Water found on(insert Wheel of Fortune noise)... The Moon. (Yes, that one. Ours)

[Heradel]

From The Times:

There appears to be, to the surprise of planetary scientists, water, water everywhere on the Moon, although how many drops future astronauts might be able to drink is not clear.

Data from three spacecraft indicate the widespread presence of water or hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one hydrogen atom and one oxygen atom as opposed to the two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up a water molecule. The discoveries are being published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science.

“It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive,” said Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a co-author of one of the papers that analyzed data from a National Aeronautics and Space Administration instrument aboard India’s Chandrayyan-1 satellite. “It’s like somebody painted the globe.”

For decades, the Moon has been regarded as a completely dry place. The dark side is more than ice cold, but when it passes into sunlight, any ice should have long ago been baked away. The possible exceptions are permanently shadowed craters near the Moon’s poles, and data announced this month by NASA verified the presence of hydrogen in those areas, which would most likely be in the form of water. [...]

Well, I'm out of here. (suckers)

[Planish]

wikipedia sez:

The term hydroxyl group is used to describe the functional group –OH when it is a substituent in an organic compound. Organic molecules containing a hydroxyl group are known as alcohols ...

Uh-oh.

[Heradel]

wikipedia sez:

The term hydroxyl group is used to describe the functional group –OH when it is a substituent in an organic compound. Organic molecules containing a hydroxyl group are known as alcohols ...

Uh-oh.

Pardon, what I mean to say was:

Well, I'm out of here. [The sound of feet slapping the pavement slowly fades]

[Russell Nash]

I think this is an example of us needed a "Science Fact" board.

[Heradel]

I think this is an example of us needed a "Science Fact" board.

Well, we could just count this as hard SF.

[Russell Nash]

I think this is an example of us needed a "Science Fact" board.

Well, we could just count this as hard SF.

Since it's –OH Molecules, Hard Liquor SF.

[deflective]

i stand by my position that discoveries belong here because they're about the moving boundary of fiction.  this was fiction yesterday but not today.

and almost as interesting as the announcement itself is the process story behind it.

[Russell Nash]

It's still drier than the Sahara Desert.

[deflective]

they're looking at extraction methods now.  water density may be higher than i ever would have imagined (first footnote).