Despite appearances, the comet’s hard as ice. The team responsible for the MUPUS (Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) instrument hammered a probe as hard as they could into 67P’s skin but only dug in a few millimeters...
|
Posted on 11/18/2014 2:42:31 PM PST by BenLurkin
With just 60 hours of battery power, the lander drilled, hammered and gathered science data on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko before going into hibernation.
Despite appearances, the comet’s hard as ice. The team responsible for the MUPUS (Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) instrument hammered a probe as hard as they could into 67P’s skin but only dug in a few millimeters:
“Although the power of the hammer was gradually increased, we were not able to go deep into the surface,” said Tilman Spohn ... “If we compare the data with laboratory measurements, we think that the probe encountered a hard surface with strength comparable to that of solid ice,” he added. This shouldn’t be surprising, since ice is the main constituent of comets, but much of 67P/C-G appears blanketed in dust, leading some to believe the surface was softer and fluffier than what Philae found.
This finding was confirmed by the SESAME experiment (Surface Electrical, Seismic and Acoustic Monitoring Experiment) where the strength of the dust-covered ice directly under the lander was “surprisingly high” according to Klaus Seidensticker from the DLR Institute. Two other SESAME instruments measured low vaporization activity and a great deal of water ice under the lander.
...
Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander manager, is confident that we’ll resume contact with Philae next spring when the Sun’s angle in the comet’s sky will have shifted to better illuminate the lander’s solar panels. The team managed to rotate the lander during the night of November 14-15, so that the largest solar panel is now aligned towards the Sun. One advantage of the shady site is that Philae isn’t as likely to overheat as 67P approaches the Sun ... Still, temperatures on the surface have to warm up before the battery can be recharged...
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
And Pluto has a satellite!
I’m waiting for papers.
Despite appearances, the comet’s hard as ice. The team responsible for the MUPUS (Multi-Purpose Sensors for Surface and Sub-Surface Science) instrument hammered a probe as hard as they could into 67P’s skin but only dug in a few millimeters...
|
So the results are rather inconclusive. For me, thats a good reason to do it again with the next comet to pass by. Maybe the results of these measurements can help us tweak the instrument package we plant on the next one, but we should definitely do it again.
They should use a tiny nuclear source, like Cassini, so they aren’t dependent on solar power. That seems silly, to go to all that time and expense and you’re depending on a solar panel to catch sunlight from a zillion miles away.
I wish the satellite headed for Pluto would drop a lander on the surface there too.
Organic? How many carbon atoms are there in an ammonia molecule?
“I thought ice couldn’t form under the vacuum conditions of space?”
Well, whether it can form or not, it can’t survive in a vacuum indefinitely, because the lack of vapor pressure would cause it to sublimate. Comets, though, do generate a little gravity, so they might accumulate enough of an atmosphere to allow ice to survive.
that is why the ice harpoons failed, they probably bounced off like Philae.
...
I think I read that the harpoons didn’t fire at all.
I wish the satellite headed for Pluto would drop a lander on the surface there too.
...
New Horizons is hauling butt. It doesn’t have enough fuel to slow down and go in orbit, much less land. Pluto’s low mass doesn’t help either.
And Pluto has a satellite!
...
Pluto has multiple moons.
In a later portion of the show they determined the comet was NOT made of ice and furthermore, the density of the comet was much lighter than water; that is to say, this comet, or rock(?), would ride high in the water. Interesting that. It also brought to mind another type of rock that coincidentally fits what we actually observe. This thing actually LOOKS like lava rock and more specifically pumice. What are the odds...
I don’t care what the boffins say. It’s a planet to me!
Waiting for a report on petrology and mineralogy.
> ...ammonia (NH3), colourless, pungent gas composed of nitrogen and hydrogen. It is the simplest stable compound of these elements and serves as a starting material for the production of many commercially important nitrogen compounds. [ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/20940/ammonia-NH3 ]
> In the sense of the ammonia molecule itself, no it is not an organic molecule, you must have C-H bonds to be considered organic. NH3 (ammonia) however is involved in organic chemistry as a reactant or product. Nitrogen is a vital component to life, NH3 can be produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria; part od the nitrogen cycle. This can then be taken up by plants to stimulate growth. Plants are taken up by animals including humans to help our growth. So yes ammonia is needed for life and in this biological sense it is ‘organic’. [ http://www.answers.com/Q/Is_ammonia_organic ]
I knew that you knew that I knew that :o)
I’m a ChE (actually petro major) who’s been engaged as software engineer in the pharm business for about 40 yrs.
So, yes, ammonia is a marker for deteriorisation of organics, but is not truly organic.
I guess I’m just saying I’m not a journalist :o). I’m a chemist, and an engineer, and words have meaning.
Wait, you knew that I knew that... (head explodes)
Moving along. I have spent a good deal of time trying to find additional information regarding alternative research on comets. As you're no doubt aware, there's not much out there. Maybe the same people are too busy banging the drum for algore warming or other "conventional wisdom", I dunno.
Although their instruments detected no water ice on(or in?) the comet; what to make of the water vapor their instruments detect escaping from the comet. Anywhere from a teacup full to over a gallon per SECOND.Might it be trapped in a highly vesicular chunk of rock. The rock itself appears to have been formed under "extreme" conditions.
Give every NASA scientist $50. Send them to local pubs.
There, the dart board will have a dust-covered diamond as the center.
Let the scientists see who can throw their dart and get it to stick in the diamond.
Nobody?
OK, sell NASA to India, or maybe Fiji.
Before one of these ‘probes’ lands on something, sticks its tool into a sleeping asteroi-nat, which then sniffs its way back along the lengthy ten-year path thru the cosmos ... to earth. Also, “bzzz” -ing all the time, to the delight of some space sleuths, but otherwise pretty much starting a 10-year global panic.
The leftists will be screaming GLOBAL WARNING!
The GOPe will disregard everybody and everything except the golf course.
They had to be politically correct and green.
Sorry for not replying sooner. I just saw your reply. I've been down with the flu.
It is a mess. They are trying to bend and twist the results they are finding to confirm their preconceived theory. It is the worst of confirmation bias. I, too, saw that special. That heat lamp was a joke! They had to raise the heat on that petri dish of mixed ice and dirt far beyond the temperatures that hold in deep space (-140º C) which is also insulated by a coat of what appears to be rock 12-20cm deep (R-?) before it hits their putative ice.
Then they have another problem. They claim that a small, itty-bitty chunk of something with a gravity field of 1.5mm/sec/sec can control a coma cloud of gas that can exceed ten million miles in diameter against the solar wind. How can that be? Frankly, it can't. Not by gravity.
And you are right, they concluded it can't be just ice, either. Yet they have cannot ask the other questions that start to provide the answers.
It was quite cogent, Sake. . . I was totally uninterested in much of anything for a couple of days except my misery. LOL!
Moving along. I have spent a good deal of time trying to find additional information regarding alternative research on comets. As you're no doubt aware, there's not much out there. Maybe the same people are too busy banging the drum for algore warming or other "conventional wisdom", I dunno.
There is quite a bit of research in the field, but the orthodox cosmologists scrub anything that does not agree with their views. . . and they have even forced Wikipedia to remove the entry for the Electric Universe from existence, claiming it is Pseudoscience, even though it has been kicking their behinds in every prediction in cosmology for about twenty years, and can explain everything that is being discovered in deep space with easily understood plasma mathematics and re-create it in the microcosm in the laboratory and model it using that math without resorting to inventing magical fudge factors such as invisible and unfound "dark matter" and "dark energy" to get their math to work.
Comments referring to such predictions from Electric Universe Cosmologists on forums relating to comets and other astronomical events are routinely deleted by the orthodox cosmology gatekeepers. It is a circling of the wagons to protect the status quo of their preferred theories. Think how the Global Warming crowd treats any one who questions their religion. . . it challenges their money stream. . . and they'd have to rewrite the textbooks.
Although their instruments detected no water ice on(or in?) the comet; what to make of the water vapor their instruments detect escaping from the comet. Anywhere from a teacup full to over a gallon per SECOND.Might it be trapped in a highly vesicular chunk of rock. The rock itself appears to have been formed under "extreme" conditions.
Try this on for size. The water is FORMED by the high-energy plasma-discharge interacting with the solar wind, which is made up of stripped protons. OH molecules leaving the comet, being pulled of by the electrons from the negatively charged body in the positively charged atmosphere it is encountering as it moves closer to the sun, interact with the plasma of the solar wind to for H2O. In fact, in the Deep Impact mission, what they saw was chemically PURE water and OH radicals escaping from the point of impact:
"In the Deep Impact data we're essentially watching water molecules form and then dissipate right in front of our eyes," said (Dr. Jessica M.) Sunshine, who said her first reaction to the M3 data was skepticism.
Absolutely pure virgin water that only existed in the collimated high-energy plasma ~90° from the point of impact, but NOT in any other angle of the matter being ejected from the point of impact! The ONLY water found on comet Temple 1.
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.
