Scientists have published the first detailed analyses of the historic cache of lunar soil and rock that China retrieved from the far side of the moon this year, and they suggest that the moon may have some new stories to tell
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
The moon likely has massive deposits of deuterium and tritium on its surface, deposited from 4 billion years of solar winds. 2 extremely useful components in nuclear fusion that, if found, will provide the key to near limitless clean and safe energy in future.
Solar panels are already fusion, but the reactor is run for free. Breaking atoms apart with fission will always be much easier than combining them and nuclear power won't be portable, so you need batteries or fuel still vs you get LIMITLESS energy. Moon mining is a silly idea.
It highlights that rovers, probes and telescopes are what we should be investing in vs manned missions, same shit we've known since the original moon landing more or less.
I don't see where that really has anything to do with anything. Rovers can do some science, but collecting moon or mars rocks is one of the lower payout investments, not as bad as ISS or a Moon/Mars base per dollar invested to research papers produces, but still pretty bad.
Meh, they have a point, moon rocks are about solar system formation and origin of life, things that have little impact on humans. Better chips or cheaper energy push science in general much more than space geology. Telescopes also do MUCH more than all other space exploration combined.
But broad approaches with more resources invested in things most likely to help work even better. In that world some resources will get spent on things less likely to have immediate impact. Selectively seeking those to write "meh" is pretty non-sensical
Or, put another way: A very reasonable response is to highlight that too much investment is going to this research (and that requires mentioning the allocation spread + your expected ROI), or simply investing your time in something you see as having higher impact. Your two responses do neither
Ozempic was understood by people researching Gila monsters. The science behind modern microchips relies on physics discovered in the 1900s. If we only ever researched things that were directly and immediately relevant to our problems, we'd still be trying to make coal furnaces 0.05% more efficient
A better way to look at it is how much research can you generate per dollar invested. If we only ever research relevant stuff we'd do just fine because any relevant topic branches out in many directions. Coal would still get replaced by relevant competitors like gas and solar/wind.
Exept you don’t know whats relevant till you look into it. Take solar panels for example. Those rely on rare earth metals that until recently had basically no use. They were first invented by coating selenium with a thin layer of gold. No one had any idea that would result in a photovoltaic effect.
So by you logic, we should have never funded some seemingly pointless experiment with inert, useless rocks, and instead would have directed funding to “relevant” things like making motor engines better, or advancing coal mining tech. And solar panels never would have been invented.
It really does, I read from another book the Moon was estimated to be just 100 million years younger than the Earth itself when it formed from that collision (4.5 billion years). I don't think a lot of us stress enough how long the Moon has been guiding the Earth for.
Hard to be sure with the article broken up by so many ads, but I think they neglected to mention the Soviet Luna sample returners of the 1970s, which provided data on parts of the Moon Apollo did not explore.
I was hoping for news about the tunnels, but I guess we wait for the planned manned expedition. I was thinking at least some kind of lava tubes, but the open ended guessing is exciting considering someone landed here at one time with atomic or nuclear based tech & could have stopped there first.
CNN currently won't call what's happening in gaza a genocide because of the fear of accountability so they post distract stories as long as they hide the #Palestine_Genocide from American eyes they feel safe
Comments
I want science to be looking for that.
The first person to predict the existence of atoms lived roughly 3000 yrs ago.
Algebra was used 4000 years ago.
The numbers 1-9 and place holder 0, are Hindu-Arabic numerals which originated in India in the 6th C.
Why are people so ignorant these days?
Religion shapes itself based on those answers.
Those who want to sustain religion then skew new knowledge to "prove God is real".
In my view, it’s a little disrespectful to slander over a billion hard working people just because their autocratic government has issues.
No matter what country does it is, science benefits our species
Why should anyone listen to you anymore?
They found an air valve