Unambiguous Evidence of Water On the Moon

Nethemas the Great writes "Information has leaked ahead of the scheduled NASA press conference tomorrow that we have found unambiguous evidence for water on the moon. From the article, 'Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.'"

Comments

It was the Indians who helped NASA find water

[Anonymous Coward]

"India's first lunar mission has found evidence of large quantities of water on its surface, The Times newspaper reported on Thursday."

from http://www.hindustantimes.com/Is-there-water-on-moon-NASA-to-reveal/H1-Article1-457426.aspx

Re:It was the Indians who helped NASA find water

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up please

Original article is here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6846639.ece

Re:It was the Indians who helped NASA find water

[volcanopele]

Using a US-built instrument. Please leave nationalism out of this...

Re:Yes Indeed, But Rocket Propulsion Sucks

[TheRaven64]

Jump off a building. Seriously. Your atoms are not accelerated quite simultaneously and equally due to the slight incline of the gravitational plane, but the difference is almost negligible (ignoring air resistance), and so you don't feel any acceleration (fall into a small black hole and the differences become important and you become spaghetti). You won't be injured until you hit the ground and the atoms in your feet are the only ones being accelerated, with the others being brought to stationary by the electromagnetic force propagating through your body. The same effect can be achieved in mass drivers with ferromagnetic projectiles in a vacuum.

The grandparent is an idiot who has read too much science fiction, but his ideas are theoretically sound. The practical problems are huge, however, not 'just around the corner'.

Re:Unambiguous?

[TheRaven64]

The scan works by looking for the OH bond, as I recall, which resonates on a particular frequency. I may be talking nonsense now, because it's a few years since I looked at this tech, but it basically works on the same principle as your microwave oven. That emits microwaves that cause the OH bonds to resonate, exciting the molecules and generating heat. This works by causing the OH bonds to resonate (in exactly the same way) and then picking up the IR that they emit as they return to their non-excited state. All that it can conclusively say is that there are molecules containing OH bonds present, but the simplest molecule containing this bond is water and so it's very probable that they've found water. Even if they haven't, they've found something that can be turned into water relatively easily, given sufficient power (e.g. a lunar solar array).