Discovery of Water In Moon May Alter Origin Theory 170
MarkWhittington writes "Scientists, working on a NASA grant, have made another startling discovery concerning water on the Moon. It seems that the interior of the Moon has far more water in it than previously thought — as much as the Earth does, apparently. Researchers made this discovery by examining samples of volcanic glass brought back to Earth by the Apollo 17 astronauts. These tiny beads of glass have about 750 parts per million of water in them: about the same amount as similar volcanic glass on Earth. It is postulated that more water than previously imagined exists deep below the lunar surface and was brought up and trapped in these crystalline beads by volcanic action billions of years ago." Phil Plait's original post adds more detail.
Who's to say.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Since the accepted theory about the origin of the moon is that it is the result of a large body impacting Earth (I watch the Universe, no scientific background here at all), is it not possible that the samples that they're finding on the moon are part of the Earth transferred in the impact?
Re:A few too many zeros (Score:2, Insightful)
Not if you believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God.
The "allegory" defense is what happened when science started figuring things out and proved the Bible wrong. Nobody said it was allegory until then.
Plus, if the Bible was meant as "allegory" wouldn't it provide some clue within? And I don't mean "clue" as in "proven to be completely mythological".
Re:The Bible said it first (Score:3, Insightful)
And by a metaphorical interpretation of the Bible, that's probably not far from the truth. You would expect that given billions of billions of subatomic particles combining in a great cosmic soup, the first things that would form are light elements, and some of the first compounds would be compounds of light elements—water, for example—long before the sorts of heavy elements and compounds that make up rocks would form.
Re:A few too many zeros (Score:5, Insightful)
To be exact: If you believe that the bible is the literal word of god, and that god told the humans the exact truth about everything, instead of stories which keep them happy.
Just imagine the situation:
Moses: OK, so how did it all start? ... ... ...
God: Well, in the beginning I created space, time and matter in a big bang
Moses: In a what?
God: In a big bang. All of space and all the matter was concentrated in a point
Moses: Where was this point?
God: Everywhere.
Moses: But that doesn't make sense.
God: It makes perfect sense. You just don't understand it.
Moses: Nor will the other people. I need something I can tell them and which they will understand!
God: But it's exactly what I did!
Moses: But the people don't care if that is so. They want something they can understand, even if it is wrong!
God: sigh Well, then, what about that: In the beginning I created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void
Re:Comets? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apollo 17, 1972? Those Nasa people must be really desperate for funding if they are now re-examing dusty cobweb ridden artifacts from the 70's.
That's part of the power of sample return missions. Once you have the sample, you can throw not only all of human science at the sample to deduce things about the place of its original, but you can throw a bunch of future scientific progress at the sample as well.