‘I attended a talk yesterday by Don Brownlee, who is the head guy on the Stardust mission (which brought back samples from a comet: see here, and here and here). Stardust returned comet particles to Earth several months ago, and scientists all over the planet have been eagerly looking at them, investigating their chemical and atomic structure. They’re looking to see what kind of environment the particles formed in (and therefore where the comet formed), where they’ve spent their time, maybe even if they came from our solar system or an entirely different one.
I was sitting off to one side, so the perspective on this image is a little odd. What Dr. Brownlee is showing there are three images of a particle from the comet. The big image is a microphotograph of a piece of LICE forsterite. I don’t know what LICE stands for, and a google search didn’t turn anything up (though I have to admit it’s weird that some web pages out there have discussions of both forsterite and head lice on them). Forsterite is a mineral that you wouldn’t think twice about finding on Earth, but finding it on a comet is very, very odd: it’s made in hot environments, like 2000 Celsius hot.
That’s really weird because comets are cold. They have lots of ice in them, and spend most of their time in deep space. If you put comets someplace hot, they evaporate pretty quickly (which is why they form tails when they get near the Sun). So how could they have minerals in them that formed at high temperatures? Is James McCanney right?
Actually, one possible solution isn’t hard to imagine. When the solar system was young, and planets and comets still forming from a disk of gas and dust, the Sun was fairly active. We see young stars shooting long jets of matter out from their poles due to magnetic forces. This transports material formed near the surface of the Sun to the outer solar system, where comets form. So in fact you might expect to see some high-temperature minerals in comets… if you had thought of it first. I have not heard of anyone predicting that, which is too bad. They’d be pretty hot stuff right now if they had!
Hot stuff. Oh man, I crack myself up.
Anyway, Dr. Brownlee pointed out another neat thing. The image on the upper right in the picture above is an extremely high-magnification zoom of the particle. That grid-like structure you see is not some photographic effect: it’s the actual crystal structure of the particle itself. You’re seeing rows of atoms lined up like soldiers on parade in the crystal.
Think on that for a moment: before the telescope (and really, even after it for some time), we had to observe comets with our eyes, and the smallest feature we could hope to see on a comet was the size of the Earth. Since the actual physical object forming the comet is at most a few kilometers across, this was hopelessly coarse resolution.
But now we have samples of comets, and can examine them in our labs. We can see individual atoms in the comet! According to Dr. Brownlee, this represents, roughly, an increase of 17 orders of magnitude in our resolving power: 100,000,000,000,000,000 times, 100 quadrillion times!
That’s not too bad. I’d love to see a day when that sort of power is brought to bear on the other objects in our solar system. There’s still so much to learn!’
April 4th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Is the grid in the upper right or lower right corner of the slide. Your description makes it sound like the lower right.
I’m still awed over what they’re learning.
April 4th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
I’m simply amazed. Comet fragments are really pretty! …Bitesized… but pretty!
It’s just great to know we have pieces of comets down here now.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
“though I have to admit it’s weird that some web pages out there have discussions of both forsterite and head lice on them”… including now, yours
Recursion is everywhere.
April 5th, 2006 at 1:56 am
doesn’t that crystal structure speak towards intellegent design? I think they are really big snowballs the devil is chucking at us. For all the talk about Hell being hot fire filled furnace doesn’t fit the outter darkness. A place without light shouldn’t have heat right?. Alright I’m kidding!!
April 5th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Ah, RAD, haven’t you seen the classic proof that Heaven is Hotter than Hell? It first appeared in the journal Applied Optics in 1972.
April 5th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Coincidentally, McCanney was on C2C last night. He was pontificating about Project Deep Impact and comet Tempel I. It seems that George Noory found a news item about how scientists had found evidence of 250,000 tons of water in the plume from the impact. According to him, all the scientist (the ones with Ph.Ds in physics) were wrong. Only he (with his masters degree in mathematics) is right, because there is no water in comets. I listened as long as I could, but my “Wacko-meter” finally overloaded and I had to change the station. McCanney is orders of magnitude worse than Hoagland, yet George unquestioningly laps up everything either one says.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:06 am
I can recall a time several years ago when McCanney claimed that he had “calculated” that the Apollo lunar modules could be seen through telescopes, if they were there.
Noory also laps up all the ET, ghost, shadow people, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and other assorted nonsense without reservation. I must admit I find C2C rather entertaining a lot of time, comic relief as it were.
“Noory is known for his mild-mannered interviewing style and his willingness to air callers with claims of alien abductions, near-death experiences, and other paranormal topics. In the past, he has made some unusual claims on his show. For example, on his March 10-11, 2006 show, he claimed that he was reincarnated in the 22nd century as Dexter Monterrey, a time traveller that hosted the last hour of Coast to Coast that night. He has also claimed that when he broadcasts his show from St. Louis, he broadcasts from a dark cave in the middle of nowhere. Regular listeners who are familiar with the show assert that this is Noory’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor; however, he often makes such claims in a deadpan manner that makes it difficult to determine if he is serious.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Noory
April 5th, 2006 at 5:21 am
And now the nitpicker steps up to pick the nits he sees:
I just checked out the BA’s page debunking James McKanney. While very nicely written overall, the fourth paragraph says that an object’s spectrum depends “on its temperature and what its made of.” That second its should have an apostrophe, naturally.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:23 am
I guess frosh week isn’t REALLY over, there’s still the formal tonight and shinerama this morning, but after all the homework I’ve got, the fun period is DEFINATELY over. I can’t wait til it gets harder….NOT. Hopefully when it gets harder, physics will get more interesting, but I really doubt that geek could make learning about explosives interesting. At least chemistry’s better, and in math I can laugh at that cooky accent (I like feet, I don’t know why) anyways…I don’t feel much like writing anything else now….maybe later. http://tramadolsalv.host.sk
April 5th, 2006 at 6:11 am
I haven’t read that heaven hotter than hell before but it was damn good. I also like the dark sucker theory(light bulbs). I wonder if that could be applied to stars and black holes?
http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/darksucker.html
April 5th, 2006 at 6:21 am
Heh, C2C…
I don’t get to hear that program all that often as I am on the east coast, so when it comes on, I’m (usually) asleep.
One night, they were discussing this one time traveler fellow, John Titor, who had come back through time from the 2030s or 2040s to various points in our recent history… the thing that caught my attention was that he had apparently traveled to 1970-something to pick up an old IBM computer that had “special characteristics.”
Well, I was on the road at the time, so this intrigued me… computers are, after all, my specialty, and I know a little bit about computer history. Somebody from the future coming back to 1970-something, of all times, to grab computer components seemed a little fishy to me (and then traveling to 2002 or whenever to talk about it was a dead giveaway).
I ended up finding a John Titor hoax post on Livejournal, and the poster was discussing the economics of the situation. A lot of people (who totally fail to understand even basic economics) were ragging on him, but the post was old, so I wasn’t going to update it with my angle unless there were recent comments. Being that there were, I added my take: http://community.livejournal.com/hoaxes/90359.html?thread=667127 (the comment located below is my debunking of this Titor fellow).
OK, enough O/T stuff. Maybe, one day, I’ll have something to say about astronomy.
April 5th, 2006 at 7:27 am
You can never be amazed at what you’ll find in a search engine BA. Around my place we play a game called “Stump Google”. The rules are that you must enter a power tool, a food item, and sex into google. For example:
+chainsaw +pineapple +sex
or another:
+”arc welder” +mango +sex
The one with the lowest number of hits wins, like golf.
Those particular examples return 42,400 and 803 hits respectively. So forsterite juxtaposed with head lice doesn’t surprise me at all
April 5th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Phil: Frank Shu’s X-wind model, published in several papers in the mid-90s, predicted that the star’s wind would fling material from close to the star all over the disk, so I’m afraid you’re not first
This is not to say that the new observations prove the X-wind model. That would require isotopic measurements, which I think are forthcoming.
- Luke
April 5th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Evolving Squid, I tried your game:
“angle grinder” + papaya + sex returns only 302 hits!
April 5th, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Dave Mitsky said:
“Noory also laps up all the ET, ghost, shadow people, Bigfoot, Chupacabra, and other assorted nonsense without reservation. I must admit I find C2C rather entertaining a lot of time, comic relief as it were.”
I happen to be friends with the seniormost producer of the show, and have asked her about the people they have on. Her reply to me was the question, “Were you entertained?” This show isn’t about disseminating facts, but entertainment. So, Dave, you hit it right on the head! C2C’s main function is to entertain its listeners, without being judgmental about its content. The hosts (George Noory, Art Bell, and sometimes Ian Punnitt) don’t have to believe what is aired, but they don’t express disbelief either. All we can do is pity the folks that believe all that is on.
April 5th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Only reference to a LICE anagram I could find that ‘might’ be relevant?
[url=http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:wq-N2RU_fCwJ:wsx.lanl.gov/Publications/Laser_Shocks.pdf+laser+induced+isentropic+compression+experiments&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=1]Laser-induced isentropic compression experiments[/url]
April 6th, 2006 at 6:01 am
Bill said:
I happen to be friends with the seniormost producer of the show, and have asked her about the people they have on. Her reply to me was the question, “Were you entertained?†This show isn’t about disseminating facts, but entertainment. So, Dave, you hit it right on the head! C2C’s main function is to entertain its listeners, without being judgmental about its content. The hosts (George Noory, Art Bell, and sometimes Ian Punnitt) don’t have to believe what is aired, but they don’t express disbelief either. All we can do is pity the folks that believe all that is on.
The problem is that many people accept what is presented on Coast To Coast AM as the literal truth. I happen to believe that an informed electorate capable of critical thinking is vital to the well-being of a modern democracy.
Dave Mitsky
April 7th, 2006 at 6:06 am
Roy Batty, your link has messed up this page–it’s all distorted. Phil, can you fix it for posterity? Thanks.
April 7th, 2006 at 7:52 am
+quorn +pineapple +sex
273 hits
April 8th, 2006 at 3:03 am
wiggie+rhubarb+sex 19
multitester+rhubarb+sex 9