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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.
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 !!
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.
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.