Water on the Moon! Water on the Moon!
Water on the Moon! Water on the Moon! Scientists found water on the Moon!
In case you have not heard yet, scientists found water on the Moon! Except, and once again you have to find this out from the Gormogons, they did not find water on the moon. Scientists have found widespread traces of hydroxyl on the moon.
Remember in school you learned that water is H2O? Two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen? Well, hydroxyl is HO… just one part hydrogen. So it is not, shall we say, water but a water-like molecule. It could, in fact, be made into water but would be extremely difficult and costly…indeed, it would likely be far cheaper to truck water up to moon than to reprocess that stuff into something future explorers could drink. Also, you would need a ton of lunar dirt to produce even a swigful of water.
The media got excited because a science story came out that they could almost figure out. “We know what water is, and we know what the moon is…let’s run with this one.” As a result, the stories are not quite getting the facts correct. We have yet to find any real form of water on the moon.
Even so, scientists are interested in hydroxyl, because it was one of those dumb things that everyone missed over the last half century of lunar exploration. It also shows that something is putting or creating hydroxyl on the moon: possibly the action of intense sunlight on real water molecules is stripping off a hydrogen atom here and there. How the hydroxyl gets there is exciting for lunar scientists because the sudden appearance of hydroxyl has everyone surprised.
In an unrelated note, congratulations to the Mandarin for his lunar orbiting hydroxylyzer, which appears to have operated flawlessly last month. No one is sure what it does, but he’s been laughing his ass off about something on the news today.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.