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Pieces of Ancient Earth May Be Hidden On the Moon
swestcott brings us a story from Space.com about the possibility of finding evidence for ancient Earth life on the moon. A team of scientists has published work confirming that meteorites originating from Earth could have remained sufficiently intact while colliding with the moon to allow the survival of biological evidence for life. Quoting:
"Crawford and Baldwin's group simulated their meteors as cubes, and calculated pressures at 500 points on the surface of the cube as it impacted the lunar surface at a wide range of impact angles and velocities. In the most extreme case they tested (vertical impact at a speed of some 11,180 mph, or 5 kilometers per second), Crawford reports that 'some portions' of the simulated meteorite would have melted, but 'the bulk of the projectile, and especially the trailing half, was subjected to much lower pressures.'"
Shit, I spent so much time thinking of something witty to put in here, I'm not first anymore!
It's a... oh, right.
A group of wealthy investors wanted to be able to predict the outcome of a horse race. So they hired a group of biologists, a group of statisticians, and a group of physicists. Each group was given a year to research the issue. After one year, the groups all reported to the investors. The biologists said that they could genetically engineer an unbeatable racehorse, but it would take 200 years and $100 billion. The statisticians reported next. They said that they could predict the outcome of any race, at a cost of $100 million per race, and they would only be right 10% of the time. Finally, the physicists reported that they could also predict the outcome of any race, and that their process was cheap and simple. The investors listened eagerly to this proposal. The head physicist reported, "We have made several simplifying assumptions... first, let each horse be a perfect rolling sphere..."
We're whalers on the Moon
We carry a harpoon
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune
The Admin and the Engineer
Tax the little buggers up there!
Table-ized A.I.
Why the hell would you model an asteroid with some improbable shape like a cube?
Tetris killed the dinos!
Table-ized A.I.
Because you have to model it as *something*.
I can confirm that there are pieces of the Earth in the moon. Somewhere in the back of my closet, I keep a fossil of a ancient platypus that astronauts brought down from the moon a few decades ago. Looks an awful lot like Hexley.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Why don't these scientists do something useful for a change and tell us where to drill! I just bought my Hummer and now I can't afford the gas.
Look on the bright side. You might not be able to aford to drive it but at least your dick's bigger.
My granma's spectacles!
A cube is pretty much the worst shape possible when it comes to distributing the force of an impact evenly across the entire object
Not true; What about those crystalline spacecraft that the Kryptonians use to send their infants to Earth in? They have all sorts of jutting and produding suraces.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
They could have tried cube-based objects like those depicted in this artist's conception.
The investor responded: "Why would we do that? Its not a sphere, its a horse!" To which the physicist responded "Have you ever tried to integrate over a horse?"