More Water Out There — Ice Found On an Asteroid 123
Matt_dk writes "For the first time, astronomers have confirmed that an asteroid contains frozen water on its surface. Analysis of asteroid 24 Themis shows evidence of water ice along with organic compounds widespread across the surface. The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet."
There's a lot of fucking water out there. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:There's a lot of fucking water out there. (Score:4, Funny)
You know, I for one have always welcomed our water bear [boingboing.net] bringer of life to earth from space overlords. They probably even brought the water with them, being water bears and all. Coolest creatures on earth, without a doubt.
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Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked a Tardigrade, but nothing happened. One would think that the Tardigrade would then mock Chuck Norris for being so weak, but alas the Tardigrade didn't even care. He just went back to space -- and went on being awesome -- alone.
Where? (Score:1)
Re:Where? (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen and Oxygen. Stellar fusion. Etc. Nothing magical about it; without (yet) knowing the specifics, we can still reasonably intuit the processes at large.
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but surely at 2.7K, it wouldn't take much for hydrogen to condense on any surface. To bind to those oxygen molecules would require some heat that just isn't present, not at 2.7K.
Earth is 70% water or so, so that would require one hell of a lot of asteroids handily coming along - like a sorcerer's apprentice of water buckets. I would think water just forms along with all the other complex molecules the earth's made of, and then it floats to the surface where we can see it. Nothing magical about the earth bei
Re:Where? (Score:4, Informative)
Its not hard to see how water can form in free space. If you have a cloud of hydrogen going one way and it collides with a cloud of oxygen going the other way the interface between the two will be a shock wave with significant temperature and pressure. At the interface the hydrogen will combine with the oxygen and you have water.
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That's because it's dark. And you're likely to be eaten by a grue.
Re:Where? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not how it works. There's the square root of bugger-all oxygen in space, so the odds of an O atom finding an H atom are beyond astronomical. Luckily they're not molecular gases, or there'd be an insurmountable activation barrier to deal with too. However there are aggregates of carbon or silicon atoms in space (grains) which O or H atoms can adhere to for long periods of time and diffuse around on. That greatly increases the chances of a reaction to form an OH, and in the very long term, water. The same's true of all molecules in space, essentially.
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There's the square root of bugger-all oxygen in space, so the odds of an O atom finding an H atom are beyond astronomical.
That's nonsense. There's enough oxygen out there that they even sell filters [telescopes.com] for telescopes that filter for oxygen ionization. It shows up a lot in planetary nebulas which are formed by the remnants of supernova (and where you'd expect to find oxygen). Those routinely run into hydrogen gas clouds.
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That's assuming that the oxygen and hydrogen are evenly distributed throughout space.
There are 8 people per square mile in Canada. While that means that, if I started at a random point in Canada, it would be highly unlikely that I'd run into another person (without shouting, or possibly even with), it does not mean that the average Canadian would have to walk far to run into someone else.
Large numbers of people gather in cities in the same way that the majority of the matter in the universe is centered arou
Re:Where? (Score:5, Insightful)
Earth is 70% water or so
No, about 71% of the Earth's surface is covered in water, the total mass of which is about 1.38E18 tons. The Earth weighs about 6E21 tons, so the Earth is about 0.00023% water.
Also:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth [wikipedia.org]
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You're a bit short on the heat there.
Freezing point of H2 is 14K
Freezing point of O2 is 54K
At 2.7K , you'd just have hydrogen and oxygen dust in a pile. Kinda like baking a cake by throwing the dry ingredents together. Sure, you have the parts, but they don't make a cake.
Ok, car analogy. You guys couldn't bake a cake to save your life. :) You can have a pile of parts sufficient to make a car, but until they're assembled, you don'
Re:Where? (Score:4, Funny)
It's meteors all the way down . . .
Maybe the Augustine commission is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Augustine commission reporting to President Obama recommended that we skip LANDING on the Moon and Mars and instead consider progressively deeper space voyages (first to L1 earth moon point, then perhaps L2 earth sun point, then Mars flyby/orbit or asteroid visits). For example astronauts in Mars orbit could send robotic probes to land on Mars which could be much more effective without the 10 minute time lag to earth. (Can you say telepresence?). Visiting comets and asteroids would be a major goal not just for scientific knowledge (and the knowledge as to how to eventually prevent them from hitting us) but ultimately in-situ resource exploitation.
They feel that this approach would lead to "the most steady cadence of steady improvement." and keep us from inconsistent achievements in space (like not leaving earth orbit for 40 years!). Some would say that this approach would be lacking in the photo-ops necessary to maintain interest in the space program (no footprints on Martian soil) but I think there would be plenty of cool vistas (rendezvous with a comet or even orbiting one of the moons of Jupiter assuming they figure out radiation shielding) to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing. The science return would be much greater because it would hopefully utilize both man and machine at their best (robots on one way trips down a gravity well while the humans provide the intuition and flexibility from orbit). If you can figure out radiation shielding and bone loss from zero-g, we could go just about anywhere in the solar system (with a good ion drive and nuclear power plant). Now with the presence of water confirmed on at least (some) of these smaller bodies, they could stay there for long periods of time.
Re:Maybe the Augustine commission is right. (Score:5, Informative)
The critical finding of the Augustine commission was that NASA is severely underfunded for doing manned spaceflight. If the US wants a human presence in space beyond low Earth orbit we need to be willing the pay the real cost of sending people beyond low Earth orbit. Until that happens any visits to a comet or a Legrange point, or anywhere else further away than the ISS are going to remain a pipe dream, unless if you happen to be Chinese.
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Money is just a way of counting resources. Space flight is very expensive however you count it. With companies like SpaceX finally emerging though, access to space might start to get cheaper.
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I just wonder why is it cheaper now, compared to 10-20 years ago? Or why is it cheaper for a private company?
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Mainly because Elon Musk came along and said "fuck it, we can do this right".
Maybe it also has something to do with the availability of tools for doing large scale engineering. When Apollo was running it was the only project of its scale in the world. Now we have good CAD tools and tools for requirements management which can be used to track interface changes. NASA invented techniques for all of this but only in the last 15 or 20 years has the private sector really been able to pull off huge aerospace proje
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NASA invented techniques for all of this but only in the last 15 or 20 years has the private sector really been able to pull off huge aerospace projects.
Boeing has pulled off high complexity projects before with each major jet they produce. There are two major rockets (the Delta IV and Atlas V) that have capabilities similar to the Saturn 1B and which have lineages reaching back to ICBMs of the 50's and 60's. And one only needs to look at other industries to see examples of manufacture (auto companies) and logistics (Coca Cola, Walmart) comparable to anything NASA has done. Finally, it's worth noting that NASA contracts out a lot of this stuff. For example,
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It's cheaper because we've come up with better ideas on how to do it. That's what's so great about technological progress and all. What’s expensive yesterday becomes cheap tomorrow because we've found a more clever way to do it.
As for the "money is keeping us on the ground" argument. The real issue and the real use / value of money is resource allocation based on utility value. We'd rather have HD televisions then people on Mars, so we spend our resources on those. Actually, other than the gee wi
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I just wonder why is it cheaper now, compared to 10-20 years ago? Or why is it cheaper for a private company?
One of the big things to keep in mind is that as a government institution, NASA is severely limited in how it's able to restructure its workforce towards its goals. This wasn't an issue back in the Apollo days, when NASA was in a massive growth spurt and could hire the best and brightest to achieve its goals. Nowadays, an absurdly high percentage of the NASA workforce is middle management, and since they're civil servants NASA can't just let them go and hire new people. Also, NASA has the additional constra
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It is because companies like SpaceX and Scaled Composites can draw on decades of research, which was done by NASA and paid for by the US government, when they design their spacecrafts. It is significantly cheaper to do something after someone else has already done it.
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Money is just a way of counting resources. Space flight is very expensive however you count it.
Well, yes, and I suppose the unwillingness to allocate the kinds of resources we need to truely step out into space is just a reflection of the low-priority that our beloved leaders give it. However, I can still dream of my perfect utopian society where everyone works for the greater good and no-one lacks for food, shelter and erotic massages.
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Money is just a way of counting resources. Space flight is very expensive however you count it.
Well, yes, and I suppose the unwillingness to allocate the kinds of resources we need to truely step out into space is just a reflection of the low-priority that our beloved leaders give it. However, I can still dream of my perfect utopian society where everyone works for the greater good and no-one lacks for food, shelter and erotic massages.
Our beloved leaders need the votes of ordinary people who have no interest in the space program. Those people would prefer that the money be directly used to give them food, shelter and erotic massages.
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So, you're advocating that instead of you choosing to give your money to hookers, distilleries, and the people who made the computer that you're using to read this, that the government take that money away from you and give it to NASA, who'll use it to buy $500 hammers?
My question to you is this: why do you hate hookers?
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Anybody else find it sort of depressing that our "Voyage to the Stars" is hindered by our invention of currency?
Nope, I'm not. That's because money isn't the problem. It's lack of money. I, for example, am at least a few billion dollars undercapitalized, which is a truly tragic situation.
What makes you think the Chinese can do it? (Score:4, Insightful)
In his 200X books, Arthur C Clarke suggested that China would do space travel on the cheap. But he always had to imagine a (nonexistent) nuclear drive to overcome the energetic considerations of getting to Mars and beyond.
The Chinese can do it (Score:2, Insightful)
Nuclear energy plus plasma rocket [slashdot.org] equals nuclear drive.
There's a good chance given the history of Chinese information gathering that they have enough details to get it done. Now the question is, do they want the prize badly enough?
Re:What makes you think the Chinese can do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Chinese culture, currently, allows a different approach to be taken. Primarily, China takes after Russia in its approach to space access. Their motto basically boils down to, "Keep it simple and make 2 just in case." Russia, for instance, has multiple factories capable of literally assembling entire launch vehicle systems rapidly down miles of assembly line. Parts come in by train and are moved down miles of assembly line in huge factories and, basically, a complete rocket is spit out the other side of the factory. Is there as much analysis and modeling of risk and failure potential? No. Do the Russians care? No. If this particular rocket blows up, hell, just use the next one off the assembly line. What about the payload? Well hopefully the customer was smart enough to keep it simple as well and made two. China takes a similar approach. They also trade cost for risk. By not over-designing their systems, they can keep the cost low and produce tangible results faster. However, there is a higher likely-hood that the duct tape holding the vent open will tear and the rocket will explode. Nonetheless, they have backups so they don't worry about it. From an external point of view, however, it appears that they are doing exactly what America is doing at twice the rate twice as well. That's not entirely true, they just take a very different mission approach.
To be complete, just about every culture has its own quirky design methodologies. Russians are pragmatic and get the job done. Americans value safety and low-failure rates. The Japanese spend a lot of time and effort streamlining and optimizing their manufacturing process. Every culture has a different approach because every culture is made up of slightly different values. To use a metaphor, there is more than one way to the top of the mountain. Americans try to chose the safest. It gives off the appearance that they are slow and wasteful (and to some extent we are) when compared to trailblazing 'craizes' like Russia and China. Nonetheless, all paths have their potential benefits and disadvantages. =)
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While I am not so sure that China will make it to the moon anytime soon, I think the belief that they will comes from a different approach to the problem than we take in America. America is a very risk adverse society in general and this has filtered heavily into our space program. We spend, literally, billions of dollars every year in this country building up infrastructure and bureaucracy within companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Gruman to design and manufacture very complex technical systems (read rockets and spacecraft) which have a 95% + success factor. I have worked on spacecraft design projects and getting a risk analysis with that high of a success rate is incredibly difficult. We are talking about connecting multiple valves, switches, screws, cables, etc. (parts level components) that each come with their own failure/success rating. These get implemented into triple and quad redundant designs so that the risk models can show parallel success paths which is what eventually allows the final massive system to have a 95% + success rating. All of this requires extraordinary amounts of personnel, and, as the number of people working on a project increase, so does the accompanying paperwork and approval meetings and so on. Thus, in order to launch one damn rocket, America literally employs tens of thousands of people at all levels micromanaging every single screw in a system (no, really, I did screw tracking for a summer internship once...Lockheed Martin never loses screws...).
Or you can launch frequently to get the same success rate with fewer personnel, infrastructure and bureaucracy amortized over more launches, and far more real data about your vehicle's failure modes. As I see it, the central problem has been cost to orbit and that remains high solely because we can't fly rockets as they are meant to be flown - frequently.
Also as the A.C. replier noted, China is notorious for being risk adverse. They won't risk Chinese astronauts dying on TV, if they can help it.
Oh boy (Score:1)
China is notorious for being risk adverse.
erm, no. Our only hope of beating China to Mars and beyond is that their leadership is even older, more hidebound and less imaginative than ours. They are not in the least unwilling to risk ten lives or a million to achieve a worthy goal. They just don't see it yet.
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They are not in the least unwilling to risk ten lives or a million to achieve a worthy goal.
We're not talking about losing a few disposable people. We're talking about losing face. That's completely different.
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Russia, for instance, has multiple factories capable of literally assembling entire launch vehicle systems rapidly down miles of assembly line. Parts come in by train and are moved down miles of assembly line in huge factories and, basically, a complete rocket is spit out the other side of the factory.
Calling BS on this one. [citation-needed]
Granted, there are some significant philosophical differences between NASA and Russia's approach to engineering. Currently, this is pronounced by NASA's use of the overly-complex shuttle, in contrast with the rather primitive Soyuz (which also has the benefit of being decades old, and thus extremely well-understood).
However, this is not necessarily a valid comparison; the USSR constructed its own Space Shuttle, which was similar in complexity (and actually more adv
Cheaper than you think (Score:2)
Even though I summarized one of the conclusions of the Augustine report I'm sorry to say that I haven't read it through myself. However I think that the approach of going further into deep space and only "landing" (perhaps docking would be a better turn) on minor bodies might be cheaper than you think.
Think of it, no need to develop:
1) a costly lander capable of re-entry on bodies if they have a significant atmosphere, ability to slow via parachute/retro-rockets and have a controlled landing (the mars rove
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The critical finding of the Augustine commission was that NASA is severely underfunded for doing manned spaceflight.
I see that claim often. And I don't see where it comes from. NASA has never tried to do manned space flight on a budget. Maybe NASA needs more money, but given how they spent money for the past 50 years, how do I know that they won't spend what they get for little consequence and "need" more? In other words, I want to see a demonstration that NASA can use well the money it gets now before I'll be willing to raise its budget.
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At their current rate of achievement - China will reach a comet or one of the Legrange points somewhere in the 2050's or 60's.
Seriously. All those folks invoking China as a reason for doing pointless* dick sizing contests seem to have missed that China isn't exactly in a hurry to accomplish anything. Calling their progress 'gl
Pros and Cons of "Blowing Up" The Moon (Score:1)
As this article [heavy.com] puts it: "The plan has generated a lot of outrage among people who shop at Whole Foods and grind their own coffee beans. However, there are a ho
Why not nuclear propulsion & rotational gravit (Score:3, Interesting)
Nuclear propulsion can easily move us to the furthest points of our Solar System with ease. Gravity produced by rotation can solve the bone loss problems. A Nuclear energy source can also provide enough power to build an electromagnetic shield around the spacecraft (make the spacecraft a large dynamo, just like Earth) and enough power for smaller craft that can be used for landing to planets.
It would cost a lot to build such a big spaceship, and it could only be built in space, but there is no alternative,
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Whoa, you can make what now? Are you sure you aren't thinking of anti-gravity [wikipedia.org]?
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It has nothing to do with the 'usual hippies' and everything to do with the '63 Partial Test Ban Treaty. It's against the law until we re-write, ratify that treaty.
I get hating 'the other guy' but try to hate them for things they've actually done rather than irrationally applying every perceived slight to them.
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First, the test ban treaty covers nuclear detonations. The ban doesn't address 'weapons in space' it covers further testing of detonations in any medium other than underground (ie water, surface, atmosphere and space).
Secondly a nuclear reactor is an excellent mechanism for generating heat, not an overly good mechanism for generating propulsion in space. Nuclear propulsion in space is via 'pulse propulsion', essentially a series of nuclear detonations which unfortunately are directly covered by the Parti
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Nuclear reactors are not only a good method for generating electricity which the electrical systems of the ship but via the electricity can also power ion engines and engines that work against planetary magnetic fields. And last time I looked pulse propulsion didn't use a nuclear reactor. Try and get your facts straight.
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send a mission to Phobos and actually land there. Establish a small sub-surface base (inflate a habitat module and bury it) and do the robot launching and control from it. You get your footprint photo-op as well... plus there'll be minerals to mine and maybe even water to extract.
Bah! (Score:2)
Call me again when it's raining beer.
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If asteroids have water... (Score:2)
... then so would earth when it formed so why do we need to look to the asteroids to "seed" this planet with water? All the solar system bodies apparently condensed from the same dust cloud so I don't see this need to discover where earths water came from. It was already here , albeit probably as steam.
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The question might be more interesting if you frame it like this: Why does the Earth have a lot of water when none of the other rocky planets have? Or for that matter any of the gas planets, moons, asteroids and other bits and sundry that were also created from that same dust cloud.
I don't think anyone's saying that water on Earth came solely from comets or asteroids.
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Thing is that they do have water on them.
Europa [wikipedia.org]
Mars [wikipedia.org]
Neptune [wikipedia.org]
If you go and look up the planets in our solar system, you will notice that most if not all of them list water as part of their composition. It's just that on most of them it's either so cold that the water exists as ice or it's so hot that the water is permanently steam. What's special about the Earth (at least for the moment) is that we have the right temperature for the water to be liquid.
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Get a grip (Score:1)
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Er... there is a *slight* problem of distance - given that the nearest star is about 8 light years away and we can't even get near light-speed. The furthest object ever made by man is currently dead in terms of power and not that far outside the solar system - but still moving at phenomenal rate.
So, looking for any planet isn't even worth the effort until we solve that problem. In the meantime, we're not caring about *life*, we're caring about *fuel*. Water is (or can be made to be, if you happen to have
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Well, technically Voyager 1 isn't dead. The Nuclear generator should provide enough power to keep it talking until 2025, by which point, it should be well beyond the known boundary of the solar system, and able to return the first true measurements of interstellar space.
But, yeah, there's a huge distance problem. Voyager 1 is travelling at about 17km/sec, and according to Wikipedia, if it were headed straight for the nearest star, would get there in about 75,000 years.
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given that the nearest star is about 8 light years away
Minor correction: Alpha Centauri is a little over 4 light years away.
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The Alpha Centauri system is under 4.5 LY from Sol, but that's certainly still a damn long journey. Theoretically we probably have the technology* to send a probe out that way, but it would be very expensive, take most likely centuries, and have a very low chance of actual success at the end. At this point, the cost is completely not worth the potential benefit. Do a bit more exploration of our own system, testing the types of technology a starship would need to have, before you consider actually building o
Not human-sustaining (Score:2)
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"With just a handful of men, we'll start - we'll start all over again"
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"Can't you just see it? Civilization starting all over again - a second chance. We'll even
build a railway and tunnel to the coast, go there for our holidays. Nothing can stop men
like us. I've made a start already. Come on down here and have a look."
Great album, great book.
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Darn skippy it's a great book [fourmilab.ch], and I don't mean "a great book for its time", I mean that the works of Wells remain as superbly well written and thought provoking books even today.
If you haven't read them, then close this tab and do so right now [gutenberg.org]. If you need convincing that Wells is One Of Us, then consider he also wrote the first (published) wargame rules: Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and bo [gutenberg.org]
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Obviously it's impossible for the entire human race to relocate to an asteroid, but it would be a great place to establish the first human colony on an extraterrestrial body.
"With just a handful of men, we'll start - we'll start all over again"
I think it would be better if a handful of women were included as well.
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Although it's an important discovery, the real importance lies on finding water on objects that we may one day need to live on. We're never going to set up facilities on an asteroid. But on a moon we certainly could, and finding water ice there would be significantly more revelatory.
By that logic, Galileo and other early astronomers who sought to explore space and discover distant planets were wasting their time. Since at that point in history getting into space was barely conceivable.
Exploration for the sake of exploration may seem pointless to you now, but knowledge about our universe is beneficial to the human race.
Moon bombing should be happening now? (Score:1)
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yeah, LCROSS just hit a dry-hole it seems ... real data in a few days
Campaing for water contamination! (Score:1)
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What about water down here? If you can nudge the right rock you could use gravity to land(!) it in the middle of some desert, thus altering the entire climate of the planet, risk changing our rotation, cracking some important tectonic plate...
uhhh, maybe we'll contentrate on "out there". Yeah.
The search for life....pffft (Score:2)
NASA has been focusing on searching for signs of extraterrestrial life for some time now.
I don't think we should be focusing on that at this point in human development. I think our resources would be better spent in efforts to explore and colonize space. The only chance for the long term survival of the human species is for us to get off this rock. It's not if Earth is going to face an ELE (extinction level event) but when.
We raced to our moon and then abandon it when we got there! I hope NASA follows t
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Ask yourself why nobody yet chooses to live in Antarctica. Its cheaper than going to Mars, safer and more comfortable. But nobody has started a colony. Until that happens I doubt that real colonists will want to move to the planets.
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http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/stations/index.shtml [antarcticconnection.com]
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Except there are many science reasearch stations in Antarctica. How would a space station be any different?
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/stations/index.shtml [antarcticconnection.com]
They are exactly like space stations. But they are not colonies, with farmers, children, etc.
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Yeah but people aren't saying gee I'd love to colonise Antarctica but its forbidden by this treaty.
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That's why it is forbidden: because governments would love to colonize it.
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Who?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_claims_of_Antarctica [wikipedia.org]
First pieces of Antarctica were interesting as bases for waling and reasons to claim exclusivity (much like current debate on who owns the North Pole) ... Antarctica treaty came when Antarctica became interesting as resupply base for surface fleets and submarines. To claim a territory a state must have citizens living there year round, so I think the minute after the Antarctica treaty will be abolished, there will be (well paid) colonists put ash
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Ask yourself why nobody yet chooses to live in Antarctica. Its cheaper than going to Mars, safer and more comfortable. But nobody has started a colony.
The reason is that both claiming sovereignty and mining resources from Antarctica is forbidden by international law. There's actually a ban on resource extraction there until 2048:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System [wikipedia.org]
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I don't see why it so important to see if we can find some bacteria hidden away on Mars.
We need to make sure that there isn't any bacteria on Mars so it doesn't kill us when we invade. Didn't you learn anything from War of the Worlds?
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Apologies, but... (Score:2)
I was just overwhelmed by the image of a classic flying saucer pulled up next to the asteroid. There's a ramp extending from an open door, and at the bottom of the ramp is a little green guy taking a leak.
Support? How about "do not refute"? (Score:3, Informative)
The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet.
Uhhh... I have a hard time necessarily accepting this. Another perfectly plausible hypothesis is that water and simple organic molecules are fairly common in the solar system (and perhaps beyond), and therefore it is not surprising for it to be everywhere. Earth formed in the right place and under the right conditions for a lot of it to condense into oceans, oceans that are hypothesized to have once covered the entire surface of the planet. These findings equally "support" this hypothesis, as do the findings of amino acids and water in some comets.
It seems to me that the best they can say is that these findings do not refute the hypothesis that asteroids brought water and organic compounds to Earth. There is plenty of geochemistry on Earth to make its own organic compounds and turn them into biochemistry. Citation provided [royalsocie...ishing.org].
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I agree.
I love the great leap from “It has water” to “helping lay the foundation for life on the planet.” That’s one small step for a sentence; one giant leap in logic.
I’m guessing that any organic material will have problems staying alive in space, plus being able to survive the entry into Earth’s atmosphere, and also withstanding the giant impact when it hits the Earth. That is one tough organism. The most this tells us is that there is / could be other organic
Disturbing the Universe (Score:1)
By the way, where do NASA or US get the permissions to bomb whatever out there?
Awesome (Score:2)
Can I ask one of my more scientifically oriented friends here on Slashdot; could this discovery potentially tell us more about how a water cycle initially starts, now that we've got another example of it happening, besides our own?
So ground astronomers find water on an asteroid... (Score:2)
Maybe a stupid question.... (Score:3, Interesting)
"The scientists say these new findings support the theory that asteroids brought both water and organic compounds to the early Earth, helping lay the foundation for life on the planet."
Well, it seems to me that whatever the processes were that would have generated/collected water and organics on these asteroids, would just as likely have SIMILARLY generated/collected water and organics on the debris that accreted to form the earth in the FIRST place, no?
I mean, I understand that the accretion process from dust>>>planet was traumatic and probably involved a great deal of heat, but
a) the crashing of meteorites to earth is easily just as traumatic
b) while all the "envisionings" of early-forming protoearth illustrate it as a molten hellhole, I'm curious why? I could see a great deal of energy being generated by the collision/compression of the dust/debris cloud, but wouldn't most of this be in the gravitational center of mass? The outer surface would both suffer less compression heating AND be able to quickly radiate heat away, no? Further, this process would have taken at least hundreds of millions of years, and so not necessarily resulted in really high (ie molten lava) temps at any given point...?
In any case, it seems logical that the process of accumulating water/organics didn't simply *poof* start AFTER the Earth was formed, there were a good 6-8 billion years prior to that, and the pre-earth debris would likely have been just as covered.
This is News Because? (Score:2)
Why? (Score:1)
If there is so much water to be found all over the universe, then why do all the alien invaders keep coming to Earth to steal the water?
still completely insane (Score:1)
I have a different, much more sensible theory: Hydrogen lit on fire.
How do we know there is water if we did not crash (Score:1)
Temperatures destroy organic chemicals (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...evidence of water ice along with organic compounds...
Chilled beer, anyone?
Re: (Score:2)
In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe it was created by some sort of God, but the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI firmly believed that the entire universe was, in fact, sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who lived in perpetual fear of the time they called "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief" were small, blue creatures with more than fifty
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
God wears a gown, you moron. Those farts aren't going anywhere.