NASA's LCROSS Spacecraft Discovers Life On Earth 171
Matt_dk writes "On Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009, the LCROSS spacecraft successfully completed its first Earth-look calibration of its science payload. 'The Earth-look was very successful' said Tony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist. 'The instruments are all healthy and the science teams was able to collect additional data that will help refine our calibrations of the instruments.' During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation."
Re:It must be broken then (Score:1, Insightful)
Apparently there world be no baseline metric for finding intelligent life on Slashdot these days.
Pre-empting the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
2 predictions:
* Lots of slashdot users trying to post something witty about why this is a new story
* trolls saying how this is everything we should expect and therefore should ignore.
to all those who disengaged their brain I ask, what would you do in their position? Hope your instruments work as designed without testing them? Either way, please devise a better test for life as we know it than life as we know it.
NASA is trying to say.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect Title (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA discovers light from the sun, and no atmosphere on the moon.
Could the summary be any more vacuous? It could have been a bit more explanatory about the nature of the satellite. (i.e. to find water on the moon - source: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/mission.htm [nasa.gov])
Re:Calibrating with Earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Know of any other data samples we can use?
Re:Pre-empting the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
>While we're at it, shouldn't we be spending this money on feeding the starving
No, because there'll always be starving. I wish humanity/life was otherwise I really do, but I don't see a long term solution where resources are finite and the exponential function is applicable.
Re:Calibrating with Earth (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Do you have a better one?
Re:But is it intelligent? (Score:3, Insightful)
And what does say that life has to have the form that we know here on Earth?
What if there is life on a planet that actually uses Fluorine or Chlorine instead of Oxygen? It may not be life as we know it, but the environment may have forced that kind of life to evolve.
Really. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not to discount their achievement (Score:3, Insightful)
My first reaction was similar - DUH! After reading more I realized it was an important step. It is a calibration of a true positive. Knowing what Earth looks like on the instruments will help in comparison to measurements of other heavenly bodies.
Like these. [google.com]