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.
Re:A few too many zeros (Score:2, Informative)
Well, simply factually wrong history on your part. This has been held by many since the earliest years of Christianity.
We answered to the best of our ability this objection to God's "commanding this first, second, and third thing to be created," when we quoted the words, "He said, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast;" remarking that the immediate Creator, and, as it were, very Maker of the world was the Word, the Son of God; while the Father of the Word, by commanding His own Son--the Word--to create the world, is primarily Creator. And with regard to the creation of the light upon the first day, and of the firmament upon the second, and of the gathering together of the waters that are under the heaven into their several reservoirs on the third (the earth thus causing to sprout forth those (fruits) which are under the control of nature alone, and of the (great) lights and stars upon the fourth, and of aquatic animals upon the fifth, and of land animals and man upon the sixth, we have treated to the best of our ability in our notes upon Genesis, as well as in the foregoing pages, when we found fault with those who, taking the words in their apparent signification, said that the time of six days was occupied in the creation of the world, and quoted the words: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
--Origen of Alexandria
You take Dawkins' errors of history on far too much thoughtless faith, I think.
Re:A few too many zeros (Score:4, Informative)
Where did I use the word "plagiarism". Does that even make sense in comparitive mythology (that's right my overly religious severely ignorant friend, there's a whole field of study tracing the similarities between mythologies). The Sumerians, via the Akkadians, laid the ground work for a considerable amount of later Middle Eastern and Western culture; writing, mythical and religious motifs (including the cosmography, the Hero and the Flood and so forth), codified laws, heck, even timekeeping and unit measures.
Why are you so shocked by this? Did you think somehow the Semitic peoples of Canaan wouldn't be heavily influenced by the Sumero-Akkadian religion just as they were in many respects by the Egyptian civilization? The ol' Promised Land sat on top of one of the most important trading routes even in prehistoric times, and it was heavily influenced by not just goods but ideas. A thousand years later the descendants of those ancient Canaanite tribes would again be influenced by Hellenistic thought, and from that was born modern Judaism, Christianity, and eventually Islam.