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Deep Impact Mission Reveals Comet Ice
Ant writes "New Scientist reports water ice is present on the surface of Comet Tempel 1." From the article: "The finding was made via observations from NASA's Deep Impact mission. This is the first direct detection of exposed water ice on a comet. The mission's science team says the water ice is present in surprisingly small amounts, covering less than 1% of Comet Tempel 1's surface. The finding suggests the comet's surrounding cloud of gas and dust may largely be fed by underlying ices, rather than by gas streaming off its surface."
While I don't know much about organic chemistry, you sound like you know what you are talking about, so I'll agree with you. Anyway, this is why we need to keep sending out these probes and learning stuff. Maybe we will reveal clues about the origins of life, and whether there is life out there or not. Hell, we might discover an intelligent life form. And, to paraphrase some wise man who I think was a SciFi author but I don't remember who: we must discover if there is intelligent life in this universe so we can build spaceships, travel to meet them, and obliterate them.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Give it enough time the probability is nearly a certaintity.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
It seems a better answer that "given enough time and opportunities, the results become almost certain". We're talking about timescales of millennia (1,000s of years) to eons (1,000,000,000s of years), and then we're talking about uncountable trillions of atomic and molecular opportunities EACH YEAR in just ONE solar system for chemical action to take place. Time+Atoms+Energy = Molecules (like amino acids and water), and then Time+Molecules+Energy = Chemicals (for example, DNA and liquid water), and then Time+Chemicals+Energy = Life. Note that the last formula can start occuring pretty soon after the first formula starts acting, since they not only cascade into each other, but each does so CONSTANTLY.
It's truly remarkable that educated men cannot see or believe this process.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
It's nice to know that one of those questions just got answered (so it's time to update the wikipedia article :)
Actually we know the answer to the third question as well: No! Duh...we just rammed a probe into it!
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!