

Moon Water Discovery Hints at Mystery Source Deep Underground - peterkelly
http://www.space.com/22553-moon-water-mystery-source.html

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coolnow
With the presence of (liquid) water, is there a high chance of simple alien
life on the moon? I mean, i can't think of any place in the sea that's
downright hostile to life, where life hasn't found a way™.

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chc
This isn't about liquid water, as far as I can tell.

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Raphmedia
I remember when the search for water meant something big. I remember the media
being all over it.

Now, there is water everywhere and nobody cares.

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haldujai
Actually this is just a confirmation of water already previously found. It's
nothing super groundbreaking but very significant nevertheless.

It's also the fact that the moon isn't exotic enough for the media/masses.

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ericd
Confirming a significant amount of water on the moon could mean in-space fuel
manufacturing and refueling, though!

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gizmo686
How? Water is already a relativly low-energy compound, so I assume you are
talking about using it to manufacture hydrogen molecules to use as fuel.

An external source of water is completely unnecessary for this. The idea
behind hydrogen as a fuel is that you can react it with oxygen to produce
water, which is a lower energy molecule. You can then harness that difference
in energy to do whatever. The amount of water generated is equal to the amount
of water needed to generate the hydrogen (and oxygen) molecules in the first
place. It is a rechargable battery.

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ProCynic
I think the idea is that you can use solar or nuclear to crack it into
hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel. With rockets, fuel is both energy
source and reaction mass, meaning that you throw it out the back end and can't
recover it. You can also use the oxygen for breathable atmosphere. Every
kilogram of useful mass you can find on the moon is one less kilo you have to
haul from earth.

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rbanffy
You can also use it as propellant for nuclear thermal rockets. You can't lift
off from Earth on one, but the Moon is an easier problem.

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Lrigikithumer
What would happen if very simple life was found on the moon? I mean what
effects would it have on society, would it be as significant if life was found
say on mars? Would it put an end to the alien life debate or just fuel it
further? I doubt have high hopes for there being life there, as obviously life
needs more than just water but its fun to think about

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tzs
I think a lot would depend on the origin of that life. Asteroid and comet
impacts with Earth can eject life bearing material into space, and that
material can reach the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and beyond [1].

Some life forms seem likely to be able to survive that kind of ejection, and a
long trip through space, and re-entry in a planetary atmosphere [2].

If we find life on the Moon, or Mars, or Europa, it could turn out to be that
it originated on Earth. It would still be an amazing and extremely interesting
discovery, but not the momentous discovery that finding true alien life would
be.

When considering the possibility that Earth life has spread to other parts of
the solar system, one should also consider the possibility that it went the
other way. Just as ejected material from Earth can reach other planets,
ejected material from other planets can reach Earth. Some believe that
conditions on Mars once were more favorable for the origin of life than they
were on Earth, so it is a possibility that life started there, and then spread
to Earth. Around 0.2% of meteorites found on Earth are thought to have
originated on Mars.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3375](http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3375)

[2] [http://www1.univap.br/~spilling/AB/Olsson-
francis_cockel_201...](http://www1.univap.br/~spilling/AB/Olsson-
francis_cockel_2010_astrobiology_Exp.pdf)

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saurik
The actual source, "Remote detection of magmatic water in Bullialdus Crater on
the Moon":

[http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo19...](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1909.html)

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sciguy77
Am I the only one thinking about underground moon aliens?

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hellrich
Moon Nazis, I watched a documentary about those, "Iron Pie" or something like
that...

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com_kieffer
Iron Sky :
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314)

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hellrich
I should have used <sarcasm>

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terramars
this is about magmatic water, which is stuff trapped underneath the crust in
the liquid planetary interior. you'd hardly call the stuff liquid since it's
going to manifest itself as hydroxide or other hydrated minerals once released
to the surface. just like the polar region solar wind water / hydrogen, you'd
have to actually mine the damn stuff in order to make use of it. seeing as
rocks have a ton of oxygen in them normally, this is really only significant
as a source of hydrogen. permanently shadowed ice "may" be significant as a
source of water in and of itself, but even still you've got huge technical
challenges trying to get at it (care to operate in a 30K environment).

anyways, mercury has way better ice deposits than the moon does and no one
cares.

EDIT: oh yeah the apollo missions found hydrated volcanic glass beads that
were ~15ppm water, i'm not sure how this finding relates to that one but don't
get the idea that the quantities involved will be large on a local scale
though they're probably much higher than that.

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iwwr
Merely getting to orbit Mercury is more energy-expensive than leaving the
solar system altogether, then landing in a high-gravity environment and
without an atmosphere. Mercury is not easy to get to.

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m_mueller
I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Is it really more energy intensive to
slow down in mercury's orbit, than escaping the sun's gravity well? If that's
true, can I inflect that the delta between mercury and earth is larger than
the delta between earth and infinity, i.e. we are 'more than halfway out' of
sun's gravity well in terms of gravitational energy levels?

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T-hawk
Yes. Check the orbital velocities involved. Mercury is 48 km/sec, Earth is 30,
and an object at infinity would be zero. Kinetic energy is proportional to
velocity squared. Square the orbital velocities and you see the Mercury-Earth
energy delta is larger than Earth-infinity.

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m_mueller
Thanks. Makes sense of course.

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sesm
No surprise here. The most popular hypothesis of Moon formation says, that it
used to be a piece of Earth
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis)).

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simonh
That has got to be hands down the the most horrible site for browsing on an
iPhone I have ever seen. It's almost completely unreadable. It's like being
stabbed in the eyes with sharpened social media icons. (OT for article, but
not HN).

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nbevans
There's plenty of HackerNews apps you can use rather than the website.

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ddeck
I'm guessing they're referring to the space.com site. When zoomed in on the
text (Android 4.3), there are FB, G+ etc. share buttons floating in the middle
of the screen and the drop down top menu likes to make sporadic appearances
also.

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nbevans
I use the Android app of this: [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com)

It summarises the content so you don't have to even visit Space.com. Problem
solved.

