[HN Gopher] LIBS confirms the presence of sulphur on the lunar s...
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LIBS confirms the presence of sulphur on the lunar surface
Author : merrier
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-08-31 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.isro.gov.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.isro.gov.in)
| 0xDEF wrote:
| It also found a a remarkable temperature gradient on the South
| Pole's surface. Even if the surface temperature is 60+ degree
| Celsius just 8 cm below the surface the temperature is -10 degree
| Celsius. (South Pole) Moon dust is a really good insulator.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| That (60 C) is far hotter than I would have guessed. I realize
| the moon doesn't have an atmosphere, but at the south pole the
| light should be tangent to the surface. Is the probe not
| actually at -90 degrees latitude, and was this measurement
| taken at noon?
| bguebert wrote:
| The moon has a tilt so the amount of light at the poles can
| vary over time.
| zardo wrote:
| It's 60 C colder than noon temps at the equator
| morbidious wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338000.
| morbidious wrote:
| Happy to see the proactive moderation.
|
| Update: Didn't see your comment on the original post.
| fsloth wrote:
| Objectively speaking if they left years ago there is chance
| they are describing the actual availability of toilets as this
| was really low in some states (some states with under 20%
| having access to toilets)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_ava...
|
| Afaik dealing with the shit was left to dalits, leading to
| their outcast status. So if one was a dalit in low-toilet-
| availability areas then 'shithole' is actually a really
| accurate depiction of their objective experience and not a
| derigatory expression.
| morbidious wrote:
| If what you say is true, it was the colonizers who left us in
| such a state.
|
| Glad those barbarians left us.
| [deleted]
| amriksohata wrote:
| What is the significance of each element being found?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The main issue is detection of water, which would show up as
| hydrogen in the elemental analysis. Failure to detect hydrogen
| is probably the most significant result at present:
|
| https://www.space.com/chandrayaan-3-moon-south-pole-why-nasa...
| mhb wrote:
| It might be possible to gather them and build a crude weapon to
| defeat the Gorn.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Less resources to be shipped from Earth for future
| habitats/missions that require a lunar base.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| We detached this flamewar subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37338000.
|
| Please don't take HN threads into political, nationalistic, or
| ideological flamewar, or any other flamewar. We ban accounts
| that keep doing this, and we've had to ask you more than once
| before, so please stop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I thought we were having a perfectly reasonable discussion on
| India's development trajectory and misses, if you read down-
| thread.
|
| But this is your sub so I will stay away from comments on
| this sub.
| vaidhy wrote:
| I do not think that is what the author intended - "You want
| your home country to do well but at the same time you are
| hyperaware of its numerous deficiencies."
|
| I am aware of the deficiencies, but also very aware of the
| progress being made. There is no magic wand to wave to make
| people not be like people and change a vast, diverse population
| into something they are not.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| So what you are saying is that the numerous deficiencies are
| *intrinsic* to India (and Indians) by extension and will
| never go away? Is is about their DNA (nature) or their
| culture (nurture)?
|
| What is about _" a vast, diverse population into something
| they are not"_? Are you saying India can not be a middle-ish
| income country like China/Thailand/Malyasia etc. I would like
| to believe that wise choices by the electorate and good
| leaders and some luck can transform the country (or any
| country). Japan/South Korea/Thailand/Malaysia all did it.
| Some of those countries are vast, some diverse and some had
| less advantages than India.
|
| If you believe in the opposite that then are you not giving
| into the ideas in the "Clash of Civilizations" or worse
| "Genetics as IQ" crowd?
| innagadadavida wrote:
| I'd like to look at some data on people movements before
| making up hypotheses and theories. What we have seen is
| that more people are moving out of India than into the
| country (other than some poor migrants from places like
| Bangladesh). What do you think that this data is telling -
| not about the people (it is easy to blame them for not
| being patriotic etc). but about the judgements these people
| have made of the situation? In my opinion, people prefer
| comfort and lesser competition over grinding it out and
| this is a universal preference. Denying this basic fact
| will not help you come up with solutions to the problem -
| just wishing "if all the people would choose to stay and
| grind it out, then the country will have more progress" is
| not a viable solution.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| People migrate. Especially when they are better
| opportunities. The founder of FB "migrated" to Singapore
| from the US. So did the Dyson guy from the UK and he then
| moved back.
|
| Using net migration as a statistic for the health of a
| country is no more (or less) valid than the TFR or
| longevity or anything else equally plausible.
|
| Q: Say that Sundar Pichai or Vinod Khosla had not left
| India? Would their impact on India larger or smaller?
|
| I would say India is better off that they left, maybe you
| differ?
| nxten wrote:
| Germany has the brain drain problem too, what does that
| tell you? People are greedy. period.
| vaidhy wrote:
| No.. I am saying deficiencies are intrinsic to humans.
| India has made some choices between being a socialist,
| democratic country and it comes with its own pros and cons.
|
| India has a very vibrant local economy which does not show
| up in nominal GDP. By GDP by PPP, India is the third
| largest economy in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)). I consider India to be a
| solid middle income country, not any less that other
| countries you are talking about.
|
| I am actually fairly proud of the changes I see in India in
| the last 20 years. I Some of the key changes I have seen
| (by no means complete): 1. Improvement in road transport
| with a nationwide single toll provider. 2. Indian railways
| has always been there as an affordable means of transport.
| 3. Getting a passport is now a couple of days and less than
| 24 hours with tatkal. 4. Healthcare is free for all. Yes,
| it varies from state to state, but government hospitals are
| available for everyone. Even otherwise, it is affordable.
| 5. Air travel went from just for the rich to middle class.
| 6. Government and publicly funded schools are reasonably
| good (The project director for Chandrayaan 3 came from a
| government school).
|
| And yes, I am also very aware of the issues - political
| class abuses the power to enrich themselves. Different
| states have different development indices. But perfection
| is not needed for improvements.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| Ah, you are not saying what I thought you were saying,
| actually the opposite.
|
| Thank you for the clarification
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Is is about their DNA (nature) or their culture
| (nurture)?
|
| It's always about culture.
|
| The British Empire employed a strategy of divide-and-rule:
| it encouraged and amplified the caste system, and also
| encouraged the partitioning of society along religious
| lines. On top of that, it layered the English class system,
| and a horribly-botched partition.
|
| I don't mean to imply that Indians don't have agency;
| they've had 80 years to fix the mess the Empire left them
| with, but things are getting worse (IMO).
|
| I don't like empires. I look forward to the breakup of
| Great Britain. I think the USA is struggling to hold itself
| together. Most complaints about China are about the
| imperial domination of ethnically-distinct regions by the
| Han. The current war in Europe is a war of imperial
| conquest. I wonder whether India might be too big and
| diverse to manage, too?
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Things are getting worse? On what metric?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Authoritarianism, wealth distribution, land distribution,
| belligerent nationalism, caste and religious intolerance.
| Take your pick.
|
| 80 years isn't a long time, and over many years I expect
| it will be sorted out.
|
| /me not been to India for 40 years, opinions based mostly
| on mainstream news
| harrymit907 wrote:
| Just to be clear, Modi and his shithole party had nothing to do
| with the success of Chandrayan. 100% credit goes to the
| scientists and engineers.
| morbidious wrote:
| Not taking anything away from the scientists and engineers,
| it is their achievement completely.
|
| But is this the way to talk about the party that has the
| support of 80% of Indians? Hate to see such uncultured
| speech.
|
| @dang please flag parent comment.
| dxbydt wrote:
| There's a flurry on new info. In particular the variance of
| surface temperature at the lunar south pole, from 60 degree
| Celsius on the lunar surface, to -10 degree Celsius if you probe
| just 8cm below the surface
|
| https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FF4hsyEQaEAAB-AS.png
|
| A whole seventy degree temperature difference over such a small
| height delta. There were a bunch of scientists trying to explain
| this on Indian news TV & it was quite amazing.
|
| I'm actually very happy in ages! As an immigrant there is this
| bittersweet relationship with the home country. You want your
| home country to do well but at the same time you are hyperaware
| of its numerous deficiencies. I haven't been back to India in a
| few decades now. But so much science! And presented in such down
| to earth language. Its really like watching some of the old
| Apollo footage where you can actually understand the scientist.
| He's using simple graphs & charts & simple math to make his
| point, instead of drowning you in technojargon.
|
| Their project scientist is a very ordinary guy with extremely
| average test scores, for an Indian aspirant. But this chap
| persisted & pursued his education throughout his adulthood,
| finally earning his PhD in aeronautics. He comes from a shithole
| village that is about 50km from my shithole village. I mean,
| growing up we didn't have fucking electricity until my teens. No
| proper drinking water. No phone no TV no nothing. Now he gets to
| put a rover on the moon! I had tears in my eyes at the end of his
| TV interview.
|
| https://urlis.net/npi7rk3q
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Totally tangential: Did you see the Indian 4x400m relay team
| made the world finals, but in qualifying, dared to try to pass
| the US team on the final leg? India has never had a
| particularly good track and field team, but allegedly they are
| encouraging running and fitness more there.
|
| For those that don't know, the US 4x400m relay team in track
| and field is about the most dominant thing ever. If they don't
| drop the stick, it is assumed they are going to win. Even the
| qualifier team virtually always wins the heats. So an unknown
| like India having the temerity to try to take the lead against
| the US team is a huge shot across the bow.
|
| It seemed significant for other reasons. First, based on very
| light googling and looking at names, the team was of mixed
| religion with two Muslims (two guys with Muhammed first names)
| and two Hindi-seeming names. They seemed to genuinely like each
| other and support each other. That might have progressive steps
| for the long standing religious conflicts in India, that a
| mixed religion team came together for a historic moment in
| Indian athletics.
|
| Second, track might be a very interesting sport for "echoes of
| caste system" India (there was just a Caste news on HN a day
| ago so it's still obviously somewhat important). Unlike any
| team sport with selection, in track, if you are faster, well
| .... you're faster. Doesn't matter the race / religion / caste
| / connections, if you can run a 50 second 400m and the other
| guy runs a 53, it is VERY apparent who wins or should be
| selected for a team. Track and fitness in general is a kind of
| class-smasher in that regard, and could be a harbinger of big
| (positive) social change.
|
| But maybe I'm reading a bit too much into a small sample.
|
| Also, an Indian won the Javelin throw, beat a Pakistani who got
| silver, and there were two other Indians in the top six.
| [deleted]
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Honestly super happy for India for pulling this off. People
| don't seem to acknowledge the amount of science that's been
| coming out of India for a long time now and I hope this
| enlightens people a little on the fact that the country has a
| lot of strong intellect to share with the world.
| junon wrote:
| Seconded. India has some terrific development culture.
| penguin_booze wrote:
| On that graph: isn't it conventional for the independent
| variable (in this case, depth) to be on the x-axis?
| perihelions wrote:
| But "depth" is literally the down direction, so I think it's
| also acceptable to do this y/x thing. I've seen this choice
| in other places too,
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Standard_Atmosphere#/medi.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Titan#/media/File:T.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline#/media/File:Thermo.
| ..
| [deleted]
| dxbydt wrote:
| https://www.dataanalytics.org.uk/reversing-the-axis-of-an-
| ex...
|
| "sometimes you want to make a plot that reflects the real
| situation rather than a plain mathematical one"
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Cannot this gradient be used for some sort of heat pump? Or is
| it more effective to just outright collect the photons with
| solar panels.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The gradient is there for the exact same reason that you your
| pump won't reach a lot of material and will just create a hot
| mini-island near you heat exchanger.
| __rito__ wrote:
| What does this point to- https://urlis.net/npi7rk3q?
|
| Can't access it. Could you please share the original link or a
| link that works?
| dxbydt wrote:
| looks like HN hug-of-death, sorry about that.
|
| https://www.indiatoday.in/science/chandrayaan-3/story/chandr.
| ..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMbpU_viwvA
|
| https://www.latestly.com/agency-news/india-news-vikram-
| lande...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrr1-XrCoDU
| V1ndaar wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your perspective. It's nice to read
| something positive once in a while! :)
| dang wrote:
| Please edit provocations and swipes out of your comments here.
| The provocation "shithole" led to a bunch of flamewar that I'm
| certain you didn't intend, and yet your comment is responsible
| for starting it. (I've detached those subthreads as offtopic
| and collapsed them, but they can be found at the bottom of the
| page.)
|
| The site guidelines specifically include rules to prevent this
| kind of thing, so it would be good to review them:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Your comment was otherwise fine, so I'm going to downweight
| this reply to the bottom of the subthread.
|
| (Oh, but also please don't use link shorteners on HN.)
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| I felt like it was okay-ish given he immediately qualified
| his own, nearby hometown with the same descriptor. I think it
| changed the effect from discriminatory to almost a term of
| chagrined endearment which lent weight to his subsequent
| commentary.
|
| Would I have written it myself? Probably not, especially
| given who recently popularized the term "shithole". But I
| think as a rhetorical device it did what he wanted it to in
| his writing.
| dang wrote:
| I agree with you of course but the problem is that such
| subtleties don't survive the statistics of a large forum.
| Even if 95% of readers get it, the 5% who don't are a
| large-enough subset to derail the thread. Even if 95% of
| the 5% who don't-get-it are willing to let it go and move
| on, that leaves 0.25% of readers triggered--more than
| enough to turn any thread into a flamewar.
|
| It's similar to this dynamic that comes up fairly often:
| User: $group is so $pejorative Mod: Please don't
| post slurs to HN User: But I'm a $group
|
| It's perfectly legit conversation in a smaller, more
| cohesive context (e.g. friends over drinks), but that's
| precisely what a large forum like HN is not. That's why we
| have to moderate comments by effect, not intent [1], and
| that's why the burden is on commenters to disambiguate
| their intent [2].
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&sor...
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&que...
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Not a space exploration expert. It seems like the presence of
| sulfur on the Moon has been known for a long time [1] but perhaps
| it's newsworthy that sulfur is more abundant in some regions
| (like the south pole) than previously thought. [1] says that
| sulfur has broad applications, most importantly the ability to be
| a substitute for water in mechanical and chemical processes.
|
| [1] https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Lunar-Bases-
| confere...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _ISRO announced the rover's LIBS results definitively confirm
| the presence of sulfur at the landing site. Additionally,
| preliminary scans detect traces of aluminum, iron, calcium,
| chromium, titanium, manganese, silicon, and oxygen in the soil.
| Further hydrogen detection efforts are underway._
|
| What about hydrogen? No hydrogen means no water where they're
| currently landed, right?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| The reason people think there will be water is that when water
| evaporates on the moon, it won't be instantly lost. Instead, it
| will bounce around for a while before it is (probabilistically)
| lost. If/when it hits a surface that's below freezing point in
| vacuum (~200K), it can instead freeze and stick to that
| surface.
|
| There are believed to be such surfaces in permanently shadowed
| craters on the poles of the moon. They won't find any in any
| place where the rover can charge, but they might do short trips
| into shadowed spots, I don't know.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Probably elemental hydrogen.
| zardo wrote:
| They certainly won't find water on a 60C surface.
| fooker wrote:
| Why not?
|
| Plenty of 60C water on the earth's surface.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| but not in the vacuum. At 60C on the moon, the water is
| just gas and would leave the moon a long time ago.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| The moon doesn't have an atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Phase_diagram#/media/File:Phas...
| fooker wrote:
| Ah nice, missed that thanks.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Is there? Hottest surface temp recorded on earth was 56.7C,
| no? And Death Valley isn't known for the presence of water
| (when it's anywhere close to that hot).
| meepmorp wrote:
| Hot springs in volcanically active areas?
| mattashii wrote:
| > Hottest surface temp recorded on earth was 56.7C, no?
|
| Hottest air temperature at just above surface level;
| excluding several localized extremes like measurements
| around vulcanos or asphalt roads.
|
| Asphalt surfaces can easily reach 60+degC on days with
| direct sunlight and little to no wind, and vulcanos
| supply new surface all the time with temperatures far
| north of 100degC.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
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