ScienceArrows on a composite image of the comet Tempel 1 point to two areas where the surface is smooth instead of spotted with depressions.
Posted on 09/07/2005 12:10:01 PM PDT by neverdem
Although comets form at the frigid edges of the solar system, they appear somehow to contain minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water, and at much warmer temperatures, scientists are reporting today.
On July 4, as planned, part of the Deep Impact spacecraft - essentially an 820-pound, washing machine-size bullet - slammed into the comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles an hour. The collision tossed up thousands of tons of ice and dust from the comet that were observed by telescopes on Earth as well as small flotilla of spacecraft.
One of the observers was the Spitzer Space Telescope, a NASA mission that takes pictures in the infrared part of the spectrum. In the burst of light after the collision, Spitzer detected specific colors of infrared light that indicated that Tempel 1 contained clays and carbonates, the minerals of limestone and seashells.
Clays and carbonates both require liquid water to form.
"How do clays and carbonates form in frozen comets where there isn't liquid water?" said Carey M. Lisse, a research scientist at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University who is presenting the Spitzer data today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in Cambridge, England. "Nobody expected this."
Spitzer also detected minerals known as crystalline silicates. Astronomers had already known that comets contain silicates, but silicates line up in neat crystal structures only when they are warmed to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit - temperatures reached at around the orbit of Mercury - and then cooled.
"How do you do that and then how do you put that stuff into a comet that forms out by Pluto?" Dr. Lisse said.
Dr. Lisse said that the presence of the clays, carbonates and crystalline silicates indicated that material in the solar system's primordial cloud had somehow...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sciencekewl--bump
ping
Sez them..........
bump for later.
Could be that they are interpreting their IR signals with a terracentric view.
It also seems a bit rash to me to be generalizing data for all Oort and Kuiper objects using data from just one.
"Could be that they are interpreting their IR signals with a terracentric view."
How horribly unprogressive. Down with terracentrism!
It looks like an interesting article, but no way am I going to the New York Times to read the rest.
Metaresearch.org has some explanations for this. Interesting none the less
"How do clays and carbonates form in frozen comets where there isn't liquid water?"
Remnants from a previous solar system I venture to guess.
It's taken a while for the analysis to start getting some results, as expected. The comet seems to be like a cottonball cone you would buy and possibly eat at the fair. There isn't much substance to it. But what there is would be very useful on the moon if they can get it there.
or remnants from the early bodies in this solar system.
Hmmm... evidence of Tiamat? What do Enki, Enlil, and the rest of the Nibiruians have to say about this? ;-)
the obvious answer is that it formed somewhere warmer.
From the moon's birth perhaps.
No, it's just another piece of evidence for the exploded planet theory.
or the collision which formed the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, or any number of other impacts.
al data indicates that the early solar system was a rather hoppin' jernt.
Panel Recommends Drug (for rheumatoid arthritis)
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post any unrelated link as they see fit.
or some WHEN warmer
huh???
Check with Greta
Uh huh, and diamonds can only be formed under high pressure.
(Unless you are growing them commercially in a low pressure chemical vapor deposition reactor)...
"It also seems a bit rash to me to be generalizing data for all Oort and Kuiper objects using data from just one"
Ditto. You know that a Pluto probe goes out next year, right? It's the fastest space vehicle ever made. It'll reach Pluto in 2015, and go on to the Kuiper Belt from there, giving scientists very important data on the early circumstances of life's evolution in the solar system. NASA & planetary scientists are caqlling this "the most important space science project of the next decade".
That is exactly what I was thinking! LOL
They're talkin' 'bout you...
Its obviously an Ice Rink, anyone who loves hockey could have explained this!
GAME ON!
Consider it health and science potpourri for my health and science ping list.
I had grief from the admin mods. I was told that I was posting too many stories that required excerpting, and that I should post my health and science stories in chat. In the case of stories that require excerpting, folks have to link to them anyway to read the whole story. I can't enthusiastically post a health or science story to chat. Multiple unrelated links also means I am less likely to be a pest, which means I'm less likely to be asked to delist someone from my ping lists, lists that have only a vague chronological order
tiamat quit this site: the racism some displayed on Katrina threads was her "last straw".
I wish she'd reconsider.
Damm! I didn't know! I wish she'd reconsider too!!!
I'm gonna miss that Bronze Age Gal.
Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner...
Yeah. Nothing is older than 4004 BC...
God is Life, He's Everything, including a billion years old, and yes He is Alive! So its not to hard to believe "the life form that may be a billion years old." That said, if what you are saying is so obvious, then why wasn't it mentioned by one of the Scientists studying the issue?
Thanks.
True. Please help me out with the crystal structure of CVD diamonds. Are they single-crystal cubic?
But a single crystal diamond substrate can be used as a template for further single crystal growth in which the synthetic grows with the same crystallographic orientation everywhere on the substrate. (I don't know how they get those substrates but they do). If it's grown to great enough thickness the diamond produced this way can be polished into faceted stones. I just couldn't recall the details.
Ah. My interest was from an engineering materials standpoint. Thanks for the additional information!
Various "scientists" each have their own areas of expertise. A astrophysicist who studies the chemical makeup of stars has a background completely different than an geologist. Actually, scientists are very conservative, and would do their best downplay the discovery. I gather most of the "scientists" are really engineers who are analyzing the data. So any information is most certainly downplayed.
ping
third of four
Phase diagram of water revisedSupercomputer simulations by two Sandia researchers have significantly altered the theoretical diagram universally used by scientists to understand the characteristics of water at extreme temperatures and pressures. The new computational model also expands the known range of water's electrical conductivity. The Sandia theoretical work showed that phase boundaries for "metallic water" -- water with its electrons able to migrate like a metal's -- should be lowered from 7,000 to 4,000 kelvin and from 250 to 100 gigapascals. (A phase boundary describes conditions at which materials change state -- think water changing to steam or ice, or in the present instance, water -- in its pure state an electrical insulator -- becoming a conductor.) The lowered boundary is sure to revise astronomers' calculations of the strength of the magnetic cores of gas-giant planets like Neptune. Because the planet's temperatures and pressures lie partly in the revised sector, its electrically conducting water probably contributes to its magnetic field, formerly thought to be generated only by the planet's core. The calculations agree with experimental measurements in research led by Peter Celliers of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
PhysOrg
Thursday, October 5, 2006
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
