MOON NEWS PENDING

NASA are about to make an important announcement about the moon apparently. Cue the Internet:

"Is it officially made of cheese then?"

"They found the Clangers?"

"Don't tell me. It's actually much closer than we thought but just a lot smaller..."

Funny.

It's to do with their flying observatory, SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy), which is basically a floating 747. They modified a jumbo jet and they fly it at 40,000 feet, just above the atmosphere. It uses an enormous reflecting telescope to detect infrared radiation far out into space. It's super-cool.

Want to know what I think? I think they've found water - maybe a lot of it, perhaps locked into underground ice reservoirs. The dream for NASA would be to send people up there one day, to build a colony. That could only happen with a large amount of water, and ahead of the nextmost exciting thing (they're sending people to the moon in the next five years), this discovery might be a stepping stone to making a lunar outpost happen.

My brain went into overdrive. I love this kind of thing - it fires my sci-fi synapses. Suddenly I was putting myself in the shoes of fictional Jim Collins, Sector Engineer on the G-ring of Particle Accelerator B in Oceanus Procellarum. One day, just after earthrise, Jim discovers a body in the beam chamber. It's up to Jim to figure out the mystery of who, and how that unfortunate soul came to be there before somehow, slowly the accelerator begins to detoriate, threatening the gravity of the moon! Will he solve the puzzle?

I've no idea. Anyway, it's still pretty exciting to think that they'll be announcing the discovery on Monday. Yes, probably it will be something unquestionably dull to most of the world. Yes, probably a million tweeters will add 'is that it?' to some funny hashtag. Chances are it won't even make it to the news.

It's the kind of thing I like though. So, I'll keep an eye out.

I reckon the murdered person was trying to blackmail someone important who was hiding on the moon because they couldn't remain on Earth. Hmmm. Moustache-twiddling. That's not even the second in line for stories to write though. Oh well. Let's see what NASA says.