Moon Could Have Been Habitable Once, Scientists Speculate (gizmodo.com) 87
Scientists from Birkbeck, University of London speculate that recent results show that the moon is wetter than scientists have previously thought, increasing the possibility for it to have the necessary conditions for life. "Whether life ever arose on the Moon, or was transported to it from elsewhere, is of course highly speculative and can only be addressed by an aggressive future program of lunar exploration," they write in the article, published in the journal Astrobiology. Gizmodo summarizes: This habitability period, if it really occurred, might have happened either just after the Moon's formation from a massive collision with Earth 4.5 billion years ago, or 3.5 billion years ago, after a period of volcanism which may have resulted in a thin lunar atmosphere. Such an atmosphere would have lasted perhaps tens of millions of years. Maybe water existed on the Moon at this point. Maybe 10 million years was enough time for some rudimentary life to evolve on the Moon. Maybe Earthly life traveled over to the Moon on asteroids. Who knows.
The researchers stress that "habitability requires much more than just the presence of a significant atmosphere and liquid water." One such requirement would be the presence of organic compounds. And there are obviously not the same water-created features on the Moon that we see here on Earth or on Mars, like drainage channels -- though maybe these existed and were eroded by small meteors and solar winds. While the paper doesn't present new data, it's an interesting synthesis of lots of existing research demonstrating that, since the Moon is wetter than was initially thought, maybe it's worth wondering whether it was once habitable.
The researchers stress that "habitability requires much more than just the presence of a significant atmosphere and liquid water." One such requirement would be the presence of organic compounds. And there are obviously not the same water-created features on the Moon that we see here on Earth or on Mars, like drainage channels -- though maybe these existed and were eroded by small meteors and solar winds. While the paper doesn't present new data, it's an interesting synthesis of lots of existing research demonstrating that, since the Moon is wetter than was initially thought, maybe it's worth wondering whether it was once habitable.
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Slashdot today (Score:5, Insightful)
An interesting topic and relevnt for science and nerdy types -- yet the first 15 or so comments are all off topic, snide remarks and the inevitable (and tiresome) ad hominem attacks.
Not a single reply which bore any relevance to the topic.
Come on Slashdot, you are better than this !!
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Come on Slashdot, you are better than this !!
It really isn't, any more. As long as they let anonymous cowards pee on the fire hydrant, we'll get the above responses. The people who are fuming about the preponderance of "may", "maybe" and "might"s in the original article have to take a back seat to the 9gag crowd.
Personally, I don't think a body the size of the moon could ever have held on to an atmosphere long enough for life to develop. "Ah, yes, BUT!" the journal of Astrobiology retorts, "there might have been extremophiles lurking in some of the da
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Dude, even simple bacterial would suggest that abiogenesis happened twice in this solar system. This will excite Drake very much.
If there is life on the moon- or ever was, it would be much more likely to originate from Earth.
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The article claims the Moon held an atmosphere for 10 million years. However, I work in the field of planetary chemistry and this this entire concept is pure speculation. I can't really believe that it's been published, but I'm not familiar with the journal Astrobiology. It might be dog shit. The impact factor is 3.6, so middling but probably worth a read.
The main issue with the hypothesis is that it depends on how the moon formed, which we don't know. If it occurred by impact then while the formation proce
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Those sound like two very odd extremes.
Presently we have a sample size of one. We have some samples from locations that give us information that life presently is not likely in locations such as Mars, Venus, or any of the other major planetary bodies. We presently know that we have two very large planets with moons that look like there might be a hint of possibility that they could have life. Even if they do, we can't say much without proper research.
This is an early working theory. Ten million years is
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If this article is anything to go by, I suspect there's a little arrow pointing up and the "bio" bit is written above. In crayon.
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This hypothesis could be an early test of the panspermia speculation. If we find extremophile fossils on the Moon, it should not be hard to prove whether or not they arrived via meteoric spallation from Earth.
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This hypothesis could be an early test of the panspermia speculation. If we find extremophile fossils on the Moon, it should not be hard to prove whether or not they arrived via meteoric spallation from Earth.
This hypothesis could be an early test of the panspermia speculation. If we find extremophile fossils on the Moon, it should not be hard to prove whether or not they arrived via meteoric spallation from Earth.
Life surviving a trip from the Earth to the moon would be a very different prospect than life surviving between planets, or even systems.
1) Temperature: if a minimum temperature is needed to keep the organism alive, it's not going to lose it in that distance.
2) Radiation: it would be exposed to very little radiation in that short trip compared to say... earth to mars.
3) Time: the shorter the trip- likely the less time that has passed. Less time for things to go wrong.
Finding life on the moon may help a pan
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But on the other hand, spallation from Earth requires a lot of energy and a large impactor, because of our deep gravity well compared to, say, Mars or Europa. If any organism could survive that experience, all the more impressive.
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Does it matter? Monsanto will end up owning them in any case.
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The original article is only a couple pages of which most is an overview of the moon's geological history that includes a short period where there may have been liquid water. Well, water equals the chance for some type of life. No new data (like today's Mars post), nothing to see here move along.
Gizmodo goes beyond the original article with:
Scientists Speculate (Score:2)
That seems to happen a lot more often since the internet became popular.
Channels or canals? (Score:2)
The mention of channels on the moon reminded me of this old thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Yeah channels and canals are different. Hah.
There were also bat-men on the moon, in those days. Funny that if you showed someone from the 1800's a Batman comic they'd think he's an alien.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
Having the elments to support life != having life. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the Scientific Process this is on step one hypothesis. Which is just a logical guess. This phase is no better then philosophy, where it is just logical thinking of things.
I don't call this science, or these people scientists because science hasn't been done yet.
That rant out of the way.
I am going to give my hypothesis/philosophy to approaching that idea.
Life isn't just about having the elements, they need to be arranged in the right way. While the moon has a lot of water, I don't think it is distributed well enough to have the conditions to start life.
We as humans can go there, we can probably mine the water and other life giving chemicals from the moon, but at great effort. Even the effort to scrape enough material to keep a bacteria alive, would be considerable effort. More then the random chance.
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It's possible that long ago it had a magnetic field worthy of the name. That might have helped a bit.
Speculation. Einstein more thought than experiment (Score:2)
There sure is a lot of speculation about what could have been in the summary. Kinda sounds like what might happen if some astrophysicists got really, really stoned.
That said:
> This phase is no better then philosophy, where it is just logical thinking of things. I don't call this science
Einstein's work on relativity was mostly logical thinking of things. We didn't have the technology to test most of it until decades later.
I suppose there is a difference in that Einstein had more "logical thinking" and les
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Whenever I see any pop-science article using "could', "might", "potentially", or "possible" I automatically negate those words. If doing that doesn't change the meaning of the statement I tend to pass it by.
"The moon could have been habitable to life." reads to me "The moon could not have been habitable to life.". Well, that isn't extraordinary.
There could be some interesting details and I'll find an article that focuses on those details that doesn't use hype words.
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You are perhaps a Thermian?
by default? (Score:3)
can't we assume that every planet (except, perhaps gass planets) and/or moon was capable at a certain point in it's life to support life?
as the planet/moon ages it loses these capabilities and ends up a dead rock, remember earth will be inhabitable at a certain point as well.
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i said 'at a certain point', it is not because they have no atmosphere _now_ that they never had one.
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but the goldilocks zone is also not fixed. for example, when our sun will expand the gz will shift.
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True, but we've skipped over the hard parts and jumped right into publication.
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Why would any good scientist speculate?
Science today is about group-think and peer-approval - the scientific method can't be relied upon to "prove" what scientists "know" to be true.
I didn't read the article... (Score:2)
...but I bet the issue was Lunar Warming, and it was triggered by the moon landings, where mean white men forced women of color smarter than them to do the math so that we could land white men on the moon!
LOL
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There are no funny Republican comedians, you included.
Fortunately, there are liberal comedians who are not afraid to mock the far-left politically correct, identity politics, SJW mindset. e.g. Bill Maher.
But yes, I struggle to think of more than a few conservative comedians. Why is that?
Milo Yiannopoulos is hilarious. Possibly not a "comedian", but makes use of humour to make a political point like John Stewart.
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Says the A.C. :-)
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Wow, the A.C. just paints a caricature. Sounds exactly like a racist troll talking about how "all blacks" are, excpet substitute "conservatives". Shame on you.
Maybe that attitude is why American politicians have never been able to negotiate a decent health-care system.
(except Romney in Massachusetts made a good effort?)
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You don't get many people who say "I'm a conservative, and I love unions, want tax payer funded healthcare, and believe taxes should be focused on the rich because those who are the people who can afford to pay and who have benefited most from society."
I do, aside from the unions part, though they would agree unions play an important role, they can also do harm. Then again, I don't live in the US.
Likewise show me the conservatives who support the current Republican party, support Trump, but are against the inhuman policies I just mentioned. Crickets?
OK, I really don't get the Republican opposition to healthcare reforms. But given that Romney had some success, and got the party nomination in 2011, there must be some?
Those others issues have been controversial, to say the least, across the political spectrum. Where are you getting your news from?
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the word "Conservative" in the US is self-identified with by people with the repugnant viewpoints I just pointed out is a little absurd.
Oh dear. Sounds like you have half the country tied up in a neat box you despise. That must be uncomfortable.
That's a bit like attacking all Catholics because of some piece of dogma you despise. You might say people have a bit more choice in politics, but there are really only two choices if Americans wish to participate. The conservative one, and the even more conservative one. (I'd have vote Bernie :-)
The policies I mentioned are the policies of people who identify as conservatives right now. If they weren't, you'd see conservatives disassociating themselves from Trump in droves.
You might have thought so. But after all that has happened, how can you possibly still believe that?
Inhabitable by what? (Score:2)
I don't even think that life (as we know it, Jim) had even evolved on Earth by that stage
The moon could be inhabitable again (Score:2)
When terraforming is mentioned, it's usually Mars, or sometimes Venus, but the moon is rarely mentioned.
It's a shame, since there's a lot the moon could offer. With enough targetted impacts, we could spin it up and give it an atmosphere. Due to the moon's smaller size, it would take far less of an effort than terraforming Mars or Venus (about 100 Halley-sized comets versus an estimated 10,000 comets for Mars). While the moon's low gravity means it'll eventually lose its atmosphere, it should hold to one
Re: The moon could be inhabitable again (Score:2)
Giving the moon an atmosphere is relatively easy. Drop a few comets ... ...
Spinning it up is close to impossible. Consider the mass of the moon