Author Topic: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!  (Read 64762 times)

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: Fornaro
Quote from: Platts
Water concentrations at the ppt level within the Moon provides strong evidence that the Moon is still outgassing water, and that such outgassed water is at least a partial source of the ice detected in polar craters. Indeed, it's likely that there is liquid water (and therefore life) within sublunarian aquifers! :)

It is mildly amusing, at best, to read that in the not known to exist "sublunarian aquifers", we are "therefore" "likely" to find life.

I can't say as I blame John for his incredulity--the idea that the Moon might harbor liquid water within it must seem counterintuitive to many. However, with the recent discovery by an undergraduate student at Brown University of unusual, Lunar volcanic glass beads containing water at the ppt level within pristine, pre-eruptive mantle sampled from the Lunar orange soil recovered by Apollo geologist Harrison Schmitt--a level about the same found in Earth mantle emerging from mid-oceanic spreading zones on Earth--it is now clear that there are large amounts of endogenous water deep within the Lunar interior. Some of this water--being less dense than rock--will try to escape to the surface through cracks and fissures.

The question is whether there are zones within the Moon where the temperature and pressure regimes favor liquid water according to water's phase diagram. A simple BOTE shows that this must be the case: Assuming an average surface temperature of 250 K, and a thermal gradient of ~1 K/m, then 250 K + 24 m = 274 K. This is quite shallow, and within reach of a most rudimentary drilling system that could be landed in a single launch quite "easily" I'm sure.

The Moon's interior temperature profile is not uniform: there are probably places where it gets hotter faster the deeper you go. There is some evidence for this in the few Lunar volcanos that have been identified, and possible sink holes caused by catstrophic gas explosions. In such areas, liquid water could be expected to be found at much shallower depths.

Such "sublunarian" aquifers would exist within naturally fractured basalt formations. Such formations exist on Earth, and actually have a decent porosity and permeability: enough at least to serve as economically practicable natural gas storage in places like eastern Washington State.

The reason I bring this up is because the fundamental mantra of exobiology is "Follow the water". The idea is that life is tenacious and will exist practically anywhere where liquid water can be found. This principle has thus been used as a scientific cudgel for Mars boosters to justify not funding ambitious Moon programs. However, as I aim to show, the idea that there is no liquid water to be found on the Moon is a mere assumption with no scientific basis to it. If finding extraterrestrial life really is a main goal in space exploration, IMHO finding it on the Moon would be more cost-effective than attempting to go to Mars for the same purpose.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:20 pm by Warren Platts »
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Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: Liquid Water In The Moon
« Reply #1 on: 07/26/2012 07:56 pm »
Considering the amount of material now known to have been exchanged between the inner planets during the LHB (when life was getting going on this planet) it's not a great stretch to ask whether viable living matter made it to the Moon. Hunting for (primarily chemical) fossils should be a major research goal when humans return to the moon in a serious fashion.

Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water In The Moon
« Reply #2 on: 07/27/2012 02:38 am »
Considering the amount of material now known to have been exchanged between the inner planets during the LHB (when life was getting going on this planet) it's not a great stretch to ask whether viable living matter made it to the Moon. Hunting for (primarily chemical) fossils should be a major research goal when humans return to the moon in a serious fashion.

Hi Bob, I agree it's quite likely that spores of life may have been exchanged between the primoridial Earth and the proto-Moon. And that hunting for Lunar fossils ought to be a serious major goal as well. It very well could be the case that signs of life could be found at the surface if one were to look in the right place. Plausible sites where outgassing has occured in the past and may still be occuring have been identified, such as the feature named "Ina" pictured in the attachment.

See also "It's a gas Man!" by Paul Spudis.

« Last Edit: 07/28/2012 12:53 pm by Warren Platts »
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Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #3 on: 07/27/2012 03:06 am »
What sort of techniques would be used to detect such things?


Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #4 on: 07/27/2012 03:33 am »
Are you referring to microbes or fumaroles??
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #5 on: 07/27/2012 07:19 am »
Are you referring to microbes or fumaroles??
Ah sorry, I meant underground pockets of water or rock with unusual water content. Actually, any interesting resources deep under the surface.

Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #6 on: 07/27/2012 08:31 pm »
Well, just look for the sort of irregularly shaped rimless pits described in the Spudis article.

But Kelvin, you've given me an idea: here's how Dr. Spudis describes the pit forming process:

Quote from: spudis
How are these features created?  Significant volcanism on the Moon largely stopped at least a couple of billion years ago.  The Brown team thought that the combination of young age, low maturity and unusual morphology suggested a relatively uncommon pit-forming process.  They proposed that the explosive release of volatile substances from the lunar interior would have disrupted the surface, created a chaotic mixture of rock and soil, exposed fresh surfaces (creating the immature spectral signature), and formed a collapse depression caused by the instantaneous removal of mass from below.

Now we can see that the new Mercurian hollows have morphologies displaying spectral anomalies similar to the lunar collapse pits such as Ina.  The new data suggest that Mercury contains significant volatile substances.  These volatiles must be present at some depth, accumulated under high pressure until crustal failure ensues and a massive gas release results in an “eruption.”  This explosive event leaves behind a chaotic, disrupted surface (“immature,” with fresh bedrock and deep regolith “newly” exposed to space).

But the strange thing is we don't see these sorts of features on Planet Earth. Yes, there are explosions caused by build up of volatiles, but these Mt. St. Helen type of explosions are high-temperature affairs and are associated with pyroclastic flows and volcanos. But the features on the Moon and Mercury are not really associated with volcanos, and that suggests a different mechanism by which the gas gets emplaced, builds up pressure and then violently explodes.

This is where the liquid water potentially comes in: imagine if a pool of water were to form between the interface of the regolith and the bedrock (perhaps in a rubble layer with good porosity). Imagine further that this water is under a little bit of pressure, and so the water would want to percolate to the surface and form an artesian spring. But ordinarily, any water moving up like that would freeze, forming a rime that would further entrap the liquid water underneath. But what if some sort of event were to occur where instead of freezing, the water went the other way on the phase diagram diagram and became stable as a gas, rather than a solid, perhaps either through some sort of local temperature increase or local decrease in the hydrostatic pressure? The water would start boiling and that could potentially cause an extremely rapid build up in pressure and thus cause a catastrophic explosion capable of excavating these sorts of rimless pits we observe.

Pure speculation, I admit: but you heard it first here at nasaspaceflight.com! :D
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

depth          0.79        1.7         2.52               Pressure
  1             250.00   250.00   250.00             3.60E+03
  2             250.79   251.70   252.52             7.19E+03
  3             251.58   253.40   255.04             1.08E+04
  4             252.37   255.10   257.56             1.44E+04
  5             253.16   256.80   260.08             1.80E+04
  6             253.95   258.50   262.60             2.16E+04
  7             254.74   260.20   265.12             2.52E+04
  8             255.53   261.90   267.64             2.88E+04
  9             256.32   263.60   270.16             3.24E+04
10             257.11   265.30   272.68             3.60E+04
11             257.90   267.00   275.20             3.96E+04
12             258.69   268.70   277.72             4.31E+04
13             259.48   270.40   280.24             4.67E+04
14             260.27   272.10   282.76             5.03E+04
15             261.06   273.80   285.28             5.39E+04
16             261.85   275.50   287.80             5.75E+04
17             262.64   277.20   290.32             6.11E+04
18             263.43   278.90   292.84             6.47E+04
19             264.22   280.60   295.36             6.83E+04
20             265.01   282.30   297.88             7.19E+04
21             265.80   284.00   300.40             7.55E+04
22             266.59   285.70   302.92             7.91E+04
23             267.38   287.40   305.44             8.27E+04
24             268.17   289.10   307.96             8.63E+04
25             268.96   290.80   310.48             8.99E+04
26             269.75   292.50   313.00             9.35E+04
27             270.54   294.20   315.52             9.71E+04
28             271.33   295.90   318.04             1.01E+05
29             272.12   297.60   320.56             1.04E+05
30             272.91   299.30   323.08             1.08E+05


Consider the above table. The depth is in meters. The three middle columns are the temperature at depth depending on the value of the thermal gradient, based on the three values I've found in the literature: 0.79, 1.7, and 2.52 K/m. (The lower one is based on LRO Diviner measurements of Hermite Crater--temp = 20K!--and Apollo values, if I'm not mistaken.) The right-most column is the pressure in pascals, if I've done my math correctly (assumes a density of 2200 kg/m3).

Note that the pressure gets to about 1 atmosphere at about 30 meters down. At that depth, all three thermal gradients are above the freezing point of water. Note further that the average depth of regolith on the Moon is on the order of ~10 meters. Thus, at a thermal gradient of 2.52 K/m, the temperature at the bedrock/regolith interface would be at about the freezing point of water.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:23 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #8 on: 07/29/2012 12:07 pm »
Who among you kind and gentle readers believe that the Martian meteorite contains compelling evidence of Martian life? Then why do you discount similar evidence of Lunar life?

Quote from: Zhmur and Gerasimenko (1999)
[We present] the results of the analyses of microphotos of lunar regolith particles published earlier, which confirmed that lunar rock contains fossilized remnants of microbial organisms, that most probably had been functioning in hydrothermal springs.

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Offline DGH

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #9 on: 07/29/2012 02:38 pm »
Temperature vs depth is very tricky because temperature change slows with depth.
You went from one extreme to the other.
First you posted 2.7 degrees per km which is probably accurate over 1000 km.
Then you went to 2.52 degrees per meter which may be accurate over a meter or two.

On the Earth it is 20- 30 degrees Celsius per Km for the first few kilometers but by 200 km it is estimated to be 0.3 degrees. Geological hot spots rise faster.

Although it was not your purpose you are making a great case for ice at depth in lunar cold traps. Even at 2.52 degrees per meter cold traps could be below 273 degrees Kelvin at almost 100 meters.

The simple fact is we need more data.

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #10 on: 07/29/2012 04:35 pm »
....

Warren asks, "Who among you kind and gentle readers believe that the Martian meteorite contains compelling evidence of Martian life?"

I answer, "Me!"


Warren asks, "Then why do you discount similar evidence of Lunar life?

I answer, "I don't discount evidence that Earth microbes might have survived on the Moon!"


Earth microbes on the moon
At: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1998/ast01sep98_1/
"The Surveyor probes were the first U.S. spacecraft to land safely on the Moon. In November, 1969, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft's microorganisms were recovered from inside its camera that was brought back to Earth under sterile conditions by the Apollo 12 crew."

And, "The 50-100 organisms survived launch, space vacuum, 3 years of radiation exposure, deep-freeze at an average temperature of only 20 degrees above absolute zero, and no nutrient, water or energy source."

And, "How this remarkable feat was accomplished only by Strep. bacteria remains speculative, but it does recall that even our present Earth does not always look as environmentally friendly as it might have 4 billion years ago when bacteria first appeared on this planet."



Note also:

"The Late Heavy Bombardment (commonly referred to as the lunar cataclysm, or LHB) is a period of time approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago (Ga) during which a large number of impact craters are believed to have formed on the Moon, and by inference on Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars as well."

And, "Extrapolating lunar cratering rates to Earth at this time suggest that the following number of craters would have formed:[citation needed]
22,000 or more impact craters with diameters >20 km (12 mi),
about 40 impact basins with diameters about 1,000 km (620 mi),
several impact basins with diameter about 5,000 km (3,100 mi)"
From: Late Heavy Bombardment
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment



"The newly formed moon orbited at about one-tenth the distance that it does today, and became tidally-locked with the Earth, where one side continually faces toward the Earth."
Geology of the Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon



If 385,000 km is the current mean distance to the Moon, then about 4.5 billion years ago the Moon was orbiting about 38,500 km away from the Earth.

The early Moon should have been in a useful orbit to 'catch' some of the many large fragments of the Earth that were thrown into space from the impacts of the large NEOs that smashed into our planet during the Late Heavy Bombardment of about 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. Early life on Earth may have existed at that time and could have caught rides to the Moon on some of those large impact fragments.

Let's go back to the Moon and look deep into the regolith and fractured bedrock for those interesting fragments from the early Earth. What else might we find while doing that Lunar research task? Might we somehow also discover lots of ice and Liquid Water IN The Moon?

:)


Edited.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 12:43 am by HappyMartian »
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Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #11 on: 07/29/2012 09:59 pm »
....

Warren asks, "Who among you kind and gentle readers believe that the Martian meteorite contains compelling evidence of Martian life?"

I answer, "Me!"


Warren asks, "Then why do you discount similar evidence of Lunar life?

I answer, "I don't discount evidence that Earth microbes might have survived on the Moon!"

{snip}

So, you're saying they probably are microbes, but that the Luna sample return mission just happened to grab a meteorite thrown up from the Earth 4 billion years ago.... Those are long odds. More importantly, if the rock came from Earth, they would be able to tell, just as we can distinguish meteorites that came from regular asteroids and meteors versus those that came from Mars or the Moon. Even if they didn't test for Earth isotopes, the idea that a single random grab from the Moon would actually grab an Earth rock stretches the imagination. Yes, people win the Powerball lottery every other day; yet I never seem to. Have you?

More importantly, to deny that it is possible that life could be/have been on the Moon is to deny the presences of liquid water on the Moon. We can quibble about the exact nature of the thermal gradient, but that there are zones where the temperature and pressure regimes favor water in its liquid phase cannot be doubted. Therefore, you must be doubting the claim that there IS enough water within the Moon to fill in cracks in the rocks within the liquid favorable zone. Yet, you, Happy Martian, are the one who keeps repeating and reposting the same links as to how much water there is in the Moon! E.g., the orange soil has recently shown that Moon mantle and Earth mantle have comparable water concentrations. Something has to give. You must give up something. Which is it?

EDIT: And what about the organic molecules detected by Chandrayaan? These are also consistent with the Lunar Life hypothesis:

Universe Today: "Signs of Life of Life Detected on the Moon?" by Nancy Atkinson
« Last Edit: 07/29/2012 11:43 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Astrobiological Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #12 on: 07/30/2012 12:07 am »
As for the Surveyor 3 camera microbes, I'm sure you're aware of the recent skepticism of that result based on the unsurprising fact that sterile, clean room standards back in 1971 were less stringent than they are in 2012. Personally, I do not find the recent "debunking" to be at all compelling: the mere fact that the investigators wore short sleeve shirts and set one of their scrapers on the table for a few seconds does not entail that they contaminated the camera. I'm sure they scrubbed their arms before they went in there, and that they sterilized their working surface.

The main problem, however, is that the type of contamination is consistent with the primary contamination occurring before Surveyor 3 was launched, but not if the contamination occurred after return to Planet Earth. If the contamination was secondary:

1. there should have been more contamination than was observed--in the event, only ~100 microbes were found within an obscure part deeply buried within the camera--about the most protected place within the camera and where, if anywhere, spores would be likely to survive;

2. fresh microbes should have quickly grown within the culture--in the event, it took substantially longer than normal, which is consistent with the life coming from dessicated spores, rather than fresh, active bacteria;

3. the microbes that inhabit the skin of humans are a veritable zoo: the entire ecological suite should have been observed if the contamination was secondary; but in fact, only a few microbes of a single species was found.

That said, if you accept the Surveyor 3 microbes at face value (i.e., that they did in fact spend 2 1/2 years on the Moon and survived), then this is evidence that life can in fact survive on the Moon, and that the purported Lunar microfossils are potentially real--not that the fossils must have necessarily come from Earth!
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:21 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #13 on: 07/30/2012 01:18 am »
....

So, you're saying they probably are microbes, but that the Luna sample return mission just happened to grab a meteorite thrown up from the Earth 4 billion years ago.... Those are long odds. More importantly, if the rock came from Earth, they would be able to tell, just as we can distinguish meteorites that came from regular asteroids and meteors versus those that came from Mars or the Moon. Even if they didn't test for Earth isotopes, the idea that a single random grab from the Moon would actually grab an Earth rock stretches the imagination. Yes, people win the Powerball lottery every other day; yet I never seem to. Have you?

More importantly, to deny that it is possible that life could be/have been on the Moon is to deny the presences of liquid water on the Moon. We can quibble about the exact nature of the thermal gradient, but that there are zones where the temperature and pressure regimes favor water in its liquid phase cannot be doubted. Therefore, you must be doubting the claim that there IS enough water within the Moon to fill in cracks in the rocks within the liquid favorable zone. Yet, you, Happy Martian, are the one who keeps repeating and reposting the same links as to how much water there is in the Moon! E.g., the orange soil has recently shown that Moon mantle and Earth mantle have comparable water concentrations. Something has to give. You must give up something. Which is it?

EDIT: And what about the organic molecules detected by Chandrayaan? These are also consistent with the Lunar Life hypothesis:

Universe Today: "Signs of Life of Life Detected on the Moon?" by Nancy Atkinson

Follow the water is supposed to be the rule in looking for life. I think it is a very good rule. If some forms of life managed to get to the Moon from Ceres, Mars, Earth, or somewhere else, then there is a good chance that if that life was buried deep enough in the Lunar environment where water in some form tends to be available, some of those immigrant forms of life would still be active today. Could life have evolved on the Moon and then caught a ride to Earth? Good question.

But you know Warren, not too many people share such beliefs. However, the best way to guarantee that there is lots of life on the Moon is to invite a dozen, then a few dozen, and then thousands, and eventually millions of humans to visit Luna. Some of those humans will stay on the Moon and some of those folks will eventually head off to Mars and Ceres and other destinations in the Solar System. And wherever humans go they are pretty good at finding fun ways to create lots of new humans...

Oh and sorry about "repeating and reposting the same links as to how much water there is in the Moon". I've noticed that some powerful folks, including the President, are in deep denial about Lunar water and volatiles, and thus I tend to repeat the obvious. Such is life on the Blue Planet.

 
 :)
 
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Offline Warren Platts

Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #14 on: 07/30/2012 03:37 am »
Follow the water is supposed to be the rule in looking for life. I think it is a very good rule. If some forms of life managed to get to the Moon from Ceres, Mars, Earth, or somewhere else, then there is a good chance that if that life was buried deep enough in the Lunar environment where water in some form tends to be available, some of those immigrant forms of life would still be active today. Could life have evolved on the Moon and then caught a ride to Earth? Good question.

But you know Warren, not too many people share such beliefs.

Yeah. I know. And your point is? That people presented with evidence won't change their minds? The purpose of this thread is to get people to re-examine their long-held prejudices with respect to life on the Moon. The idea that there might be extraterrestrial life has always been THE trump card played by the Mars folks and has been a major justification for the plan to husband every dollar in the HSF program and channel it into one great shoestring leap to Mars in an effort to find Martian microbes, since billions of dollars worth of robots so far have proven inept at that task. The idea being that once life is found, a profound philosophical transformation will sweep Planet Earth, and all of a sudden, many more billions will become available for space exploration with plenty of ponies and unicorns for all.

I say, OK, fair enough, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander! If we really think that finding extraterrestrial life is a major justification for space exploration, then if it is the case that there is likely liquid water within a few 10's of meters of the Moon's surface, then we should look for life on the Moon First!

Or to put it another way, I guess a side purpose of this thread is to expose the hypocrisy of many Mars First!ers: their proclaimed desire to find extraterrestrial life is a mere disingenuous ploy to direct funding their way and away from other, more useful projects. Thus, when presented with the case that life is just as likely to be found on the Moon as it is on Mars, watch them: they will not retract their position that an aggressive Moon program is a wasteful distraction from the main goal of Mars. But at least for now, the fence sitters will be able to see that the emperor wears no clothes.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 03:47 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #15 on: 07/30/2012 08:13 am »
Yes Warren, I too appreciate "The Emperor's New Clothes" and since 1837 that simple story by Hans Christian Andersen has taught the lesson of how some folks in various leadership positions don't want to appear foolish or think too deeply or ask any questions at all about the obviously nonsensical behavior and illogical proclamations of their Grand Pooh-bah.

From such grandiose and easily duped Grand Pooh-bahs we get tragic wars, bankrupt nations, misdirected space programs, and various other types of goofy zig zagging national policies.

Now, some pretty serious scientists have repeatedly tried to make the point that the Moon appears to have more than enough water and volatiles to meet our space exploration and in-situ resource utilization needs.

Further human field work research to prioritize the tapping of the strategically located Lunar water, volatiles, and other resources would be the logical and commercially smart thing to do, if logic and commerce had anything to do with the vague blind alley asteroid and Mars space policy formulated and articulated by our Grand Pooh-bah.

Unfortunately, we space cadets are faced with the little child's task of crying out loudly and repeatedly that the Grand Pooh-bah's space policy's nonexistent clothes are revealing too much of the embarrassing nakedness of a vacuous Solar System exploration architecture which is not based on space commerce, Lunar geology, and the many joys of water where you need it.

The water and volatiles that exist both in the Moon and in its polar surface areas will be used by some nation, or group of nations, to make the Moon into the prettiest rocket propellant station imaginable and to make that generous gift even commercially sweeter, Luna has just about the best possible location to efficiently service many local and far voyaging spacecraft. Unfortunately, our current Grand Pooh-bah continues to display his disdain about the commercial prospects of our lovely and resource rich Moon.

We Americans routinely install a new Grand Pooh-bah every four or eight years, so hopefully we will eventually get a Grand Pooh-bah that is actually interested in science instead of displaying an ongoing dismal ignorance about what is needed for a functional and commercially robust space exploration architecture.   


:)
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Offline Warren Platts

Temperature vs depth is very tricky because temperature change slows with depth. You went from one extreme to the other. First you posted 2.7 degrees per km which is probably accurate over 1000 km. Then you went to 2.52 degrees per meter which may be accurate over a meter or two.

On the Earth it is 20- 30 degrees Celsius per Km for the first few kilometers but by 200 km it is estimated to be 0.3 degrees.

True, but for the practical purposes of this thread, we are only interested in the top 10 to 100 meters of the surface. It's not clear to me that there is a sharp dogleg in the thermal gradient where it drops down to 20 K/km immediately after the first 2 meters. I'm still researching this issue. Main point remains that it's possible, indeed likely, that liquid water in certain circumstances may reach as high as the base of the regolith is some locations. My guess is that liquid water somehow plays a role in the formation of the irregularly shaped rimless pit features like Ina. Evidence for this is that the rimless pits are not found in the polar regions. There, because of the extra cold surface temperatures, the "water table" is too low, and so the overburden is too heavy to be blown away by overpressured pockets of water vapor. 

Quote
Although it was not your purpose you are making a great case for ice at depth in lunar cold traps. Even at 2.52 degrees per meter cold traps could be below 273 degrees Kelvin at almost 100 meters.

Interesting point that I hadn't thought of. If the ice lid was thick enough, there might even be a pool of liquid water at the base of the ice.

Quote
The simple fact is we need more data.

Not so simple. The platitudinous truism that "we need more data" hides a multitude of sin. It sounds reasonable, but it is at once a claim that speculation on the possibilities must be rejected as useless, that commitments to major projects must be postponed, that nothing can be done because there isn't enough money, that money earmarked for HSF must be redirected toward robotic spacecraft, that exploration must be confined to power point presentations. Above all that we must not step off of the "Flexible Path". Something a little more specific than "we need more data" would provide a better point of departure for more conversation. The statement "we need more data" ends the discussion.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:16 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Yes Warren, I too appreciate "The Emperor's New Clothes" and since 1837 that simple story by Hans Christian Andersen has taught the lesson of how some folks in various leadership positions don't want to appear foolish or think too deeply or ask any questions at all about the obviously nonsensical behavior and illogical proclamations of their Grand Pooh-bah.

From such grandiose and easily duped Grand Pooh-bahs we get tragic wars, bankrupt nations, misdirected space programs, and various other types of goofy zig zagging national policies.

Now, some pretty serious scientists have repeatedly tried to make the point that the Moon appears to have more than enough water and volatiles to meet our space exploration and in-situ resource utilization needs.

Further human field work research to prioritize the tapping of the strategically located Lunar water, volatiles, and other resources would be the logical and commercially smart thing to do, if logic and commerce had anything to do with the vague blind alley asteroid and Mars space policy formulated and articulated by our Grand Pooh-bah.

Unfortunately, we space cadets are faced with the little child's task of crying out loudly and repeatedly that the Grand Pooh-bah's space policy's nonexistent clothes are revealing too much of the embarrassing nakedness of a vacuous Solar System exploration architecture which is not based on space commerce, Lunar geology, and the many joys of water where you need it.

The water and volatiles that exist both in the Moon and in its polar surface areas will be used by some nation, or group of nations, to make the Moon into the prettiest rocket propellant station imaginable and to make that generous gift even commercially sweeter, Luna has just about the best possible location to efficiently service many local and far voyaging spacecraft. Unfortunately, our current Grand Pooh-bah continues to display his disdain about the commercial prospects of our lovely and resource rich Moon.

We Americans routinely install a new Grand Pooh-bah every four or eight years, so hopefully we will eventually get a Grand Pooh-bah that is actually interested in science instead of displaying an ongoing dismal ignorance about what is needed for a functional and commercially robust space exploration architecture.   


:)

This is all fine and dandy, but it's a bit off topic, sir. What we're really talking about in this thread is why the Moon always gets the short shrift when it comes to astrobiology. The traditional answer has always been that the Moon is dryer than a bone. But now, evidently, it's become clear that there are substantive amounts of water on the Moon. Since there is a baseline of water that is not entirely allochthonous, we must ask why couldn't there be liquid water in the Moon? And the only answer to that question is that there is no water on the Moon to begin with--which we now know to be false. Therefore, if we are to take the principle of "follow the water" seriously, then we should follow it wherever it leads, even if it leads to that humble silver orb in the sky. Not as sexy as Enceladus ejaculations, I'll admit, but so what? Are we looking for life or not? Or is it all about pork driven "cool" stunts?
« Last Edit: 07/31/2012 12:18 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline aero

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #18 on: 07/30/2012 01:33 pm »
Quote
... so what? Are we looking for life or not? Or is it all about pork ...

I thought we were looking for a place to live so to spread the risk of living in one place, and for resources with which to generate wealth in order to live comfortably. But we need more data. But as was implied, that statement results in an endless drain on resources, with no end in sight. There will always be more data to collect. We are still collecting data about the Earth after all. We need to identify the data that we really need in order to evaluate whether or not mankind can live there.

What would be the keystone piece of data about the Moon? Do we need to know whether or not liquid water exists at some depth, or is it enough to know whether or not near surface ice exists in the polar craters? Do we need to know whether or not mankind on the moon will spread across the surface living in surface habs, like houses, or will bore down under the protection of the surface living in underground (?) cities. If the latter, then subsurface water might cause problems similar to what it causes here on Earth when constructing deep underground structures (mines, for example). It could also provide inestimable benefits.

But do we need to know this next? If so, then how do we find out? Can it be done remotely or do we need to dig, drill or blast? Where should we look, and how deep should we look irrespective of the required technology and equipment? If this is not next on the agenda, what is?
Retired, working interesting problems

Offline muomega0

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #19 on: 07/30/2012 01:50 pm »
Yes Warren, I too appreciate "The Emperor's New Clothes" and since 1837 that simple story by Hans Christian Andersen has taught the lesson of how some folks in various leadership positions don't want to appear foolish or think too deeply or ask any questions at all about the obviously nonsensical behavior and illogical proclamations of their Grand Pooh-bah.

From such grandiose and easily duped Grand Pooh-bahs we get tragic wars, bankrupt nations, misdirected space programs, and various other types of goofy zig zagging national policies.

Further human field work research to prioritize the tapping of the strategically located Lunar water, volatiles, and other resources would be the logical and commercially smart thing to do, if logic and commerce had anything to do with the vague blind alley asteroid and Mars space policy formulated and articulated by our Grand Pooh-bah.

Unfortunately, our current Grand Pooh-bah continues to display his disdain about the commercial prospects of our lovely and resource rich Moon.

We Americans routinely install a new Grand Pooh-bah every four or eight years, so hopefully we will eventually get a Grand Pooh-bah that is actually interested in science instead of displaying an ongoing dismal ignorance about what is needed for a functional and commercially robust space exploration architecture.   

:)
Oh really?

Quote above leaves in sentences with GPB:  Grand Pooh-bah

GPB circa 2001-2009 along with the same Congress and forced NASA to build a HLV (Constellation)--throwing out the depot centric architecture.  The budget impact of this choice was ~$3B/year.   Robotic missions?!

The links to the data and leaked studies show

Why a decade of HLVs (Constellation and SLS) did not solve NASA $$$ problems, but depot centric with a LEO ZBO Depot and Smaller LVs Will free up cash for Flexible Exploration


GPB circa 2009-   threw out Constellation, but *Congress* mandated the 70 to 130 metric tonne LV SLS as part of a compromse--no cash savings.  SLS =>   something << envisioned HSF

The great news for those at NASA who want to start addressing the key Challenges and developing Exploration Hardware is that SLS now has a half life of 4 months. ;)  This will free LV dollars for hardware to explore for water and to start working on technologies for other BEO missions.

Visiting an asteroid is only a step in the process and has nothing in common with the Constellation flags and footprints 2X/year 6 day lunar sorties.  A asteroid mission requires most of the technologies needed for Mars, but with substantially less energy required.  Think of the asteroid mission as a lunar flyby--a step in the overall process.

But its flexible, if one does find a economically retrievable resource.....asteroid or lunar or ....

One remaining key to the puzzle is a reasonable, cheap yearly IMLEO required by NASA to aid the so called 'commercial' lv sector, because as we all know, increasing the flight rate reduces costs.   Again, this is accomplished by removing unneeded product lines, and using the cash for BEO hardware.

Most people at NASA want to move *forward* to the proper, flexible architecture.

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #20 on: 07/30/2012 02:17 pm »
....

The links to the data and leaked studies show

Why a decade of HLVs (Constellation and SLS) did not solve NASA $$$ problems, but depot centric with a LEO ZBO Depot and Smaller LVs Will free up cash for Flexible Exploration


....


Hi muomega0!

See the comments by Removed User

« Reply #110 on: 12/29/2011 08:49 PM »

His post is slightly below the one you referenced.


Cheers!
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #21 on: 07/30/2012 06:02 pm »
Quote
... so what? Are we looking for life or not? Or is it all about pork ...

I thought we were looking for a place to live so to spread the risk of living in one place, and for resources with which to generate wealth in order to live comfortably. But we need more data. ...

What would be the keystone piece of data about the Moon? Do we need to know whether or not liquid water exists at some depth, or is it enough to know whether or not near surface ice exists in the polar craters? Do we need to know whether or not mankind on the moon will spread across the surface living in surface habs, like houses, or will bore down under the protection of the surface living in underground (?) cities. ...

But do we need to know this next? If so, then how do we find out? Can it be done remotely or do we need to dig, drill or blast? Where should we look, and how deep should we look irrespective of the required technology and equipment? If this is not next on the agenda, what is?

Your line of thinking here is pretty good.

My indictment of NASA's efforts over the last forty years has been summarized as the preference for profit over accomplishment.  Although the word "pork" does not generally cross my lips in this regard, I am not unaware of the concept.

We are looking for a place to attempt the experiment of living off planet.  That's "we", as in we who are looking for that place to live.  Water is one of those resources which could enable wealth generation, if a lot of other things go right.  Water might be that "keystone piece of data" for Luna.  It will be easier to live on the surface, even if we have to use some meters of regolith for radiation shielding.  Windows and distant views are crucial for most people, and quite enticing if the views would be alien and wild.

I think we do need to know more about that water next.  Unfortunately, the current Pooh-bah and the aspiring Pooh-bah are not interested in Luna, thus have no interest in searching for a site for an outpost.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts

Quote
... so what? Are we looking for life or not? Or is it all about pork ...
But we need more data. ...

But do we need to know this next? If so, then how do we find out? Can it be done remotely or do we need to dig, drill or blast? Where should we look, and how deep should we look irrespective of the required technology and equipment? If this is not next on the agenda, what is?

I guarantee you drilling for liquid water on the Moon is not next on the agenda. But maybe it should be. Back in the day when they first began drilling for oil and natural gas, the strategy was simply to find an oil or gas seep, and then drill down on top of that. (As a result, natural oil and gas seeps as a natural phenomena on Earth are  practically extinct.)

So the thing to do would be to identify features on the Moon--evidently, these are the rimless pits like Ina--that are thought to have been formed because of escaping volatiles, and then drill down on top of them. For starters, a rig capable of drilling completely through the 10 meter regolith and down into some pristine bedrock would be good for starters. Core samples with sample return to earth would be great. A rig capable of drilling a hundred feet could be landed with a single beefy lander, pipes and all.

It's potentially dangerous work. If they found liquid water, it could potentially be overpressured. They could have a blowout. But hey, there are worse problems to have! Hopefully, no one will get hurt.

But even if Ina proved to be a dry hole, they could potentially find direct geochemical evidence that liquid water was somehow involved in the explosion that caused the formation of Ina. Maybe even some microfossils.
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:28 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Yes Warren, I too appreciate "The Emperor's New Clothes" and since 1837 that simple story by Hans Christian Andersen has taught the lesson of how some folks in various leadership positions don't want to appear foolish or think too deeply or ask any questions at all about the obviously nonsensical behavior and illogical proclamations of their Grand Pooh-bah.

From such grandiose and easily duped Grand Pooh-bahs we get tragic wars, bankrupt nations, misdirected space programs, and various other types of goofy zig zagging national policies.

Further human field work research to prioritize the tapping of the strategically located Lunar water, volatiles, and other resources would be the logical and commercially smart thing to do, if logic and commerce had anything to do with the vague blind alley asteroid and Mars space policy formulated and articulated by our Grand Pooh-bah.

Unfortunately, our current Grand Pooh-bah continues to display his disdain about the commercial prospects of our lovely and resource rich Moon.

We Americans routinely install a new Grand Pooh-bah every four or eight years, so hopefully we will eventually get a Grand Pooh-bah that is actually interested in science instead of displaying an ongoing dismal ignorance about what is needed for a functional and commercially robust space exploration architecture.   

:)
Oh really?

Quote above leaves in sentences with GPB:  Grand Pooh-bah

GPB circa 2001-2009 along with the same Congress and forced NASA to build a HLV (Constellation)--throwing out the depot centric architecture.  The budget impact of this choice was ~$3B/year.   Robotic missions?!

The links to the data and leaked studies show

Why a decade of HLVs (Constellation and SLS) did not solve NASA $$$ problems, but depot centric with a LEO ZBO Depot and Smaller LVs Will free up cash for Flexible Exploration


GPB circa 2009-   threw out Constellation, but *Congress* mandated the 70 to 130 metric tonne LV SLS as part of a compromse--no cash savings.  SLS =>   something << envisioned HSF

The great news for those at NASA who want to start addressing the key Challenges and developing Exploration Hardware is that SLS now has a half life of 4 months. ;)  This will free LV dollars for hardware to explore for water and to start working on technologies for other BEO missions.

Visiting an asteroid is only a step in the process and has nothing in common with the Constellation flags and footprints 2X/year 6 day lunar sorties.  A asteroid mission requires most of the technologies needed for Mars, but with substantially less energy required.  Think of the asteroid mission as a lunar flyby--a step in the overall process.

But its flexible, if one does find a economically retrievable resource.....asteroid or lunar or ....

One remaining key to the puzzle is a reasonable, cheap yearly IMLEO required by NASA to aid the so called 'commercial' lv sector, because as we all know, increasing the flight rate reduces costs.   Again, this is accomplished by removing unneeded product lines, and using the cash for BEO hardware.

Most people at NASA want to move *forward* to the proper, flexible architecture.

....

The links to the data and leaked studies show

Why a decade of HLVs (Constellation and SLS) did not solve NASA $$$ problems, but depot centric with a LEO ZBO Depot and Smaller LVs Will free up cash for Flexible Exploration


....


Hi muomega0!

See the comments by Removed User

« Reply #110 on: 12/29/2011 08:49 PM »

His post is slightly below the one you referenced.


Cheers!

Quote
... so what? Are we looking for life or not? Or is it all about pork ...

I thought we were looking for a place to live so to spread the risk of living in one place, and for resources with which to generate wealth in order to live comfortably. But we need more data. ...

What would be the keystone piece of data about the Moon? Do we need to know whether or not liquid water exists at some depth, or is it enough to know whether or not near surface ice exists in the polar craters? Do we need to know whether or not mankind on the moon will spread across the surface living in surface habs, like houses, or will bore down under the protection of the surface living in underground (?) cities. ...

But do we need to know this next? If so, then how do we find out? Can it be done remotely or do we need to dig, drill or blast? Where should we look, and how deep should we look irrespective of the required technology and equipment? If this is not next on the agenda, what is?

Your line of thinking here is pretty good.

My indictment of NASA's efforts over the last forty years has been summarized as the preference for profit over accomplishment.  Although the word "pork" does not generally cross my lips in this regard, I am not unaware of the concept.

We are looking for a place to attempt the experiment of living off planet.  That's "we", as in we who are looking for that place to live.  Water is one of those resources which could enable wealth generation, if a lot of other things go right.  Water might be that "keystone piece of data" for Luna.  It will be easier to live on the surface, even if we have to use some meters of regolith for radiation shielding.  Windows and distant views are crucial for most people, and quite enticing if the views would be alien and wild.

I think we do need to know more about that water next.  Unfortunately, the current Pooh-bah and the aspiring Pooh-bah are not interested in Luna, thus have no interest in searching for a site for an outpost.

Hap, I knew this would happen. Thanks a lot. 1000 words between you all, and the word "liquid" appears nowhere. Let's leave the Presidential politics out of it, please. There is the Space Policy subforum for that if you like. If you must discuss politics, then let's talk about the scientific politics of the astrobiology and planetary science community. Why is it politically incorrect to discuss the possibility of life on the Moon? Why is it career suicide to discuss the possibility? What happened to the ISRO leak that Chandrayaan found "signs of life"? There was no follow up. It disappeared down a black hole. E.g., the latest article quoting a lot of astrobiology rock stars: no mention of the Moon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/alien-life-enceladus-saturn-moon
« Last Edit: 07/30/2012 11:29 pm by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #24 on: 07/30/2012 09:57 pm »
....

Hap, I knew this would happen. Thanks a lot. 1000 words between you all, and the word "liquid" appears nowhere. Let's leave the Presidential politics out of it, please. There is the Space Policy subforum for that if you like. If you must discuss politics, then let's talk about the scientific politics of the astrobiology and planetary science community. Why is it politically incorrect to discuss the possibility of life on the Moon? Why is it career suicide to discuss the possibility? What happened to the ISRO leak that Chandrayaan found "signs of life"? There was no follow up. It disappeared down a black hole. E.g., the latest article quoting a lot of astrobiology rock stars: no mention of the Moon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/alien-life-enceladus-saturn-moon


Warren, the topic of this thread is Liquid Water IN The Moon!, not life in the Moon.

I am willing to encourage folks to drill deep for that liquid Lunar water, and have done so in some of my previous posts, . The current Pooh-bah and the Pooh-bah wannabe don't seem inclined to do any drilling on the Moon for liquid water or evidence of life. Luckily, a bipartisan Luna first attitude in Congress seems to have us headed back to the Moon, and once we eventually get there we will do some drilling, and maybe even some very deep drilling for liquid water. Yep, for water, and maybe even life, we should drill deep and not just be "interested in the top 10 to 100 meters of the surface".


.....
True, but for the practical purposes of this thread, we are only interested in the top 10 to 100 meters of the surface. It's not clear to me that there is a sharp dogleg in the thermal gradient where it drops down to 20 K/km immediately after the first 2 meters. I'm still researching this issue. Main point remains that it's possible, indeed likely, that liquid water in certain circumstances may reach as high as the base of the regolith is some locations.
....



"Back in 1998, Onstott made the astonishing discovery that bacteria can thrive in pockets of hot water miles underground — far below the depth at which living organisms were known to exist before. Ever since then, he's been spending his summers thousands of feet beneath the earth, in the bowels of South Africa's deepest gold mines, prospecting for other kinds of life in this lightless, hidden biosphere."

And, "To prove the critters were truly worms from hell (rather than worms just visiting hell), Onstott and Borgonie had to tap into veins of water that had never been exposed to air. Sure enough, they found worms there as well."

From: Could 'Worms from Hell' Mean There's Life in Space?  By Michael D. Lemonick Wednesday, June 08, 2011
At: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2076281,00.html


Drill many kilometers deep into the Moon and find "veins" of liquid water and maybe life as well.


Cheers! 
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

....

Hap, I knew this would happen. Thanks a lot. 1000 words between you all, and the word "liquid" appears nowhere. Let's leave the Presidential politics out of it, please. There is the Space Policy subforum for that if you like. If you must discuss politics, then let's talk about the scientific politics of the astrobiology and planetary science community. Why is it politically incorrect to discuss the possibility of life on the Moon? Why is it career suicide to discuss the possibility? What happened to the ISRO leak that Chandrayaan found "signs of life"? There was no follow up. It disappeared down a black hole. E.g., the latest article quoting a lot of astrobiology rock stars: no mention of the Moon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/29/alien-life-enceladus-saturn-moon


Warren, the topic of this thread is Liquid Water IN The Moon!, not life in the Moon.

Nope. The thread title is Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN the Moon! Liquid water, while interesting, and with potential ISRU applications (implying that it might potentially be possible to drill for water in non-polar regions), it's main interest is its potential to harbor extraterrestrial life. That is a scientific problem that can fire the imagination of the public in a way that magnetic and gravitational anomalies cannot. It's a problem we've already spent billions on, with little to show in the form of positive results. And look how desperate they're getting: an Enceladus flyby mission that's going to cost billions and take 30 years to deliver results is now being billed as our most cost-effective way to discover actual alien life forms.

That is so awful it's making me begin to get suspicious that the astrobiology rock stars really don't want to find life on another world. Maybe they're afraid that once they find it, the funding will dry up, so a nice 30 year mission to the Far Side of the Solar System is a good way to keep the cabbage flowing. But that's being really cynical on my part. We should have HSF capability to Lunar surface within the decade (it's still the law of the land to have a man on the Moon by 2020). We should start developing drilling technology now.

Quote from: Happy Martian
I am willing to encourage folks to drill deep for that liquid Lunar water, and have done so in some of my previous posts, . The current Pooh-bah and the Pooh-bah wannabe don't seem inclined to do any drilling on the Moon for liquid water or evidence of life. Luckily, a bipartisan Luna first attitude in Congress seems to have us headed back to the Moon, and once we eventually get there we will do some drilling, and maybe even some very deep drilling for liquid water. Yep, for water, and maybe even life, we should drill deep and not just be "interested in the top 10 to 100 meters of the surface".

There is a world of difference between a drilling rig that can drill 100 feet versus one that can drill 10,000 feet. The equipment required to drill a shallow water well can fit on a single truck; to drill a deep oil well takes many semi-truck loads to set up. The drill pipe alone is heavy; so heavy in fact, it only really makes sense if the drill pipe and most other heavy components of a big rig can be forged on the Moon itself.

A small rig capable of drilling at least down through 30 to 50 feet of regolith can surely fit on a single lander. It could possibly be entirely robotic, but other things being equal, it would be better of course to have humans at the scene to help with the setting up, troubleshooting and analysis of the results. Most especially, having humans on the scene ensures sample return.


Quote from: Happy Martian
"Back in 1998, Onstott made the astonishing discovery that bacteria can thrive in pockets of hot water miles underground — far below the depth at which living organisms were known to exist before. Ever since then, he's been spending his summers thousands of feet beneath the earth, in the bowels of South Africa's deepest gold mines, prospecting for other kinds of life in this lightless, hidden biosphere."

And, "To prove the critters were truly worms from hell (rather than worms just visiting hell), Onstott and Borgonie had to tap into veins of water that had never been exposed to air. Sure enough, they found worms there as well."

From: Could 'Worms from Hell' Mean There's Life in Space?  By Michael D. Lemonick Wednesday, June 08, 2011
At: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2076281,00.html


Drill many kilometers deep into the Moon and find "veins" of liquid water and maybe life as well.


Cheers! 

Now thanks for this Hap! Keep digging and keep posting the results here my friend. However, if I am right, we won't have to drill many kilometers down. It might very well be under our very noses. You know how it is: the Sahara Desert looks like a barren place to our Western eyes, but a smart Bedouin will know where to dig with his bare hands and still find water.
« Last Edit: 07/31/2012 12:17 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #26 on: 07/31/2012 12:50 am »
{snip}
That is so awful it's making me begin to get suspicious that the astrobiology rock stars really don't want to find life on another world. Maybe they're afraid that once they find it, the funding will dry up, so a nice 30 year mission to the Far Side of the Solar System is a good way to keep the cabbage flowing. But that's being really cynical on my part. We should have HSF capability to Lunar surface within the decade (it's still the law of the land to have a man on the Moon by 2020). We should start developing drilling technology now.
{snip}

Or they have worked out that any drilling mission to the Moon, that is going down more than a few feet, will not be launched for at least 5 years.  That means there will be a different man in the White House.  The new man may wish to claim the glory and give it public authorisation.  Until then NASA has to quietly develop landers, prospecting equipment, drills and refining machines.  So long as the President does not know the project is there he will not bother to cancel it.

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #27 on: 07/31/2012 03:05 am »
...
So long as the President does not know the project is there he will not bother to cancel it.


A stealthy Lunar exploration program designed to find liquid water and life. I got it! OK Swallow! But I'm not sure we should tell anyone, even Warren. Warren is an American and sometimes those Americans get a bit excited. Is there anyone we can discuss this with in the international community? You know, someone who won't blab it it to the media, right? Let's keep this on topic and on the QT. Yep, a strictly need to know basis.

Hhmmmm, Swallow, maybe you shouldn't tell me either. I am an American and have a much bigger mouth than Warren...

Swallow, this is your secret international mission: Figure out the Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon! Remember, whatever you come up with, don't tell NASA, Warren, me, or any American. You can work with the rest of the world, but please keep this new research program away from every American. Scientific secrecy is essential for the success of your deep mission into the depths of Luna! I trust you! Good luck!


Cheers!
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Offline spacermase

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #28 on: 07/31/2012 03:32 am »


That is so awful it's making me begin to get suspicious that the astrobiology rock stars really don't want to find life on another world. Maybe they're afraid that once they find it, the funding will dry up, so a nice 30 year mission to the Far Side of the Solar System is a good way to keep the cabbage flowing. But that's being really cynical on my part.

Speaking as an astrobiologist (though not yet a rock star), I have a hard time conceiving of an astrobiologist who didn't want to find life on another world- aside from the nice benefit of having your name immortalized in history as That Guy Who Found Aliens, finding exolife would represent just the start of funding- after all, you're going to need multiple samples, a thorough investigation into the ecosystem of the organisms, lots and lots of gene sequencing, assuming there are genes to be sequenced.  The reason Enceladus is getting a lot of attention is because we know with absolute certainty that there is both liquid water and organics there (although personally I'm skeptical that there is enough chemical energy in Enceladus's hydrothermal systems to support life, but I certainly could be wrong).

The problem with going after the Moon for astrobiology is that, truth be told, it's not just a matter of following the water- you also need a lot of organics (and easily assimilated organics at that), and a source of energy.   Organics have only been definitively detected in relatively trace amounts on the Moon's surface, and there is no reason to suspect that they'll necessarily be found in the subsurface (as they are believed to the result of micrometeorite and solar wind deposition).  And as for energy, terrestrial biology uses a relatively narrow range of sources (although it's still surprisingly wide by everyday standards)- the most likely metabolic pathway for the Moon, based on simple availability, would be the reduction of iron, but you'd eventually run out of of Fe(III) to reduce, since there's no volatile oxygen available to reoxidize the Fe(II) and cycle it.  It doesn't help that the Moon (at least at the surface) is predominantly silicon dioxide, which is about as biologically inert and inaccessible as you can get.

The terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria mentioned earlier get by through an extremely slow metabolism (they may not reproduce for centuries, and it has been suggested that they may be effectively immortal), and by (we think) metabolizing high energy compounds produced by radioactive decay.  And even then, the colonies that support nematodes are specifically mentioned as not being entirely isolated from the surface biosphere.

Bottom line, while life deep in the Moon can't be ruled out- we've found stranger things, after all- but it's much, much more of a stretch compared to Mars (where water and organic carbon are known to have existed in the past, and may still exist in some form), Europa (strongly suspected to have water and probably organics), and Enceladus (definitively known to have water and organics).

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #29 on: 07/31/2012 03:49 am »
Until then NASA has to quietly develop landers, prospecting equipment, drills and refining machines.  So long as the President does not know the project is there he will not bother to cancel it.

I agree, except replacing "the house" for "the president". The current president proposed significant funding for all these things. We would have had a lunar lander with an ISRU package during his term. The exploration technology budget was radically large.


Offline QuantumG

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #30 on: 07/31/2012 04:06 am »
The exploration technology budget was radically large.

Yep. Most people who can't understand why anyone would be against SLS seem to be completely unaware of what they gave up to have it.

Human spaceflight is basically just LARPing now.

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #31 on: 07/31/2012 04:25 am »
Back on topic, the moon might have one advantage for looking for life. Since the surface itself is so unfriendly to life, genuine life signs might stand out like a beacon.

There is so much we just havent seen at all. We debate the ice at the poles and whether this or that experiment will be sufficient but maybe we will go there and find seven foot ice crystal forests or something we just haven't considered.

I would really like to get even a look at any locations where volatiles have been gassing out of. What sort of residue is left on the surface, for example.

Offline Warren Platts

Speaking as an astrobiologist (though not yet a rock star), I have a hard time conceiving of an astrobiologist who didn't want to find life on another world- aside from the nice benefit of having your name immortalized in history as That Guy Who Found Aliens, finding exolife would represent just the start of funding- after all, you're going to need multiple samples, a thorough investigation into the ecosystem of the organisms, lots and lots of gene sequencing, assuming there are genes to be sequenced.  The reason Enceladus is getting a lot of attention is because we know with absolute certainty that there is both liquid water and organics there (although personally I'm skeptical that there is enough chemical energy in Enceladus's hydrothermal systems to support life, but I certainly could be wrong).

The problem with going after the Moon for astrobiology is that, truth be told, it's not just a matter of following the water- you also need a lot of organics (and easily assimilated organics at that), and a source of energy.   Organics have only been definitively detected in relatively trace amounts on the Moon's surface, and there is no reason to suspect that they'll necessarily be found in the subsurface (as they are believed to the result of micrometeorite and solar wind deposition).  And as for energy, terrestrial biology uses a relatively narrow range of sources (although it's still surprisingly wide by everyday standards)- the most likely metabolic pathway for the Moon, based on simple availability, would be the reduction of iron, but you'd eventually run out of of Fe(III) to reduce, since there's no volatile oxygen available to reoxidize the Fe(II) and cycle it.  It doesn't help that the Moon (at least at the surface) is predominantly silicon dioxide, which is about as biologically inert and inaccessible as you can get.

The terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria mentioned earlier get by through an extremely slow metabolism (they may not reproduce for centuries, and it has been suggested that they may be effectively immortal), and by (we think) metabolizing high energy compounds produced by radioactive decay.  And even then, the colonies that support nematodes are specifically mentioned as not being entirely isolated from the surface biosphere.

Bottom line, while life deep in the Moon can't be ruled out- we've found stranger things, after all- but it's much, much more of a stretch compared to Mars (where water and organic carbon are known to have existed in the past, and may still exist in some form), Europa (strongly suspected to have water and probably organics), and Enceladus (definitively known to have water and organics).

Wow! Thank you for the breath of fresh air. These are the sort of things we should be discussing. However, I think you may be mistaken in a few of your assumptions:

1. Organics: LCROSS did find organics in the material it dislodged from the Moon; granted, current theory is that most of this stuff comes from comet impacts, but the recent discovery of water within magma fragments found encapsulated in glass particles found in the famous "orange soil" recovered by Apollo 17 indicates that the Lunar mantle contains water concentrations comparable to the Earth's mantle; presumably other sorts of volatiles would be included, and so it's possible that the polar cold traps are trapping Lunar volatiles also, and not just cometary impact material.

2. The rimless pit features (like Ina) are thought to have been caused by the catastrophic release of overpressured volatiles; these do not happen in the polar regions; this is further evidence that "food" molecules could be coming from deep with the Moon.

3. What do you mean my Lunar "surface samples"? If you are referring to the typical Apollo sample, it's no surprise that the volatiles and organics have been baked out of them by a billion years of heating up in a vacuum. These cannot be taken as representative of what's going on in the interior.

4. There was the tantalizing ISRO leak about the Chandrayaan impactor finding "signs of life" in the form of organic molecules.

5. Your point about iron reducing forms running out of iron is well taken, but I was thinking the most likely form would be methanogens feeding off of primoridial carbon dioxide and hydrogen released by the serpentinisation of olivine. (Alternatively, they could get hydrogen from water, and release oxygen--and this could in turn reoxidise Fe(II) and cycle it.) These are the sorts of organisms that live deep within the Earth's basalts (which are primarily composed of olivine). And there is actually a bit of empirical evidence to support this view: there is a mysterious diurnal pulse of methane that the Apollo science packages consistently detected; this is consistent with methanogens releasing methane that slowly makes its way to the surface. During the night it accumulates in the regolith, and then when warmed up by the Sun, it is released to the Lunar exosphere.

Any thoughts you have on this subject are very welcome spacermase. Astrobiological expertise is definitely in short supply around here! ;)
« Last Edit: 07/31/2012 06:30 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #33 on: 07/31/2012 07:07 am »
...

Speaking as an astrobiologist (though not yet a rock star), I have a hard time conceiving of an astrobiologist who didn't want to find life on another world- aside from the nice benefit of having your name immortalized in history as That Guy Who Found Aliens, finding exolife would represent just the start of funding- after all, you're going to need multiple samples, a thorough investigation into the ecosystem of the organisms, lots and lots of gene sequencing, assuming there are genes to be sequenced.  The reason Enceladus is getting a lot of attention is because we know with absolute certainty that there is both liquid water and organics there (although personally I'm skeptical that there is enough chemical energy in Enceladus's hydrothermal systems to support life, but I certainly could be wrong).

The problem with going after the Moon for astrobiology is that, truth be told, it's not just a matter of following the water- you also need a lot of organics (and easily assimilated organics at that), and a source of energy.   Organics have only been definitively detected in relatively trace amounts on the Moon's surface, and there is no reason to suspect that they'll necessarily be found in the subsurface (as they are believed to the result of micrometeorite and solar wind deposition).  And as for energy, terrestrial biology uses a relatively narrow range of sources (although it's still surprisingly wide by everyday standards)- the most likely metabolic pathway for the Moon, based on simple availability, would be the reduction of iron, but you'd eventually run out of of Fe(III) to reduce, since there's no volatile oxygen available to reoxidize the Fe(II) and cycle it.  It doesn't help that the Moon (at least at the surface) is predominantly silicon dioxide, which is about as biologically inert and inaccessible as you can get.

The terrestrial deep subsurface bacteria mentioned earlier get by through an extremely slow metabolism (they may not reproduce for centuries, and it has been suggested that they may be effectively immortal), and by (we think) metabolizing high energy compounds produced by radioactive decay.  And even then, the colonies that support nematodes are specifically mentioned as not being entirely isolated from the surface biosphere.

Bottom line, while life deep in the Moon can't be ruled out- we've found stranger things, after all- but it's much, much more of a stretch compared to Mars (where water and organic carbon are known to have existed in the past, and may still exist in some form), Europa (strongly suspected to have water and probably organics), and Enceladus (definitively known to have water and organics).


Yep. Thank you spacermase and Warren!

Bottom line, "Mars (where water and organic carbon are known to have existed in the past, and may still exist in some form)" may not actually have had any life evolve there, and given all the givens and lots of unknowns, the Moon or Mars may only harbor life that hitched a ride from Earth on a fragment launched by an ancient large NEO impact.

Such Earth life may 'live and thrive' deeply buried on some other orb in part because of organics that were brought to that hidden environment from Earth, NEOs, or even wandering Oort cloud comets, several billion of years ago.



See:

Oort cloud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud
"If analyses of comets are representative of the whole, the vast majority of Oort-cloud objects consist of various ices such as water, methane, ethane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.[20] However, the discovery of the object 1996 PW, an asteroid in an orbit more typical of a long-period comet, suggests that the cloud may also contain rocky objects.[21]"

And, "Analysis of the carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in both the Oort cloud and Jupiter-family comets shows little difference between the two, despite their vastly separate regions of origin. This suggests that both originated from the original protosolar cloud,[22] a conclusion also supported by studies of granular size in Oort-cloud comets[23] and by the recent impact study of Jupiter-family comet Tempel 1.[24]"



What is buried deeply beneath the Lunar surface? Warren is a geologist and he doesn't know. No one really knows, do they? 

Going looking for life elsewhere is what astrobiologists do. But since astrobiology is a somewhat young science and there is a large degree of uncertainty about the early history of life on Earth and the actual environmental conditions on the early Earth, Mars, and Moon, perhaps we should not yet discount the possibilities of life from Earth, Mars, Ceres,  Enceladus, or wherever, may in fact be deeply buried in relatively isolated and suitable water rich Lunar environments.

One may also tend to wonder about the shattered depths of Luna's far side. Exactly what happened there, and when did those events happen, and what became deeply buried there?

See:

Far side of the Moon
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_side_of_the_Moon
"The far side has a battered, densely cratered appearance with few maria. Only 1% of the surface of the far side is covered by maria,[4] compared to 31.2% on the near side."

And, "Another factor in the large difference between the two hemispheres is that the near side has been shielded from impacts by the Earth via the synchronous rotation that keeps the far side exposed to impactors coming from outer space."

And, "The L2 Lagrange point of the Earth-Moon system is located about 62,800 km (39,000 mi) above the far side, which has also been proposed as a location for a future radio telescope which would perform a Lissajous orbit about the Lagrangian point."

And, "One of the NASA missions to the Moon under study would send a sample-return lander to the South Pole-Aitken basin, the location of a major impact event that created a formation nearly 2,400 kilometres (1,491 mi) across. The size of this impact has created a deep penetration into the lunar surface, and a sample returned from this site could be analyzed for information concerning the interior of the Moon.[19]"



There are many potential questions about the Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water in the Beautiful Orb orbiting above us. Maybe that's why almost everyone wants to go to the Moon, including Congress and our International Partners. It is a smart idea to have International Partners and Congressional support when you go digging and drilling for Liquid Water IN The Moon!



"Where does the Moon fit into plans for future human space exploration?  From reading the space media, you might get the idea that the very notion is dead and buried, killed by President Obama’s casual dismissal of the idea in a speech over two years ago at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, followed this year by Mitt Romney’s dismissive remarks on the Moon during the Republican primaries."

And, "So even though the agency and most of the media seem to be blissfully unaware of it, NASA has been charged by Congress to develop space systems capable of conducting missions to and throughout cislunar space, including to the lunar surface.  Our international partners agree with this intended direction, convinced that the Moon is the appropriate next destination for humans in space."

From: Everyone’s Gone To The Moon   By Paul D. Spudis   June 5, 2012
At: http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2012/06/everyones-gone-to-the-moon/



Yep folks, be patient. Lots of ground truth Lunar research, including looking for Liquid Water, is going to be done by robots and humans in the next few decades.



Cheers!


Edited.
« Last Edit: 07/31/2012 10:36 am by HappyMartian »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #34 on: 07/31/2012 01:29 pm »
...having your name immortalized in history as That Guy Who Found Aliens...

Y'all lookin' in the wrong place.  Try Dirty Nellie's Pub, down the street on Fontaine Avenue...

But seriously, folks:

Quote
Bottom line, while life deep in the Moon can't be ruled out- (1) we've found stranger things, after all- but it's much, much (2) more of a stretch compared to Mars (3) ... Europa ... and Enceladus ...

(1) No, you (or we) haven't found stranger things.  Life off of Earth has simply not been found yet.  Yeah, we have interesting terrestrial varieties which eat different food than humans do, and we haven't yet found all of them.  Any strange life found so far is strictly strange Earthly life, varieties of which can be found in various environmental niches, including bars and arsenic infested watering holes.

Tantalizing extraterrestrial soups of likely chemicals are fine, even if they are freeze dried, and certainly should be looked for, categorized, and understood.  Maybe that search will lead to a serendipitous finding of alien life, but...

(2) Mars looks pretty dead and dry at the moment.  Curiosity lands in a few days, and "everybody" is rooting for her successful landing, and for a successful mission.  That secondary "success" refers to the successful operation of the various experiments, which will collect a bunch of new data.

What "everybody" would like to see is unambiguous, macro scale evidence of life or intelligence.  Technically, microbes would be acceptable, but microbes would get lower TV ratings than bones or stone axes or hey, even "primitive" robots.

(3) Fascinating future destinations.  But the astrobiology community would do better, I think, to insist that Mars be thoroughly studied, before moving the goal posts to such distant locations.

Right now, Curiosity is not being held out as the final word on whether or not Mars is barren of life.  Clearly, the planet should be studied far more thoroughly.

Who can say what's behind the next rock?
« Last Edit: 07/31/2012 01:32 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #35 on: 07/31/2012 02:16 pm »
The exploration technology budget was radically large.

Yep. Most people who can't understand why anyone would be against SLS seem to be completely unaware of what they gave up to have it.




With the SLS and Orion, Congress and NASA and people from many countries are going to get a viable BLEO human transportation system that will also begin the process of giving us the modules and tools we need to answer some diverse and difficult questions about the Moon, asteroids, Mars, and even our own planet. The SLS and Orion combination may also make an important contribution to answering our questions concerning the Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!

Yep, in the end, robotic Lunar and Martian drilling efforts for Liquid Water will need ground truth research by humans.

And to fully enjoy and make good use of Luna's water, volatiles, and other resources, you'll obviously want humans there doing all those things that humans could do with those treasures and an expanded base of scientific knowledge. Lunar experience and ISRU could even reduce the high costs and dangers of missions to asteroids and Mars. Wouldn't that be peachy keen?

But since you seem a bit set in your negative perspective about the BLEO transportation value of the SLS and Orion combination, perhaps you might try to convince some other folks of your superior wisdom and knowledge in this important area of expertise.


See:  First Look: China’s Big New Rockets   By Craig Covault
At: http://www.americaspace.org/?p=22881

"Liang outlined several new Long March versions, virtually all of them testing elements that would eventually find their way into the Long March 9 that has 4 million lb. more of liftoff thrust than the 7.5 million lb. thrust NASA Saturn V.  Forty-three years ago this week a Saturn V propelled the Apollo 11 astronauts to the first manned landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969."


Yep, the clock is always ticking and the years just seem to zip by while the world keeps on spinning and changing. It could well be that Warren won't be the geologist that discovers Liquid Water IN The Moon. But please QuantumG, don't tell Warren because I'm sure he would be disappointed. Keep it a secret, OK?


Cheers!
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline spacermase

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #36 on: 07/31/2012 09:02 pm »

5. Your point about iron reducing forms running out of iron is well taken, but I was thinking the most likely form would be methanogens feeding off of primoridial carbon dioxide and hydrogen released by the serpentinisation of olivine. (Alternatively, they could get hydrogen from water, and release oxygen--and this could in turn reoxidise Fe(II) and cycle it.) These are the sorts of organisms that live deep within the Earth's basalts (which are primarily composed of olivine). And there is actually a bit of empirical evidence to support this view: there is a mysterious diurnal pulse of methane that the Apollo science packages consistently detected; this is consistent with methanogens releasing methane that slowly makes its way to the surface. During the night it accumulates in the regolith, and then when warmed up by the Sun, it is released to the Lunar exosphere.

Any thoughts you have on this subject are very welcome spacermase. Astrobiological expertise is definitely in short supply around here! ;)

Actually, your serpentinization hypothesis is really intriguing- it's not something that had occurred to me, but you are correct, that would be entirely viable (although Fe cycling works better if you have sulfur available to act as an intermediary- the subglacial ecosystem I work on uses exactly that system, and has been stable for the last three million years or so despite being more or less cut off from the rest of the biosphere).  The one tricky thing with it, however- and this has been a major bugaboo with the much-debated Martian methane findings- is that serpentinization can also generate methane abiotically.  Either way, though, it does definitely suggest the presence of liquid water.

Additionally, it occurred to me today that this could actually be a great opportunity for collaboration between lunar and Mars science- it is my personal suspicion, one that is shared with many others in my field, that if there's anything still kicking around on Mars, it's probably going to be buried either in the deep subsurface, or underneath the polar icecaps.  Therefore, if we're going to go hunting for Martians, we're going to need some pretty serious drilling equipment, designed for non-terrestrial environments.  I think you could make a good argument for the same approach on the Moon (if to practice for Mars, if for no other reason), and if any Selenites happen to serendipitously turn up, so much the better. 

(Although, with that said, a major obstacle with the previously mentioned idea of life being seeded from Earth on the the Moon occurred to me as well- on Earth, microbes probably infiltrated the deep subsurface using groundwater; on the Moon, no such route would be available, so anything that managed to make it to the Moon's surface would be pretty much stranded there until it either starved or was cooked.  Alternatively, if lunar life exists, it may have a separate indigenous origin (which admittedly, from the astrobiological perspective, would be all kinds of awesome)- but that gets into the debate on how easy is it for life to form (do you just need water, organics, and energy, or is life more finnicky than that?), and we really don't know enough to say one way or the other).

Offline Warren Platts


Actually, your serpentinization hypothesis is really intriguing- it's not something that had occurred to me, but you are correct, that would be entirely viable (although Fe cycling works better if you have sulfur available to act as an intermediary- the subglacial ecosystem I work on uses exactly that system, and has been stable for the last three million years or so despite being more or less cut off from the rest of the biosphere).  The one tricky thing with it, however- and this has been a major bugaboo with the much-debated Martian methane findings- is that serpentinization can also generate methane abiotically.  Either way, though, it does definitely suggest the presence of liquid water.

Additionally, it occurred to me today that this could actually be a great opportunity for collaboration between lunar and Mars science- it is my personal suspicion, one that is shared with many others in my field, that if there's anything still kicking around on Mars, it's probably going to be buried either in the deep subsurface, or underneath the polar icecaps.  Therefore, if we're going to go hunting for Martians, we're going to need some pretty serious drilling equipment, designed for non-terrestrial environments.  I think you could make a good argument for the same approach on the Moon (if to practice for Mars, if for no other reason), and if any Selenites happen to serendipitously turn up, so much the better. 

(Although, with that said, a major obstacle with the previously mentioned idea of life being seeded from Earth on the the Moon occurred to me as well- on Earth, microbes probably infiltrated the deep subsurface using groundwater; on the Moon, no such route would be available, so anything that managed to make it to the Moon's surface would be pretty much stranded there until it either starved or was cooked.  Alternatively, if lunar life exists, it may have a separate indigenous origin (which admittedly, from the astrobiological perspective, would be all kinds of awesome)- but that gets into the debate on how easy is it for life to form (do you just need water, organics, and energy, or is life more finnicky than that?), and we really don't know enough to say one way or the other).

Might there not be an isotopic distinction between biotically mediated serpentinogenic methane versus abiotically mediated methane? I think I read somewhere that if the methane on Mars is biotically generated, it should be depleted in heavy carbon (C13). As for methane being prima facie evidence for the existence of water, isn't it also the case that we should expect some primoridial methane from the original dust clouds that formed the planets? Or would such primoridial methane get mostly pyrolized?

I agree that this potentially offers a great opportunity for collaboration between Mars and Lunar science. But tell us, please: what really happens when you're sitting around talking shop over beers and someone brings up the possibility of life on the Moon? Isn't there a lot of eye rolling. I mean if a graduate student wanted to work on that project, he or she probably might have a hard time getting a job once out of school?

As for how life originally got down there, I figure after the late heavy bombardment, as the Lunar surface cooled there must have been a brief period where liquid water was stable on the surface, and life might have snuck into the interior at that point.

And regarding the possibility of independent origin, how would we know for sure it was an independent origin, unless it was wildly different. I mean how do we know for sure that the Achaea are not the result of an independent origin?
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #38 on: 08/01/2012 02:01 pm »
...it is my personal suspicion, one that is shared with many others in my field, that if there's anything still kicking around on Mars, it's probably going to be buried either in the deep subsurface, or underneath the polar icecaps.

In general, I'm in agreement on the liklihood of martian life possibly existing in the subsurface rather than the surface.  I don't agree with the word "deep" however.  If there now exist living creatures deep in the martian crust, they would have to be the evolutionary product of an earlier time when life was teeming in the martian oceans.  Otherwise, it must then be assumed that the genesis of martian life took place in those deep regions, and such an assumption doesn't seem credible to me.  If there is any life "left over" on Mars, I think it is likely to be shallow, not deep.  My intuition is that here on Erf, life began in the oceans, and migrated underground, and that if it should exist on Mars, it's history would have been similar.

We don't know how life began on Earth, but most thinking holds that it began in the oceans.  The link between animal's blood salinity, and that of the oceans is more than a coincidence.  If the genesis of Earthly life took place in the oceans, and evolutionary processes arose such that it could adapt to the fairly wide variety of ecosystems here, then that could explain a possible evolutionary pathway for life to spread to deep subterranean locations, given the eons of time that life here was given.

An alternative genesis hypothesis would be that life began in the deep subterranean locations, then spread to the surface.  I have not heard of such a hypothesis before, so it would be interesting to read something about that.  Of course, life needs an energy source, and the subterranean genesis hypothesis   could only work if a "serpentinization of olivine" process, or a similar process, was the first process to produce life, which then spread thruout the planet.  Today, the organisms which "live deep within the Earth's basalts" are more considered to be extremeophiles, and do not represent the vast majority of Earth's life.  See:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/270/5235/377.short

It doesn't seem to me that these guys, who live 1500m below ground, were the first to evolve here on Earth.  Plus, consider the probable mass of these organisms, and compare to the mass of surface based organisms.  They probably represent a small proportion of Earthly life by mass, without some proof to the contrary.

For me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely, and I'd say that if life began on Mars, that it began in those oceans, and then possibly migrated to the deep places, time permitting.  If life came to be on Mars in the same way it is thought to have come to be on Earth, then those oceans would have been teeming with life for a sufficient number of millenia for it to have migrated to the deep levels.  This means that the sedimentary beds of those ancient oceans should be teeming with fossils.  This suggests to me that looking for fossils in these areas should be the first thing to be done.

************************************

I took a googol on the phrase:

"diurnal pulse of methane detected by Apollo"

but it produced this thread as the first hit.  The phrase:

"Apollo detection of lunar methane cycle"

dealt mostly with returned sample analysis.  It would be interesting to read more on the topic of the diurnal methane pulse results reported by Apollo science packages.

************************************

Quote from: spacermase
if lunar life exists, it may have a separate indigenous origin (which admittedly, from the astrobiological perspective, would be all kinds of awesome)- but that gets into the debate on how easy is it for life to form (do you just need water, organics, and energy, or is life more finnicky than that?), and we really don't know enough to say one way or the other).

I've been asking this question since I was six.  Not a single adult has been able to answer it.  Second genesis would be a totally awesome thing to find out, and a totally sobering thing to know if it is not found on Mars.  The Panspermia hypothesis would be another question that adults have not yet answered for children.  And that hypothesis has a directed possibility, and an undirected one, with the former being taboo in some cultures and the latter frowned upon severely.  All OT, but hey.

Some analysis can be done of the lunar and martian methane cycles, if enough about the cycles is known.  My suspicion is that these cycles, if thought to be the waste products of life, don't indicate clearly that the bodies in question are teeming with life.  The cycles will be seen as corroborating evidence of life, but only after it is found by other means.

I suppose it depends on what the word "teeming" means.  Already, our basalt here is, uhhh, "teeming" with life.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #39 on: 08/01/2012 05:38 pm »
Video: moonorigin (History Channel)


Video: Robin M. Canup, UC Boulder/SRI
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~robin/moonimpact/
motion2_sm4.avi          12-Dec-2004 15:17   16M
motion3_sm.avi           14-Dec-2004 11:02   27M

Video: Excellent CGI
Where Did The Moon Come From? - Do We Really Need the Moon? - Preview - BBC Two


Video: Animation on the Formation of the Moon (NASA)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_water_on_Earth
"Liquid water oceans existed despite the surface temperature of 230°C because of the atmospheric pressure of the heavy CO2 atmosphere. As cooling continued, subduction and dissolving in ocean water removed most CO2 from the atmosphere but levels oscillated wildly as new surface and mantle cycles appeared.[3] ... Study of zircons has found that liquid water must have existed as long ago as 4.4 Ga, very soon after the formation of the Earth.[4][5][6] This requires the presence of an atmosphere."

Spacermase, am I correct that hydrothermal vent origins enjoy no consensus at all? From my reading it appears that the present understanding is that they are a destination site of a range of specifically adapted thermophillics from some other origin site, rather than the origin site of everything. Also, is there any consensus on whether the earliest common ancestor was a thermophile as opposed to a nonthermophile? Lastly, does anyone at all subscribe to cryophillic origins?

A hot (off) topic lately that is marrying astronomy and comparative planetary science is the carbon to oxygen ratio to be found in extrasolar planetary systems. The spectra from "hot jupiters" found in surveys like WASP, TrES, COROT are can indicate if some systems are too carbon rich to support as much water as we enjoy. Water inventory in a stellar system may be a function of the pertaining C/O ratios, and the C/O ratio may change from host star to inner planets to outer planets. Carbon excess sucks up oxygen into carbon monoxide and dioxide. Oxygen excess permits nontrivial water. We have a very dry inner solar system with solar C/O ratio ~.5 , order unity.

The effects of snowlines on C/O in planetary atmospheres
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.5567.pdf

On the Evolution of the Snow Line in Protoplanetary Discs
arxiv.org/pdf/1207.4284
« Last Edit: 08/01/2012 05:42 pm by Hernalt »

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: Fornaro
The link between animal's blood salinity, and that of the oceans is more than a coincidence.

Yeah I saw the same movie when I was in grade school as well. It is a coincidence however. Salinity was most likely at least twice as high as it is these days, and there have been major fluctuations throughout Earth's history.

Knauth 2005
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts


An alternative genesis hypothesis would be that life began in the deep subterranean locations, then spread to the surface.  I have not heard of such a hypothesis before,
It is an old idea. 

Quote
Of course, life needs an energy source, and the subterranean genesis hypothesis   could only work if a "serpentinization of olivine" process, or a similar process, was the first process to produce life, which then spread thruout the planet.

 Metabolizing CO2 and H2 is a lot simpler than photosynthesis.


Quote
Today, the organisms which "live deep within the Earth's basalts" are more considered to be extremeophiles, and do not represent the vast majority of Earth's life.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/270/5235/377.short

So? And the article you cite doesn't even support your position. The early Earth was an extreme environment by the standards of today; therefore, any organisms living back then are by definition "extremeophiles"


Quote
It doesn't seem to me that these guys, who live 1500m below ground, were the first to evolve here on Earth.

As opposed to what exactly? Unicorns and ponies?

Quote
Plus, consider the probable mass of these organisms, and compare to the mass of surface based organisms.  They probably represent a small proportion of Earthly life by mass, without some proof to the contrary.

Extremely irrelevant. There is no logical reason to suppose that the most primitive life forms have the highest biomass 4 billion years later. That said, FYI Archeaens compose up to 20% of Earth's biomass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea

Quote
For me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely, and I'd say that if life began on Mars, that it began in those oceans, and then possibly migrated to the deep places, time permitting.  If life came to be on Mars in the same way it is thought to have come to be on Earth, then those oceans would have been teeming with life for a sufficient number of millenia for it to have migrated to the deep levels.

Early oceans, with salinities comparable to the Great Salt Lake on a good day were hardly cushy environments, and argue against your hypothesis that life originated in the open oceans. Therefore....


Quote
This means that the sedimentary beds of those ancient oceans should be teeming with fossils.  This suggests to me that looking for fossils in these areas should be the first thing to be done.

this does not follow at all. Also, are you aware of the cost and expense of a manned missions to Mars? Because that's what it would take to look for pre-Noachian microfossils. That's why it makes a lot more sense to check out the Moon for signs of life first: it is a lot more cost effective, and therefore much more likely to deliver timely results.

And since when did you become a Mars First!er? Guess it must not be raining today in Virginia, eh?
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #42 on: 08/01/2012 09:53 pm »
Although this discussion has - as ever - drifted into the strange world of US politics, it has at least not gone far down the road followed by the 'MERs photographed organisms on Mars' enthusiasts! Without inviting either subject into our current discourse, could we turn our attention to the ways that biological material might practically be identified?

My first thoughts would be that chemical remnants of organisms should persist far longer than microscopic (or larger) remains, and that bulk examination of soils for unexpected chemistry would be the way forward. I suspect that the best way to gather samples would be by unmanned spacecraft - far less forward contamination would occur as compared to using astronauts. Lunar fines, like all powders, have enormous surface area compared to their mass, and I think that it is in such materials that we should be looking for the evidence of biology. Note, please, that I'm at no point suggesting that currently living organisms will readily be found by such means, but that instead we should be looking for the chemical signatures left by biological material. The twin Holy Grails of that approach might well be the identification of biologically inspired molecular 'handedness' or of preferential use of isotopes of common elements.

So, how to do it? A series of trenches in polar cold traps? Near ray deposits? In areas where local Lunar magnetism might concentrate particles?

It'd not quite be the discovery of life, but...

Offline spacermase

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #43 on: 08/01/2012 10:36 pm »

Might there not be an isotopic distinction between biotically mediated serpentinogenic methane versus abiotically mediated methane? I think I read somewhere that if the methane on Mars is biotically generated, it should be depleted in heavy carbon (C13). As for methane being prima facie evidence for the existence of water, isn't it also the case that we should expect some primoridial methane from the original dust clouds that formed the planets? Or would such primoridial methane get mostly pyrolized?

I agree that this potentially offers a great opportunity for collaboration between Mars and Lunar science. But tell us, please: what really happens when you're sitting around talking shop over beers and someone brings up the possibility of life on the Moon? Isn't there a lot of eye rolling. I mean if a graduate student wanted to work on that project, he or she probably might have a hard time getting a job once out of school?

As for how life originally got down there, I figure after the late heavy bombardment, as the Lunar surface cooled there must have been a brief period where liquid water was stable on the surface, and life might have snuck into the interior at that point.

And regarding the possibility of independent origin, how would we know for sure it was an independent origin, unless it was wildly different. I mean how do we know for sure that the Achaea are not the result of an independent origin?


1.  Oh, yeah, there would almost certainly be obvious isotopic fractionation.  In fact, the Tunable Laser Spectrometer on Curiosity was designed with doing exactly that type of analysis in mind.  Same technique should work for  lunar methane as well.

2. In answer to your question, there would probably be some resistance, just because at first glance it seems pretty out there (astrobiologists in general are biased towards places where there are or were, oceans, for better or for worse); however, on the other hand, I've seen colleagues make a very convincing case for life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, and compared to that, a hypothetical lunar aquifer would be pretty darn hospitable and comfy. So yeah, if you could make a good argument for it, backed with say, data on the methane pulses, plus probably a good model for methane production, I don't think it would have much negative effect on your professional reputation.   In fact, about the only thing that will really draw the ire of our community is if it involves UFOs.

3. Regarding independent origin and Archaea- there's pretty good phylogenic evidence that we and Archaea have a common ancestor; however, as it was pointed out at the last conference I was at, in the early days of life swapping DNA/RNA/other chemical messengers was absolutely rampant, and as such, clearly defined species as we know them didn't really exist yet.  The upshot of that is that you could have had a multitude of independent origins, and the resulting lifeforms "interbred" so much that they eventually formed a more-or-less homogeneous population that gave rise to the current lineage.


Spacermase, am I correct that hydrothermal vent origins enjoy no consensus at all? From my reading it appears that the present understanding is that they are a destination site of a range of specifically adapted thermophillics from some other origin site, rather than the origin site of everything. Also, is there any consensus on whether the earliest common ancestor was a thermophile as opposed to a nonthermophile? Lastly, does anyone at all subscribe to cryophillic origins?


Well, hydrothermal origins is still pretty popular, partially because it can provide a reducing environment rich in complex organics, and partially because there's phylogenic evidence that the last universal common ancestor was a themophile.  However, the latter may not actually be all that relevant- it's been pointed out that during the Late Heavy Bombardment, thermophiles would have been heavily selected for (for obvious reasons).

With that said, cryophillic theories are actually also quite popular- the freezing of water can concentrate impurities, and at least 7 amino acids and 11 nucleotides have been synthesized in this fashion.  Frequently, this is paired with the Snowball Earth, although the timing on that event is still murky, so there may not be a connection.

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #44 on: 08/01/2012 10:58 pm »
freezing of water can concentrate impurities, and at least 7 amino acids and 11 nucleotides have been synthesized in this fashion.
8) That is way too cool.
« Last Edit: 08/01/2012 10:58 pm by Hernalt »

Offline Warren Platts

Attache article on archeae living on basalt and water.

re: moon collisions:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428628/moon-formed-in-interplanetary-hit-and-run/
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: spacermase
Actually, your serpentinization hypothesis is really intriguing- it's not something that had occurred to me, but you are correct, that would be entirely viable (although Fe cycling works better if you have sulfur available to act as an intermediary- the subglacial ecosystem I work on uses exactly that system, and has been stable for the last three million years or so despite being more or less cut off from the rest of the biosphere). 

Hey spacermase:

Quote from: Wikipedia
Troilite is a rare iron sulfide mineral with the simple formula of FeS. ...

Troilite is the most common sulfide mineral at the lunar surface. It forms about one percent of the lunar crust and is present in any rock or meteorite originating from moon. In particular, all basalts brought by the Apollo 11, 12, 15 and 16 missions contain about 1% of troilite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troilite
« Last Edit: 08/02/2012 02:08 am by Warren Platts »
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

1.  Oh, yeah, there would almost certainly be obvious isotopic fractionation.  In fact, the Tunable Laser Spectrometer on Curiosity was designed with doing exactly that type of analysis in mind.  Same technique should work for  lunar methane as well.

2. In answer to your question, there would probably be some resistance, just because at first glance it seems pretty out there (astrobiologists in general are biased towards places where there are or were, oceans, for better or for worse); however, on the other hand, I've seen colleagues make a very convincing case for life in the upper atmosphere of Venus, and compared to that, a hypothetical lunar aquifer would be pretty darn hospitable and comfy. So yeah, if you could make a good argument for it, backed with say, data on the methane pulses, plus probably a good model for methane production, I don't think it would have much negative effect on your professional reputation.   In fact, about the only thing that will really draw the ire of our community is if it involves UFOs.

3. Regarding independent origin and Archaea- there's pretty good phylogenic evidence that we and Archaea have a common ancestor; however, as it was pointed out at the last conference I was at, in the early days of life swapping DNA/RNA/other chemical messengers was absolutely rampant, and as such, clearly defined species as we know them didn't really exist yet.  The upshot of that is that you could have had a multitude of independent origins, and the resulting lifeforms "interbred" so much that they eventually formed a more-or-less homogeneous population that gave rise to the current lineage.

1. A mass spectrometer or whatever that could measure the C13/C12 ratio in methane within the Lunar exosphere would be a great little scientific instrument that could be easily added to a Google X-Prize contender's lander! :)

2. Good argument for Lunar Life:

a. Methane pulses. Check.

b. Model for methane production. Check.

c. Computed Lunar habitable zones. Check.

d. The only spanner in the works that I can see is that very little serpentine was collected by the Apollo samples: but that can be explained away as (1) most Apollo rocks come from magmas formed by impact melting, which would disrupt the crystal structure of phyllosilicates; and (2) any water seeping into surficial impact-melt rocks or regolith would have to be brought to the surface by further impacts which would probably cause high enough temperatures to destroy any serpentines; (3) the orange soil discovery by the Brown University team definitely found water next to olivine crystals, and that's all you need to generate H2 (in fact, one article I read yesterday complained of a test water well into some basalt causing a hydrogen explosion when a welder lit his torch too close to it...)

3. That's pretty interesting stuff. It's hard to see how the ordinary model of natural selection would work in a milleau where there is no clear distinction between organism and environment...

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Although this discussion has - as ever - drifted into the strange world of US politics, it has at least not gone far down the road followed by the 'MERs photographed organisms on Mars' enthusiasts! Without inviting either subject into our current discourse, could we turn our attention to the ways that biological material might practically be identified?

My first thoughts would be that chemical remnants of organisms should persist far longer than microscopic (or larger) remains, and that bulk examination of soils for unexpected chemistry would be the way forward. I suspect that the best way to gather samples would be by unmanned spacecraft - far less forward contamination would occur as compared to using astronauts. Lunar fines, like all powders, have enormous surface area compared to their mass, and I think that it is in such materials that we should be looking for the evidence of biology. Note, please, that I'm at no point suggesting that currently living organisms will readily be found by such means, but that instead we should be looking for the chemical signatures left by biological material. The twin Holy Grails of that approach might well be the identification of biologically inspired molecular 'handedness' or of preferential use of isotopes of common elements.

So, how to do it? A series of trenches in polar cold traps?

I would recommend the polar cold traps. Not only volatiles are stored there, but also any complex organic molecules would be preserved there as well. Probably, there is also a lot of frozen natural gas in there as well. Some of it could come from comets, but some of it is probably indigenous. The isotope ratios of this stuff could be easily analyzed.

And heck, who knows? Possible Martian or Ceresian or Enceladusian meteorites might be collected there that actually contain viable spores of life!
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #49 on: 08/02/2012 01:54 pm »
Attache article on archeae living on basalt and water.

re: moon collisions:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428628/moon-formed-in-interplanetary-hit-and-run/


Warren, your post reminds me of something else about collisions:

Asteroid craters could provide clue to life on Mars  April 15, 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-17705984
"They believe such craters provide refuge for microbes. The findings suggest that crater sites on other planets may be 'hiding life'."

And, "To find the microbes, researchers drilled almost 2km below one of the largest asteroid impact craters on Earth, in Chesapeake, US."

And, "Researchers from the University of Edinburgh said heat from the impact of an asteroid collision would kill everything at the surface, but fractures to rocks deep below would allow water and nutrients to flow in and support life."



Since I'm doing a little repetition from elsewhere, how about:

Live Slow, Die Old   By Ed Yong    May 17, 2012
At: http://the-scientist.com/2012/05/17/live-slow-die-old/
"Ancient bacteria living in deep-sea sediments are alive—but with metabolisms so slow that it’s hard to tell."

And, "They have not received any fresh sources of food since they were buried 86 million years ago, when dinosaurs still walked the land."



Yep, perhaps some of the research about the potential of life in isolated Martian environments is also relevant to life in the Moon. And remember that the early Moon was much closer to the Earth than it is today. And Earth has lots of life.



Strong Release of Methane on Mars in Northern Summer 2003
At: http://images.spaceref.com/news/2009/Mumma_et_al_Methane_Mars_wSOM_accepted2.pdf
"Of special interest are the deep bio-communities that utilize H2 (produced by radiolysis of water) as an energy source (reducing CO2 to CH4). These communities thrive at 2-3 km depth in the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa and have been isolated from the surface (and photosynthesis) for millions of years [(37), (38)]. It might be possible for analogous biota to survive for eons below the cryosphere boundary on Mars, where water is again liquid, radiolysis can supply energy, and CO2 can provide carbon."

 
 
An Astrobiological View on Sustainable Life By Takeshi Naganuma
At: www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/827/pdf
"The sources of external dissociation energy are the Sun (solar radiation) and the Earth (geothermal heat including 40K radioactivity); and water molecules split via the light reaction of photosynthesis, photochemical reactions (photolysis), 40K -radiation (radiolysis) and the high-temperature water-rock interaction (thermolysis) (Figure 7)."



Kiwis help in search for life on Mars
At: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kiwis-help-in-search-for-life-on-Mars/tabid/1160/articleID/257437/Default.aspx
"The team of four, made up of research designer Dr Oze with researchers from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and the US Geological Survey, found that living things convert hydrogen into methane faster than geothermal processes, so in places where life exists there will be more methane than in places where there is no life."

And, "They found that where there was no life, the lowest ratio of hydrogen to methane was 42:1 (meaning 42 times as much hydrogen as methane), whereas when life was present the ratio of hydrogen to methane was maximum 33:1 and more often was 10:1.



Cheers!
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

And here's an early paper on methane on the Moon. They were surprised at how little the concentration was, give that the measured concentration was about the same as argon36, yet the solar wind flux of carbon was estimated to be an order of magnitude more than the solar flux of argon.

It also reminded me that identifying the C13H4/C12H4 is not straightforward, since ammonia (NH3 also has a molecular weight of 17 (as does CH3D).

I guess there's nothing mysterious about the pulse: a lot of gases condense during the night, and are then released as the ground gets heated up by the terminator.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1975Moon...14..159H&amp;data_type=PDF_HIGH&amp;whole_paper=YES&amp;type=PRINTER&amp;filetype=.pdf

« Last Edit: 08/04/2012 02:39 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #51 on: 08/02/2012 10:58 pm »
Testing for meteoric material in the Lunar regolith should actually be remarkably simple - so long as we're *not* looking for biologically interesting stuff!

Consider this: initially, we shouldn't look for anything other than traces left by nickel-iron meteorites. The ratio of stony falls on Earth (which includes such types as the carbonaceous chondrites, lumps of basalt from Vesta and a whole range of semi-differentiated stuff) to metallic meteorites should by now be pretty predictable. The advent of Antarctic meteorite collecting has at last given us some genuine yardsticks regarding the relative proportions of falls here and now on Earth. It might require some arm-waving, but it's easy to see that some sensible initial predictions might be made regarding stony meteorite quantities on the Moon.

And, guess what - there's lots of research out there on Apollo samples, giving specific figures for elemental iron (which obviously gives us at least one set of limiting numbers).

So, there's got to be a way to crunch those figures which may give us some upper limits, at least. Clearly, there are a number of origins possible for iron in lunar soils, so the next step might be to actively search for nickel-iron nuggets, which should reduce the overall estimates for meteoric material somewhat. To do that, you'll need a lander which can actively search for magnetic material - again, not to difficult a process (the MERs found nickel-iron meteorites on Mars just by driving up to them - how many fragments did they miss, I wonder!).


Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Astrobiological implications of liquid water in terrestrials
« Reply #52 on: 08/03/2012 01:56 am »
However, with the recent discovery by an undergraduate student at Brown University of unusual, Lunar volcanic glass beads containing water at the ppt level within pristine, pre-eruptive mantle sampled from the Lunar orange soil recovered by Apollo geologist Harrison Schmitt--a level about the same found in Earth mantle emerging from mid-oceanic spreading zones on Earth--it is now clear that there are large amounts of endogenous water deep within the Lunar interior.

The general astrobiological implications are certainly interesting. Besides the recent reassessment of initial water content of mantles being the same for the Earth-Moon system, the recent assessment of the martian mantle over time by way of martian meteorites found similar levels.

This would be hard to square with contributions from later impactors. Instead, a reassessment of how modern protoplanetary disk models affect the ice line predicts much the same initial water content for the terrestrials of our system. As opposed to earlier models, it predicts why they are so relatively dry.

This is good for habitability here and elsewhere IMO as an off-and-on astrobiology student as time permits. Specifically it tests the validity of the different mantle finds. But it also predicts that the finetuning of water needed for habitability as we know it isn't rare. Enough water for oceans, not too much for continents.

One can detail this more, I think, since oxygen isotope ratios as well as titanium isotopes (IIRC) are the same on Earth and Moon. This would be hard to square with a low velocity impact that correctly predicts the same angular momentum as observed.

However, I hear that they have just found a parameter space where high velocity impactors, which are more likely anyway, may make a glancing impact predict what we see. (It made the rounds this week.) This could solidify the general result on water even more, since the observed oxygen would ultimately derive from dissociated water in the mantle.

[EDIT: Warren Platts was there before me, this is what made the rounds:

"re: moon collisions:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428628/moon-formed-in-interplanetary-hit-and-run/ " ]

5. Your point about iron reducing forms running out of iron is well taken, but I was thinking the most likely form would be methanogens feeding off of primoridial carbon dioxide and hydrogen released by the serpentinisation of olivine. (Alternatively, they could get hydrogen from water, and release oxygen--and this could in turn reoxidise Fe(II) and cycle it.) These are the sorts of organisms that live deep within the Earth's basalts (which are primarily composed of olivine). And there is actually a bit of empirical evidence to support this view: there is a mysterious diurnal pulse of methane that the Apollo science packages consistently detected; this is consistent with methanogens releasing methane that slowly makes its way to the surface. During the night it accumulates in the regolith, and then when warmed up by the Sun, it is released to the Lunar exosphere.

Any thoughts you have on this subject are very welcome spacermase. Astrobiological expertise is definitely in short supply around here! ;)

If we start with the methane observations, they can likely be predicted by the same mechanism that was recently proposed to be able to produce all (arguably) observed methane on Mars, meteorite impact heating. On Mars CO2 contribute, but chondrites have carbons.

While I generally agree with spacermase, as for methanogens, and I know I am fairly alone in making this point, I have to disagree here. Phylogenetic analysis predicts that they arose after Earth atmosphere oxygenated, from the aerobic metabolism of methanophiles. (I'll dig up references if asked, but it is late here.)

The reason is probably because the needed enzymes are among the most energetically demanding evolved, I hear. Most likely few terrestrial biospheres will have time to evolve methanogens as a niche against lacking photosynthesis and/or suitable geothermal energy sources.

To put this in perspective and use references I have handy, modern whole genome analysis predicts a phylogeny from protein fold families which reach all the way down to the RNA/protein world. On a protein fold clock proxy the RNA/protein world was ~ 20 %, the DNA LUCA was another ~ 20 %, and the diversification into domains the rest. ["The evolution and functional repertoire of translation proteins following the origin of life", Goldman et al, Biol Dir 2010]

Hence ~ 50 % of evolution (on an as of yet uncalibrated clock) happened before modern metabolisms diverged. This is consistent with phylometabolic analyses of non-stereospecific lipid membranes and autotrophic CO2 metabolism, which both predicts robust dual core pathways at a unique root. ["The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation, Braakman et al, PLOS Comp Biol 2012; "Ancestral lipid biosynthesis and early membrane evolution", Peretó et al, TRENDS in Biochem Sci 2004]

(One may wonder what early cells lived on. Anoxic photosynthesis akin to modern purple bacteria would be fairly easy to evolve, and it would have liberated cells to form the early phototaxic stromatolites arguably observed.)

Instead I see a synergy here. As noted the system have seen early large hypervelocity impactors that would mean a preserved record of early geology and biosphere of mostly Earth but also Mars on the Moon. We should go and look for all these things astrobiological.
« Last Edit: 08/03/2012 02:23 am by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #53 on: 08/03/2012 12:28 pm »
The general astrobiological implications are certainly interesting.  ... We should go and look for all these things astrobiological.

Wow.  Now that's what a first post should look like!
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #54 on: 08/03/2012 01:37 pm »
And here's an early paper on methane on the Moon. They were surprised at how little the concentration was, give that the measured concentration was about the same as argon36, yet the solar wind flux of carbon was estimated to be an order of magnitude more than the solar flux of argon.

It also reminded me that identifying the C13H4/C12H4 is not straightforward, since ammonia (NH3 also has a molecular weight of 17 (as does CH3D).

I guess there's nothing mysterious about the pulse: a lot of gases condense during the night, and are then released as the ground gets heated up by the terminator.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1975Moon...14..159H&amp;data_type=PDF_HIGH&amp;whole_paper=YES&amp;type=PRINTER&amp;filetype=.pdf

Attachments

* asdfiwelwkerj.pdf (765.56 KB


Warren, thank you for your post's attachment,

Differentiating biotic from abiotic methane genesis in hydrothermally active planetary surfaces  By Christopher Ozea, L. Camille Jonesb, Jonas I. Goldsmithc, and Robert J. Rosenbauerd

Which contains the following statements:
"A seasonal Martian CH4 plume with a mean mixing ratio of approximately 33 parts per billion (ppb) has been observed (31). If this CH4 resulted from the
combination of serpentinization and biological processes, the amount of H2 present should be less than 1,400 ppb, assuming H2 is entirely derived from  serpentinization, and alternative routes of H2 production (i.e., atmospheric photolysis reactions involving H2O) and consumption [i.e., Fe(III) reduction] are not significant."

And, "However, approximately 10 times that much H2 is present in the lower Martian atmosphere (33), suggesting that biological processes may not be responsible for the observed CH4. By monitoring both H2 and CH4 flux released at the Martian surface, we may be able to determine whether life (if similar to Earth) is present and active in the subsurface."



The last sentence about Mars seems to imply that current orbital observation capabilities are limited in determining specific local concentrations of H2 and CH4 and thus there may be a need for multiple Lunar surface monitoring rovers on long-term missions to adequately 'sniff with instruments' near suspected venting areas that are connected to the Moon's interior.

If the Curiosity rover also finds, "that biological processes may not be responsible for the observed CH4" on Mars, this viewpoint shouldn't directly affect the chances of life buried deep in the Moon. Remember, the particular situation of the Moon being much closer to life on Earth 4.5 to 3.6 billion years ago than it is today

Also, since much of the current commercial and strategic interest in the Moon revolves around mining needed resources, the Lunar ground truth field work for exploration and exploitation efforts is likely to increase the chances of humans eventually finding evidence of life in the Moon, if there actually is such life inside that large and lovely NEO.

And I agree with Torbjorn Larsson's statements... 


....
Instead I see a synergy here. As noted the system have seen early large hypervelocity impactors that would mean a preserved record of early geology and biosphere of mostly Earth but also Mars on the Moon. We should go and look for all these things astrobiological.



Science missions to the Moon to find samples of Lunar impactors that originated on Earth, Mars, or wherever should also give us many opportunities to look for evidence of any Lunar life. 


Cheers!
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

Testing for meteoric material in the Lunar regolith should actually be remarkably simple - so long as we're *not* looking for biologically interesting stuff!

Clearly, there are a number of origins possible for iron in lunar soils, so the next step might be to actively search for nickel-iron nuggets, which should reduce the overall estimates for meteoric material somewhat. To do that, you'll need a lander which can actively search for magnetic material - again, not to difficult a process (the MERs found nickel-iron meteorites on Mars just by driving up to them - how many fragments did they miss, I wonder!).

Interesting, yes. Earth-shattering, no. As spacemaser said, astrobiology is the one scientific topic the People are willing to spend billions on. I'm reading the tea leaves, however, and things don't bode well for what really need to be doing: building up a truly strategic, space-faring infrastructure: it seems that planetary science is being forced into a reluctant coalition with space porn addicts:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/07/planetary-science-is-busting-bud.html

The robotic sample return mission doesn't look like it's going to happen. However:

Quote
NASA isn't giving up on Mars. It may have failed to sell the Administration on a big-ticket exploration of Mars in the fiscal year 2013 budget round, but NASA is now undertaking a “reformulation” of its Mars Exploration Program. Next month, the ad hoc Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG), chaired by one-time NASA official Orlando Figueroa, will report to NASA leadership on how robotic exploration of Mars might “remain responsive to the primary scientific goals” of the decadal survey while being “consistent with the President's [2010] challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit,” according to the MPPG Web site.

In other words, planetary science would be riding human exploration's coattails to Mars in the FY 2014 budget request.

See how this is supposed to work? Back during Apollo, the race to the Moon was a cold war extravaganza designed to demonstrate the superiority of freedom, capitalism, and apple pie. But they couldn't really come out and say that at the time, so the cover story was that it was all about SCIENCE! And a lot of great science was done, but once the real purpose was fulfilled, the science got tossed along with the entire Apollo project and several unused Saturn V LV's.

Fast forward to 2010: President Obama's need to distance himself from the former president's policies wherever he can (which wasn't much) led him to declare that "Buzz had been to the Moon" already, and so we were going to try something different this time: Mars, by the 2030's. Naturally, this delighted space porn addicts: these are the people who delight in Olympian feats of rocketry and hi-rez images of astronauts bouncing around in low gravity. "Asspirational" in NASA-speak.

As in all porn addictions, the main thing in space porn is novelty above all else. And as in all addictions, taking care of business, the family, the nation, all take back seat to the main event. So we get a woman on Mars, but to get that, we have to give up the cis-lunar interplanetary railroad: we get Sacagawea instead of Union Pacific.

Unfortunately, space porn addiction is even harder to explain than cold war pissing contests. So, once again, SCIENCE! will provide the cover story. And this is where the cancelation of the Mars sample return mission comes in: the planetary science community has always (and probably rightly) viewed the Moon as the bailiwick of the NASA HSF program. There has never been a "flagship" mission to the Moon recommended by the Decadal Survey, let alone one funded and flown.

Now, however, the planetary science community, to their chagrin, is being told that Mars is also now in the HSF bailiwick. They will (in theory) get their sample return all right, but it will be brought back in a human rated lander. Surprisingly, the Mars science community is dismayed:

Quote
“That is fraught with danger,” Christensen says. “If you attach yourselves to human exploration,” Bagenal says, “you end up tailoring your science to address the needs of human exploration. Then they change their mind. The lunar people have been down that road several times.” ... And then there is the question of just what science would be both consistent with sending humans to Mars and responsive to the decadal survey. Not a lot, it turns out, at least not for putting astronauts in orbit by the 2030s. “The emphasis is mostly on safety and implementation,” says Carr, who co-chaired a group advising NASA's MPPG. “It's very different from scientific knowledge.”

Yes indeedy...

But it is what it is...

So the space porn mission to Mars is getting rebranded as "Following the water and lookin' for signs of life!"TM

See, as long has the planetary scientists had their billion+ USD flagship projects to Mars, they could sniff at plans to send humans to Mars for what they are at this point in time: as pie-in-the-sky non-science. But now, they've reached the point of diminishing returns: sending more of the same kind of rovers is starting to seem like a waste of resources, but to really take it to the next level would require sample return, and that's hit the brick wall of budget realities: the public just isn't going to be willing to spend $10B on a robotic sample return mission.

So it's come down to this: if the serious Mars planetary scientists want their sample returns, evidently, it's going to be humans who are going to do the retrieving--at least as things stand now. And herein lies the danger: without the backing of the planetary science community, current plans to go to Mars via an asteroid by the "2030's
" will collapse under their own weight: they would be revealed for what they are: plans to generate novel (and very expensive) space porno that have very little to do with strategic space infrastructure, economics, or even planetary science.

However, a coalition consisting of space porn addicts and serious planetary scientists seeking to capture a few billion in HSF $$$ might actually be able to muster enough chutzpah to make sure that the Mars stunt gets pulled off; and meanwhile, we sacrifice truly mastering the navigation of the cis-lunar space environment with reusable spacecraft and permanent manned presence on the Moon first: followed by Mars--in time--and beyond and all that.

So yeah, that's what this thread is really all about. Although I think astrobiology is a fascinating subject, the ulterior political motive here is to head off the Mars astrobiologists at the pass and point out that the Moon is as likely to harbor life as Mars--and that such life will be more accessible for less money than manned missions to Mars. So if astrobiologists really want an HSF program that will actually be able to deliver their Holy Grail--alien life in a petri dish--then they should get behind a serious effort to return to the Moon permanently, set up the research station, get some game-changing ISRU going, and start drilling some holes....
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #56 on: 08/03/2012 02:34 pm »
....

Although I think astrobiology is a fascinating subject, the ulterior political motive here is to head off the Mars astrobiologists at the pass and point out that the Moon is as likely to harbor life as Mars--and that such life will be more accessible for less money than manned missions to Mars. So if astrobiologists really want an HSF program that will actually be able to deliver their Holy Grail--alien life in a petri dish--then they should get behind a serious effort to return to the Moon permanently, set up the research station, get some game-changing ISRU going, and start drilling some holes....



Yikes Warren! Too much truth will make many lovers of the unknown asteroid and those Mars first folks extremely unhappy. They will want and demand a scapegoat! You do remember what happened to Socrates, Jesus, Hypatia, Joan of Arc, and many other good and honest folks, don't you? How fast can you run?

Please be diplomatic Warren! Lunar ISRU needs you! If Lunar life is there, we need you to find it! Be subtle!
 


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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #57 on: 08/03/2012 02:37 pm »
As I mentioned earlier; for me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely, and I'd say that if life began on Mars, that it began in those oceans, and then possibly migrated to the deep places, time permitting.  The same goes for Luna.

Besides the recent reassessment of initial water content of mantles being the same for the Earth-Moon system, the recent assessment of the martian mantle over time by way of martian meteorites found similar levels.

If I'm reading this correctly, it is thought that the initial water content of the mantels of Earth, Moon, and Mars were of similar levels.  At the intuitive level, this makes sense since all the bodies were formed in the same region of the solar system, at roughly the same time, so there would have to be some kind of common geological history for the three bodies.

Then why and what would be the major difference in the isotopic signatures of these bodies?

Quote from: the Technolgy Review article
But there is a problem with this model. [the slow impact model] The silicate surfaces of both the Moon and the Earth have a similar isotopic signature indicating that they must have formed from the same stuff.

But in a slow, grazing impact, most of the debris that ends up in orbit and forms into the Moon comes from the Mars-sized impactor, which is unlikely to have had the required isotopic signature. That's a major problem.

In other words, why would the Mars sized impactor have a substantially different isotopic signature?

Quote from: Torbjorn Larsson
While I generally agree with spacermase, as for methanogens, and I know I am fairly alone in making this point, I have to disagree here. Phylogenetic analysis predicts that they [methanogens] arose after Earth atmosphere oxygenated, from the aerobic metabolism of methanophiles. (I'll dig up references if asked, but it is late here.)

Please do dig up those references, if you would.  My understanding of the evolutionary process is as you have described, that methane producers evolved after methanotrophs.

Quote from: Torbjorn Larsson
Hence ~ 50 % of evolution (on an as of yet uncalibrated clock) happened before modern metabolisms diverged.

The "ancestry values" referred to by Goldman are subject to debate.  I'm not sure that I fully understand the concept they are proposing.  Fascinating reading.

Below is some info that I found in this morning's reading.

****************************

http://compbio.washington.edu/publications/samudrala_2010a.pdf

Quote
The initial onset of translation could thus have produced a positive feedback cycle that accelerated its own evolution (Figure 5).  The transition from a primitive translation system to a sophisticated one may have been not only rapid but also deterministic.

In other words, once life has been created, it can take on an almost deterministic evolutionary path.  The author of this article does not make the broad generalization that I just did, but the notion is interesting to me.  Regarding this paper however, it is also very interesting to read the reviewers' comments, which is something you see very little:

Quote
Although the paper is an important contribution, it will require significant revision in several areas. The most significant omission is supporting
documentation.

The author's response to this criticism is also interesting:

Quote
The paper creates, perhaps unwittingly, the impression that ancestry values equate strongly with actual historical age. ... Thus, the reader should be cautioned about this potential limitation of the ancestry values.

This entire topic touches on, as it must, origin of life theorization.  The author's view is that:

Quote
While we prefer to view the origin of life as a process that began with the formation of the solar system and ended
with the divergence of the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the common view is that the origin of life was a single event in time.

That is, the origin of life is a multi-billion year process, not a "single event in time".  This notion broadens the scope of the search for the origin so as to become unfocused.

http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlyearth/questions/snowball.html

Quote
Clues to the composition of Earth's pre-biotic atmosphere composition as well as surface temperatures prior to the end of late bombardment ca. 3.9 Ga are sparse and inconclusive. ... The addition of abundant biogenic methane to the atmosphere is seen as necessary for providing an adequate greenhouse effect and avoiding a permanent icehouse condition ...

The requirement for biogenic methane implies that anaerobic methane-generating organisms (methanogens) would have evolved very early in Earth history, and would have been present in sufficient mass to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere "in time" to compensate for loss of H2 via thermal escape and the inadequacy of CO2 as a sole greenhouse gas.

******************

Some more reading material:

http://www.bacterialphylogeny.com/archaea.html

Quote
According to these proposals all differences between Archaea and Bacteria originated at a pre-cellular stage by non-Darwinian means, but they suggest no rationale as to how or why the observed differences between these two groups arose or evolved.

As always, the issue is not really about the survival of the species, it's about the arrival of the species.  But I digress.

See Kandler's depiction below.

Quote
It is of interest in this regard that the analyses of genomic sequences by Lake and coworkers provide evidence that the root of the tree of life does not lie in either Archaea [23] or Gram-negative (diderm) bacteria
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15876569

Quote
We conclude that hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis appeared only once during evolution. ... Given that fossil evidence for methanogenesis dates back 2.8 billion years, a unique origin of this process makes the methanogenic archaea a very ancient taxon.

http://bulletin.geoscienceworld.org/content/112/9/1459.short

Quote
Increased atmospheric methane was probably partly responsible for the global carbon isotopic shift documented in marine and terrestrial sediments across the Permian–Triassic boundary.

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1470/969.short

Quote
... the origin of anaerobic methane oxidation ca 570 Myr ago reduced methane flux at source, stabilizing Phanerozoic climates.

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1470/969.full.pdf+html

Quote
Previously, assuming that archaebacterial methanogenesis was ancient, this was interpreted as the result of recycling of biogenic methane made by archaebacteria (archaebacterial methanogenesis has exceptionally low 13C : 12C ratios: D13C K30–50‰) by methanotrophic bacteria into organic carbon (Hayes 1983, 1994).  Hayes suggested that the rise of oxygen restricted methanogen habitats sufficiently to make their hypothetical contribution quantitatively undetectable less than 2.2 Gyr ago.

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/library-of-resources/annual-reports/2009/msu/projects/evolution-of-nitrogen-fixation-photosynthesis-hydrogen-metabolism-and-methanogenesis/
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2365/model-methanogens

http://www.frontiersin.org/Evolutionary_and_Genomic_Microbiology/10.3389/fmicb.2012.00303/abstract

*************

But... 

You haven't yet commented on the OP, that is, the astrobiological implications of liquid water inside Luna.  I don't think that there is liquid water buried deep in the lunar surface, at least not in macroscopic pools.  I can see that there could be "soggy soils", so to speak, down there.  But what could be a possible mechanism for life to have migrated to those depths after the extreme events of the collision?  Is it thought that life began in those subterranean regions?  I don't think so; neither can I imagine how it got there.

So... Whaddaya think?
« Last Edit: 08/03/2012 02:47 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #58 on: 08/05/2012 08:22 am »
The general astrobiological implications are certainly interesting.  ... We should go and look for all these things astrobiological.

Wow.  Now that's what a first post should look like!


Thanks!

Quote from: Torbjorn Larsson
While I generally agree with spacermase, as for methanogens, and I know I am fairly alone in making this point, I have to disagree here. Phylogenetic analysis predicts that they [methanogens] arose after Earth atmosphere oxygenated, from the aerobic metabolism of methanophiles. (I'll dig up references if asked, but it is late here.)

Please do dig up those references, if you would.  My understanding of the evolutionary process is as you have described, that methane producers evolved after methanotrophs.

I will return to this and the rest of your comment, maybe later today or tomorrow, I got swamped which obviously seeing my long first comment wasn't my intention.

It was actually methylotrophs IIRC, but I hadn't time to go back and revise that screwup ("methanophiles"!?). Certainly the methanotrophs are related as well, but the root is claimed to be aerobic methylotrophs. (In which case one would think of a heterotroph environment with lots of cellular turnaround and biomass recycling, I guess. A tempting "hook" is that it evolved around the atmosphere oxygenation event, but that is nearly a "just so" story.)

Meanwhile and if you are in a hurry, while I'm not sitting where I have that carbon metabolic paper handy, as I remember it they reference it.
« Last Edit: 08/06/2012 11:08 pm by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #59 on: 08/06/2012 02:14 pm »
Attache article on archeae living on basalt and water.

re: moon collisions:

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428628/moon-formed-in-interplanetary-hit-and-run/


The full paper is interesting...

A hit-and-run Giant Impact scenario  By Andreas Reufer, Matthias M. M. Meier, Willy Benz, and Rainer Wieler
At: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1207/1207.5224.pdf


Warren, today I watched NASA TV for the landing of Curiosity on Mars and loved it.

Now we just need a similar one-ton, automobile-sized roving laboratory on the Moon to explore the Lunar surface and find answers to the Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!. And a year or two after that Lunar rover starts exploring, it sure would be useful to also see some astrobiologists and geologists on the Moon doing some ground truth field work and initial ISRU experiments.

The Moon is where our international partners and Congress seem to believe humans should be heading to. Eventually, that is exactly what we will do.

And Warren, if someone claims humans cannot afford, or are incapable of, regular international human missions to explore, search for buried life, and do ISRU on the Moon, then ask that nonfan of the Moon if he or she really thinks we'll regularly do such missions on distant Mars!

Humans on the Moon first, then a NEO, then Mars. What a bipartisan, affordable, and logical step by step plan!

:)
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

However, with the recent discovery by an undergraduate student at Brown University of unusual, Lunar volcanic glass beads containing water at the ppt level within pristine, pre-eruptive mantle sampled from the Lunar orange soil recovered by Apollo geologist Harrison Schmitt--a level about the same found in Earth mantle emerging from mid-oceanic spreading zones on Earth--it is now clear that there are large amounts of endogenous water deep within the Lunar interior.

The general astrobiological implications are certainly interesting. Besides the recent reassessment of initial water content of mantles being the same for the Earth-Moon system, the recent assessment of the martian mantle over time by way of martian meteorites found similar levels.

This would be hard to square with contributions from later impactors. Instead, a reassessment of how modern protoplanetary disk models affect the ice line predicts much the same initial water content for the terrestrials of our system. As opposed to earlier models, it predicts why they are so relatively dry.

This is good for habitability here and elsewhere IMO as an off-and-on astrobiology student as time permits. Specifically it tests the validity of the different mantle finds. But it also predicts that the finetuning of water needed for habitability as we know it isn't rare. Enough water for oceans, not too much for continents.

Hi Torbjorn. Welcome to the forum. I agree that the fact that Earth, Mars and the Moon had/have approximately similar water concentrations in their respective mantles increases the chances of finding life on Mars and hopefully the Moon as well. Presumbably, there was water enough for an ocean on the Moon, but like Mars, it lost its surface waters. Thus a key question is how fast. Was there ever a period when the surface pressure was adequate to favor liquid water on the Moon's surface, once the temperature had cooled down? In other words, had the atmosphere entirely blown away by the time the surface rocks cooled to below 120 C? If so, the life seeded from outer space would have a chance to colonize the Lunar subsurface.

Alternatively, if subsurface liquid layers were close enough to the surface, a meteor bearing microbes could embed itself in the wet strata and inject life directly into the subsurface, perhaps. Speaking of which, I ran into another reference that suggested that there may be liquid brine layers on top of Lunar permafrost in certain areas of the polar regions. These would be less than a meter deep, and easily accessible, even to a rover. Analogous brines are found in Antarctica. Even if they proved to be lifeless, the first expedition to recover liquid water on another celestial body is going to be an important scientific first.

5. Your point about iron reducing forms running out of iron is well taken, but I was thinking the most likely form would be methanogens feeding off of primoridial carbon dioxide and hydrogen released by the serpentinisation of olivine. (Alternatively, they could get hydrogen from water, and release oxygen--and this could in turn reoxidise Fe(II) and cycle it.) These are the sorts of organisms that live deep within the Earth's basalts (which are primarily composed of olivine). And there is actually a bit of empirical evidence to support this view: there is a mysterious diurnal pulse of methane that the Apollo science packages consistently detected; this is consistent with methanogens releasing methane that slowly makes its way to the surface. During the night it accumulates in the regolith, and then when warmed up by the Sun, it is released to the Lunar exosphere.

If we start with the methane observations, they can likely be predicted by the same mechanism that was recently proposed to be able to produce all (arguably) observed methane on Mars, meteorite impact heating. On Mars CO2 contribute, but chondrites have carbons.

Right, one of the explanations for the 2003 Mars pulse was a meteor impact. However, the Lunar reference I was looking at said that in their opinion, the solar wind was responsible for the methane; and given the solar wind rate, they were wondering why there wasn't more methane. Not sure how that would work, though. Would individual carbon atoms necessarily react with hydrogen, or would most of it get lost to space? 

Quote from: Tjorborn
While I generally agree with spacermase, as for methanogens, and I know I am fairly alone in making this point, I have to disagree here. Phylogenetic analysis predicts that they arose after Earth atmosphere oxygenated, from the aerobic metabolism of methanophiles. (I'll dig up references if asked, but it is late here.)

Arguing against that is the ecological one that the water + olivine --> H2 is an ecological niche that predates just about everything. Also, assigning primitiveness to DNA base pairs (which have no fossils that can be independently dated) is a tricky business. A most parsimonious computer printout is not guarantee that it is 100% the way it happened.

Quote from: Tjorborn
The reason is probably because the needed enzymes are among the most energetically demanding evolved, I hear. Most likely few terrestrial biospheres will have time to evolve methanogens as a niche against lacking photosynthesis and/or suitable geothermal energy sources.

But an enzyme capable of breaking a high energy bond isn't necessarily more complex or harder to evolve than any other enzyme, or so I would think. The problem with early photosynthesis is that it requires being close to the surface, probably in a  confined space, which would necessarily be transient, not to mention the problem with intense UV radiation. Similarly, hydrothrmal vents, while protected from UV radiation, probably aren't stable on time scales of tens of millions of years. However, basaltic aquifers would be both protected from UV radiation, be stable at time scales of tens of millions of years, and have a preditable thermal environment, and a ready source of chemical energy. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that the methanogens as we know them today are pretty much the original "ur" organisms, but the niche itself is certainly old enough, and is at least as likely as any other niche to be the first one that spawned life. Interestingly, the mysterious "nanobes" that some people think they have found--nano-"bacteria" much, much smaller than ordinary microbes (these are about the same scale as the supposed nanobacteria found in the Mars meteorite)--these are found in deep, subterannean environments.

Quote from:
TorbjornTo put this in perspective and use references I have handy, modern whole genome analysis predicts a phylogeny from protein fold families which reach all the way down to the RNA/protein world. On a protein fold clock proxy the RNA/protein world was ~ 20 %, the DNA LUCA was another ~ 20 %, and the diversification into domains the rest. ["The evolution and functional repertoire of translation proteins following the origin of life", Goldman et al, Biol Dir 2010]

Hence ~ 50 % of evolution (on an as of yet uncalibrated clock) happened before modern metabolisms diverged.

This is a great example of why we must be cautious using genetic distances as a biological clock. Half of all chemical evolution probably happened during a very short time.

Quote from: Torbjorn
This is consistent with phylometabolic analyses of non-stereospecific lipid membranes and autotrophic CO2 metabolism, which both predicts robust dual core pathways at a unique root. ["The Emergence and Early Evolution of Biological Carbon-Fixation, Braakman et al, PLOS Comp Biol 2012; "Ancestral lipid biosynthesis and early membrane evolution", Peretó et al, TRENDS in Biochem Sci 2004]

(One may wonder what early cells lived on. Anoxic photosynthesis akin to modern purple bacteria would be fairly easy to evolve, and it would have liberated cells to form the early phototaxic stromatolites arguably observed.)

Instead I see a synergy here. As noted the system have seen early large hypervelocity impactors that would mean a preserved record of early geology and biosphere of mostly Earth but also Mars on the Moon. We should go and look for all these things astrobiological.
Agreed.
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Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Astrobiology in the system
« Reply #61 on: 08/06/2012 09:53 pm »
I have to agree with Warren Platts that given the resources, it makes sense to do astrobiology on the Moon now.

To find life on Earth, aside from the obvious ecologies, it takes paleontologists looking at many formations before they find the fossil bearing ones or microbiologists many attempts before they find out how to grow a few species reliably for study. Given that, after given verified habitability at some time from MSL, any sample return program would likely mean a few tens of missions to test for extant of extinct life. With the current investment it will take decades or centuries for closure.

A few end runs on life should thus be attempted early.

RNA could be chemically selected for hypothetically, since we use it, and verifiably, since it sees at least one order of magnitude (oom) increased catalytic ability in primordial anoxic conditions with lots of iron. (A recent result.) Testing for nucleotides and its heteromers should be done early and consistently. Unfortunately it fossilize poorly, so it would only pick up extant life. This is done in the SOLID experiment.

A specific end run could be an Enceladus plume sampling mission with a few orbits around Saturn for plume diving and a simple aerogel sample return. A SOLID would be cheaper, but the sample return is a good back up. Here one sample return may suffice.

But mostly the Moon is more accessible. There was a recent paper on estimating manned vs robotic exploration, and aside from telepresence apparently manned missions are 1-2 oom less costly. The Moon may just be too far away for telepresence, remember the Lunokhod 2 failure.

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #62 on: 08/06/2012 10:51 pm »
As I mentioned earlier; for me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely,

Agreed.

In other words, why would the Mars sized impactor have a substantially different isotopic signature?

The similarity in water across terrestrials would follow from the disk model for the volatile component for water. The similarity Earth-Moon would follow from some impact model, unclear which at this time.

The difference in isotopic signatures, if any, would come from the random aggregation from impactors with different histories. Since the disk was pretty mixed, I would personally not expect much differences, but I haven't studied the observations much.

Please do dig up those references, if you would.  My understanding of the evolutionary process is as you have described, that methane producers evolved after methanotrophs.

"C1 transfer enzymes and coenzymes linking methylotrophic bacteria and methanogenic archaea", Chistoserdova et al, Science 281:99-102. (And it was in the Braakman et al paper.)

The "ancestry values" referred to by Goldman are subject to debate.  I'm not sure that I fully understand the concept they are proposing.  Fascinating reading.

Fascinating indeed. Similar work comes from Caetano-Anollés et al. I skipped the last of their longish papers for Goldman, but "The origin of modern metabolic networks inferred from phylogenetic analysis of protein architecture", PNAS 2007 paints a similar picture.

Independent work on the clock proxy by a full birth/transfer/duplication/loss model and a self-consistent calibration comes from "Rapid evolutionary innovation during an Archaean genetic expansion", David et al, Nature 2010. The Archean Expansion (AE) is correlated with the DNA LUCA period according to their data on DNA metabolism, but I would like to see a specific work on that. If fact, it would mean the LUCA originated somewhere between 3.3 - 2.8 Ga bp (billion years before present).

One problem with their dating is that they accept the arguable 3.8 Ga bp date from isotopic data. But it isn't far off according to Brazier et al recent finds of ~ 3.5 - 3.2 Ga bp cells. Extrapolating their data in a toy model of a simple gene clock, the RNA/protein world originated ~ 4.1 Ga bp. If so, simple cells had to survive the LHB in the crust, which again has astrobiological implications for the Moon.

[LHB is survivable in models, because cells proliferate and spread faster than realistic impact flows can sterilize. Even crust busters are survivable ~ 1 km down. Life is a plague on a planet.]

The author's view is that:

Quote
While we prefer to view the origin of life as a process that began with the formation of the solar system and ended with the divergence of the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the common view is that the origin of life was a single event in time.

That is, the origin of life is a multi-billion year process, not a "single event in time".  This notion broadens the scope of the search for the origin so as to become unfocused.

It looks to me that they want to point out a long period of chemical evolution, which their work ties in to through the likely RNA/RNA to RNA/protein genetic/catalytic worlds transformation, as well as the problem for metabolic phylogenies to distinguish between trophic confederations and species lineages even if horizontal gene transfer wouldn't be a factor.

The resolution of the phylogenies can be improved by considering more genes/metabolic systems, for example the membrane work or the redox processes of the AE paper.

By the way on this point of lineages vs confederations, Kandler's diagram isn't consistent with the eukaryote endosymbiosis event which is fairly well tested. It is a little bit to eager to promote confederations.


Quote
Clues to the composition of Earth's pre-biotic atmosphere composition as well as surface temperatures prior to the end of late bombardment ca. 3.9 Ga are sparse and inconclusive. ... The addition of abundant biogenic methane to the atmosphere is seen as necessary for providing an adequate greenhouse effect and avoiding a permanent icehouse condition ...

The requirement for biogenic methane implies that anaerobic methane-generating organisms (methanogens) would have evolved very early in Earth history, and would have been present in sufficient mass to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere "in time" to compensate for loss of H2 via thermal escape and the inadequacy of CO2 as a sole greenhouse gas.

Well, as I noted, AGW theory has lowered the necessary CO2 with a faint early Sun significantly. That concentration is consistent with geophysical observations:

Quote
With a radiative-convective model including new, updated thermal absorption coefficients, we found that the amount of CO2 necessary to obtain 273 K at the surface is reduced up to an order of magnitude compared to previous studies.

For the late Archaean and early Proterozoic period of the Earth, we calculate that CO2 partial pressures of only about 2.9 mb are required to keep its surface from freezing which is compatible with the amount inferred from sediment studies. This conclusion was not significantly changed when we varied model parameters such as relative humidity or surface albedo, obtaining CO2 partial pressures for the late Archaean between 1.5 and 5.5 mb. Thus, the contradiction between sediment data and model results disappears for the late Archaean and early Proterozoic.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15876569

Quote
We conclude that hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis appeared only once during evolution. ... Given that fossil evidence for methanogenesis dates back 2.8 billion years, a unique origin of this process makes the methanogenic archaea a very ancient taxon.

I'll have to read the evidence. Nearly all early fossil evidence is argued by someone or other. I am agnostic about the dating more than I am agnostic about the phylogeny. Aerobic metabolism would be rare or impossible before atmosphere oxygenation.

You haven't yet commented on the OP, that is, the astrobiological implications of liquid water inside Luna.

AFAIK the Moon likely still has a molten active core by the reassessed Apollo seismic experiments. Energy, water and presumably organics is present, resulting in a habitable crust.

Whether or not chemical evolution results in biological evolution in such conditions I don't know. Our cells, at least at the DNA LUCA root level, shows ocean ancestry by the range of metal catalysts needed. (Salt content.)

The roots of the RNA world is a topic that I could expand on, but it is perhaps outside the topic of implications.
« Last Edit: 08/07/2012 12:33 am by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #63 on: 08/07/2012 12:30 am »
Hi Torbjorn. Welcome to the forum.

Thanks! It looks like an interesting place for astrobiologists trying to survive the space age.

Was there ever a period when the surface pressure was adequate to favor liquid water on the Moon's surface, once the temperature had cooled down? In other words, had the atmosphere entirely blown away by the time the surface rocks cooled to below 120 C? If so, the life seeded from outer space would have a chance to colonize the Lunar subsurface.

That is an interesting idea. Volcanism would have resulted in some form of atmosphere. Titan, at twice the mass, has hold on to a dense atmosphere for up to 0.5 Ga. (But in cold and low solar irradiation conditions.)

Under such conditions I don't think the Moon would have necessary been seeded. Hydrothermal vents with a sufficient ocean like outlet would be a possible pathway at the current state of astrobiology. I would think water filled fractured rocks with geothermal energy could be a substitute for vents, but the temperature and dilution range from vent to ocean is an important part of vent models.

Right, one of the explanations for the 2003 Mars pulse was a meteor impact.

I was thinking of this:

Quote
Although our original headline suggested a choice between geology or life on Mars, researchers have since proposed eight different processes that might account for the seasonal plumes, although none of them is without its issues. In addition, there was a ninth option: the researchers behind the original findings were misinterpreting their data, and there was far less methane around than their work suggested.

Now, a new study is out that may split the difference. Although it can't account for the full amount of methane suggested by the first paper, it proposes a source of methane that should produce the sorts of seasonal increases seen in the earlier study: a combination of carbon-rich meteors and exposure to UV light.


Quote
So, in many ways, these experiments indicate that the combination of UV light and meteor fragments could account for many of the more compelling features of the Mars observations. They do, however, fall short in two ways. One is that they can't explain why the methane in the atmosphere appears to be concentrated over specific regions of the martian surface. The second issue is that the estimates of the total tonnage of meteorites hitting the planet's surface don't seem to bring enough carbon in to fully account for the methane seen in the atmosphere. These data can only fully account for Mars' methane if the more recent estimates of its volume are right and the original report was wrong.


So this may be predictive. The regional issue may be up in the air due to observational difficulties.
 
Arguing against that is the ecological one that the water + olivine --> H2 is an ecological niche that predates just about everything.

Complex multicellular life was an ecological niche that predates an oxygenated atmosphere. Yet it wasn't settled, because of evolutionary difficulties and more precisely energy difficulties (Lane's energy theory on eukaryotes). This is why the energetic difficulties of methanogens tests the predictions of the phylogenies. (Chisosterdova et al as well as Braakman et al.)

Also, assigning primitiveness to DNA base pairs (which have no fossils that can be independently dated) is a tricky business. A most parsimonious computer printout is not guarantee that it is 100% the way it happened.

Phylogenies have a certain resolution, which is why they result in a (much) constrained set of possible pathways that then has to be tested as per above. But generically they result in the lowest possible uncertainties in overall topologies in all of science due to their combinatorial nature.

Douglas Theobald is the go to guy here:

Quote
When two independently determined trees mismatch by some branches, they are called "incongruent". In general, phylogenetic trees may be very incongruent and still match with an extremely high degree of statistical significance (Hendy et al. 1984; Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986; Steel and Penny 1993). Even for a phylogeny with a small number of organisms, the total number of possible trees is extremely large. For example, there are about a thousand different possible phylogenies for only six organisms; for nine organisms, there are millions of possible phylogenies; for 12 organisms, there are nearly 14 trillion different possible phylogenies (Table 1.3.1; Felsenstein 1982; Li 1997, p. 102). Thus, the probability of finding two similar trees by chance via two independent methods is extremely small in most cases. In fact, two different trees of 16 organisms that mismatch by as many as 10 branches still match with high statistical significance (Hendy et al. 1984, Table 4; Steel and Penny 1993). For more information on the statistical significance of trees that do not match exactly, see "Statistics of Incongruent Phylogenetic Trees".

The stunning degree of match between even the most incongruent phylogenetic trees found in the biological literature is widely unappreciated, mainly because most people (including many biologists) are unaware of the mathematics involved (Bryant et al. 2002; Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986). Penny and Hendy have performed a series of detailed statistical analyses of the significance of incongruent phylogenetic trees, and here is their conclusion:

Quote
    "Biologists seem to seek the 'The One Tree' and appear not to be satisfied by a range of options. However, there is no logical difficulty in having a range of trees. There are 34,459,425 possible [unrooted] trees for 11 taxa (Penny et al. 1982), and to reduce this to the order of 10-50 trees is analogous to an accuracy of measurement of approximately one part in 10^6." (Penny and Hendy 1986, p. 414)

Theobald has managed to test the UCA ancestry of cells as opposed to multiple ancestors to a factor ~ 10^2000 as likely. I maintain that this is the best observation in all of science, and will likely remain so because of the combinatorial complexity.

Quote from: Tjorborn
The reason is probably because the needed enzymes are among the most energetically demanding evolved, I hear. Most likely few terrestrial biospheres will have time to evolve methanogens as a niche against lacking photosynthesis and/or suitable geothermal energy sources.

But an enzyme capable of breaking a high energy bond isn't necessarily more complex or harder to evolve than any other enzyme, or so I would think.

The necessary capability would be outside of RNA, for example. Only advanced proteins are used in high energy cases as I understand it, they are heavily constrained by choice of metal and folds for catalytic centers.

But I don't have any references handy, so I welcome any you have.

The problem with early photosynthesis is that it requires being close to the surface, probably in a  confined space, which would necessarily be transient, not to mention the problem with intense UV radiation.

As I noted, anoxic photosynthesis akin to modern purple bacteria would be fairly easy to evolve. It can use various compounds and more importantly it works with IR at low light levels. It is ideal for deep bacterial mats in a world without ozone protection and intense surface UV.

Again, I am agnostic about early cells metabolism. I pointed out a possible pathway in case the DNA LUCA root indeed wasn't diversified into domains.

Similarly, hydrothrmal vents, while protected from UV radiation, probably aren't stable on time scales of tens of millions of years. However, basaltic aquifers would be both protected from UV radiation, be stable at time scales of tens of millions of years, and have a preditable thermal environment, and a ready source of chemical energy.

I commented on that above, vents are main stream and at least the LUCA is greatly helped by metals in an ocean. The short time to life is a feature, not a bug. ;D

This is a great example of why we must be cautious using genetic distances as a biological clock. Half of all chemical evolution probably happened during a very short time.

Actually it isn't genetic distances as much as protein fold family births. But see my reply to Fornaro on the similar results and how a calibrated and detailed fold clock fairs. The "very short time" of biological evolution is ~ 0.6 Ga (RNA/protein world) respectively ~ 0.5 Ga (the intense Archaean Expansion period that seems associated with the DNA LUCA) for each 20 % proxy period, leaving ~ 2 Ga for the domain diversification.

The mismatch to the real clock is ~ 1 Ga out of ~ 4 Ga, or 25 %.

To sum up, since I'm mostly reacting here, I am not wedded to methanogens as late, datings, confederations or vent hypotheses. I do think the phylogenies that reach beyond the DNA LUCA down to the RNA world has relevance as all phylogenies seems to have. That is promising.

That phylogenies points to evolutionary problems for methanogens, on Earth but also generically, is noteworthy in that context. Energy conditions for cells is a new and promising theory that predicts the domains ecology (Valentine's energy theory for archaea, Lane's energy theory for eukaryotes) as well as generic cellular constraints for metabolism. ["An Energy Balance Concept for Habitability", Hoehler, Astrobiology 2007.]

This of course ties your geology to cellular metabolism in a more concrete form. Possible redox cycles are interesting, but are they also likely? As they say, more work needed.

Meanwhile, I believe you suggested redox possibilities for the Moon that wasn't tied to methanogens specifically? I would hate to derail a thread for a minor topic.

Especially since early or relatively early methanogens are main stream, much to my chagrin. The early Earth atmospheric work is dated and no longer supportive, the fossil work the same and the phylogenies are arguable. But as any possible metabolism it opens up a world of possibilities, and that is hard to detract from.
« Last Edit: 08/07/2012 01:32 am by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #64 on: 08/07/2012 12:53 am »
This turned out to be a quick check, it was all open access:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15876569

Quote
We conclude that hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis appeared only once during evolution. ... Given that fossil evidence for methanogenesis dates back 2.8 billion years, a unique origin of this process makes the methanogenic archaea a very ancient taxon.

The fossil evidence is, as I suspected, trace fossils:

Quote
For these reasons, methanogenesis is likely ancient (as suggested by the fossil record) (Brocks et al. 1999),

This comes from "Archean Molecular Fossils and the Early Rise of Eukaryotes", Jochen J. Brocks et al, Science 1999.

Quote
The n-alkanes are probably the products of a diverse biota of primary producers and heterotrophs. The isoprenoids are derived from photosynthetic microbes with a possible contribution from isotopically light methanogenic Archaea, which are known to yield only small quantities of pristane and phytane relative to total biomass and non-alkanes when pyrolyzed (20). The contrasting depletion of 13C in the kerogen may be attributed to contributions from methanotrophs, as proposed by Hayes (21). However, n-alkanes derived from isotopically depleted membrane lipids of methanotrophs could not be identified in our samples. Furthermore, we cannot discount the possibility that the observed isotopic pattern could also reflect the products of an extinct biochemistry.

So the suggestion is actually a detection of cyanobacteria, the main find of their paper, that could conceal possible archaea - which they don't find as they expected, neither methanogens or methanotrophs.

More generally, Brooks et al specifically, but also some similar finds, have been criticized on the likely contamination from more recent kerogens as they misinterpreted the geology (IIRC). That paper I may have lost, so I hope I can find it again if you are interested.

As for Goldman I don't know exactly how it has been received, even though in both cases the general trend is along those lines. Here, the trend is that non-argued fossil ages of cyanobacteria, archaea and eukaryotes don't predate the oxygenation of the atmosphere, as of yet. If spacermase returns, maybe he has inputs on relevance.
« Last Edit: 08/07/2012 01:20 am by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline Warren Platts

Hi Torbjorn, I'm not wedded to anything here either, except the principle of "follow the water". If it's halfway geologically plausible that liquid water could be found within 1 to 100 meters of the surface, that's some low hanging fruit that we ought to pluck before we go traipsing off to Mars. And positive or negative results aside, the experience gained will prove very helpful and lower the costs IMO when we do in fact go to Mars.

In that regard, I came across this intriguing reference:

Quote
Lunar missions over the past few years have provided new evidence that water may be present at the lunar poles in the form of cold-trapped ice deposits, thereby rekindling interest in sampling the polar regions. Robotic landers fitted with mineralogical instrumentation for in-situ analyses could provide unequivocal answers on the presence of crystalline water ice and/or hydrous minerals at the lunar poles. Data from Lunar Prospector suggest that any surface exploration of the lunar poles should include the capability to drill to depths of more than 40 cm. Limited data on the lunar geotherm indicate temperatures of approximately 245-255 K at regolith depths of 40 cm, within a range where water may exist in the liquid state as brine. A relevant terrestrial analog occurs in Antarctica, where the zeolite mineral chabazite has been found at the boundary between ice-free and ice-cemented regolith horizons, and precipitation from a regolith brine is indicated. Soluble halogens and sulfur in the lunar regolith could provide comparable brine chemistry in an analogous setting. Regolith samples collected by a drilling device could be readily analyzed by CheMin, a mineralogical instrument that combines X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques to simultaneously characterize the chemical and mineralogical compositions of granular or powdered samples. CheMin can unambiguously determine not only the presence of hydrous alteration phases such as clays or zeolites, but it can also identify the structural variants or types of clay or zeolite present (e.g., well-ordered versus poorly ordered smectite; chabazite versus phillipsite). In addition, CheMin can readily measure the abundances of key elements that may occur in lunar minerals (Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Fe) as well as the likely constituents of lunar brines (F, Cl, S). Finally, if coring and analysis are done during the lunar night or in permanent shadow, CheMin can provide information on the chemistry and structure of any crystalline ices that might occur in the regolith samples.

http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20020074706&qs=Ns%3DLoaded-Date%7C0%26N%3D4294774829

And here's something on the dry valley Antarctic brines:

Quote
Geomicrobiology of an Antarctic subglacial brine: A plausible Martian ecosystem

The dry valleys of Antartica are host to an assortment of brines at various stages of cryoevaporation ( Lyons et al., 2005 ). It has been suggested that brines formed by similar processes exist on Mars ( Burth and Knauth, 2003 ). Here, we present geomicrobiological data on an Antarctic brine that exists below the Taylor Glacier in the Taylor Valley. Geochemical analyses of subglacial discharge collected at the surface site known as Blood Falls, indicates that the brine is of marine origin and has had limited contact to the atmosphere since it was covered by Taylor Glacier. The brine contains high concentrations of iron oxides (∼3.8 mM), dissolved inorganic (∼50 mM C) and organic carbon (∼400 μM C), and is depleted in sulfate relative to is source waters (SO 4 2−:Cl− ratios in seawater = 0.052; in Blood Falls = 0.035). The microbial diversity associated with this feature, described using molecular and culture techniques, reflects the in situ geochemistry with members known to cycle iron and sulfur compounds (i.e. Thiomicrospria sp., Geopsychrobacter sp., and Desulfocapsa sp.). Combining our geochemical and biological data on the Taylor brine allows for the theoretical modeling of both physical and geochemical constraints on microbially mediated processes in this subglacial system. Importantly, the physical and chemical nature of Blood Falls brine provides a model system for assessing the biological ...


http://www.search4oil.com/DigitalEarth/getDocumentDetail.jsp?type=doc&id=doc_a3ce1b0dc82d414ba37cb5869b3665ca

I'm thinking the most likely place to find easily accesible Lunar brines would be in the polar regions, but not necessarily in permanently shaded zones. There, there might be a layer of frozen water cemented regolith on top of which might be found a layer of liquid brine. Using the ground penetrating radar that Hap mentioned today in the other thread such a layer would show up as an abrupt cutoff and prevent the radar from penetrating further than the brine layer. 

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #66 on: 08/07/2012 04:32 pm »
As I mentioned earlier; for me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely,

Agreed.

And by "cushy", I mean Earthlike.  You know.  Wild, warm, and <ahem> wet.  So where is the possible mechanism for life to have survived the impact and its burial at those depths?

IOW, if they evolved early...

Quote
The requirement for biogenic methane implies that anaerobic methane-generating organisms (methanogens) would have evolved very early in Earth history, and would have been present in sufficient mass to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere "in time" to compensate for loss of H2 via thermal escape and the inadequacy of CO2 as a sole greenhouse gas.

... how did they get to the inside of Luna?

So that's one question. 

There's a costly technical issue of developing and implementing the capability of drilling from one to a hundred yards beneath the lunar surface, which would have to be solved for ground truthing.  Of course, all eyes on the $2.5B MSL rover at the moment, but for a sum such as this to be devoted to this lunar capability, it would have to be demonstrated that the chances of finding something at this depth are very good.  So there's a very real prioritization issue here as well.

Quote from: Torbjorn
LHB is survivable in models, because cells proliferate and spread faster than realistic impact flows can sterilize. Even crust busters are survivable ~ 1 km down. Life is a plague on a planet.

It's only a uhhhh..... plague on one planet, that we can tell.  To me the LHB doesn't really include Mars size impactors, does it?  Impactors which turn the crust of both bodies into magma oceans?  (ignoring for the moment that Earth didn't get a magma ocean from this impact, as is currently thought)  Does that magma ocean not extend down one km?  Worse, that model presupposes that life was already existant at that level.  I can't imagine a mechanism by which it was driven to that depth in that impact.

So I'm having a hard time with this theorizing at the moment.

Quote from: Torbjorn
AFAIK the Moon likely still has a molten active core by the reassessed Apollo seismic experiments. Energy, water and presumably organics is present, possibly resulting in a habitable crust.

Ever the grammarian; fixed that for ya.  But current thinking is that Luna has a molten interior:



http://phys.org/news/2012-02-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-reveals-geological.html

Quote
"We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior," said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. "The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form."

Quote from: Goldman
While we prefer to view the origin of life as a process that began with the formation of the solar system and ended with the divergence of the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the common view is that the origin of life was a single event in time.

This view makes the OP's speculation even more tentative, I'd say.  Theia would have had to undergone this multi-billyun year process, at a survivable depth before whacking the Earth.  In addition, there would have had to be a "likely RNA/RNA to RNA/protein genetic/catalytic worlds transformation", as you point out.

...the similar results and how a calibrated and detailed fold clock fairs. The "very short time" of biological evolution is ~ 0.6 Ga (RNA/protein world) respectively ~ 0.5 Ga (the intense Archaean Expansion period that seems associated with the DNA LUCA) for each 20 % proxy period, leaving ~ 2 Ga for the domain diversification.

The mismatch to the real clock is ~ 1 Ga out of ~ 4 Ga, or 25 %.

I get that such a "clock" has not yet been adequately proposed to explain the Earthly genesis of life.  But this "clock" will have to include Luna as well, wouldn't it?  First, Theia would have to be found...

Quote
Well, as I noted, AGW theory has lowered the necessary CO2 with a faint early Sun significantly.

BTW, this link was broken for me this morning.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #67 on: 08/08/2012 02:58 am »
As I mentioned earlier; for me, the migration of life from cushy environments to extreme environments seems more likely,

Agreed.
....

It's only a uhhhh..... plague on one planet, that we can tell.  To me the LHB doesn't really include Mars size impactors, does it?  Impactors which turn the crust of both bodies into magma oceans?  (ignoring for the moment that Earth didn't get a magma ocean from this impact, as is currently thought)  Does that magma ocean not extend down one km?  Worse, that model presupposes that life was already existant at that level.  I can't imagine a mechanism by which it was driven to that depth in that impact.

So I'm having a hard time with this theorizing at the moment.

Quote from: Torbjorn
AFAIK the Moon likely still has a molten active core by the reassessed Apollo seismic experiments. Energy, water and presumably organics is present, possibly resulting in a habitable crust.

Ever the grammarian; fixed that for ya.  But current thinking is that Luna has a molten interior:



http://phys.org/news/2012-02-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-reveals-geological.html

Quote
"We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior," said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. "The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form."

....

It's Alive! There's Magma on the Moon Feb 21, 2012
At: http://news.discovery.com/space/moon-magma-122102.html
"Instead, these findings suggest the moon was not completely molten after it was formed. If this were the case, the moon would not contract strongly enough to suppress the emergence of graben."

And, "'Currently, a popular idea for how the moon formed is that it was completely molten in the beginning— after a Mars-size object hit Earth very early in its history, the debris cloud from the surviving material formed the moon,' Watters said. 'This may lend support to alternative scenarios that the moon was not completely molten when it formed, that only part of it was, forming a magma ocean.'"
 
....



I added the bold.

:)
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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #68 on: 08/12/2012 03:50 pm »
Hi Torbjorn, I'm not wedded to anything here either, except the principle of "follow the water". If it's halfway geologically plausible that liquid water could be found within 1 to 100 meters of the surface, that's some low hanging fruit that we ought to pluck before we go traipsing off to Mars. And positive or negative results aside, the experience gained will prove very helpful and lower the costs IMO when we do in fact go to Mars.

In that regard, I came across this intriguing reference:

Quote
Lunar missions over the past few years have provided new evidence that water may be present at the lunar poles in the form of cold-trapped ice deposits, thereby rekindling interest in sampling the polar regions. Robotic landers fitted with mineralogical instrumentation for in-situ analyses could provide unequivocal answers on the presence of crystalline water ice and/or hydrous minerals at the lunar poles. Data from Lunar Prospector suggest that any surface exploration of the lunar poles should include the capability to drill to depths of more than 40 cm. Limited data on the lunar geotherm indicate temperatures of approximately 245-255 K at regolith depths of 40 cm, within a range where water may exist in the liquid state as brine. A relevant terrestrial analog occurs in Antarctica, where the zeolite mineral chabazite has been found at the boundary between ice-free and ice-cemented regolith horizons, and precipitation from a regolith brine is indicated. Soluble halogens and sulfur in the lunar regolith could provide comparable brine chemistry in an analogous setting. Regolith samples collected by a drilling device could be readily analyzed by CheMin, a mineralogical instrument that combines X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) techniques to simultaneously characterize the chemical and mineralogical compositions of granular or powdered samples. CheMin can unambiguously determine not only the presence of hydrous alteration phases such as clays or zeolites, but it can also identify the structural variants or types of clay or zeolite present (e.g., well-ordered versus poorly ordered smectite; chabazite versus phillipsite). In addition, CheMin can readily measure the abundances of key elements that may occur in lunar minerals (Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Fe) as well as the likely constituents of lunar brines (F, Cl, S). Finally, if coring and analysis are done during the lunar night or in permanent shadow, CheMin can provide information on the chemistry and structure of any crystalline ices that might occur in the regolith samples.

http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20020074706&qs=Ns%3DLoaded-Date%7C0%26N%3D4294774829

....



Calibration of the MSL/ChemCam/LIBS Remote Sensing Composition Instrument  By R. C. Wiens, S. Maurice, S. Bender, B. L. Barraclough, A. Cousin, O. Forni, A. Ollila, H. Newsom, D. Vani-man, S. Clegg, J. A. Lasue, D. Blaney, L. DeFlores, R.V. Morris, and the ChemCam team Los Alamos National Laboratory
At: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110008153_2011007196.pdf
"Introduction: The ChemCam instrument suite on board the 2011 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rov-er, Curiosity, will provide remote-sensing composition information for rock and soil samples within seven meters of the rover using a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) system, and will provide context imaging with a resolution of 0.10 mradians using the remote micro-imager (RMI) camera. The high resolution is needed to image the small analysis footprint of the LIBS system, at 0.2-0.6 mm diameter."

And, "ChemCam is intended for rapid survey analyses within 7 m of the rover, with each measurement taking less than 6 minutes. Repeated laser pulses remove dust coatings and provide depth profiles [2] through weathering layers, allowing de-tailed investigation of rock varnish features as well as analysis of the underlying pristine rock composition."


Wouldn't this be useful? Instead of climbing into a Lunar vent or crater or an artificial impactor's crater, you just analyze the crater's inside's from various locations on the rim...

Of course the real question is, 'How far away could your instrument be
from the target material you zap with the laser if your system was designed to maximize distances and be used on the Moon and your target was in an ultra-cold environment?'

Remember, there should usually be lots of solar electric power on the rim of a crater and you don't want to risk your rover and spend a lot of time climbing down into a crater or volcanic vent if you don't need to. Of course, if you really want to drill or dig on the crater's floor, then you might have to climb down into the crater, unless you are on the rim above the location of a well-aimed artificial impactor, such as a Centaur rocket. Then that new impactor crater inside a shallow or deep natural crater that was directly below your observation location on the rim might allow line of sight access for your instruments into the new hole.

It all depends on how feasible it is to extend such analysis from tens of meters to kilometers. A large diameter telescope would be needed at a kilometer or more distances...


Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy
Celio Pasquini, Juliana Cortez, Lucas M. C. Silva, and Fabiano B. Gonzaga
At: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/jbchs/v18n3/01.pdf
"This review describes the fundamentals, instrumentation, applications and future trends of an analytical technique that is in its early stages of consolidation and is establishing its definitive niches among modern spectrometric techniques. The technique has been named Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and its main characteristic stands in the use of short laser pulses as the energy source to vaporize samples and excite the emission of electromagnetic radiation from its elements and/or molecular fragments. The emitted radiation is analyzed by high resolution optics and the intensities are recorded, usually by fast triggered solid state detectors."

And, "Remote analysis is another niche that will be occupied by LIBS without any rival technique. The ability of a LIBS system in generating, collecting and measuring a signal produced from a sample distant by more than 50 m is unique among the spectroscopic elemental analytical techniques."



Of course, one may also wonder if this Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy system could eventually be used by a spacecraft in low Lunar orbit to zap the lunar surface... Or be used to zap and analyze carefully selected areas of an asteroid at a distance of several kilometers...
 


Or, if such a laser system is to be used with a drill, you stop drilling, uncover your small instrument lens on the bit or tip of the of the drill, and zap your target material. Cover your lens and go back to drilling. You might not have to remove your cores and this could speed up the overall drilling process. Fiber optics should make it work. Cooling the drill bit would be interesting... This might be a useful way to minimize the bore diameter of the hole you drill into the Lunar surface.



See also:

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Induced_Breakdown_Spectroscopy


Cheers!

"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #69 on: 08/12/2012 09:12 pm »

Quote
The requirement for biogenic methane implies that anaerobic methane-generating organisms (methanogens) would have evolved very early in Earth history, and would have been present in sufficient mass to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere "in time" to compensate for loss of H2 via thermal escape and the inadequacy of CO2 as a sole greenhouse gas.

... how did they get to the inside of Luna?

BTW, this link was broken for me this morning.

You repeat this, but as my refs show there is no longer a "requirement for biogenic methane". CO2 would suffice.

I can absolutely not get the editor to not break the link. Lets try this: http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.4134v2 . It was also published in Nature later, see the next link.

Note that there is a later critique, but it is based on cloud models and lower albedo of early rocks which I would think is a more uncertain way to critique the updated GW theory. [ http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424154/faint-young-sun-paradox-not-solved-says-nasa/ ]

Again, I'm agnostic on extant or extinct life on the Moon.


It's only a uhhhh..... plague on one planet, that we can tell.  To me the LHB doesn't really include Mars size impactors, does it?  Impactors which turn the crust of both bodies into magma oceans?  (ignoring for the moment that Earth didn't get a magma ocean from this impact, as is currently thought)  Does that magma ocean not extend down one km?  Worse, that model presupposes that life was already existant at that level.  I can't imagine a mechanism by which it was driven to that depth in that impact.

So I'm having a hard time with this theorizing at the moment.

No, the Earth-Moon impactor event was well before the LHB, ~ 4.5 Ga bp vs ~ 4.1 - 3.8 Ga bp.

The models are quite simple really. [" Microbial habitability of the Hadean Earth during the late heavy bombardment", Oleg Abramov & Stephen J. Mojzsis, Nature 2009; the Goldilock zone extension is a later paper.]

As already noted, we find bacteria (and nematodes!) several km down, they migrate in cracks.

Quote from: Torbjorn
AFAIK the Moon likely still has a molten active core by the reassessed Apollo seismic experiments. Energy, water and presumably organics is present, possibly resulting in a habitable crust.

Ever the grammarian; fixed that for ya.

Maybe it is a grammatical problem, but I meant that if we have the presumed organics, it would be a habitable zone by definition. You changed the logics.


Quote from: Goldman
While we prefer to view the origin of life as a process that began with the formation of the solar system and ended with the divergence of the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the common view is that the origin of life was a single event in time.

This view makes the OP's speculation even more tentative, I'd say.  Theia would have had to undergone this multi-billyun year process, at a survivable depth before whacking the Earth.  In addition, there would have had to be a "likely RNA/RNA to RNA/protein genetic/catalytic worlds transformation", as you point out.
.

I responded on this in my earlier comment, they can't possibly mean that planets aggregating and differentiating is a problem. The Earth-Moon event may have restarted what was already underway, surely.

This gets into the RNA world scenario, which description would warrant comments all by itself.


I get that such a "clock" has not yet been adequately proposed to explain the Earthly genesis of life.  But this "clock" will have to include Luna as well, wouldn't it?  First, Theia would have to be found...

The toy model predicts genes, so it is a relatively mature RNA world.

You keep inserting Theia here, but it happened earlier. The Moon would have its own clock, depending on how its environment (with Warren's oceans) affected the abiogenesis "attempt rate".
« Last Edit: 08/12/2012 10:04 pm by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline Torbjorn Larsson, OM

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Re: Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #70 on: 08/12/2012 09:59 pm »
Obviously, I'm not suggesting that the methanogens as we know them today are pretty much the original "ur" organisms, but the niche itself is certainly old enough, and is at least as likely as any other niche to be the first one that spawned life. Interestingly, the mysterious "nanobes" that some people think they have found--nano-"bacteria" much, much smaller than ordinary microbes (these are about the same scale as the supposed nanobacteria found in the Mars meteorite)--these are found in deep, subterannean environments.

I wanted to respond to this theme of the thread more in depth when I had time.

It started here:

Who among you kind and gentle readers believe that the Martian meteorite contains compelling evidence of Martian life? Then why do you discount similar evidence of Lunar life?

Quote from: Zhmur and Gerasimenko (1999)
[We present] the results of the analyses of microphotos of lunar regolith particles published earlier, which confirmed that lunar rock contains fossilized remnants of microbial organisms, that most probably had been functioning in hydrothermal springs.

As far as astrobiology goes nowadays the basic courses or at least the one I attended, as well as the professional area include a heavy criticism of untestable pattern search. It is too much reminding of pseudoscience in that way, and the field was too accepting of easy observation in the beginning.

It started, I believe, with Schopf's claims of early life out of cellular or kerogen (sedimentary organics broken down in anoxic environment) reminding finds aka "bacteriomorphic" in Zhmur et al.

As later Brazier et al showed, this is too unconstrained to distinguish between geological and biological processes.

Schopf was and remain, I think, a NASA advisor, a fact which seems to encourage this line of work. The ALH84001 finds have all been successfully criticized on similar grounds, the finds can be derived from geology.

A general observation on this type of paper of observations on meteorites (mostly), besides the ALH84001 work, is that they are published as conference proceedings in SPIE or IEEE as examples of what instruments can do. This is a warning sign on Zhmur et al paper, as well as a later NASA employee's papers, the name which slips my mind at the moment. The involved workers are often experts on instruments and sample preparation, seldom biologists or paleontologists.

In short, all of these works are considered conclusively observations of geological processes by the majority of astrobiologists and ground courses.

It has been successfully modeled that small asteroid bodies, smaller than ~ 200 km IIRC, has a too rapid moving water zone during differentiation to be able to participate in abiogenesis.* So we would need to look inside bodies like Ceres or the Moon to find life.

As for nanofossils, they were also criticized similarly and successfully separately the last few years.

They were always too small to contain all the necessary cellular mechanisms of modern cells, cells that result out of billions of years of evolution.

More problematic, it turns out that extracellular carbonates and/or proteins, depending on if it is geological or biological origin, can form these odd aggregates.

-----------------
* Personally I no longer think that is enough. An RNA world would need a salty ocean to kick in at the current level of understanding. (RNA catalytic ability promoted by anoxic conditions but also iron; energetics of redox processes essential for metabolism.)
« Last Edit: 08/12/2012 10:09 pm by Torbjorn Larsson, OM »

Offline Warren Platts

Actually, I think Schopf was an early skeptic of the early ALH84001 results--I think you're thinking of NASA scientist Dave McKay who was the lead author on the original article. Schopf was a pioneer in study of Precambrian microfossils, so he knew how hard it is to prove the case for these things. Plus they've been finding strange things in meteorites since the 1950's--it's hard to see how ALH84001 is any different from these. I myself was very skeptical when the 1996 paper came out; I watched the news conference: I thought the NASA team was being far too credulous. Schopf was the only guy up there expressing caution, and he wasn't on the NASA team IRRC.

But I agree, the Lunar bugs photographed by Zhmur and Gerasimenko are probably not very credible. But then again, neither is ALH84001. Nevertheless, McKay and his colleagues are still true believers, so who knows? My point in citing Zhmur and Gerasimenko is that their pictures are in neither worse nor better shape than the NASA pictures. One can't consistently maintain that purported Martian fossil microbes are great and the Lunar ones are junk.
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #72 on: 08/13/2012 02:53 am »
Thanks for that link.  It worked.  Will read later.

... how did they [the primitive life forms] get to the inside of Luna?

my refs show there is no longer a "requirement for biogenic methane". CO2 would suffice.

At the moment, I'm somewhat less concerned with the possible order that the organisms evolved, and more interested in the process by which they got some 100 to 1000 meters below the lunar surface  As I understand the Theian hypothesis, as modified by the subterranean lunar life hypothesis; Earth had life; Earth was impacted by Theia, and life was transferred to the piece that became the Moon, deep under the magma ocean.  Alternatively, Theia had life, impacted the Earth, and seeded at least the Moon, again, at that depth.  Another hypothesis would be that life began on the Moon, at depth, in a second genesis.

Seeing as you're agnostic on the question, no need to answer.  But you suggest:

Quote from: Torbjorn
As already noted, we find bacteria (and nematodes!) several km down, they migrate in cracks.

Here on Earth, they've had plenty of time to make that migration, without disruption.  The nematode at the surface is a different species from the nematode at the bottom of the crack.  I don't see how they could have, after the Moon's magma ocean cooled, found their way down there.  They would have had to have been there before the impact with Earth.

Quote from: Torbjorn
I meant that if we have the presumed organics, it would be a habitable zone by definition. You changed the logics.

Fair enough.  The problem remains then, what are those "presumed organics", and are they actually where hypothesized?  Again, you don't have to answer this, others do.


Quote from: Goldman
While we prefer to view the origin of life as a process that began with the formation of the solar system and ended with the divergence of the Last Universal Common Ancestor, the common view is that the origin of life was a single event in time.

This view makes the OP's speculation even more tentative, I'd say.  Theia would have had to undergone this multi-billion year process, at a survivable depth before whacking the Earth.  In addition, there would have had to be a "likely RNA/RNA to RNA/protein genetic/catalytic worlds transformation", as you point out.
.

Quote from: Torbjorn
I responded on this in my earlier comment, they can't possibly mean that planets aggregating and differentiating is a problem. The Earth-Moon event may have restarted what was already underway, surely.

Surely?  Not so fast, kemosabe.  Let me rephrase my point.

The common view is that the arrival of life, and thus evolution, was a single event.  This is simply not known.  Goldman et al., think that evolution was actually in effect in the inanimate universe at the formation of the solar system, continued thru the aggregation and differentiation periods, culminating, presumably, with DNA, and continuing to this day.

(He is merely pushing back the single event of the beginning of evolution back in time.  There's a whole discussion there about why he pushes back the beginning of evolution to that arbitrary point and not another, but that's for some other thread.)

(I can't resist.  For one thing, if evolution started with the formation of our solar system, how can it be that we have not seen it evidenced in other solar systems?)

The RNA world scenario must depend on a quiescent planet, relatively free from heavy bombardment, and planet wide ecological disruption.  DNA and say, nematodes, must have a chance to evolve and descend to those survivable depths.  Then Theia can swing by, impact the Earth, dislodge a Moon, and not interrupt the evolutionary process.  How could that happen, especially at that delicate stage of life?

That the impact "restarted what was already underway", I find hard to accept.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #73 on: 08/14/2012 02:54 pm »
Organic matter likely has been found on the Moon.

Since it is likely, therefore it is a fact that it is there?  The problem remains then, what are those "presumed organics", and are they actually where hypothesized?

Quote
To migrate 1 km over 1 million years (a mere blink in geological time) the average speed would have to be 1 mm/year. This is a rate of about 1/10th of a micrometer per hour.

As I said, they've had plenty of time to make that migration, without disruption, here on Earth.  That cannot already be known to be the case on Luna.

Quote
The creatures have been separated for millions of years and occupy different ecological niches. It would be surprising if they were the same species.

As I said, they've had plenty of time to make that migration, without disruption, here on Earth.  Again, there was an impact, hypothetically Theia, which would have disrupted evolution in these niches on Earth.

Quote
You are still conflating the "Giant Impact" with the "Late Heavy Bombardment". These are two entirely separate events.

As I said, the creatures would have had to have been there (either on Earth or Theia) before the Giant Impact with Earth. Should any creatures (and microbes are a type of creature) have found their way to the part of Theia which became Luna, they would have had to survive the impact, and have burrowed deep within the lunar crust quickly, to have survived the magma ocean.

As I understand the Theian hypothesis, as modified by the subterranean lunar life hypothesis; Earth had life; Earth was impacted by Theia, and life was transferred to the piece that became the Moon, deep under the magma ocean.

Straw man figment of your imagination. Nobody says this. :o  If you can find a reference to this, I'd dearly love to see it....

So there's no life on the Moon?  Just on Earth?
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts

To summarize one aspect of this thread, there are at least 3 zones on the Moon where active or at least viable life might be found:

1. The main habitable zone that exists below the upper frozen zone where there is enough water and the temperature is between -20 to 120 C. Presumably, the putative ecosystem would be supported by methanogenic autotrophes that fix CO2 with energy gained from H2 released by the serpentinization of olivine.

2. Possible zones of liquid brines that would overlie permafrost consisting of water-ice cemented regolith. These would be analogous to similar zones known to contain life in the Antarctic dry valleys. The advantage of these zones is that they may be quite close to the surface in some places--perhaps less than 1 meter.

3. The permanently shaded polar cold traps. Obviously, such places can't support active life, but some people have speculated they may be a great place to find possible Martian or Ceresian life forms, or if there is active life on the Moon, material containing Lunar microbes that was dislodged by an impact might also come to rest there, where it's possible they could be preserved. Since we're going there anyway, assaying recovered Lunar ice samples for signs of life would represent some easily plucked low-hanging fruit.
« Last Edit: 08/15/2012 08:05 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #75 on: 08/15/2012 02:39 am »
Per the oracle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Quote
The geologic era in which abiogenesis likely took place was the early Eoarchean era (between 4.0 and 3.6 billion years ago, i.e. the time after the Hadean era in which the Earth was essentially molten) with abiogenesis occurring between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago.

Quote
Between 3.8 and 4.1 Ga, changes in the orbits of the gaseous giant planets may have caused a late heavy bombardment that pockmarked the Moon and the other inner planets (Mercury, Mars, and presumably Earth and Venus). This would likely have sterilized the planet, had life appeared before that time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

Quote
The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact: a Mars-sized body hitting the newly formed proto-Earth, blasting material into orbit around it, which accreted to form the Moon.[18] Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System. Computer simulations modelling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system and the small size of the lunar core; they also show that most of the Moon came from the impactor, not from the proto-Earth.[19] More recent tests suggest more of the Moon coalesced from the Earth and not the impactor.[20][21][22] Meteorites show that other inner Solar System bodies such as Mars and Vesta have very different oxygen and tungsten isotopic compositions to the Earth, while the Earth and Moon have near-identical isotopic compositions. Post-impact mixing of the vaporized material between the forming Earth and Moon could have equalized their isotopic compositions,[23] although this is debated.[24]

Quote
Around the core is a partially molten boundary layer with a radius of about 500 kilometers.[28] This structure is thought to have developed through the fractional crystallization of a global magma ocean shortly after the Moon's formation 4.5 billion years ago.[29]

http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar06/mars_magmaOcean.html

Quote
The Apollo 11 basalts provided one bit of evidence. Cosmochemists found that some chemical characteristics of mare basalts were complementary to those of anorthosites. This suggested that the regions in the deep interior of the Moon where the basalt lavas formed by partial melting were part of the same magma from which the anorthosites formed. Since the mare basalts formed at depths of hundreds of kilometers, the magma must have been hundreds of kilometers thick.

******************

If the oracle can be believed, it asserts that Luna was formed from the detritus of Theia after it impacted Earth 4.5 gya. 

Between 4.1 to 3.8 gya the LHB occured.

After all this excitement, abiogenesis occurred between 3.9 to 3.5 gya. 

These dates haven't yet been pinned down with greater accuracy, at least by the oracle. It looks like life occurred on Earth after the impact of Theia and the Moon's formation.  The magma ocean that was the surface of the Moon was "several hundreds of kilometers" deep. , not one to a hundred meters, as Warren suggests.  [Edit: Warren did not actually suggest this; I used incorrect wording.]  Warren suggests looking  in the range of one to a hundred meters for the hypothetical aquifers.  If life had originated on Earth before the Theian impact event, it sure seems unlikely to have been robust and widespread enough to spread to the proto-Moon.

Warren seems to recognize this.  There are some zones on the Moon where it may be that there are organics, and the temperatures of those zones may be habitable for life as we know it.  There is a possible hypothesis for life in these zones, but there is no theoretical mechanism by which life could have gotten to those zones.

>
Quote from: Warren Platts
Moreover, nobody as far as I know has ever suggested that life originated on Earth before the hypothetical Theia impacted the Earth; nobody as far as I know has suggested life on Earth would survive the Theia impact.

He seems to be suggesting that we look in the zones he has identified largely because he says so.  He appears to be the only one identifying these zones as presently containing signs of life, and there is no way that anybody else can drill down to these depths.  The zones in question were thoroughly sterilized by the magma ocean.  He is left with suggesting a second genesis of life in these zones.

I'm thinking of Mark Twain: "Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference."
« Last Edit: 08/15/2012 01:12 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts

I've been doing some more research trying to tighten up the thermal gradient argument. It turns out there is a radical dogleg in the thermal gradient (K/m) at the regolith/bedrock boundary. The difference has to do with the radically different thermal conductivities (W/mK) of regolith versus solid rock: regolith thermal conductivities are on the order of 0.01 W/mK, whereas that for basalt is more like 1.7 W/mK.

cf. The Apollo Thermal Conductivity Experiment Revisited

The formula relating thermal gradient to thermal conductivity is:

dT/dz = q/k

where:

dT/dz is the thermal gradient (K/m)
k is the thermal conductivity (W/mK)
q is the heat flow (W/m2)

The heat flow on the Moon is on the order of 0.01 to 0.02 W/m2. Thus, as long as one is in the regolith, reasonable thermal gradients are going to be on the order of 1.5 K/m--meaning that temperature increases rapidly with depth.

But once one reaches the basalt bedrock, the thermal gradient drops down to the order of 0.01 K/m.

Regolith depth on the Moon is on average on the order of 10 meters. If the surface temperature at 1 m is 250K, then at 10 meters, the temperature could be expected to be about 264, according to the simulation I ran. Still to cold for fresh water. By the time the temperature gets to 273 K in the basalt bedrock, however, a depth of 1900 m (~6200 feet) is reached. Such a depth could be easily drilled by a small oil rig, but would be out of reach for a single rover.

So the thing to do is:

(a) find a spot where the regolith is extra deep--at 30 meters, it would be warm enough for liquid water under most scenarios;

(b) find a spot where the radioactivity is higher, such the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (a.k.a., the PKT)--higher radioactivity entails higher heat flux and hence higher thermal gradient, in which case, liquid water could possibly be found at a depth of only 20 meters.
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #77 on: 08/15/2012 02:03 pm »
I never suggested, implied nor stated that the magma ocean created by the giant impact that formed the Moon was only 100 m thick.

That is true, and my wording was inaccurate.  I edited the earlier post to this:

Quote from: JF
It looks like life occurred on Earth after the impact of Theia and the Moon's formation.  The magma ocean that was the surface of the Moon was "several hundreds of kilometers" deep.  Warren suggests looking  in the range of one to a hundred meters for the hypothetical aquifers.
 

Quote from: Warren Post # 70
Drilling 1 meter to 100 meters on the Moon...

Quote from: Warren Post # 67
If it's halfway geologically plausible that liquid water could be found within 1 to 100 meters of the surface...

Quote from: Warren Post # 16
...for the practical purposes of this thread, we are only interested in the top 10 to 100 meters of the surface.

These aquifers could have only been created well after the Moon cooled down, and seem unlikely to have condensed out of the Moon's tenuous atmosphere at the time of its creation, due to the Moon's low gravity.  There has yet to be proposed a mechanism by which the hypothetical aquifers, with water and organics in the amounts and depths that Warren theorizes about, could have started accumulating when the Moon cooled enough. This mechanism needs a start date, a rate of accumulation, a time of accumulation, and a means for testing the hypothesis, short of sending up a drilling rig to ground truth a theory presented to the extent that this theory has been presented.

Quote from: Warren Platts
3. Water oceans formed over the former magma ocean on the Earth; presumably, there were periods when bodies of liquid water also formed on the Moon. If panspermia happens, then life could have been transferred to crater lakes on the Moon during this time.

4. Water in crater lakes on the Moon would seep underground bringing living microbes along with it.

5. Then the crater lakes dry up, leaving life forms living underground in sublunarean aquifers.

3.  The "presumably" awaits proof.  "If panspermia happens", also awaits proof. 

As to the magma ocean on Earth, a different process, due to the Earth's gravity and magnetic field is used to explain the creation of Earthly oceans.  It is not unreasonable to think that the Moon's magma oceans could have contained water:

http://geophysics.nmsu.edu/slava/publications/OEM.pdf

Quote
Many authors pointed out that magma oceans can contain substantial amounts of water...

The oracle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Moon#The_lunar_magma_ocean

Quote
...estimates for the depth of this magma ocean ranging from about 500 km to full moon melting.

What is missing tho, is a theory by which the water possibly contained in the Moon's magma oceans condensed and stayed liquid on the surface of the Moon; maintained their temperature and pressure so as to support life; received lifeforms from another body or else underwent abiogenesis; and migrated successfully to the depth of 10m to 100m.

Additionally, if panspermia is proven, then there needs to be a source for that life, which would either  have been Earth, which was the nearest body with life to transfer to the now cooled Moon, or some other source, which Warren does not specify.  This successful transfer of life would have to have taken place some number of years after the Moon's magma ocean cooled.  There is not yeat a theoretical mechanism by which that life traveled from Earth to Moon.  These hypotheses await proof.

4.  "Water in the crater lakes" also awaits proof.  I don't believe this hypothesis, that liquid water crater lakes are known to have existed on the Moon, is in the published literature. 

5.  At Warren's suggested rates of flow, the migration of water and microbes to a depth of 100m would have had to take place in the next 100,000 years, before the lakes were evaporated by the Sun.  The "sublunarean aquifers" have yet to be found, and thus proven.  In addition, those "aquifers" would have had to last long enough so as to leave a verifiable life signature at the depth of 10m to 100m.

I understand Warren to be also asserting that those "aquifers" are still there, awaiting discovery, but I'm not sure if he thinks they currently support living organisms, particularly in the spots where "radioactivity is higher".  It is my intuition that if liquid water is found on the Moon at a depth of a hundred meters, then it will be "soggy soil" [Edit: Clumsy typing mangled this sentence earlier]  and not free flowing water, but that's just my guess today of the possible nature of those hypothetical aquifers.

It may be the case, according to Warren's continued work on his "thermal gradient argument", that theory would allow liquid water in the zones that he's interested in.  If liquid water were to be found in those zones, that would change some of the thinking about the history of the Moon's formation.
« Last Edit: 08/16/2012 03:23 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #78 on: 08/15/2012 02:07 pm »
I've been doing some more research trying to tighten up the thermal gradient argument. It turns out there is a radical dogleg in the thermal gradient (K/m) at the regolith/bedrock boundary. The difference has to do with the radically different thermal conductivities (W/mK) of regolith versus solid rock: regolith thermal conductivities are on the order of 0.01 W/mK, whereas that for basalt is more like 1.7 W/mK.
...

So the thing to do is:

(a) find a spot where the regolith is extra deep--at 30 meters, it would be warm enough for liquid water under most scenarios;

(b) find a spot where the radioactivity is higher, such the Procellarum KREEP Terrane (a.k.a., the PKT)--higher radioactivity entails higher heat flux and hence higher thermal gradient, in which case, liquid water could possibly be found at a depth of only 20 meters.


Warren, this probe may be useful:[/i]


A COMPACT IN-SITU THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY PROBE AS PART OF A LUNAR REGOLITH EXCAVATIONSYSTEM By  S. Nagihara, K. Zacny, M. Hedlund, and P. T. Taylor  43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2012)
At: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2012/pdf/1135.pdf

"Introduction: Geothermal heat flow measurements are a high priority for the future lunar geophysical network missions recommended by the latest Decadal
Survey [1] and previously the International Lunar Network [2]. Because the lander for such a mission will be relatively small, the heat flow instrumentation
must be a low-mass and low-power system, while it needs to measure both thermal gradient and thermal conductivity of the regolith penetrated. It also needs to be capable of excavating a deep enough hole (~3 m, [2]) to avoid the effect of potential long-term changes of the surface thermal environment [3, 4]."


And eventually, when we have geologists and engineers on the Moon, we will drill several kilometers deep into the fractured megaregolith to look for liquid water and life.


"The regolith is generally from 4 to 5 metres thick in mare areas and from 10 to 15 metres in the older highland regions.[9] Below this true regolith is a region of blocky and fractured bedrock created by larger impacts, which is often referred to as the 'megaregolith'."
From: Regolith
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regolith


Cheers!


Edited.
« Last Edit: 03/22/2014 04:19 pm by HappyMartian »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #79 on: 08/16/2012 03:59 pm »
Quote from: JF
There has yet to be proposed [By Warren Platts] a mechanism by which the hypothetical aquifers, with water and organics in the amounts and depths that Warren theorizes about, could have started accumulating when the Moon cooled enough. This mechanism needs a start date, a rate of accumulation, a time of accumulation, and a means for testing the hypothesis, short of sending up a drilling rig to ground truth a theory presented to the extent that this theory has been presented.

Quote from: S. Alan Stern
During Epoch II, which spanned the period from the end of the last magma ocean and the formation of the lunar crust 4.4 Gyr ago, until the tailoff of large impacts, 3.4-3.0 Gyr ago, the lunar atmosphere stochastically fluctuated between an SBE state and thicker environments owing to the effects of vulcanism and impacts.

And of course, "stochastically" means, for all practical purposes, "randomly", from "rarified" to "thick, thermally supported rock vapor pressure atmosphere".  (Leaving aside for the moment that we need to know more about water vapor prssure.)  Without more knowledge about the varying pressures and the elemental content of that atmosphere, it cannot be said for certain what the conditions for life may have been.  In addition, we still don't know the exact time that abiogenesis happened here, the exact nature of the oceans and the atmosphere, whether there were multiple starts and stops, the time range in which abiogenesis may have occurred, nor do we have a testable mechanism by which we know abiogenesis to have happened.  Same for the liklihood of panspermia.

During that 1.0-1.4 Billion year interval, when those volcanoes were active, the pressure of the Moon's atmosphere varied.  However, the elemental content of that atmosphere, was not mentioned by Mr. Stern.  There must have  some water in the volcanic eruptions, but this does not constitute proof of the quantities of water such that they condensed into "crater lakes".  Mr. Stern acknowledges that basing too many conclusions based on this volcanic observation would be incorrect; after all it is a "crude (and perhaps grossly inaccurate) scale for the "background" mass" of the lunar atmosphere.  It's another way of saying "More data is needed".


Quote from: JF
The "presumably" awaits proof.  "If panspermia happens", also awaits proof.

Quote from: Warren Platts
So what? I'm sure you have a point here. Perhaps you should spell it out explicitly.

You haven't proved anything about "presumably, there were periods when bodies of liquid water also formed on the Moon".  You haven't proved anything about "If panspermia happens".

It is interchanges like this which call to mind Samuel Clemmons.

Quote from: JF
What is missing tho, is a theory by which the water possibly contained in the Moon's magma oceans condensed and stayed liquid on the surface of the Moon; maintained their temperature and pressure so as to support life; received lifeforms from another body or else underwent abiogenesis; and migrated successfully to the depth of 10m to 100m.

You may have such a comprehensive theory in your mind, but you have not yet presented it.

You have said that "condensation will occur if the pressure and temperature regime favors condensation", but this is a general statement about condensation.  It doesn't address the particulars of water condensation on the Moon during the volcanic period, or during periods of "Copernicus sized impacts".  You have addressed the pressure, "millibar-class atmospheres", but you haven't addressed the temperature, the quantity of water accumulated, or the time during which it may have accumulated.   You have stated only that "presumably, there were periods when bodies of liquid water also formed on the Moon", without proof or substantiation.

You haven't specified whether lifeforms on the Moon may have been created by abiogenesis or by panspermia.  While you have speculated that life may have come to the Moon from Earth, Mars, Ceres, or Enceladus, this is still speculation only.   If panspermia can be proven, you have not yet proven it.  Upon the speculation of panspermia, you rest your theory of the origin of lifeforms on the Moon.

Finally, you have not specified a mechanism by which these possible lifeforms could have migrated successfully to the depth of 10m to 100m.  You have pointed out that one can apply multiplication to arbitrarily assumed distances and times, resulting in an arbitrary speed:

To migrate 1 km over 1 million years (a mere blink in geological time) the average speed would have to be 1 mm/year. This is a rate of about 1/10th of a micrometer per hour. The diameter of most bacteria ranges from about 0.2 to 2 microns. To put this in perspective, the continents on the Earth move at 10 to 100 times faster than this speed.

You have pointed out that on Earth, lifeforms have been found as deep as 5km, but this says nothing about presumed lunar lifeforms:

Microbes have been found as deep as we have looked for them. Five kilometers is the record so far. You seem to be confused about microbes make their way into deep formations. The simplest explanation is they simply move through little channels, cracks and pores.

This proves nothing about analogous events transpiring on the Moon.

Quote from: JF
4.  "Water in the crater lakes" also awaits proof.  I don't believe this hypothesis, that liquid water crater lakes are known to have existed on the Moon, is in the published literature.
 
There you go again, putting words in my mouth I never said....

Well, below is your quote where you mention the "crater lakes" on the Moon:

And as I said, a million years is a blink in geological and evolutionary time. Therefore, it would be surprising that any organisms on the Moon did not have plenty of time to make the migration from crater lakes to underground aquifers; which if my calculations are correct, the shallowest depths of which are measured on scales of 10 to 100 meters, not 1000 m. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate the supersurprising idea that organisms wouldn't have a 100,000 years to move 100 meters.

If these crater lakes are not thought by you to be full of water, what do you suppose they are full of?

Incidentally, I am not presenting theories requiring burdens of proof.  You are.

You claim there are likely have been crater lakes up on the Moon.  You claim that these lakes have likely become sublunarean aquifers.  You claim that it is highly likely that there is life in these aquifers.

Quote from: Warren Platts
Yeah? So what? What IS your point?!?

You haven't proven anything.

********************

Oooo.  And speaking of grammar:

Quote from: Warren Platts
And yet again, your intuition fails to capture reality. Name a single "soggy soil" place on Earth that isn't crawling with life.

Clumsy typing mangled my sentence in my post which you refer to.  I have corrected it.

It is my intuition that if liquid water is found on the Moon at a depth of a hundred meters, then it will be "soggy soil" ....
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #80 on: 08/17/2012 12:56 pm »
Quote from: Warren Platts
There was plenty of water available to form crater lakes.

Maybe so, but that doesn't mean they were there.  There's a lot of gold in the world.  That doesn't mean that it's in my possession. 
I don't think that anybody is stating in the public literature that there were crater lakes of liquid water on the Moon.

Quote from: JF
you haven't addressed the temperature, the quantity of water accumulated, or the time during which it may have accumulated.

Quote from: Warren Platts
1500 K > 373 K > 273 K > 250 K > 30 K

Which does not address the temperature, the quantity of water accumulated, or the time during which it may have accumulated.

Quote from: Warren Platts
I specifically said I didn't know if abiogenesis or panspermia or a combination of the two or neither happened on the Moon.

I understand that.  What I don't understand is how you then deduce that it's "quite likely" that the hypothetical aquifers harbor life:

My claim is that if the sublunarean aquifers are still there, then it's quite likely that they harbor life.

I never said that life on the Moon requires panspermia.

I understand that too.  You don't present a hypothetical mechanism by which life came to be "likely" in those hypothetical aquifers.

Moreover, your supercillious assertion that the speed of migration estimate I calculated was arbitrarily chosen is either an intentional misrepresentation or a catastrophic misreading of what I wrote: the estimate was an attempt to come up with a reasonable lower bound on migration rates...

Citation needed on that lower bound, as well as a cite on the upper bound.

Quote from: Warren Platts
John, have you ever heard of the principle of uniformitarianism? Or the Copernican principle? In essence, the idea is that the Earth is not special. The theory is that same laws of physics that happen on the Earth also happen at other places in the universe. This does require the assumption that the universe is somewhat orderly. If you disagree with that assumption, I can respect that, I guess.

This general observation does not support a theory of likely life in unknown sublunarean aquifers which are hypothesized by you to have come from liquid water lakes in lunar craters.  After you suggest a mechanism by which life might have arrived on the Moon, then give your estimate of how fast the microbes migrated to the hypothetical aquifers.

Quote from: Warren Platts
The real question if what are you full of.

No.  The real question is:  Would the hypothetical crater lakes have been full of liquid water under a temperate, and adequately pressurized early lunar atmosphere for a long enough time to have supported life?

Quote from: Warren Platts
I was hoping it was something a little more substantive like that we can't go spending money looking for liquid water on the Moon because we haven't yet proved that what we are looking for is there.

That's correct. 

You have presented a very incomplete theory supporting your supposition of "likely life" in hypothetical aquifers from unsubstantiated liquid water in lunar craters at some time in the Moon's history, when its atmosphere would have supported liquid water on the surface.  You suggest that life came to be in that water, but that you don't "know if abiogenesis or panspermia or a combination of the two or neither happened on the Moon".  One can only wonder how "likely" life would be in the hypothetical aquifers if "neither" panspermia nor abiogenrsis happened on the Moon. 

Like you say: "We can't go spending money looking for liquid water on the Moon because we haven't yet proved that what we are looking for is there".
« Last Edit: 08/17/2012 03:04 pm by JohnFornaro »
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: John Fornaro
We should not go spending money looking for liquid water on the Moon in sublunarean aquifers because the existence of those hypothetical aquifers is not supported by a more complete theory of how they came to be, and how life could have arrived in those aquifers.

To say we shouldn't attempt to seek out liquid water on the Moon because the theory behind the liquid water hypothesis is "incomplete" is no argument. All science is incomplete. Modern physics is incomplete in that we still haven't found a way to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. Yet that doesn't stop us from spending billions on particle accelerators. Similarly, astrobiology is obviously incomplete: yet that hasn't stopped us from spending billions on Mars probes that have looked for life either directly or indirectly.

So why shouldn't we look for liquid water on the Moon as well?

Let's review: the main fact that cannot be debated is that there are large zones within the Moon where the temperature and pressure are within the liquid water area of the water phase diagram. Moreover, the thermal gradient of the regolith has been directly measured by instruments emplaced by Apollo 15 and Apollo 17. The measured thermal gradient of ~1.5 K/m is huge compared to the thermal gradient of the underlying basalt (~0.01 to 0.02 K/m).

The relation between the thermal gradient, heat flow and thermal conductivity is given by:

dT/dz = q/k

where:

dT/dz is the thermal gradient (K/m)
k is the thermal conductivity (W/mK)
q is the heat flow (W/m2)

Given this formula, it is easy to calculate to a first order approximation where the habitable zone in relation to the surface of the Moon should begin. So we can reasonably infer that the order of magnitude ball park where the temperature and pressure favor the existence of liquid water should begin anywhere from within ~10 m to ~1000 m of the surface, depending heavily on the depth of the regolith and the local heat flow.

Of course, just because the temperature and pressure are right for liquid water does not entail that there is in fact liquid water there. Indeed, the old fashioned, commonplace perception that the Moon is as dry as a bone has led the Moon to be largely passed over as an astrobiology science target. However, in my considered opinion, there is some empirical evidence to support the idea that liquid water may exist in places within the Moon:

First, and most importantly, is the recent Brown University discovery of water at the ppt level within mantle specks encapsulated within glass beads found within the famous orange soil discovered by Cernan and Schmitt of Apollo 17. This concentration of water is comparable to that found within mid-oceanic ridge basalts (MORBs) found on Earth. Which in hindsight is not surprising, considering that the Moon and Earth share a common origin. Moreover, such water deep within the mantle should cause serpentinization of olivine, which would provide both a heat source (since serpentinization is highly exothermic) and an energy source for methanogenic, Lunar lithotrophes in the form of H2. This primordial water on the Moon can provide a continuing source of fresh water and fresh food that could keep a Lunar ecosystem going for billions of years.

Second, there is indirect evidence of liquid water within the Moon in the form of the rimless, oddly-shaped craters like Ina. According to Dr. Spudis and others, one likely explanation for these features (which have also been observed on Mercury) is that they were caused by violent, volatile gas expulsions. Water is a common Lunar volatile, and so water, probably in all it's phases, is likely to be involved: as steam heated by local hot spots, radioactive decay, and/or serpentinization becomes overpressured and moves toward the surface, when it gets to the cold surface layers, it would then condense and freeze. If this layer occurred within the regolith, the water would freeze and turn unconsolidated regolith into a rock hard, impervious cement. Then eventually, as heating of liquid water by serpentinization outpaces the conductivity of the overlying non-cemented regolith and it's ability to radiate the heat away into space, the water would turn into a gas, and the pore spaces would become extremely overpressured. The pressure would only increase until something gave way: a violent explosion ensues, and the rimless pit is formed. Note that such events cannot be blamed on water and volatiles leftover from comet impacts.

Of course, even if we find liquid water, that does not entail that we will find life. However, we know for a fact that in between the present Lunar epoch--where the Lunar atmosphere, technically a "surface boundary exosphere" (SBE), is a virtual vacuum--and the Hadean epoch--where the Moon had a 100 Bar rock vapor atmosphere with a temperature in excess of 1500 K--there must have been a second, intermediate epoch (during which occurred the Late Heavy Bombardment) in which the atmospheric pressure varied wildly between periods where an SBE prevailed, and other periods when the atmospheric pressure almost certainly was well above the triple point of water. As Vondrak mathematically demonstrated, once the atmosphere gets thick enough to cross a very low threshold, upper layers protect lower layers, the solar wind gets deflected around the planet, and the atmosphere becomes stable on a time scale of 103 years in the sense that any given molecule will not get dissipated into space for a period on the order of 103 years (as opposed to the current conditions, where gases are lost to space on a time scale measured in months).

What the weather was like back then is anybody's guess at this point. It would certainly make an interesting numerical climatic modeling project. However, it almost certainly must have been the case that the temperature at times must have been between freezing and boiling and that cometary impacts must have occassionally delivered enough water to cause precipitation; after all, this is during the time when most of the Earth's water is thought to have been delivered via cometary impacts.

Now, it is certainly the case that the Martian meteorite, ALH84001, cannot be taken as conclusive evidence for the existence of life on Mars. On the other hand, ALH84001, and others of its class have conclusively demonstrated that (a) material is exchanged between Mars, the Earth, and the Moon, and (b) that these transfer events can happen at low enough temperatures so that any life contained within such rocks would not be sterilized. Therefore, given the evidence and theory we have available to us today, it is certainly not implausible that life could be transferred from the Earth to the Moon and Mars, or vice versa. Any Martian or Earthly life that was transferred to the Moon that happened to land in a little, warm crater lake might very well have survived. From there, such life forms would be able to make their way into the Lunar groundwater on time scales measured in hours or weeks. Once life got down past the first few meters, it would be home free in the inevitable event that the lake desiccated. Once underground, some of the life would eventually come into contact with groundwaters fed in part by primordial water moving up from deeper within the mantle and lower crust. The fractures within the megaregolith would provide plenty of living space for microbial life, and the fresh water moving up from below would provide a more or less constant trickle of fresh food in the form of H2 coming from the serpentinization of olivine.

Or alternatively, during this second epoch on the Moon, the Moon was a much wetter, more volcanically active place than it is today: therefore, it is certainly not implausible that there existed Lunar analogues for most of the environments on the early Earth, such as hydrothermal vents, that are thought to be conducive for the spontaneous origin of life. Certainly, it is the case that the Moon did not have as much time as the Earth did for abiogenesis to occur; however, we cannot say beyond a reasonble doubt that the Moon did not have enough time for abiogenesis to occur. Indeed, since the Moon cooled faster than the Earth after the end of the Hadean, perhaps it's the case that life originate on the Moon first, and was then spread to Planet Earth!

In sum, the idea that (1) life could have originated or arrived on the Moon early in its history, that (2) Lunar life might very well still be extant, and that (3) it might very well be found at depths that could be accessed by robots or humans relatively easily, cannot reasonably be dismissed out of hand. The reason that Lunar astrobiology has not been discussed much in the past is because the entire case presented here hinges on the very recent announcement in May of 2011 that the Moon contains Earth-equivalent amounts of water within the Moon's mantle (cf. Scientists detect Earth-equivalent amount of water in the moon). Without such a plausible, indigenous source of fresh water and energy, it would indeed be hard to make a case for life in the Moon. But now that such a source has been found, the opposite condition holds: it is now difficult--once one thoughtfully considers the evidence with an open mind--to presume that life could not exist on the Moon!

Therefore, why not attempt to seek out liquid water deposits on future Lunar missions??

Well, isn't it the case that it is more likely that life exists on Mars? Perhaps. If we were to assign personal Bayesian prior probabilities to the likelihood that life will eventually be found on the Moon and/or Mars, no doubt Mars would score higher on average. Of course, the real probabilities are either 1 or 0. Either life is present on the Mars and/or the Moon, or it is not. The fact is that, for now, we don't know, and we will never know for sure unless we go try and find out.

One thing is certain, however: and that is that the cost and difficulty of Lunar operations is far less than Martian operations at this point in our technological and economic history. Therefore, one is well within reason to question the wisdom of blowing off the Moon pretty much entirely as President Obama would have us do, in order that every spare dollar be spent on a push to Mars in an attempt to find life there. Indeed, wouldn't we all feel kind of stupid if we went to Mars first, only to find out years later that ET was right under our nose on the Moon the whole time?

And here is where my agenda comes in: here is the danger IMHO: if we attempt to go straight to Mars first without building up a serious cis-Lunar infrastructure that includes Lunar ISRU propellants, then it's pretty much going to have to be the sort of Apollo-on-steroids, Mars Direct-style type of architecture that gets us there, where very many tonnes go up into space and very few tonnes come back, with little to nothing that is reused. Such an architecture is not sustainable in the long term; once "success" was declared, cancelation would be the likely result, and we would be back where we are now--basically at square one.

On the other hand, if we are patient and husband our resources by building permanent infrastructure that accumulates over time, starting with a permanently manned, international, Lunar research station, the new view of the Moon demonstrates that we can still do intensive astrobiology at the same time, with actual human scientist boots on the ground--albeit on the Moon. If the analysis presented here has no irreparable major holes in it (and I see none so far--John Fornaro certainly hasn't pointed out one yet), then it is the case that we stand a fairly good chance of achieving positive astrobiological results on the Moon for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the waiting time that a similar Mars effort would entail. And even if the search for liquid water eventually proved futile, or that any liquid water found turned out to be entirely sterile, looking for liquid water on the Moon would not be a waste of resources since the experience gained and equipment developed would prove invaluable to future Mars efforts that will certainly occur sooner or later. :)

Cheers!
« Last Edit: 08/19/2012 08:58 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #82 on: 08/19/2012 10:58 am »
Great job Warren!

I might quibble on the need for an atmosphere and liquid water to be present on the surface of the Moon in order for there to be hospitable conditions for life riding inside an incoming impactor from Earth, as that may not be a valid requirement.

Impactors from Earth could inject material directly, and sometimes quite deeply, into the Lunar regolith and megaregolith, and be promptly buried thus obviating the need for an atmosphere and liquid water on the surface, if the appropriate conditions are or were available at such depths. Initial heat from such a deep impact could be dissipated fast enough by the Lunar water, volatiles, or other conditions inside the Moon, and should not be considered a guaranteed sterilizing agent.

Remember that a fragment coming from Earth might have a relatively low velocity when it hits the Moon. You would have various orbits with the many fragments launched by a large impactor that has hit the Earth.

From: Repeated Blows  By
At: http://www.miracosta.edu/home/kmeldahl/articles/blows.pdf
"Based on the number of craters on the moon, astronomers estimate that about 60 such giant space rocks slammed into the earth during the past 600 million years. Even the smallest of those collisions would have left a scar 95 kilometers (about 60 miles) wide and would have released a blast of kinetic energy equivalent to detonating 10 million megatons of TNT."


And, "Such impact tracers are especially prevalent with large, devastating collisions like the hypothetical one illustrated here: an asteroid 10 kilometers (six miles) wide slams into a coastline, transmitting temperatures of several thousand degrees and pressures a million times greater than the weight of the earth’s atmosphere."

And, "The explosion ejects some 21,000 cubic kilometers (5,000 cubic miles) of debris, about 1,700 cubic kilometers of which is launched into orbit at 50 times the speed of sound."


Note also the early period.

Late Heavy Bombardment
At: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Heavy_Bombardment
"The Late Heavy Bombardment (commonly referred to as the lunar cataclysm, or LHB) is a period of time approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago (Ga) during which a large number of impact craters were formed on the Moon, and by inference on Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars as well."

And, "Extrapolating lunar cratering rates to Earth at this time suggest that the following number of craters would have formed:[citation needed]

    22,000 or more impact craters with diameters >20 km (12 mi),
    about 40 impact basins with diameters about 1,000 km (620 mi),
    several impact basins with diameter about 5,000 km (3,100 mi)"

And, "Serious environmental damage would occur about every 100 years, although life is not known to have existed on Earth at this time."



Ahhhh, forget my quibble Warren. Kudos to you! Have a great day!


Cheers!

"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #83 on: 08/19/2012 04:40 pm »
1) On the other hand, ALH84001, and others of its class have conclusively demonstrated that (a) material is exchanged between Mars, the Earth, and the Moon, and (b) that these transfer events can happen at low enough temperatures so that any life contained within such rocks would not be sterilized. ...

2) Certainly, it is the case that the Moon did not have as much time as the Earth did for abiogenesis to occur; however, we cannot say beyond a reasonble doubt that the Moon did not have enough time for abiogenesis to occur. ...

3) Without such a plausible, indigenous source of fresh water and energy, it would indeed be hard to make a case for life in the Moon. But now that such a source has been found, the opposite condition holds: it is now difficult--once one thoughtfully considers the evidence with an open mind--to presume that life could not exist on the Moon! ...

4) If the analysis presented here has no irreparable major holes in it (and I see none so far--John Fornaro certainly hasn't pointed out one yet)...

First, thanks for changing your tone of voice.

1) I don't know of any proof that "such rocks would not be sterilized".

2) It is not known at all how much time abiogenesis requires, other than the obvious outer bound that abiogenesis happened some time in Earth's distant past.  Therefore there's reaonable doubt that abiogenesis occurred on the Moon. 

3) It is known that the Moon has a molten interior, and that there is some kind of "moon-tonics" going on even to this day.  Presumably this is a possible energy source. There might be the serpentinization process as well.  There is water in the glass beads at the ppt level, which in and of itself is insufficient to support life.  The data still suggests plenty of water up there, even so.

My contention contines to be that sublunarean aquifers have not yet been found at depths of 1 to 100m.  If there is liquid water there, it will be in a "soggy soil".  If they should indeed exist, and if there had been a process by which life could have gotten to that level, there may be a chance that it could live there still.  I think that that chance is very small, to the point that a mission to hunt for life in that environment should not be prioritized.  Again, I am criticizing your theory; I am not offering a competing theory.

4) The major hole in your theory, in my opinion, is that you have not presented a mechanism by which life could have gotten to those aquifers.  That the theories of panspermia or abiogenesis exist doesn't explain which process would be more likely to seed those aquifers, especially in the time frame after the impact of Theia.  Furthermore, you speculate about the existance of those aquifers themselves.

It is thought that there are two possible ways that life on Earth originated:  Panspermia from some other source, or abiogenesis here on Earth.  Neither of these processes have been proven, tho it is my understanding that abiogenesis is the preferred explanation among those people who study life on Earth.

I understand your proximity argument about searching for lunar life rather than martian life.  It is my opinion that we should continue the unmanned astrobiological work on Mars so that it can be said with greater certainty whether or not it is a barren planet.  We should spend money on establishing a manned polar base with the primary purpose of developing an infrastructure for living off planet, including solving the propellant problems that await solution, and developing the capability for routine human access to a new cis-lunar economy.

Many years from now, after this capability has been developed, drill below the Moon's surface and look for life there, if a private group could fund that effort.  Do not use public funds at this time for a search for lunar life.
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #84 on: 08/20/2012 06:32 am »
....

Many years from now, after this capability has been developed, drill below the Moon's surface and look for life there, if a private group could fund that effort.  Do not use public funds at this time for a search for lunar life.


John, you've not accepted some of the ideas that have been offered in this thread and that is fine by me.

In any case, it is likely that humans and our robotic rovers will be able to initially detect underground Lunar ice, and liquid water if it exists, by using ground penetrating radar and seismic or acoustic devices in direct contact with the Lunar surface.

Such liquid water, should it exist, might be much easier to drill for and use for ISRU purposes than ice.

It is quite likely that we will look for liquid water and ice at the same time and using the same tools, and in some cases both water and ice may be present at the same location under the surface of the Moon.

As part of the routine ISRU process of evaluating, mining, and using Lunar ice, and potentially liquid water resources, we would analyze and monitor that valuable H2O for useful gases and other chemicals, including those that may indicate current or previous life on the Moon.

So all in all, the process of initially finding or not finding life on the Moon is unlikely to cost any additional amount of money or time because we would be already be using the same process and tools to look for underground ice and various other needed resources on the Moon.

However, just because that knowledge of the presence or absence of Lunar life may be a freebee of our expected Lunar exploration and ISRU efforts, it still should be respected as an important and valuable scientific goal.

Warren has clearly shown us some interesting Lunar possibilities and I thank him for his hard work in that serious intellectual effort.

Take care John!

Cheers!


Edited.   
« Last Edit: 08/20/2012 06:42 am by HappyMartian »
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Offline Warren Platts

First, thanks for changing your tone of voice.

No problem sir. Chris was nice enough to reopen the thread (after I reupped my L2 subscription! ;) I urge everyone who's not a member to help support the operating costs of this epic site by becoming an L2 member!). I pruned back my low signal-to-noise posts; you might want to consider doing the same.

I'd rather not play the slice and dice game again, since it's impossible to follow and makes for boring reading for the two lurkers who are following this thread. ;)

So I shall focus on your bottom line argument that NASA resources should not be expended on looking for liquid water.

The argument is that the search for life would in all likelihood turn out to be a waste of scarce resources because the probability of finding life (Pf)is vanishingly small. The likelihood of finding life relies on a series of Bayesian prior probabilities that must be multiplied:

Pl = probability that viable life gets to the Moon, either through interplanetary transfer or abiogenesis, and then survives
Pg = probability that Lunar groundwater exists
Pa = probability that Lunar life will be "easily" accessible, say within 100 m of the surface

Thus:

Pf = Pl X Pg X Pa


I will treat these in order:

==>Pl: that life occurred on the Moon depends of course on the fact that life occurred on Earth naturally; that is, life on Earth either occurred through panspermia or abiogenesis; and conversely, that life on Earth did not originate through either directed panspermia or an act of special creation by God. Now, John, you've already expressed sympathy for directed panspermia in this thread. That's fine and dandy, but for the political argument about disposing of NASA taxpayer dollars, the probability that life originated on Earth naturally must be assigned a probability of 1.0; if your argument here is that we shouldn't look for life on the Moon because life on Earth was probably seeded by an intelligent life form that wouldn't bother to spread life to such a barren place as the Moon, then your political argument that we shouldn't expend public dollars looking for life fails right here.

--Transfer to the Moon: the idea that rocks transfered to the Moon from Earth would necessarily be sterilized is simply false. This is common knowledge: people have worked out the theory and have empirically analyzed the temperature history based on the geochemistry of the interior of meteorites and have conclusively demonstrated that it is quite possible for rocks to be transferred and not get sterilized. So already, I have proven that your estimate of Pf is too low. That viable life could be transferred to the Moon is actually quite likely: call it 90%.

Of course, once life lands, it must worm it's way underground. I guess the comment that Lunar aquifers would be "soggy soil" is meant to imply that the permeability of Lunar soggy soils would be so low that life would not have time to migrate into the interior. The problem is the premise is surely false: no doubt regolith soaked with water will tend to be soggy soil of low permeability, but the regolith only extends down to a depth of 10 m on average. Therefore, 99% of the aquifer would be in the "megaregolith"--essentially fractured basalt where the hydraulic conductivity could be expected to range from 10-2 to 10-12 m/sec. So movement within the aquifer would not present a problem at all. Moreover, lakes would tend to form in craters; but craters also tend to have exposed layers of bedrock (that's why MSL was landed within a crater on Mars). So microbes would not necessarily have to traverse thick layers of mud, and in any case, mud is not totally impermeable, as anyone who has tried to line a farm pond in rocky soil with a layer of clay tends to find out the hard way.  To me, the hard part for life would be the very first step: once a meteor hits, even if any microbes are viable at that point, it might prove difficult to get the first few rounds of reproduction going, even if  the landing occured in the middle of a nice warm pond. On the other hand, any microbes landing on the Moon would at least not have Earth organisms to compete against it. Moreover, the rate of meteor impacts back during Epoch II was much higher than it is today, so that also weighs in favor of Lunar life. Moreover, there is Hap's point that a meteor would necessarily land in a warm pond in order to transfer life. So overall, the odds that at least one of the probable thousands of transfers that took place managed to survive look pretty good. Call it 50%. Thus the overall odds of successful panspermia would be 0.9 * 0.5 = 0.45
 
--Time for abiogenesis: This depends of course on the environment: if Tommy Gold's Hot 'n' Deep theory is the case, then the Moon would have all the time in the world. But there are many other possible explanations as well, so let's just call it 10%. Thus the net probability is given by:

Pl 1 - (.55 * .9) = ~0.5

==>Pg: this must also be given a rather high probability. This is why the Brown results are so game-changing: before Brown, the mantle water concentration was thought to be orders of magnitude less than 1 ppt. At such low levels, there would not be enough water to fill even the tightest basalt formations. But, assuming the Brown results are true, the probability that liquid water aquifers exist on the moon have got to be taken as pretty good, at a minimum. Assigning a 50% probability is probably conservative.

==>Pa the probability that life actually would be found within 100 m of the surface depends on some special circumstances: most especially it requires an extra thick layer of regolith. An average regolith depth of 10 m implies that the depth of the habitable zone is start depth is at about 500 m. The thickness of the habitable zone can be expected to range anywhere from between 5 to 10 km. Howevever, if the regolith is 20 meters thick, the habitable zone can be expected to be found right at the base of the regolith.

On the other hand, if the effective porosity is too high, the entire habitable zone will not be filled up. At a basic concentration of 1 ppt by mass, an aquifer with an effective porosity of 0.3% could be easily filled. Effective porosities of less than 0.3% would provide a surplus of water. However, 0.3% effective porosity is on the extreme low end for Terran basalts; 1% effective porosity is a typical reported lower value. Thus for an aquifer to be filled to the brim where it could be relatively easily accessed by astronauts, it would have to be very tight. Therefore, easily accesible aquifers would only be found in areas where there is widespread thick regolith overlieing relatively fresh basalt that hasn't been disturbed much, such that the effective porosity is <<1%. Such zones are probably very rare on the Moon; on the other hand, the place has a land area larger than Africa, and all we need is one place where the liquid water reaches up close to the surface. That water at least occassionally reaches that high is supported by the existence of the rimless pits, such as Ina. The existence of such pits is a direct prediction of the model presented here, (and is a feature ignored by Mr. Fornaro's analysis so far). (In fact, I'm going to stick my neck out and make a prediction: Ina is located in a region where the regolith is at least 20 to 30 meters thick, probably in a high KREEP zone (higher radioactivity, and there for higher heat flow), and it is in a region that is relatively young and otherwise undisturbed by major impact events.) So the odds of groundwaters reaching up to 100 meters somewhere on the Moon have got to be pretty good. Call it 50%.

Thus: 50% X 50% X 50% = 12.5%

It's a long shot in other words. But so what? In poker, you will lose your shorts if you never take a bet where the odds of winning a hand are less than 50%. What counts is the so-called money odds (the ratio of your bets to the total pot) relative to the odds of drawing a winning hand: if your money odds are 1:10, but the odds of winning are only 1:8, you've got to take that bet.

So what are the money odds of finding life on the Moon? Pretty high IMO. Consider that we as a global society recently spent ~$10B to discover the so-called God Particle. An exciting find to be sure, but one that pales in comparison to a positive finding of life on another planet. NASA has already spent close to $10B on the search for life on Mars, but is balking at a projected cost of $10B for MSR. This is mainly because the odds of MSR actually finding life are quite slim. If we could be reasonably certain that the MSR would deliver definitive results, no doubt the money would be forked over.

We should apply the same reasoning to the Moon. A discovery of life on the Moon would be worth spending $20B if we were reasonably certain we could go there and obtain positive results. Since we can't we can estimate the money we should spend by multiplying the worth of the discovery by the odds of finding it: $20B X 0.125 = $2.5B. Two and a half billion is a lot of money, and would probably buy a mobile drilling rig capable of drilling down a hundred yards or more that could be landed at a likely spot, such as Ina. Thus, as part of an overall aggressive Lunar program, diverting $2.5B for a 100+ meter drilling rig would be an investment that would be well worth it IMHO.
« Last Edit: 08/20/2012 06:41 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #86 on: 08/20/2012 01:24 pm »
Quote from: Warren Platts
I pruned back my low signal-to-noise posts...

LOL.

Quote from: Warren Platts
Pf = Pl X Pg X Pa

My feeling is, on probability equations such as this, that a group of people agree that the assumptions of the equation are correct, over time and with sufficient lobbying, the correctness of the equation becomes accepted as fact, political connections see to it that policy is made, dollars are then spent.  Some calculus of this sort guides the exploration of life on Mars even as we speak.

The Drake Conjecture (that's what I call it) features a similar equation, arguing that there must be life thruout the universe, because the assumed values of the equation are so "reasonably" low.   There is a non-zero chance that the probability of life elsewhere than Earth may be zero.  I could discuss your equation further if it is clear that your values would be subject to revision.

Below, I have summarized my understanding of the terms of your equation.
Quote from: Warren Platts
John, you've already expressed sympathy for directed panspermia in this thread.

I included a quotation from Doctor Francis Crick regarding an efficient methodology for such an intentional attempt.  This is not an expression of sympathy from me; it is a reporting of someone else's words.

Quote from: Warren Platts
I guess the comment that Lunar aquifers would be "soggy soil" is meant to imply that the permeability of Lunar soggy soils would be so low that life would not have time to migrate into the interior.

That is incorrect.  Were I to drill into the soggy soil on either side of the creek in back of the house, I would not be able to pump water.  Should I drill down to a fractured rock level further down, I would tap into an aquifer, with enough free running water to fill a well and be pumped out.  I am aware of the fractured megaregolith, so I agree with the principle of a possible aquifer up there, but I don't think it's there and that the priority for looking for that aquifer be rather low, preferring first, an assay of the surface ice in the craters.

The reason I don't think that there are sub-lunarean aquifers is because I don't think that liquid water existed in lunar craters long enough to find its way down to those levels.  Your theory holds that the lunar atmospheric pressure and temperature allowed this to take place, after the Theian impact event.

I think that if there is water under the lunar surface that is more common than shown in the few chemically bound samples brought back to Earth so far, that it would be "soggy soil" and not an "aquifer".  I have not said that I know this to be a fact; I have said that a sub-lunarean aquifer is not known to be a fact.

Quote from: Warren Platts
[Panspermic] Transfer to the Moon ... call it 90%.

So overall, the odds that at least one of the probable thousands of transfers that took place managed to survive look pretty good. Call it 50%.

Thus the overall odds of successful panspermia would be 0.9 * 0.5 = 0.45.

Time for abiogenesis ... call it 10%.

... before Brown, the mantle water concentration was thought to be orders of magnitude less than 1 ppt. ... Assigning a 50% probability is probably conservative.

... the probability that life actually would be found within 100 m ... Call it 50%.

I can't comment on these individual probabilty estimates, but I believe that I have quoted you accurately.

It is true that my bottom line here is, as usual, mission prioritization, particularly involving public funding.  We are simply not finished looking for life on Mars, therefore we should not use public funding to hunt for it on the Moon.  That task can be done much later in time.
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Offline Hop_David

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #87 on: 08/20/2012 04:47 pm »
Here's a pdf that seems to bolster the notion of native lunar water beneath the surface.

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: Warren Platts
I guess the comment that Lunar aquifers would be "soggy soil" is meant to imply that the permeability of Lunar soggy soils would be so low that life would not have time to migrate into the interior.

That is incorrect.  ... I don't think that liquid water existed in lunar craters long enough to find its way down to those levels.  Your theory holds that the lunar atmospheric pressure and temperature allowed this to take place, after the Theian impact event.

I think that if there is water ... that it would be "soggy soil" and not an "aquifer".

That is incorrect. I guess I must not have made myself clear. I'm not arguing that sublunarean aquifers were filled by Epoch II waters; I'm assuming that most of the water is "native water" degassed from mantle rock.

Your internal picture of the role of "soggy soil" in hydrology is all wrong. Of course it would be stupid to drill a 4" water well into a clay formation. From that, however, it does not at all follow that "soggy soil" is 100% impermeable. If you were correct, aquifers on Earth could never get recharged from rainwater. Now, I don't know if anyone's ever done a "perc test" on Lunar regolith, but I guarantee you it wouldn't take more than a thousand years to drain the hole. It would take hours at most. Your idea that microbes cannot traverse a muddy lake bottom into a gravelly, underlying aquifer is simply false.

Therefore, your political argument regarding mission priorities does not follow.
 
But you've moved the goal posts ...

Quote
We are simply not finished looking for life on Mars, therefore we should not use public funding to hunt for it on the Moon.  That task can be done much later in time.

which is fine. But this is a quite separate argument. Previously you were trying to draw a conclusion (don't hunt for life on the Moon) from a false premise (the soggy bottoms of lakes form a bioimpenetrable barrier).

Now you are equivocating on two separate premises: (1) of course it is true that we are "not finished" looking for life on Mars, in the sense that positive results have yet to be generated; but (2) we are finished looking for Martian life as far as the SMD is concerned. To take it to the next level, they would have to do MSR with no guarantee that life would be found at a cost of ~$10B. So it's not going to happen. Right now, Enceladus beckons the astrobiology community. Mars is passe. If your argument was correct, the SMD shouldn't launch a sample return mission to Enceladus. Obviously, your argument is unsound, with respect to the SMD.

However, you might very well have a point with respect to the HSF Exploration Directorate. According to the Science news article I quoted from earlier, there is a faction within NASA that is prepared to make the hunt for Martian life the top priority of the HSF program. Which, if it happens, you can kiss your Lunar Joy miners and garden tractor swarms  goodbye.

What I propose is that we do a joint project: Lunar ISRU + Lunar astrobiology + Enceladus astrobiology.

What you propose: Martian astrobiology - Lunar ISRU - Enceladus astrobiology.

Let the lurkers decide who is correct and who is incorrect...

« Last Edit: 08/20/2012 08:48 pm by Warren Platts »
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Offline JohnFornaro

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #89 on: 08/20/2012 10:30 pm »
Quote from: Warren Platts
Your idea that microbes cannot traverse a muddy lake bottom into a gravelly, underlying aquifer is simply false.

This is a false statement that you attribute to me.  No point in me continuing.

You win.  See ya around.
Sometimes I just flat out don't get it.

Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: Warren Platts
Your idea that microbes cannot traverse a muddy lake bottom into a gravelly, underlying aquifer is simply false.

This is a false statement that you attribute to me.

Huh? Well then, frankly, I have no idea what the intended relevance of "soggy soil" is supposed to be. Sorry I am not a mind reader.  You should consider that if I don't understand what you are trying to say, probably no one else does either. Maybe you should try drawing a picture.

Anyway, what's the big deal? Your second argument based on the fact that we haven't found life on Mars yet doesn't depend on your "soggy soil" premise. I'm genuinely curious: it's pretty much a given that the SMD is going to blow off Mars for the most part, once MSL is done; yet you are for sending astronauts to the Moon in order to get ISRU rocket fuel (or at least you used to be). But now you're saying we also need to finish doing Martian astrobiology before we start on the Lunar astrobiology. Meanwhile, there's a committee at NASA that's making noises about making Martian astrobiology the top HSF priority, (which after all is consistent with the President's desire that we should  blow off the Moon and head for Mars first). So it seems we are faced with a soup or salad choice of either:

Martian astrobiology + Martian ISRU

XOR

Lunar ISRU + Lunar astrobiology

Surely, you're not arguing here that you would prefer the former over the latter? Or are you?
« Last Edit: 08/21/2012 07:05 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline Warren Platts

Quote from: Platts
In fact, I'm going to stick my neck out and make a prediction: Ina is located in a region where the regolith is at least 20 to 30 meters thick, probably in a high KREEP zone (higher radioactivity, and there for higher heat flow), and it is in a region that is relatively young and otherwise undisturbed by major impact events.

Well, it turns out I was pretty close to the mark. When I said we wanted relatively young terrains covered by thick regolith, that's kind of a contradiction: younger terrains haven't been around long enough to build up an extra thick layer of regolith. But as you can see from the first attached photo (lifted from astrobob's very cool website Ina (red circle) is situated on a relatively narrow basaltic mare sandwiched between two much older, highland terrains.

The second picture is an extreme close up. The picture is easily subject to an optical illusion (you should like that Hop! :) ) The smooth looking terrains are actually bulges (sun is shining from the right). If you're having trouble seeing it that way, one trick I learned by accident is if you're using a laptop, tilt the screen toward you until you are looking at the top edge-on, then slowly move the screen back again. The bulges will show up first, and then remain bulges (at least it works for me on my computer, YMMV).

I found an article that discusses how Ina may have formed:

Quote from: G.Jeffrey Taylor
How Did Ina Form?

The bright, rubbled materials on Ida's floor appear to consist of fresh exposures of high-titanium mare basalt, with the regolith removed. The heights of the hills suggest that the regolith is thicker than 12 meters. An alternative is that the surface consists of pyroclastic volcanic materials, or a combination of regolith and pyroclastic debris. The basalts are old, probably as old as the Apollo 11 mare basalts, about 3.5 billion years. Schultz and colleagues suggest that the regolith or pyroclastic layer was blown away by the sudden release of pressurized gases. The subdued ejecta surrounding the structure indicates that the process was not as energetic as an impact, consistent with a gas eruption. Which gases is unknown, but they must have come from deep within the Moon, and collected beneath the surface until their pressure built up enough to suddenly burp out, blowing regolith around, a rare case of wind on the airless Moon.

Schultz has found three other features similar to Ina. All are related to structural features associated with linear rilles associated with the Imbrium impact basin. These areas may be places of crustal weaknesses that allow interior gases to escape.

Schultz and his coworkers also point out that the Apollo alpha-particle spectrometer gave hints of recent gas releases from the lunar interior. Ina is adjacent to one of the broad regions having elevated polonium-210 alpha particles. Polonium-210, which forms from radon (produced during uranium decay), has a short half-life, so its radon parent must have been released during the past 60 years. Thus, the Moon appears to be leaking gases now, and occasionally does so in bursts, forming or modifying features like Ina.
(my emphasis throughout)

There are several things to note from this description:

1. They say the basalt is "old", but it is relatively young compared to the surrounding terrain that was battered by the LHB.

2. They note that Ina is adjacent to a region that is relatively radioactive, thus pumping up the heat flow.

3. They say the regolith is more than 12 m deep; given the higher radioactivity, the thermal gradient would also be higher. 2.5 K/m would not be unreasonable; thus even though the regolith is only 12 m, it's lower few feet should be above freezing.

4. Only the regolith blew off.

5. Ina and other like it are associated with rille structures of the Imbrium impact basin.

The one thing their theory leaves out is how gases collected beneath the surface. It the blowout event only involved gases, why didn't the gases diffuse through the regolith and escape without a huge pressure buildup? Here is where I think liquid water may have played a role: water seeping up locally into the lower regolith would have formed Fornaro's infamous "soggy soil"; some of this water would seep up into the below-freezing zone and froze, thus forming an effective caprock--something missing from Shultz's theory.
« Last Edit: 08/21/2012 10:26 am by Warren Platts »
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Offline Warren Platts

Here's a pdf that seems to bolster the notion of native lunar water beneath the surface.

I've been thinking about that, and I don't know... Actually it seems to bolster the case that there used to be water beneath the surface, and the reason we don't see signs of hydrated minerals is because all the hydrogen dissociated and then escaped the planet...

If we're going to find liquid water, at shallow depths it's going to require some very special circumstances. (Of course, the habitable zone extends down 10 km--I would be very surprised if there was no liquid water at all within that zone.)

The Ina feature is what keeps my hopes up. It must have happened in the very recent past, probably no more than a million years ago--a blink of the geological eye. But still, a million years is a million years, and that ain't exactly yesterday.

If we're going to find shallow water, it will probably be the same old fashioned way the old timers used to find oil and gas reservoirs--by looking for oil and gas seeps at the surface. These are now an extinct species pretty much on land, but they are still looking for undersea oil seeps.

The Lunar exosphere is extremely tenuous. The Apollo missions alone put out an amount of gases equivalent to the entire Lunar atmosphere. But this is a good thing, since the signal of any gas fumaroles won't be swamped by the larger atmosphere. LADEE is still scheduled to be launched in 2013, but it would be better if we could have a network of several atmospheric monitors since LADEE could conceivably miss a gas release on the other side of the Moon from where it will be situated.

A cool experiment to try would be to release a couple of tonnes of an obviously artificial tracer gas on the opposite side of the Moon and then see how long or if it makes it to the LADEE detector.
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Offline A_M_Swallow

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #93 on: 08/21/2012 11:54 pm »
{snip}
A cool experiment to try would be to release a couple of tonnes of an obviously artificial tracer gas on the opposite side of the Moon and then see how long or if it makes it to the LADEE detector.

The left over propellant in the landers may do that for free.
Oxygen, fuel, helium and RCS monopropellant.

Offline Warren Platts

Since the gases will be dispersed at the landing site, that won't give very much information about how gases move around at the global scale.
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Offline Warren Platts

Bump: recent results from GRAIL suggest high porosity within Moon that could harbor liquid water, and perhaps life:

Quote
In August 2011, planetary scientist Erik Asphaug of Arizona State University published a theory describing the source of the mysterious, mountainous farside lunar highlands: a smaller, short-lived second moon. For tens of millions of years, the moon and moonlet peacefully coexisted. Then, in a slow-motion collision, the moonlet bumped into the moon. Rather than creating a crater, the moonlet pancaked, sending millions of cubic miles of rocky material sliding across the lunar globe. The landslide-like rubble quickly piled up to a depth of tens of miles, Asphaug describes. “So I think that’s consistent with a deeply porous moon, but obviously there are many ways to generate porosity.”
 
Asphaug also notes that a deep, porous crust, as interpreted by the GRAIL team, could have captured water delivered by cometary impacts – and that, if coupled with a source of heat, could have provided briefly favorable pockets where life could evolve with the help of materials ejected from Earth.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/grail-moon-probes-results/

EDIT: porosity map:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/multimedia/pia16588.html
« Last Edit: 12/27/2012 09:37 pm by Warren Platts »
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #96 on: 12/28/2012 12:17 pm »
And with all that porosity will some folks worry a bit less about having a place to dump excess heat from Lunar nuclear and solar thermal electric power plants? 
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Offline Warren Platts

And with all that porosity will some folks worry a bit less about having a place to dump excess heat from Lunar nuclear and solar thermal electric power plants?

Don't see how that follows...
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #98 on: 12/29/2012 10:42 am »
And with all that porosity will some folks worry a bit less about having a place to dump excess heat from Lunar nuclear and solar thermal electric power plants?

Don't see how that follows...

Since this is the Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon! thread you might suspect that very large regions of porosity might contain water, a substance that has long been used to remove waste heat.

Who knows, if there is Lunar life in all that immense amount of porosity, and this thread has offered some good arguments for that possibility, then perhaps that life might even benefit from some artificially warmed water.


Edited.
« Last Edit: 12/30/2012 12:12 am by HappyMartian »
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Offline Warren Platts

I was thinking about this today and got a new idea: that temperature and pressure regions within the Moon exist that should favor the existence of liquid water is a simple matter of logic. Somewhere between the frozen regolith and the hot core, there must exist a zone where liquid water is able to exist. The only questions are whether there is enough juvenile water within the Moon’s mantle to form liquid water, and if so, whether the liquid zone extends close enough to the surface to where evidence for the existence of liquid water could be found practically.

In this regard, note that the unusual shape and extreme youth of the Ina “D-Caldera”—first discovered during the Apollo missions—indicate that it was formed neither from impact cratering nor volcanic eruption. Moreover, the Ina feature is far from unique: over 20 other “meniscus hollows”—so-called due to characteristic convex upward humps—have been identified on the Moon, and similar features have been found on Mercury.

Our current best guess is that these hollows were caused by episodic buildups of high pressure volatiles followed by explosive outgassing. Shultz et al. (2006) suggest that CO2 and H2O are likely culprits. In addition, it has been widely suggested that outgassing of juvenile water is at least partially responsible for the buildup of water ice in permanently shaded regions of the Moon. However, it is difficult to see how either CO2 or H2O alone could cause explosive events. In the case of CO2, in the absence of some sort of caprock, there would be no way for pressure to buildup: for example, Frisillo et al. (1974) estimate that a concentration of argon atoms would diffuse through 30 feet of regolith in a single day.

In the case of H2O, it would also be difficult to form high pressures, though for different reasons: as juvenile water vapor released from mantle moved upward, before it reached the surface it would pass through a zone where it would exist as liquid, and then reach as layer where it would freeze solid, suspending any further movement. Simple calculations demonstrate that the liquid/frozen boundary should be several kilometers below the surface of the Moon.

Note, however, that meniscus hollows are nearly always associated with volcanic features and graben-like structures. Ina itself is located squarely atop a 15-km diameter volcanic shield. Such volcanic shields are likely locations of potential hotspots. Furthermore, the grabens indicate deep faulting and fracturing that would serve the dual function of facilitating the flow of volatiles while inhibiting the flow of heat, thus allowing higher temperatures to build up closer to the lunar surface. In addition, regolith is an excellent insulator, so that regions with thick regolith should also allow higher temperatures—in this regard note that the regolith around Ina is deeper than average. Thus, it is conceivable that temperatures and pressures favoring liquid water could have extended to the base of the regolith at Ina. There liquid water would freeze, and the frozen regolith would form an effective cap rock blocking the flow of volatiles. Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how water alone would have enough energy to cause the “D-caldera” to form. It is highly unlikely that temperatures high enough to form steam could occur, and in any case, hot water would melt the frozen regolith cap rock, allowing any vapor to diffuse through the regolith. In addition, if the liquid water were exposed to the vacuum, it would flash into vapor, but the rapid expansion would cause much of the vapor to form ice crystals—as is commonly observed during everyday urine dumps in crewed spacecraft—thus absorbing much energy.

However, consider this: what if CO2 and H2O  work synergistically? Liquid water trapped beneath a frozen regolith cap rock could entrain massive amounts of dissolved CO2 gas, similar to the situation known to exist in Lake Manoun and other so-called “exploding lakes”. There deep layers in the lake absorb large amounts of dissolved CO2: when the lakes turn over, a catastrophic release of the dissolved CO2 occurs, similar to opening a shaken up can of soda. Thus, it is possible that an impact could cause the catastrophic release of CO2 and H2O at Ina. The resulting explosion would release pressure on adjacent zones causing a cascading chain reaction that could explain the characteristic humpy morphology of meniscus hollows.
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #100 on: 08/02/2013 03:37 pm »

....

Thus, it is possible that an impact could cause the catastrophic release of CO2 and H2O at Ina. The resulting explosion would release pressure on adjacent zones causing a cascading chain reaction that could explain the characteristic humpy morphology of meniscus hollows.



Sounds reasonable to me!

Do you think there would still be minable H2O/CO2 at or near Ina?
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #101 on: 08/03/2013 01:17 pm »
Melted Moon   By Paul D. Spudis  July 31, 2013
At: http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/2013/07/melted-moon/


What happens when melted Moon rock flows above regolith that covers a frozen H2O/CO/CO2/H2/O2 deposit?

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Offline Warren Platts


....

Thus, it is possible that an impact could cause the catastrophic release of CO2 and H2O at Ina. The resulting explosion would release pressure on adjacent zones causing a cascading chain reaction that could explain the characteristic humpy morphology of meniscus hollows.



Sounds reasonable to me!

Do you think there would still be minable H2O/CO2 at or near Ina?

The theory is that once the insulative cover of regolith gets blown off, the "ice-line" where liquid water freezes forming an impenetrable rind or "cap rock" would move down in depth, but would still be reasonably shallow so that liquid H2O (and dissolved CO2) would be a drillable resource.
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Bob Shaw

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #103 on: 08/05/2013 06:49 pm »
Here's a thought: would fracking work on the Moon? Perhaps a seriously small nuke at the bottom of a deep hole would shake and bake some water vapour out of the interstices of the megaregolith...

Offline Warren Platts

Here's a thought: would fracking work on the Moon? Perhaps a seriously small nuke at the bottom of a deep hole would shake and bake some water vapour out of the interstices of the megaregolith...


They tried that on Planet Earth with Operation Plowshare: the idea was to use nukes to open up tight natural gas formations. It didn't work out so hot: it didn't connect the formations liked they hoped it would, and the gas was too radioactive to use. Also, it's against the rules of the OST to send weapons of mass destruction into space...
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Warren Platts

Did a bit of research on the use of the word "sublunarian". Earliest use I could find was a 1849 book by Herman Melville (Mardi) where it's used as a noun: a "sublunarian" is a "denizen of Earth", after the word sublunar, a very old word that means below the Moon, although that word as come to mean the space between Earth and Moon. Actually, I like it better than "cis-lunar" (which has yet to make all the dictionaries) to describe the same thing. Sublunarian as an adjective analogous to subterranean first appears in the 1873 Quarterly Journal of Science, and Annals of Mining, Metallurgy, Engineering, Industrial Arts, Manufactures, and Technology

Quote
We see the traces of tremendous sublunarian disturbances (using the word "sublunarian," here and elsewhere, to correspond to the word "subterranean" used with reference to the earth), and we find some features of resemblance between the effects of such disturbances and those produced by the subterranean forces of our earth;

The word has occurred very sporadically ever since...
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Offline Warren Platts



http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n9/full/ngeo1909.html

Quote
Here we analyse spectroscopic data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and report that the central peak of Bullialdus Crater is significantly enhanced in hydroxyl relative to its surroundings. We suggest that the strong and localized hydroxyl absorption features are inconsistent with a surficial origin. Instead, they are consistent with hydroxyl bound to magmatic minerals that were excavated from depth by the impact that formed Bullialdus Crater. Furthermore, estimates of thorium concentration in the central peak using data from the Lunar Prospector orbiter indicate an enhancement in incompatible elements, in contrast to the compositions of water-bearing lunar samples2. We suggest that the hydroxyl-bearing material was excavated from a magmatic source that is distinct from that of samples analysed thus far.

This is very exciting news.
« Last Edit: 10/07/2013 09:58 pm by Warren Platts »
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #107 on: 08/30/2013 02:28 pm »
Evidence of serpentinization of olivine:

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n9/full/ngeo1909.html

Quote
Here we analyse spectroscopic data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) and report that the central peak of Bullialdus Crater is significantly enhanced in hydroxyl relative to its surroundings.
...

This is very exciting news.

Yep, it sure is! Thank you Warren!
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

In case anyone's interested, here's a copy of the paper I presented at the GS workshop. My approach was to use the debris halo that surrounds Ina to constrain the energetics of whatever phenomenon produced it. It turns out that a CO2-liquid water system has just about the right energy to make it happen: not too violent, not too mild. I can't think of any other phenomenon that could do it. Maybe you can? ;)
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Offline HappyMartian

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #109 on: 10/08/2013 02:48 pm »
In case anyone's interested, here's a copy of the paper I presented at the GS workshop. My approach was to use the debris halo that surrounds Ina to constrain the energetics of whatever phenomenon produced it. It turns out that a CO2-liquid water system has just about the right energy to make it happen: not too violent, not too mild. I can't think of any other phenomenon that could do it. Maybe you can? ;)


A very interesting paper Mr. Warren Platts! Congratulations on your presentation and thank you for offering it here!

What are your thoughts about prepositioning a robotic drill capable of going 12 to 30 meters deep at Ina as the first step for a followup NASA surface mission using the SLS, Orion, and Golden Spike Lander?

Would there be a significant risk of initiating a cryovolcanism blowout or a blast event from drilling or landing the robotic drill and then the Golden Spike Lander on Ina?

Keep up the great work!



Edited.

« Last Edit: 10/23/2013 11:08 am by HappyMartian »
"The Moon is the most accessible destination for realizing commercial, exploration and scientific objectives beyond low Earth orbit." - LEAG

Offline Warren Platts

Earth has a secret reservoir of water, say scientists

Interesting article. Apparently, Earth's mantle contains much more water than previously thought. Since the Moon is derived from the Earth's mantle, this implies that there should be more "juvenile" water deep within the Moon as well!
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Offline Robert Thompson

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Re: Astrobiological Implications of Liquid Water IN The Moon!
« Reply #111 on: 03/18/2014 12:04 pm »
(Post #75 may have an unclosed [ i ].)

Regarding additional water in the moon, that's plausible.
« Last Edit: 03/19/2014 02:59 am by Hernalt »

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