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(meteorobs) Sandia Report /pt 2--dust
July 6, 1996
Here is the next installment of the Sandia Workshop Report.
(A disclaimer: I may be wrong on a few details but hopefully you will get a
flavor of the workshop.)
An intent of this meeting was to bring workers in different disciplines
into better communication with each other and expose methods of
observation.
One intersting talk was by Mike Zolensky, who is the dust collector for
NASA at Johnson Space Center in Houston. He gave a great talk with slides
of the plane, the dust collecting system, the lab and sterile conditions,
and showed examples of dust particles. Mike is trained as a geologist and
also collects meteorites in Anarctica, Africa, and elsewhere. He discoursed
on this as well.
They collect at about 20 kms altitude. The pilot attains altitude and flips
open a gelled plate and then closes it after a certain amount of time.
(Mike said that occaisionaly the pilot has forgotten to close the plate so
when the plane descends the collectors have come back with flies on them.)
The plates are then studied in sterile conditions and particles are viewd
with a electron microscope, catalogued and put into storage.
Samples are lent out to world meteor scientists when requested.
Knowing that some of us are interested in the possibility of ground based
collecting of micro-meteorites I asked whether this has been studied well.
Mike said that it is very difficult to distinguish micro-meteorite
particles from terrestrial partcles like power plant soots.
BUT....ultimately he was inconclusive whether ground collecting is possible
or not which to me is encouraging of continued experimentation.
For serious micro-meteorite students, the JSC lab may be a great resource
as there are particle catalogues and other materials available.
On a personal note, (because I enjoy reading Fred Hoyle and Chandra
Wickramasinghe's theories) I asked about living matter at high altitudes.
There is pollen up there. Mike was inconclusive about terrestrial bacteria
and virus though. He said they don't check for microbes I think because
they are destroyed in the collecting or scanning microscope process. But
there is quarantine procedure in place if an extraterrestrial virus were to
be discovered though.
Lastly, Mike told us that if there were to be an extra-ordinary event like
a fireball or whatever that he could authorize a special flight into the
high altitude debris fields. In the two decades of the lab's operation this
has never happened. Perhaps because fireball reporting isn't instantaneous
enough.
If anyone out there notes a particularly extra-ordinary fireball event then
it is possible to get in contact with this lab to send up a "U2" plane to
specially sample it. This is a standing offer.
(This offer may be limited to United States territory. I'm not sure.)
I will finish with this thought: There doesn't appear to be an
*instantaneous* North American fireball reporting agency. Maybe the
workshop folks worked on this problem the last two days when I wasn't there
but I don't think so.
If a fireball was identified and plotted extremely well, maybe the best bet
would be to contact the North American IMO as soon as possible...? I
don't know. I don't know what the protocol is but I would like to know as
there is a very real possibility of sampling its dust directly.
Enough for now.
Yours,
Tom Ashcraft
72632.1427@compuservedot com