation that is the conclusion made by scientific research from data collected since exploration into space which begin before I was born. “Is believed" is not evidence. In simple terms for non scientist that means... that is their best guess. This experiment was supposed to determine that and to that end it is inconclusive, therefore adding no new knowledge.

As far as oxygen being anywhere else in the universe besides Earth I don’t see how since the process of Photosynthesis, which produces oxygen cannot be determined where there is no life and scientist have not discovered life anywhere other than Earth. But that argument I’ll leave alone.


:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

keep them coming, please.
 
As far as oxygen being anywhere else in the universe besides Earth I don’t see how since the process of Photosynthesis, which produces oxygen cannot be determined where there is no life and scientist have not discovered life anywhere other than Earth. But that argument I’ll leave alone.
Oxygen can be produced by other means besides photosynthesis. Combustion of carbohydrates for instance.

google hit said:
2007-05-03 09:56:09
International team discovers molecular oxygen in space

WATERLOO, ONT. (Thursday, May 3, 2007) -- An international team of space scientists, including several Canadian astronomers, has discovered molecular oxygen in interstellar space. Oxygen is one of the main constituents of the Earth's atmosphere and was expected to be common in space too, but surprisingly this molecule appears to be quite rare in most of the universe.
http://newsrelease.uwaterloo.ca/news.php?id=4862
 
Oxygen can be produced by other means besides photosynthesis. Combustion of carbohydrates for instance.

I’ll save you the trouble of returning to that article I’m sure you never read and just post the whole thing here. This research team “discovered proof” of Oxygen in space.... looking through a telescope.

Perhaps the author of this piece made the error but these scientist only developed a hypothesis. Their research “discovered” nothing. This article is also over two years old. Making the moon experiment a redundant waste of time since they would have only been searching for something that has already been found.

”WATERLOO, ONT. (Thursday, May 3, 2007) -- An international team of space scientists, including several Canadian astronomers, has discovered molecular oxygen in interstellar space. Oxygen is one of the main constituents of the Earth's atmosphere and was expected to be common in space too, but surprisingly this molecule appears to be quite rare in most of the universe.

A team of Canadian, Swedish, French and Finnish researchers has been seeking the elusive oxygen molecule with the Odin space observatory. The team has spent countless hours in observation and data evaluation in search of molecular oxygen. The search, a principal goal of Odin, is important to understanding the chemistry in large interstellar clouds, the birthplaces of planets and stars.

"Earlier attempts to find the elusive oxygen molecule frustrated observatories on the ground and in space until space researchers realized something crucial," said Michel Fich, UW professor of physics and astronomy. "The abundance of oxygen was much lower than assumed before the search started. The Odin measurements have now told us just how low."

The team's findings are reported in the current issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The Canadian members of this Odin team include Fich, Sun Kwok and Rene Plume of the University of Calgary, Christine Wilson of McMaster University, and George Mitchell of Saint Mary's University.

Astrochemists have long argued that the basic molecules of life, water (H2O) and oxygen (O2), are highly abundant in the denser regions of the interstellar medium. One of the primary goals of the Odin astronomy mission was to use spectral line data from molecular oxygen and water to study processes of star formation.

Models at the time predicted that these molecules would be abundant enough to assist the formation of stars by radiating away excess energy produced when clouds collapse to form new stars. The collapse results in compression of the gas, which is therefore heated. Unless this excess heat can be radiated away stars will not be able to form.

Many attempts have been made from the ground, balloons and space to detect oxygen, but have, until now, all failed.

The molecule was found in a dense (astronomically speaking) gas cloud (called rho Oph A) in the constellation of Ophiuchus at a distance of about 500 light years. The oxygen abundance is a thousand times lower than can be explained by today's chemical models.

Odin is a space-based radio observatory for studying both celestial objects and Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft is equipped with a 1.1-metre diameter radio telescope operating in the millimetre and submillimetre wavelength ranges. Odin was launched into a 600-km altitude orbit on Feb. 20, 2001.

The importance of molecular oxygen led to the inclusion in the Odin five-channel microwave radiometer of a dedicated radio receiver tuned to the ground state transition of oxygen at 118.75 GHz. This frequency is about a factor 1,000 higher than the typical FM radio band.

The actual observations were made during 33 days over a period from August 2002 to February 2006. After careful processing and detailed analysis of more than 300,000 spectra, the oxygen line is convincingly visible, at a level of five times above the noise.

The characteristics of the observed oxygen profile are precisely as expected, based on the profiles of the spectral lines from other species, such as atomic carbon, carbon monoxide and water vapour, observed from the same cloud with ground-based telescopes and with Odin.

Odin was developed by the Swedish Space Corporation, which is also responsible for the operations, on behalf of the Swedish National Space Board, the Canadian Space Agency and the space agencies of Finland and France. It serves astronomers and aeronomers (who study the Earth's atmosphere) of all four partner countries."
 
I’ll save you the trouble of returning to that article I’m sure you never read and just post the whole thing here.
Whoa calm down there. I did read it before I posted it.

This research team “discovered proof” of Oxygen in space.... looking through a telescope.
Which is a completely valid way to do it. What problems do you have with spectral analysis?

Perhaps the author of this piece made the error but these scientist only developed a hypothesis. Their research “discovered” nothing.
No they discovered the spectra of oxygen in space :confused:.

This article is also over two years old. Making the moon experiment a redundant waste of time since they would have only been searching for something that has already been found.
Finding water on the moon is different than finding oxygen in space. Why is finding water on the moon redundant :confused:?
 
This is an amazing discovery and could change the future of humanity. Without water on the moon, we might never be able to reach the stars.

With this discovery, it makes the Moon so much more viable as a stepping stone to the stars.

Furthermore, NASA have said they found other interesting materials in the vapour plume - but they won't say what for now, until they've rechecked their results. Can't wait.
 
Amazing discovery.

I guess if NASA had ACTUALLY put someone on the moon in the 60's instead of a sound stage in Area 51, they'd have known there was ice there already.

DOH!
 
Here's the editorial from Science Magazine. Says a little about the possible elements that might also be there RedTomato :). It'll be exciting to see what comes of this :).

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1113/1


The Moon Is Wet!
By Richard A. Kerr
ScienceNOW Daily News
13 November 2009

Slamming a spent rocket booster into the frigid, inky shadow of a lunar crater last month sent up a plume of dust laced with water, NASA scientists reported in a press conference today. Observers on Earth were denied a view of the fireworks in October, but "we found water, a significant amount of water," said LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission principal investigator Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
After several decades of controversy, scientists now know that over billions of years, water from who knows where--impacting comets or perhaps the solar wind--can collect in some of the coldest places in the solar system. Whether the predicted amount of water is enough to sustain future astronauts--as either sustenance or rocket fuel--remains to be seen, however.

The LCROSS mission worked to perfection, with the exception of the show that unfolded on Earth. Before the impact, NASA scientists had predicted that ground-based observers, even amateurs, would see the plume in the gap between two mountains. As it turned out, Colaprete said, the impact's plume of debris "was as bright as thought, but it was behind a hill" because the debris did not rise as high as impact modeling had suggested.

The heavily instrumented LCROSS spacecraft, however, had a fine view of the rocket booster's impact and aftermath as it sped to its own impact 4 minutes later. LCROSS instruments delivered a "good, strong detection" of water, Colaprete said. At infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, they gave clear indications of water vapor, water ice, and hydroxyl ions produced when sunlight splits water molecules.

All told, LCROSS detected about 100 kilograms of water, Colaprete said. It came from a 20-meter-wide crater maybe 3 meters deep, but he declined to guess how abundant water ice had been beneath the impact site. Team members must still calculate what portion of subsurface ice actually rose into view and could have been measured, Colaprete noted. "It would probably be safe to say it's wetter than the Atacama Desert," the driest place on Earth, he said. Some remote sensing had suggested about 1% water ice by volume in the upper 3 meters, which was regarded as a substantial amount. Impact modeler and LCROSS team member David Goldstein of the University of Texas, Austin, says 1% "is not inconsistent with what's been observed. I haven't convinced myself yet whether it's 0.1% or 10%. I think we'll work that out."

Whatever the amount, the principle of cold-trapping water in permanently shadowed craters--as had been demonstrated for Mercury using radar--is now firmly established for the moon. The LCROSS results give only an inkling of where the water might have come from. Colaprete reported that spectra hint at the presence of volatile compounds besides water, such as carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, and methanol, just the sort of compounds found in comets and ice-rich asteroids. So the moon may have retained a tiny bit of the objects that have pummeled it for eons.
 
I'm stunned at this discussion. Talk about making things unnecessarily complicated.

Water got on the moon the same way water got here, on Earth. By asteroid and/or comet bombardment, after initial formation. People think water as this huge quantity, which on our scale, it is. In the grand scheme of things, that thin sliver of water covering the surface isn't much compared to the mass and volume of the Earth itself.

There's tons of water flying all over the solar system.

What do you think a comet's tail is? Water vapor jetting off the comet. The comet itself 80% water ice. A big, dirty snowball.

There's a freaking CLOUD of water surrounding the whole solar system. Literally, a trillion comets of large than 1km.

Finding water on the moon just confirms everything else we already know and our ideas about how things should be.
 
I'm stunned at this discussion. Talk about making things unnecessarily complicated.

Water got on the moon the same way water got here, on Earth. By asteroid and/or comet bombardment, after initial formation. People think water as this huge quantity, which on our scale, it is. In the grand scheme of things, that thin sliver of water covering the surface isn't much compared to the mass and volume of the Earth itself.

There's tons of water flying all over the solar system.

What do you think a comet's tail is? Water vapor jetting off the comet. The comet itself 80% water ice. A big, dirty snowball.

There's a freaking CLOUD of water surrounding the whole solar system. Literally, a trillion comets of large than 1km.

Finding water on the moon just confirms everything else we already know and our ideas about how things should be.

LOL agree.
still it is a quite exciting discovery in the perspective of a Lunar base.
If this wasn't the case, they would have had to extract the oxygen from rocks, which is quite more complex, long and expensive.
or capture a comet, that might might turn out to be a bit tricky.

If you couple this with the recent observation of the network of moon tunnels it makes the possible colonization of the moon a tad more feasable.
 
I'm stunned at this discussion. Talk about making things unnecessarily complicated.

Water got on the moon the same way water got here, on Earth. By asteroid and/or comet bombardment, after initial formation. People think water as this huge quantity, which on our scale, it is. In the grand scheme of things, that thin sliver of water covering the surface isn't much compared to the mass and volume of the Earth itself.

There's tons of water flying all over the solar system.

What do you think a comet's tail is? Water vapor jetting off the comet. The comet itself 80% water ice. A big, dirty snowball.

There's a freaking CLOUD of water surrounding the whole solar system. Literally, a trillion comets of large than 1km.

Finding water on the moon just confirms everything else we already know and our ideas about how things should be.

^ This ^


P.S. Hey, NASA, don't break the moon, okay? Thanks.

Love & Kisses,

iBlue
 
Rather than repost everything you said and go to endless links that say the same thing over and over I’ll simply return to the “stupefying” article I quoted:
Given present knowledge, water in space is believed (again) is believed (once more for those whom truly have difficulty in reading comprehension) IS BELIEVED to exist only as ice,
That is not my interpretation that is the conclusion made by scientific research from data collected since exploration into space which begin before I was born. “Is believed" is not evidence. In simple terms for non scientist that means... that is their best guess. This experiment was supposed to determine that and to that end it is inconclusive, therefore adding no new knowledge.


You can bold and add red color to your post until your face turns red. That doesn't change the incorrect statements.

In regards to the article. Who wrote it? They have sources, but is the usage of the term "believe" accurate? Quoting one article and not finding their primary source for the claim does nothing to further this discussion.

Second, I don't see how this relates to your claim that the elements necessary for water do not exist outside of our atmosphere. The elements necessarily exist outside of our atmosphere and I gave you an explanation as to why that is the case. The elements necessary for water were originally forged in stars.

I truly think you are rather confused. Nothing you have stated backs up your claim that the elements required for water do not exist outside of our atmosphere. As this statement is false. Even if we "believe" water exists elsewhere as ice, this still does nothing to add credibility to your claim that the elements necessary for water do not exist outside our atmosphere. Which is what I was responding to.

As far as oxygen being anywhere else in the universe besides Earth I don’t see how since the process of Photosynthesis, which produces oxygen cannot be determined where there is no life and scientist have not discovered life anywhere other than Earth. But that argument I’ll leave alone.

You didn't even read the informational articles I posted from Wikipedia, did you? The elements, as we know, we forged in stars. That is what stars do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Isotopes_and_stellar_origin

As I stated above, it is necessarily the case that Oxygen exists elsewhere in the universe. Now the question is in what form? With other elements? In O2 form?

Photosynthesis is not necessary for the existence of O2. For O2 in abundant quantities in an atmosphere? No, Photosynthesis is not the only conceivable means of O2 production. Although, it is the ony natural process that we know of that produces large amount, over time. It took 3 billion years to get the amount of Oxygen we have.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=Yh...ng Blocks&pg=PA303#v=snippet&q=oxygen&f=false

I again refer you to Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Build-up_in_the_atmosphere

Notice how that section begins: Free Oxygen.

Now, it may be your contention that Oxygen doesn't often exist in O2 form, which may be the case as noted in the article that is linked from Waterloo. However, this is obvious to anyone familiar with chemistry. Oxygen is an element that readily forms compounds, again, read the Wikipedia article on Oxygen. So it isn't at all surprising that it may not often exist alone in the Universe. However, the elements necessary for water do exist outside our atmosphere, just maybe not in forms that would be likely to produce water. But again, you need to understand chemistry.

I suggest you put more time into studying what you are discussing.
 
Tunnels? On the moon??

Google leads me to http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18030-found-first-skylight-on-the-moon.html

Wow. Tunnels 260 feet down and 1200 feet wide. Just wow. Spray the walls with plastic and that's your lunar base more or less done. :D

yep, that's kind of the idea.
if these large underground cave systems are indeed usable, they would provide shelter against meteorites and radiation and allow for much more manageable structures.
one of the problem is whether there is any in a desirable location, for example close to ice sources.
 
yep, that's kind of the idea.
if these large underground cave systems are indeed usable, they would provide shelter against meteorites and radiation and allow for much more manageable structures.
one of the problem is whether there is any in a desirable location, for example close to ice sources.

That would be awesome. This is something long overdue, and could be a great first step in colonizing other planets.
 
Anyone else think this is just the usual NASA, with better marketing?

NASA 1989: Uhhh.. one of our rockets is missing.. Crashed into the Moon we believe. Created a hell of a cloud. Sorry, but thanks for all the cash!

NASA 2009: Wayhey! We just crashed a rocket into the moon, and found water!

(Or maybe, Apollo 11 sprang a leak... :p )

On a slightly more serious note, isn't the composition of comets now being questioned - as is the differentiation between comets and asteroids?
 
Anyone else think this is just the usual NASA, with better marketing?

NASA 1989: Uhhh.. one of our rockets is missing.. Crashed into the Moon we believe. Created a hell of a cloud. Sorry, but thanks for all the cash!

NASA 2009: Wayhey! We just crashed a rocket into the moon, and found water!

(Or maybe, Apollo 11 sprang a leak... :p )

Umm...no I don't. If you'd read about the purpose of the mission in the first place... oh hell, I give up. I don't even know why anyone should try with people like you.
 
Umm...no I don't. If you'd read about the purpose of the mission in the first place... oh hell, I give up. I don't even know why anyone should try with people like you.

In more headline news, NASA scientists were amazed to discover no Irony on the Internet. That's true folks, there is no Irony online.

(Seriously, you read the Apollo 11 line, and still thought I was serious? :p )
 
Umm...no I don't. If you'd read about the purpose of the mission in the first place... oh hell, I give up. I don't even know why anyone should try with people like you.
I think it was a joke…
;)

Edit:
Yes, it was.

In more headline news, NASA scientists were amazed to discover no Irony on the Internet. That's true folks, there is no Irony online.
Same as Goldy or Silvery?
 
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