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NASA Says Moon Has More Water Than Great Lakes

Posted by samzenpus on from the water-and-cheese dept.

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.'"

4 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. The US great lakes? by VoiceOfRaisin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And here I thought the great lakes were in Canada as well.

  2. Re:but then... by cduffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Transporting anything from the moon to the earth is so expensive that it likely isn't worth mining.

    Earth to the moon is really flippin' expensive, to be sure.

    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. I'm not saying it's a solved problem, but it's a much, much easier one.

    Then again, I've read too much Heinlein. *grin*

  3. Re:Cheating Moon by icebike · · Score: 5, Funny

    When "Dude" was last in vogue, Pluto was still a planet.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  4. Re:libraries of congress... by atrain728 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The surface area of an ellipsoid (in this case, the moon) expands as it's diameter increases. Therefore, your math is off by more than a little bit.

    According to Wikipedia, the moon has a mean radius of 1,737.10km and has a volume of 2.1958E10 km^3.

    From your calculations, the great lakes have a volume of 22,560 km^3. Therefore, the volume of the great lakes times the number of books in the library of congress is 6.5424E11 km^3.

    If we add this volume to the volume of the moon, the volume of our new moon is 6.76198E11 km^3. Assuming the new moon takes on a spherical shape, we can get the new radius of the moon by using the formula for the volume of a sphere, V=4/3r^3. Therefore, we deduce that the new radius is 7,974.65km.

    Further assuming that the moon as it exists now settles in the center of this new waterworld relatively undisturbed, with it's mean radius remaining at 1,737.10km, we can calculate the mean depth of the water on the moon as 6237.55km.