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NASA Says Moon Has More Water Than Great Lakes
jerryjamesstone writes "The US Great Lakes have some competition: the moon. Yes, that old thing in the sky may hold more than all of the water contained in the Great Lakes, according to a NASA-funded study. From the article: 'Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, along with other scientists across the nation, determined that the water was likely present very early in the moon's formation history as hot magma started to cool and crystallize. This finding means water is native to the moon.'"
Volume of the Great Lakes ~22.5 *10^3 km^3 Volume of the Moon ~21.9 *10^9 km^3 So, the Moon contains even more than one teaspoon of water in 5 tonnes of rock.
Well, they got a border on all of them... except Lake Michigan! USA!
The article does not mention anywhere that the amount of water on is more than the great lakes system.
Firstly, the water is in the form of hydroxyl and the mineral apartite (article didn't go into more detail). Secondly, TFA states the amount of water is under 5ppm. Yes, parts per million. I can't see how anyone could arrive at the great lakes value unless they took the volume of the moon and took 5ppm of that, which is ridiculous.
Firstly, the moon's not a uniform material. Secondly, to get anywhere close to this amount of water, you'd need to mine and refine the majority of the moon. It's like saying we have 300 quintillion gallons of water on earth while neglecting to mention that 97% of it is salt water and some more of it in the ice caps.
The real takeaway from the article is that the previously estimated amount of water was 1 ppb and now it's around 5 ppm.
It's not called the dark side because it's dark. It's "dark" because that side never faces Earth. Thus, during a solar eclipse the "dark" side is completely illuminated by the sun.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
More importantly: Can you go sailing on it? Swim in it? Fish salmon, trout, and invasive asian carp from it? Ride a scooter along hundreds and hundreds of miles of it?
If not, I'll stay here in Michigan, the Great Lakes State.
We're Bi-peninsular and Proud.
Yes! Michigan!
(This message has been a public service announcement, brought to you in cooperation with the Michigan tourism office and my summer travel plans.)
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Perhaps you should look at a map sometime.
Lake Michigan, the second largest of the lakes by volume (and third by surface area) belongs entirely to the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_lakes#Bathymetry
Lake Superior, the largest of the lakes by any measure has a surface area almost 2/3 attributed to the United States, 53,700 km^2 of the 82,400 km^2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior
I could not find splits for Huron, Ontario, or Erie. However, Ontario and Erie, from a map, appear to be about 50/50, and Huron appears to favor Canada slightly. Regardless, between the United States' posession of Superior and Michigan alone, it contains 111,700 km^2 of the total 208,610km^2 of all the lakes surface area. Therefore, saying that the lakes are "predominately Canadian" is just flat wrong.
Cheers.
That's nice, but Ryan Island is in Siskiwit Lake, which is on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. It is the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake* in the world". Which, I might add, is really close to Canada and could have been Canadian if the border were drawn more reasonably, but... it's in Michigan. :)
*This doesn't count the Black or Caspain Sea because they're saline, and it doesn't count Lakes Huron and Michigan as a single lake because no one but a nit-picking hydrologist would. But if you were such a person, you'd count Manitoulin Island as the largest island in the largest lake (and in any case, it's is the largest island in any lake), and Lake Manitou (a different one from the one you cited) as the largest lake on it. There are at least a couple islands in that Lake Manitou, but I can't find names for them.
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Yeah, it gives me a case of the facepalm every time I see it as well. GSO is 42,164 km away, ala wikipedia. Call it 4.2x10^7 meters. The only material close to being possible to use for a cable are carbon nanotubes. Lets make a thread of a carbon nanotube cable, which does not exist in lengths more than like 30 cm at the moment, with a diameter of 1mm. That is an area of 3x10^-6 m^2, and results in a volume of about 132 cubic meters. This is over 50% more than the shuttle can hold.
Assuming we could go get an asteroid, a very, very large asteroid, and put it into GSO without either skipping it off the atmosphere or turning a city into a crater, we're left with the issue that we can't get a tiny, continuous cable into orbit with any current technology. The shuttle comes in 50% too small, and doesn't get to GSO, even Falcon 9 only has cargo volume of 14m^3 to GTO!
The next option is to somehow attach 1x10^9 30 cm sections of nanotube together, in a way that doesn't weaken them. That doesn't exist. We'd also have to be able to do this in space, since we can't realistically get a continuous cable up there.
So the only things stopping a space elevator are:
1) 1x10^9 carbon nanotube units short of reaching GSO
2) No way currently to move a large asteroid into GSO safely, nor many nations willing to let someone try for fear of an extinction event.
3) No way to get a continuous cable into GSO, despite the problems of #1
4) No known way to stick 1x10^9 chunks of carbon nanotube together effectively, preserving their high tensile strength. In space.
5) Current climber technology is shooting for 1km. That's only 42,163 km short of GSO.
6) Coincidently, the earth's circumference is about 40,000 km. Have we ever built ANYTHING on the scale of the earth's circumference? Have we ever tried to stress-test a cable of more than a km or two?
Sure, we could shoot for a continuous, 0.1 mm diameter cable, and that might fit on Falcon 9 and be possible to bring to GSO. But again, we're left with the problem with the asteroid, the climber, and stress-testing and QCing a cable that we can't build in a billionth of that length at a time, longer than the circumference of the earth. Or we somehow come up with a way to bond nanotubes together in a way that preserves their tensile strength, in space, with the ability to test and QC the work, and we're only left with the asteroid and climber issues....
Magic is unlikely to be better to research, but not by a lot...
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Don't forget - Futurama marks its return on June 24 at 22:00 (10:00pm for you non geeks) on Comedy Central
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Moon to the earth? It's called a GRAVITY WELL. Give things a kick, they come down on their own; all you need is enough casing to survive reentry
That better be a 1000km/s kick, if you really expect it to fall to earth. Otherwise it's gonna end up orbiting the Earth or the Moon.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
Siphons don't work in vacuum, and they don't work if the distance between the two containers is greater than 10 meters (one atm of pressure at sea level). You can transfer liquid between two containers in a vacuum, but its a completely different principle, not nearly as efficient (molecular cohesion) and places additional requirements on the materials of the tube.