Water found on the Moon

[tomscud]

No, really..

Sept. 23, 2009 -- Shattering a long-held belief that Earth's moon is a dead and dry world, a trio of spacecraft uncovered clear evidence of water and hydrogen-oxygen molecules throughout the lunar surface

Comments

[jgs42]

Too cool. "She estimates that if you filled a soda bottle with lunar soil, there would be about an eyedropper's worth of water." Sounds positively soaking wet to me.

[jeevmon]

Where's Dan Quayle when you need him?

[jgs42]

Mars?

[cowboyzydeco]

Space.com's article lists 32 ounces of water per ton of top layer dirt. NPR shows another Sunshine estimate, less than a quart for a football-field sized portion of surface dirt. I'm too lazy to sort out the typical volume of an eyedropper compared to a soda bottle- what size, anyway? 16 oz? 20? Two liter? Of course, there's also the definition of "surface" and "top layer" in terms of volume and depth. Ah, science reporting.

I'm still holding out for water ice discovered in the upcoming "throw a big honking rock at it and see what splashes up" experiment in October.

[rfmcdpei]

That's a pretty substantial volume, right?

The name reminds me of Christmas Jones from one of the Brosnan James Bond movies.

[cowboyzydeco]

Or Christmas "Chrissy" Snow from "Three's Company."