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Moon Could Have Been Habitable Once, Scientists Speculate (gizmodo.com)
Scientists from Birkbeck, University of London speculate that recent results show that the moon is wetter than scientists have previously thought, increasing the possibility for it to have the necessary conditions for life. "Whether life ever arose on the Moon, or was transported to it from elsewhere, is of course highly speculative and can only be addressed by an aggressive future program of lunar exploration," they write in the article, published in the journal Astrobiology. Gizmodo summarizes: This habitability period, if it really occurred, might have happened either just after the Moon's formation from a massive collision with Earth 4.5 billion years ago, or 3.5 billion years ago, after a period of volcanism which may have resulted in a thin lunar atmosphere. Such an atmosphere would have lasted perhaps tens of millions of years. Maybe water existed on the Moon at this point. Maybe 10 million years was enough time for some rudimentary life to evolve on the Moon. Maybe Earthly life traveled over to the Moon on asteroids. Who knows.
The researchers stress that "habitability requires much more than just the presence of a significant atmosphere and liquid water." One such requirement would be the presence of organic compounds. And there are obviously not the same water-created features on the Moon that we see here on Earth or on Mars, like drainage channels -- though maybe these existed and were eroded by small meteors and solar winds. While the paper doesn't present new data, it's an interesting synthesis of lots of existing research demonstrating that, since the Moon is wetter than was initially thought, maybe it's worth wondering whether it was once habitable.
The researchers stress that "habitability requires much more than just the presence of a significant atmosphere and liquid water." One such requirement would be the presence of organic compounds. And there are obviously not the same water-created features on the Moon that we see here on Earth or on Mars, like drainage channels -- though maybe these existed and were eroded by small meteors and solar winds. While the paper doesn't present new data, it's an interesting synthesis of lots of existing research demonstrating that, since the Moon is wetter than was initially thought, maybe it's worth wondering whether it was once habitable.
besides fucking traitor.
He COULD have been just sleazy wanna-be-daughterfucking pervert bully pseudo-businessman who went broke running casinos, the shark week moron.
Fuck it, hang him with his own words.
... of UK taxpayers.
Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD die? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented be tween a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 20 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD effectively lost all of its market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adhere nts of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
"Traitor" is an opinion - Hahaaa.. In my opinion, faggots like you don't matter for a fellow prisoner's dickshot worth in the real world, bitch. #Outside Leavenworth
#Jesus calling, are you sure you're not a traitor faggot, bitch?
it's a bit too late now, isn't it?
By my big BLACK COCK
But god chose to create life on Earth instead of the moon. Not sure why it matters that it could have once been habitable. We can live where ever we choose now thanks to the power of jesus.
An interesting topic and relevnt for science and nerdy types -- yet the first 15 or so comments are all off topic, snide remarks and the inevitable (and tiresome) ad hominem attacks.
Not a single reply which bore any relevance to the topic.
Come on Slashdot, you are better than this !!
That global warming is destroying our planets!
The destruction wrought by white men knows no bounds!
That seems to happen a lot more often since the internet became popular.
The mention of channels on the moon reminded me of this old thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Yeah channels and canals are different. Hah.
There were also bat-men on the moon, in those days. Funny that if you showed someone from the 1800's a Batman comic they'd think he's an alien.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
In the Scientific Process this is on step one hypothesis. Which is just a logical guess. This phase is no better then philosophy, where it is just logical thinking of things.
I don't call this science, or these people scientists because science hasn't been done yet.
That rant out of the way.
I am going to give my hypothesis/philosophy to approaching that idea.
Life isn't just about having the elements, they need to be arranged in the right way. While the moon has a lot of water, I don't think it is distributed well enough to have the conditions to start life.
We as humans can go there, we can probably mine the water and other life giving chemicals from the moon, but at great effort. Even the effort to scrape enough material to keep a bacteria alive, would be considerable effort. More then the random chance.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
of a bigger earth
This historical document details life on the moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq09cHZHrfM
can't we assume that every planet (except, perhaps gass planets) and/or moon was capable at a certain point in it's life to support life?
as the planet/moon ages it loses these capabilities and ends up a dead rock, remember earth will be inhabitable at a certain point as well.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Why would any good scientist speculate? Isn't science about facts and proven theories through evidence? What's up with these people speculating, this is just another word for educated guessing.
I thought in discussions about terraforming the Moon, that it was concluded that those efforts would be in vain. That the solar wind would cause the various gaseous molecules to dissipate into space rather than remain part of the Moon's atmosphere. I think the results of terraforming to create an atmosphere on the Moon would only last about 100 years. It's pretty speculative to say that an atmosphere would stay in place for millions of years due to outgassing volcanic activity and even more so to say that life would be possible.
There sure is a lot of speculation about what could have been in the summary. Kinda sounds like what might happen if some astrophysicists got really, really stoned.
That said:
> This phase is no better then philosophy, where it is just logical thinking of things. I don't call this science
Einstein's work on relativity was mostly logical thinking of things. We didn't have the technology to test most of it until decades later.
I suppose there is a difference in that Einstein had more "logical thinking" and less wild speculation. He eliminated many possibilities and came up with a lot of "if X is true, then Y must also be true, which in turn implies Z through the blahblah theorem".
...but I bet the issue was Lunar Warming, and it was triggered by the moon landings, where mean white men forced women of color smarter than them to do the math so that we could land white men on the moon!
LOL
Ken
I don't even think that life (as we know it, Jim) had even evolved on Earth by that stage
It feels like the initial collision would have practically sterilized anything that might have survived the event responsible for forming the moon. And unless the atmosphere was more than "thin", the UV from the sun would have pretty much ensured that there wasn't going to be any life forms (as we known them). Remember at this point, the moon was not tidally locked. It would have evenly baked every square meter.
Can be President of the Moon! To the Moon, Alice!
Yes, Einstein was using logic and theory to predict possibilities.
This article, on the other hand, was a steady stream of consciousness being spewed out by someone with a lot of ideas that didn't know how to fit those ideas into any coherent theory, therefore they just began every sentence with, "Maybe."
"Maybe there are ancient ruins from long dead civilizations under the seas of Europa. Maybe Unicorns once lived there. Maybe those Unicorns were intelligent enough to see the Earth growing green. Maybe they attempted to set up possible communications with Earth. Maybe the attempt to set up the antenna arrays caused them to be wiped out."
SCIENCE!
Except not. It's possible the author has an actual theory brewing somewhere in the back of their brain that hangs on legitimate data and currently tested theories, but all we're seeing here is the initial blast of random thoughts that may one day form a theory, not the theory itself.
population as well If you do not probleM; a few
When terraforming is mentioned, it's usually Mars, or sometimes Venus, but the moon is rarely mentioned.
It's a shame, since there's a lot the moon could offer. With enough targetted impacts, we could spin it up and give it an atmosphere. Due to the moon's smaller size, it would take far less of an effort than terraforming Mars or Venus (about 100 Halley-sized comets versus an estimated 10,000 comets for Mars). While the moon's low gravity means it'll eventually lose its atmosphere, it should hold to one for tens of thousands of years, which is long compared to human lifespans.
Whenever I see any pop-science article using "could', "might", "potentially", or "possible" I automatically negate those words. If doing that doesn't change the meaning of the statement I tend to pass it by.
"The moon could have been habitable to life." reads to me "The moon could not have been habitable to life.". Well, that isn't extraordinary.
There could be some interesting details and I'll find an article that focuses on those details that doesn't use hype words.
It's possible that long ago it had a magnetic field worthy of the name. That might have helped a bit.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."