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NASA's LCROSS Spacecraft Discovers Life On Earth
Matt_dk writes "On Saturday, Aug. 1, 2009, the LCROSS spacecraft successfully completed its first Earth-look calibration of its science payload. 'The Earth-look was very successful' said Tony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist. 'The instruments are all healthy and the science teams was able to collect additional data that will help refine our calibrations of the instruments.' During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation."
Apparently there world be no baseline metric for finding intelligent life on Slashdot these days.
2 predictions:
* Lots of slashdot users trying to post something witty about why this is a new story
* trolls saying how this is everything we should expect and therefore should ignore.
to all those who disengaged their brain I ask, what would you do in their position? Hope your instruments work as designed without testing them? Either way, please devise a better test for life as we know it than life as we know it.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
.. that if our machine can identify life on Earth all by itself, then we can possibly send it somewhere and it might be able to detect another planet or moon which has Earth-like life.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
It should be: NASA' LCROSS Spacecraft Discovers Earth-Like Life On Earth
-- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
NASA discovers light from the sun, and no atmosphere on the moon.
Could the summary be any more vacuous? It could have been a bit more explanatory about the nature of the satellite. (i.e. to find water on the moon - source: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/mission.htm)
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Yes. Know of any other data samples we can use?
No. Do you have a better one?
And what does say that life has to have the form that we know here on Earth?
What if there is life on a planet that actually uses Fluorine or Chlorine instead of Oxygen? It may not be life as we know it, but the environment may have forced that kind of life to evolve.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If you can't discern a sarcastic remark without visual assistance, I think it's *you* that shouldn't be here.
My first reaction was similar - DUH! After reading more I realized it was an important step. It is a calibration of a true positive. Knowing what Earth looks like on the instruments will help in comparison to measurements of other heavenly bodies.
Like these.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai