• Welcome to the Speedsolving.com, home of the web's largest puzzle community!
    You are currently viewing our forum as a guest which gives you limited access to join discussions and access our other features.

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community of 40,000+ people from around the world today!

    If you are already a member, simply login to hide this message and begin participating in the community!

They found water on the moon!

Nukoca

Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2009
Messages
414
Location
United States of America
Remember the LCROSS mission? Well, I didn't. In fact, I forgot about it until today, when I saw a whole bunch of news stories that shouted "THERE'S WATER ON THE MOON!" :D Ahahaha!
Google even changed its logo:
wateronmoon09-hp.gif

I suspect they had it ready to post when NASA got the results back.


News stories about it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/14moon.html
http://www.examiner.com/x-5181-Jack...y2009m11d13-NASA--discovers-water-on-the-moon
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/11/13/science-us-sci-shoot-the-moon_7120918.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091113/ts_afp/sciencespaceusmoon\
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/11/13/water.moon.nasa/index.html
 
Last edited:

KubeKid73

Member
Joined
Jan 23, 2009
Messages
369
I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?
 

JTW2007

BattsMan
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
1,591
Location
WCA
2008WARL01
I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?

1. What is the basis of your opinion that people are "not meant to" leave Earth?
1a. What tells you that people are "meant to" be on Earth?
 

blade740

Mack Daddy
Joined
May 29, 2006
Messages
851
WCA
2007NELS01
YouTube
Visit Channel
I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?

Because one day there won't be room for us on this planet and we'll need to move out eventually.

If water exists on the moon, and on mars, it seems (to me at least) that it's a bit more common than we first thought, and chances of finding it elsewhere look good.
 

Twofu2

Member
Joined
Sep 7, 2009
Messages
51
Location
...zzzz
We might go to other places if people mess up this earth more. We might have to go to the Moon. Hmm... I wonder if Nasa or someone will heat up and melt the ice, to make it livable...
 

LewisJ

Member
Joined
Nov 4, 2009
Messages
273
I don't see why it's so great. Why can't we just stay on Earth and stop messing around where we're not meant to be?

Why didn't the Europeans just stay where they were "meant" to be...

It's called curiosity, and it is the force that drives mankind.
 

qqwref

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
7,834
Location
a <script> tag near you
WCA
2006GOTT01
YouTube
Visit Channel
i doubt that there is water becuase water has oxygen. and if there is oxygen then................you get the rest.
...wow.


To be honest I don't see why this is so cool. Yes, I know scientists have been trying to find water in space for a long time, and looking for microscopic life and so on, but why? There's clearly not enough water on the moon or Mars to sustain any kind of colony or expedition of humans, so for me its existence is a mere curiosity. It's not interesting to me to look for microbes in space because there are probably still microbes on Earth we haven't discovered (so space is not the best place to look if you just wanna discover more species) and because the only kind of extraterrestial life most people are interested is the kind they could interact with (i.e. organisms that are at least big enough to hold or look at).

I feel the same way about this as about the particle-colliding experiments in physics. I know a lot of scientists get really excited about this sort of stuff, but even in the best case all we're going to discover is something tiny and unimportant. (Disagree? Compare the number of particles we know about to the number of particles that are found in matter or have any applications to technology. It's a pretty significant ratio.) It would be OK if this was just a bunch of scientists working in a lab, but I'm talking about stuff we spend billions of dollars on, and if there are no results that matter outside of pure science then I don't approve sinking so much money into it.

Space expeditions are not cheap, but perhaps the best example of this kind of waste of resources is the Large Hadron Collider. It cost over 3 billion Euros ($4.5 billion) and what are they doing with it? Trying to find extremely rare particles in order to determine which of a few quantum physics theories (all of which have the same predictions about everything we've ever observed) is correct. The knowledge gained from this thing has literally no known applications. Do you really think this is a better use of $4.5 billion than, say, giving 45 million laptops to poor children?
 

aronpm

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2009
Messages
2,010
@ qqwref:

From an economic standpoint, you're right. Space programs and the LHC are massive wastes of money. That money could go to giving poor children laptops (or better yet, food). But from a scientific standpoint, money shouldn't trump discovery. When computers were first made, didn't people say that they were a waste of money and had little practical use?

Finding water on the moon lets us now that there are other bodies in space that contain water other than Earth, so it's more likely that life may exist elsewhere in our solar system. Even if we do only find microbes, the question about whether Earth is the only life-bearing body in the universe is answered.

With the LHC, they're trying to discover if the Higgs-Boson particle exists and gives particles mass. Whether it exists or not has no practical application I can think of, but it does let us humans know a little bit more about the universe. Answers to questions are what humans ultimately seek, right?
 

qqwref

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2007
Messages
7,834
Location
a <script> tag near you
WCA
2006GOTT01
YouTube
Visit Channel
When computers were first made, didn't people say that they were a waste of money and had little practical use?
Probably not anyone who knew what they were talking about. All of the early computers were just ways to speed up arithmetic calculations, which is clearly useful if you have to do it all by hand. And besides, this analogy makes no sense because the LHC is by design only capable of finding particles that are so rare (and thus are so unimportant outside of theoretical physics) that all of the previous colliders couldn't find them.

Even if we do only find microbes, the question about whether Earth is the only life-bearing body in the universe is answered. [...] [The LHC] does let us humans know a little bit more about the universe. Answers to questions are what humans ultimately seek, right?
So, we answer one question - one which has no applications - at a cost of some billions of dollars. Is this reasonable? I really don't think it is.

For comparison, imagine spending $4.5 billion on a bunch of supercomputers. A supercomputer can calculate pretty much anything you want it to. Want to simulate weather patterns, fold proteins, try to prove important mathematical theorems by brute force? Want to compute God's Algorithm? There is no excuse for spending $4.5 billion on a machine that does one task well when you could spend the money on ten machines (supercomputers apparently cost from $50 to $500 million each) that will each do any task well.
 
Top