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Lunar Polar Ice Not Present
pclark999 writes "The New Scientist reports that radar probes of the lunar polar region has disproved earlier theories regarding large sheets of polar ice in craters permanently in the shade. "
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It's expensive to send water to the moon. Also Earth is pretty much a sealed ecosystem (although we get tonnes of stuff from space every day) so every time we send water to the moon we've removed it from the Earth for good. It's not like the christian myth of Noah and the flood where water can come and go at the whim of a deity.
Trolling is a art,
(a) similar studies done from *lunar orbit* favor the existence of ice. why is an earth-based study more accurate?
(b) the article states that only 20% of the permanently-shadowed surface was tested from arecibo. so why the unilateral conclusion?
There are areas in the polar region where the bottoms of craters are in eternal shade, and that is precisely what these studies are talking about.
And when we say "The dark side of the moon".. we are referring to either a Pink Floyd album, or the side of the moon that is currently in darkness.. so the dark side of the moon is indeed always dark.. just like the dark side of the earth.
Dude, that is why they are called theories, not laws. They only think that is what is happening or what has occured based on the best evidence. Science is full of theories that have been discounted. That is in fact one of the main goals of science. You come up with a hypothesis based on your theory, and see if the evidence supprts it. If it does, you have more evidence to support your theory. If it doesn't, then you hav more evidence which you can use to make a better theory. The big bang theory is a theory which not only was supported by the evidence at teh time of its inception but has since been corraborated by dozens and dozens of more evidence that it occured. Evolution has so much evidence going for it that most don't even consider it a theory. There are massive amounts of observations where evolution is the only explanation that makes any real sense. Take a class in psychology on Sensation and Perception if you don't believe me.
As to Lunar ice, science does not rely on single observations alone but must have duplicatable results. In other words, just becuase one person notices ice on the moon and forms a theory that it exists at the bottom of these craters does not mean that that is the case. Those observations have to be supported by doing multiple observations. In this case, those multiple observations shwed that lunar ice did not exist and that the theory for it was incorrect. We have now have even more evidence from which we can form an even better understanding of the moon. This is the way science works. If no theory ever got discounted, we would never get anywhere.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Although finding water would be nice, the real issue is finding a long-term source of hydrogen on the moon. The moon offers plenty of long-term sources of oxygen as a byproduct of processing moon rocks. But hydrogen may be scarer, unless there really is a concentration of either water or hydrated rock at the poles. Without hydrogen, life gets much harder. Perhaps the moon really is a harsh mistress.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What are you doing here on slashdot? Better get yourself down there and edumicate some so-called scientists. Shit, if they were so daft to overlook this simple "fact", they don't deserve to call themselves scientists.
even if the flood did occur and there was a guy named noah who built the ark, it still doesn't prove a god exists. the bible might have accurate depictions of real life events, but it cannot prove the existence of a god. many christians frequently try to prove the existence of their god by pointing to evidence of that events described in the bible did actually happen, but they fail to see the logical fallacy in their flawed arguments.
How about never seeing such a thing. Couple of points:
First, RamScoop practicality has been debated extensively. Many physicists who examine the problem and the energy expeditures have pointed out that given even an extremely small inefficiency, it would make a damned good brake instead of a propulsion system.
Second, if you're going anything like significant fractions of c you'd whiz right past the earth's and moon's orbits. Here's a sanity check: Low earth orbital speeds are about 2.5E-5 c.
Since you are a self described writer of science fiction, I shouldn't have to remind you about the importance of using reasonably realistic science...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
This is probably a troll, but the parent got modded up, so I hope this could be considered part of the discussion here. I've tried to discuss this WITHOUT any hint of personal belief, so it can be absorbed by both sides of this issue.
Please note that science frequently requires as much faith as religion does.
You make a large number of statements that you posit as "fact" without any backing behind them. For example, evolution is NOT practically common sense. Quite the contrary, there are many SCIENTISTS (not religious nuts) who have serious problems with fitting Darwin's theories with observed facts. For example, the idea that DNA could self-organize from bare chemicals is difficult to support, when there are ZERO examples of lower-level compounds that appear to be precursors of DNA; this casts a certain pall on the entire concept of life-as-we-know-it-evolving-from-primoridal-goop. Many people I know actually believe in some middle-ground - like God-directed evolution, where God somehow sparked things off and put certain structures in place.
One problem many scientists willingly admit is that there are few rigorous examples of "macro-evolution" - huge-scale evolution between species. There are numerous examples of microevolution such as moths changing color in sooty areas of England, etc. But the fossil record, often used to "prove" evolution, contains HUGE gaps that cannot be explained (at this point). If you look at a realistic evolutionary species tree, you'll see lots of question marks and dashed or dotted lines. Granted, these may be simply a lack of having found the right fossil yet - but then again, whichever way you see THAT is a matter of faith, isn't it?
Much of the things you propose are myth or symbolic imply a disbelief in any deity. Be honest - that sort of invalidates you as capable of accurately evaluating a theological work from a theological perspective. To narrow that statement down, if you DO believe in God, it's not a far stretch to believe that God (by definition all-powerful) is easily capable of using natural phenomenon such as lightning or flood or earthquake or supernova to do his work. If he exists, and is all-powerful, and decided to create enough water to cover the earth, why not? The only reason it seems impossible to you is because you START from the viewpoint that there is no deity. That's a logical fallacy.
One interesting quandry for a scientific-thinking believer in God is "what did God choose to create?" Many creationists belive God created the fossil record, intact. Some believe that the record was created during Noah's flood. But you can also find people, quite intelligent people, who think that God chooses to use geology, cosmology, evolution etc. as tools to shape the world as we know it. Why not, after all? Why should any rational person try to limit a deity to a particular method of creation (such as the "ex nihilo", or instantaneous out-of-nothing creation)? (BTW, many Christian fundamentalists believe that if you don't believe in a literal King-James-Version interpretation of the Bible's story of a six-day creation, you throw away Truth as a concept. But others see more wiggle-room in the Genesis account - arguing that the original-language word for "day" actually is better translated "time", implying an epoch instead.)
As to the Big Bang, again, we have no comprehension whatsoever (scientifically) about why such an event would ever happen. Can you PROVE that such an event wasn't sparked by a deity? I don't believe so, any more than a deist could PROVE it was. So you operate on a certain level of faith, while the deist operates on a similar level - just in a different deity.
For these, and many more reasons, I find it foolish to make absolute statements about cause-and-effect of the universe in a public forum. We simply don't know enough, either way.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Water is simply Hydrogen
Don't forget the Oxygen part of the H20 equation... Thats the bit that makes creating it in remote places a tad trickier..
CR
Burma?