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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."
Eat my shorts !!
That is the question?
My first first post... and I don't have anything witty to say...
First Plant!
You just got troll'd!
Turns out they were just over Detroit.
I almost fell out of my chair when I read this
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
We should mount a robotic mission to this place right away.
-
At the same time, we're still waiting from the SETI's calibration and observation to discover any trace of *Intelligence* on earth.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And I, for one, welcome our new vegetation overlords.
The search for intelligent life continues...
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
... none of it was intelligent.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
It's life, Jim, just as we know it, just as we know it, Jim.
Beam me sideways, Scotty, nobody on this planet knows which way is up.
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" -
Theres no intelligent live down here!!
Doesn't it suffer from a serious risk of overfitting?
I really thought it was an Onion article...
A far more interesting result would have been if they hadn't been able to detect life on Earth as the inability to do so from such a close distance would make detecting Earth-like life elsewhere in the galaxy a laughable prospect.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
.. 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
Clearly this planet has many forms of life that must be feared for their religions and copyright laws! We must sterilize this place for peace and stability!
It should be: NASA' LCROSS Spacecraft Discovers Earth-Like Life On Earth
-- How many sigs are as useless as this one?
They must have detected the huge tree in my front yard, it's the only vegetation on the planet besides a few trillion other plants.
- Intriguing.
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
The spacecraft Galileo, on its way to Jupiter, performed a related experiment back in 1990. Details were published in Nature
Isn't there a big difference between detecting water, methane, oxygen, ozone, and so on, on the earth, where they are conveniently in the atmosphere, and on the moon?
Note to spacefellowship:
I'm going to save google some bandwidth and expand the acronym:
LCrOSS=lunar crater observation & sensing satellite
Pointless calibration.
So, they just calibrated their instruments to detect massive urbanization, a huge population, and massive amounts of water?!
They should be calibrating for FAR weaker readings, unless they expect to find a civilization just as obvious as ours.
Heck, all they would have needed to do is walk outside, or at least calibrate their instruments to detect far FAR less of what they are looking for.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
.' 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."
Just to see a Fart-in-a-jar.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
A experiment to detect intellegent life couldn't be tested before sending into space.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
detect the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and possibly vegetation
What? No oil detector? This thing is useless!
Meanwhile, we necromancers remain hidden and oblivious...
...if it had found "intelligent life" that would have been a false positive.
BSDI is also dead, At my frrelance
So it mentions that they detect levels of methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc. etc.
In an uninhabited planet, methane and oxygen are two completely incompatible chemicals (over a time period which is considered tiny on astronomical scales, these two chemicals to react to form carbon dioxide.) Therefore, the coexistence of methane and oxygen implies that a process is actively forming these two molecules, so that an equilibrium is reached between production and decay. This process, in other words, is photosynthesis, which in turn, implies life.
The idea is that if we can detect incompatible chemicals in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, then we have a strong clue that life is on that planet, and what better way to calibrate our sensors than by pointing it at ourselves?
DemIse. You don't
Obvious cat is obvious
The satellite discovered life on Earth. Fine, we all knew that there is some. Now, if we were only able to positively establish an existence of the intelligent life, that would be even better.
Lacroix! Sweetie - Lacroix!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This was a test to be sure everything is working properly before being launched.
Does this probe send back its data "in the clear", I mean, in an easily readable format ? Or is it heavily encrypted and in some obscure NASA-proprietary format ?
The reason I ask, are those Apollo landing site photos released a few weeks ago. If any HAM amateur or whatever would have happened to receive these images while they were being sent to Earth, before anybody at NASA had a chance to "touch them up", I'd be mighty interested in seeing those.
Not to discount their achievement...
and I do understand that this is a really
great stride in technology here.
However, is this not the equivalent of,
"New NASA probe declares Earth's sun HOT"
I am not trying to be a smartass here.
However, if the technology simply determines of the planet COULD support life, then assumes there IS life, that wouldn't be a very big stride...
Just another comment from the Pundit Panel over here.
**Disclaimer: I have absolutely no sources for this besides my own thoughts, and am just trying to encourage people to think about this**
**P.S.: I reserve the right to be absolutely DEAD WRONG**
This comment was laboriously planned and extremely well thought out by Mike Donaghy @ http://mikedonaghy.org
Really makes you wonder if it makes sense to go searching for ET life with such methods at this point...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator (EVE)
Watch out for the plasma cannon!
Late last year the planned UHCD (Unrefined HydroCarbon Detector) unit was ditched for a PGMCD (Potentially Generous Media Corporation Detector) unit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you can't discern a sarcastic remark without visual assistance, I think it's *you* that shouldn't be here.
Don't worry I alerted them about the typo under the picture. It should be 360,000 km not 360,00.
> 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.
I recall the Viking landings on Mars. They ran their life detection kits and wow! Life. Maybe. Here are a bunch of other theories that account for it but not requiring life.
Repeat ad nauseam with other spacecraft.
So instead of pointing it at Earth and saying, hey, it detects life! why not pretend it was pointed at Venus and say, hey, got all the same readings. But is it life?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
...bow to our new Earthling overlords... wait a minute...
Good news, everyone!
"And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth." -- Monty Python