Did Chandrayaan Find Organic Matter On the Moon?

Matt_dk writes "Surendra Pal, associate director of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Satellite Centre says that Chandrayaan-1 picked up signatures of organic matter on parts of the Moon's surface. 'The findings are being analyzed and scrutinized for validation by ISRO scientists and peer reviewers,' Pal said. At a press conference Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union fall conference, scientists from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter also hinted at possible organics locked away in the lunar regolith. When asked directly about the Chandrayaan-1 claim of finding life on the Moon, NASA's chief lunar scientist, Mike Wargo, certainly did not dismiss the idea."

Comments

"Life" or "organics"?

[thirty-seven]

The summary seems to make a jump from talking about "organics" and "organic matter" to "the Chandrayaan-1 claim of finding life on the Moon". Is the ISRO actually claiming to have found life on the moon? And aren't there lots of sources of organic molecules that don't involve life?

Re:"Life" or "organics"?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

I didn't RTFA but I assume that they're whalers on the moon and they carry a harpoon.

Re:"Life" or "organics"?

[boef]

Humans have been there. Humans carry organic matter with them (water, waste etc). So no surprise here in my opinion...

For those wondering about the toilets - From the book called A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts:

But one aspect of weightlessness was so unpleasant was so unpleasant that even the thrill of exploration didn't make up for it. If this marvel of engineering called Apollo had one major design flaw, it was the 'Waste Management System,' perhaps the most euphemistic use of English ever recorded. For urine collection there was a hose with a condom-like fitting at one end which led, by way of a valve, to a vent on the side of the spacecraft. On paper at least, it seemed like a reasonable, if low-tech, way to handle urinating in zero g, assuming you got over your anxiety about connecting yor private parts to the vacuum of space. You roll on the condom, open the valve, and it all goes into the void where it freezes into droplets of ice that are iridescent in the sunlight. One astronaut answered the question "What's the most beautiful sight you ever saw in space?" with "Urine dump at sunset."

In reality, using the urine collector didn't work so well. For one thing, it could be painful. If you opened the valve too soon, some part of the mechanism was liable to poke into the end of your penis, which prevented you from urinating. And at that point, as if to confirm your worst fears, the suction began to pull you in. Now you were being jabbed and pulled at the same time, so you shut the valve, and as the mechanism resealed itself it caught a little piece of you in it. It took only one episode like that to convince you to never let it happen again. Next time you had a strategy: start flowing a split-second before you turn on the valve. But once you began to urinate the condom popped off and out came a flurry of little golden droplets at play in the wonderland, floating around and making your misfortune everybody's misfortune! And in no time at all the whole device reeked; it was an affront to the senses just sitting there.

The astronauts got used to the urine collector, though, and they got used to mopping up afterwards. But there was no getting used to the other part of the Waste Management System. Tucked away in a strange locker was a supply of special plastic bags, each of which resembled a top hat with an adhesive coating on the brim. Each bag had a finger-shaped pocket built into the side of it. When the call came you had to flypaper this thing to your rear end, and then you were supposed to reach in there through the pocket with your finger---after all, nothing falls in zero gravity---and suddenly you were wishing you had never left home. And after you had it in the bag, so to speak, you had one last delightful task: break open a capsule of blue germicide, seal it up in the bag, and knead the contents to make sure they were fully mixed! At best, the operation was an ordeal. In the confined space of the Apollo command module, your crewmates suffered, too. One of the Apollo 7 astronauts said the smell was so bad it woke him out of a deep sleep. When the crew came back they wrote a memo about it: "Get naked, allow an hour, have plenty of tissues handy."

Re:"Life" or "organics"?

[ArsonSmith]

I'd say the timeline was something like this:

JFK: We will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade
NASA 3 months later: ok we put a man on the moon!
After small coverup
JFK: We will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and bring him back.

40 years later,
Chandrayyaan: What's this spot of organic matter on the moon?

Re:"Life" or "organics"?

[Again]

But there ain't no whales! So what do the whalers do, then? Tell tall tales? Sing their whaling tune? Tell me that, smart guy.

Actually, the lack of whales in space is a piece of evidence supporting the theory that there are whalers in space.

Organic matter is the basis of life

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Though organic matter is the basis of life, it does not guarantee that life would exist. It is just a type of matter composed of carbon-based molecules. Is there carbon out there? You bet. That means that organic matter will also exist out there in space.

Colin Powell was crucified for claiming the existence of WMDs in Iraq. It took a couple years, but we never found the smoking gun. Don't be too quick to jump on the first piece of evidence you find.

Why is this surprising?

[d3ac0n]

Assuming the theory of "panspermia" is a reasonably close to accurate description of how life arrived on earth (Amino acids and water carried inside asteroids brought life to Earth) and knowing that the Moon has acted as an Asteroid barrier for BILLIONS of years, is it all that surprising that we would ALSO find "organic signatures" on the moon?

Indeed, one would almost EXPECT to find them there.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[SatanicPuppy]

Assuming panspermia is pretty big leap.

Re:organic buzzword

[yincrash]

they just meant it's pesticide free

mmmm....

[seven of five]

Green cheese....

Re:Neil Armstrong's Pee

[seven of five]

Dude, I think the vaccum woulda done a number on his unit.

ZOMG!

[Quiet_Desperation]

It *is* cheese!

Remember that in Chemistry has a precise meaning

[NotSoHeavyD3]

It means hydrocarbons. So before any one asks to a chemist gasoline is organic.

wow

[fulldecent]

Wow... peer review, remember that?

Organic?

[VincenzoRomano]

It depends on what do they mean with "organic"!
At the bare minimum it's "anything that contains carbon". Which is not that hard to find when you stroll close to a star.

In other news, moons only indigenous life...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

In other news, moons only indigenous life destroyed by rocket. Film at 11!

Re:Hey look what we found!

[Rei]

Actually, it's really interesting news, if confirmed and if the organics are in quantity. Many people know that the moon has historically been viewed as having a shortage of hydrogen (the amount of water found recently was still pretty sparse). Most people don't know that there are also shortages of other elements critical to life, including carbon and nitrogen. Finding places on the moon where they could be found in greater concentration would be critical to long-term, sustainable human habitation.