[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
(meteorobs) Excerpts from "CCNet 68/2001 - 18 May 2001"
Was this perhaps the 01 April version of CCNet, somehow delayed by mistake?
Some really silly (but nonetheless meteor-related) nonsense can be found in
this issue of the forum - and at least one good item, on Deep Space 1.
Lew Gramer
------- Forwarded Message
From: Peiser Benny <B.J.Peiser@livjm.acdot uk>
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet 68/2001 - 18 May 2001
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 11:49:20 +0100
CCNet 68/2001 - 18 May 2001
----------------------------
"My own favourite theory is that not only were the pyramids not
simply royal tombs and gateways to the stars, but they also actually served
the kings before their death as a kind of air raid shelter, to protect them
from the explosions of these cosmic missiles. The channel within the
Great Pyramid, pointing in the direction of Orion's belt, could have been
used to observe the progress of an offending meteor stream, focusing on the
point in the sky from which the missiles would have appeared to
come."
--Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff University, 17 May 2001
[Huh??]
[...]
(2) DEEP SPACE 1 ON TRACK FOR COMET FLYBY
SpaceDaily, 15 May 2001
[...]
(4) FIRST EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON ASTROBIOLOGY
ESA Media Relations <ContactESA@esa.int>
[...]
(8) ORIGINS OF ELEMENTS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM: IMPLICATIONS OF POST-1957
OBSERVATIONS
Oliver K. Manuel <oess@umrdot edu>
[...]
(10) PYRAMID TO PARADISE: WERE THESE ENIGMATIC MONUMENTS
AIR-RAID SHELTERS AGAINST COSMIC MISSILES?
Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff University
[...]
======================================================================
(2) DEEP SPACE 1 ON TRACK FOR COMET FLYBY
>From SpaceDaily, 15 May 2001
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deep1-01d.html
by Marc D. Rayman
Pasadena - May 15, 2001
As Deep Space 1 continues is cosmic voyage, it is preparing for a very brief
and extremely daring assignment later this year. If all goes well for the
next 4 months, on September 22 DS1 will greet comet Borrelly as the icy body
and the spacecraft flash past each other at 16.5 kilometers/second (more
than 10 miles/second, or 36,900 miles/hour).
While this is a great bonus opportunity to try to gather some unique and
wondrous information about comets, it is also a very very challenging and
risky undertaking.
But with a marvelously successful primary mission to its credit as well as a
remarkably exciting and rewarding extension, the bold challenge of the comet
encounter is a worthwhile adventure. Comets are believed to be remnants from
the formation of the solar system, and studying them may shed light on the
origin and evolution of our solar system and perhaps even on the evolution
of Earth.
With its motto of "If it isn't impossible, it isn't worth doing" always in
mind, the very small Deep Space 1 team has been preparing for the event.
The measurements DS1 will attempt at the comet will be described in detail
in future logs. In brief, however, the probe will attempt to fly through the
coma, the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus, and measure its
composition.
Then as it closes in to near the center of the coma, it will be faced with
its greatest challenge -- to obtain pictures and infrared spectra of the
diminutive nucleus, invisible from Earth because of its size and the
obscuration by the coma.
The craft will have to locate the nucleus on its own and point the camera at
it as it streaks by. That would be difficult enough, given that we can't
tell DS1 exactly where the nucleus is nor what it will look like. But the
little robot's assignment will be still more challenging because in the
absence of its star tracker, which failed in November 1999, it normally has
to stay locked to a reference star to remain stable.
It can't point its camera at a star while it is trying to find and
photograph the nucleus, so it will have to rely on its gyros, which provide
approximate measurements of the spacecraft's turns. These gyros however were
not meant for such a job, and they are not accurate enough to provide a
stable platform throughout the encounter period.
To get an inkling of just one facet of the problem, suppose someone were
holding a pair of high-power binoculars for you while you tried to look
through them. Her hands would not be perfectly steady, and you would have a
hard time seeing what you wanted. In fact, unless you told her how to
position the binoculars, she might even move them around enough that the
object of interest would completely leave your field of view.
DS1 is faced with a similar situation, with the binoculars being like the
camera, and the gyros being the assistant's hands. But now if you could tell
your friend how to move the binoculars ("a little to the right, now lower
them -- no, that's too much") you might be able to guide her well enough for
you to get a good view.
Some of the new software that was installed in DS1 in March is designed to
analyze the pictures, look for what might be the nucleus, and decide how to
move the spacecraft to keep it in the camera's sights.
During the spacecraft's encounter with the comet, it will rely on the
software and an extremely complex set of carefully timed commands to execute
the myriad steps necessary to collect its measurements. But how do we test
all of this?
Of course, we have ground-based simulators of the spacecraft, but they are
of only limited fidelity. So to make sure we are on the right track in
developing the commands that will give the probe its best chance to point
its camera at the comet as it closes in on it, the DS1 control team
conducted some clever experiments with the spacecraft on May 1 and May 8.
Such tests involve some risk and a great deal of work to prepare and
execute. The very long hours of hard (but, frankly, incredibly cool!) work
by the team keep paying off however. In addition, because the Deep Space 1
project's resources are quite limited, the team's careful decisions in how
it deals with risky undertakings have been an important ingredient in the
success of such difficult operations.
After much planning, on May 1 DS1 took advantage of a coincidental alignment
of itself with two planets to conduct a valuable test of the new software.
On that date, when DS1 pointed its main antenna to distant Earth, its camera
ended up pointing to still-more-distant Jupiter.
With controllers thus able to monitor data (of course delayed by the long
wait for signals to travel from the probe to the second floor of JPL's Space
Flight Operations Facility on Earth), DS1 used this new software to keep
Jupiter in the view of its camera for the duration of the test -- over 2
hours. This provided the spacecraft with a rare opportunity to try to track
a target other than a star, which would have appeared only as a pinpoint.
Jupiter is around 30,000 times larger than the nucleus of the comet (whose
actual size is very poorly known) DS1 will meet in September. So although it
was over 820 million kilometers (510 million miles) from the craft, the
planet, the largest in our solar system, looked to DS1 about the same size
that the comet will appear when DS1 is on its final approach, only about
half an hour before the moment of closest encounter.
This also illustrates part of the difficulty of the encounter -- this comet
nucleus is going to be very tiny and thus difficult to locate! The software
successfully detected Jupiter (appearing as just a little fuzzy ball) in the
picture frame and correctly computed compensations for the gyros to hold
Jupiter in about the right spot.
Jupiter was so far away that its position did not vary during the test, but
when the spacecraft gets to the vicinity of comet Borrelly, it will have to
keep turning to keep its camera pointed at the moving target. In addition,
it will execute many other commands to control its scientific instruments,
to move and record data in its computer system, to set various operating
modes of the spacecraft systems, etc.
To rehearse all of that, on May 8 DS1 executed a practice encounter with
comet Spoof.
This comet exists only in the virtual universe of software (as well as, of
course, the hearts and minds of the mission operations team), but DS1 did
not know the difference (and don't tell the impressionable probe!).
It dutifully followed the sequence of commands, all the while recording its
own performance for later analysis by engineers. Each time it took a
picture, the computer file containing the image was intercepted by a special
routine on board that "painted" a comet nucleus on it.
The software determined how big Spoof should be at that point in the
encounter, and how much of the portion visible to the spacecraft would be
illuminated by the Sun. The image file was subsequently sent back on its
electronic way, and nothing else on board knew that the nucleus in the
picture was synthetic.
The spacecraft then processed each of these pictures and exercised the
systems that will be used to try to follow the nucleus during the encounter.
By using the actual camera on the actual spacecraft, the test included such
phenomena as unwanted stray light, camera flaws, and cosmic rays (which can
show up in some pictures and confuse the software); this made the rehearsal
much more realistic.
The test proved very successful, giving the DS1 team important information
on the detailed performance of the spacecraft using the software and the
commands that have been formulated thus far.
This will be important in helping guide our work in designing the comet
encounter, as we now have a new comparison of the operation of the genuine
spacecraft with that of the Earth-based simulator. An encore performance
rehearsal will take place near the end of June.
The Sun, now at the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity, is spewing forth
much more radiation than usual. Any readers in the vicinity of Earth are
protected from this by our planet's vast magnetic field, and those near the
surface have the extra protection of the thick (and mostly breathable)
atmosphere.
Those of you on several of our solar system's planets may still be treated
to some lovely auroras these days triggered by the solar activity, and
observers who are very careful can see Sun spots, some large enough to be
visible without magnification.
But lonely DS1 does not have a planet's magnetic field or atmosphere to
shield it from the buffeting of the raging storms on the Sun. Nevertheless,
much to the relief of the busy and fatigued operations team, it is managing
to fly smoothly and happily; solar radiation does not appear to be causing
problems.
As DS1 continues its flight, the thrusting with the ion propulsion system
has passed several milestones. On March 21, DS1 had accumulated 10,000 hours
of thrusting. This number is not inherently special, but it certainly does
illustrate the system's fantastic longevity.
On May 1 DS1 had completed enough firing of its ion engine to coast to the
comet -- we're on target! But as several mission logs have described, the
spacecraft is so low on its supply of the conventional rocket fuel known as
hydrazine that it must keep the ion engine thrusting at a low throttle level
to control its orientation in space. So it will remain at "impulse power"
for most of the time until shortly before the spacecraft reaches Borrelly.
DS1 is now about 157 million kilometers, or 97 million miles, from comet
Borrelly.
Deep Space 1 is 1.9 times as far from Earth as the Sun is and more than 750
times as far as the moon. At this distance of 290 million kilometers, or 180
million miles, radio signals, traveling at the universal limit of the speed
of light, take over 32 minutes to make the round trip.
Copyright 2001, SpaceDaily
======================================================================
(4) FIRST EUROPEAN WORKSHOP ON ASTROBIOLOGY
>From ESA Media Relations <ContactESA@esa.int>
Paris, 23 May 2001
Press Release
N0 27-2001
First European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology - ESA/ESRIN, 21 - 23 May 2001
>From 21 to 23 May, the first European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology will be
taking place at ESA/ESRIN, the European Space Agency establishment in Italy
(Frascati, near Rome).
The workshop is being organised jointly by the European Exobiology Network
and the European Space Agency.
Its purpose is to identify the European potential in exo/astrobiology and
develop new avenues for cooperation and projects in this field, and more
particularly to strengthen the European network in exo/astrobiology,
encourage young scientists to participate in this field of research, and
develop a perspective for longer-term research, especially in relation to
human missions to Mars.
The workshop will be in six distinct sessions addressing the following
topics:
7 national and international activities in exo/astrobiology,
7 life in the extremes, terrestrial analogues for extraterrestrial habitats
7 ingredients and chemistry of primitive life,
7 extraterrestrial/extrasolar habitability, and
7 nature and search for life in the solar system and beyond, and
7 search for life in the Solar system (missions).
In addition to the plenary sessions, group discussions will be organised in
splinter meetings and poster sessions.
Media representatives are invited to attend the morning session of the
opening day (Monday 21 May, 09h00 - 13h15). Lunch will be provided for the
media, and ESA and European scientists will be available for interviews.
Media representatives wishing to attend are kindly requested to complete the
attached form and return it by fax to the ESA/ESRIN Communication Office
(Simonetta Cheli, Fax No: + 39 06 94180352).
More details are available at the following Web address:
http://www.estec.esadot nl/conferences/01C17/index.html
For further information, please contact :
Simonetta Cheli
Head of the Public and Institutional Relations Office
Tel.: + 39 06 94180350
Fax: + 39 06 94180352
======================================================================
(8) ORIGINS OF ELEMENTS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM:
IMPLICATIONS OF POST-1957 OBSERVATIONS
>From Oliver K. Manuel <oess@umrdot edu>
Dear Colleagues:
Please forgive this unsolicited message to inform you that the above
Proceedings have finally been published and are now being distributed. One
participant, Dr. R. Ganapathy <Ganapathy39@aol.com>, has received his copy
and seems pleased with the final product.
These are Proceedings of the ACS Symposium organized by Glenn Seaborg and
me in 1999, shortly before his death. It provides a good cross-section of
opinions on this important subject at the end of the 20th Century from
internationally recognized leaders in nuclear physics, nuclear chemistry,
astronomy, geology, astrophysics, planetary and space sciences.
The link for the book's homepage is:
http://www.wkapdot nl/book.htm/0-306-46562-0
Please help us get this book into the hands of as many readers as possible.
They can order it online from there. Or they can call customer service at 1
866-269-9527.
The book is being released by:
Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers
233 Spring Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10013
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
- --
***************************
Oliver K. Manuel, Professor
University of Missouri
Department of Chemistry
Rolla, MO 65401-0249
Phone: 573-341-4420 or -4344
FAX: 573-341-6033
E-mail: oess@umrdot edu
http://www.umrdot edu/~om/
***************************
======================================================================
(10) PYRAMID TO PARADISE: WERE THESE ENIGMATIC MONUMENTS
AIR-RAID SHELTERS AGAINST COSMIC MISSILES?
>From The Daily Mail, 15 May 2001, p. 11
By Chandra Wickramasinghe, Cardiff University
FOR thousands of years they have stood in the desert, inspiring and
perplexing generations of explorers. The pyramids, utterly simple and
profoundly beguiling, remain the greatest enigma of human endeavour.
Over the years the intricate mechanics of these astonishing constructions
have been revealed. But like all great enigmas, the more we discover about
them the more mysterious they become. And the greatest mystery of all is why
were they built at all?
Were the pyramids simply burial chambers for megalomaniac pharaohs, eager to
carve out the flashiest of all resting places in the Egyptian desert? Or
were they built with a deeper and possibly cosmic meaning?
There is now mounting evidence to support the latest tantalising theory,
raised again this week, that they were constructed as stairways to the
stars, inspired by meteorites from space.
Toby Wilkinson, an Egyptologist based at Cambridge University, told a
conference at University College London over the weekend that, judging from
the orientation and shapes of the pyramids, their mystical purpose was to
provide a direct highway to the heavens, a spiritual launch pad for the
pharaoh's journey to the afterlife.
No one has convincingly unlocked this mystery of the pyramids, that has
intrigued historians, archaeologists and explorers - not to mention the
public - for many years. This week the sequel to the blockbuster film The
Mummy will open, yet another testimony of the enduring hold the pyramids
have over us.
As scholars turn their attention to the question that has haunted us since
the historian Herodotus wrote the first 'traveller's guide' to the pyramids
in the fifth century BC, it is now the turn of astronomers to try and
explain their significance.
The time at which the pyramids were built, from around 2800BC, may offer the
greatest clue to their celestial importance. It was an era when our planet
was under regular attack from the skies in the form of cosmic missiles,
meteorites and pieces of comets that crashed through the skies.
They landed on earth causing many different forms of devastation and were an
Egyptian obsession. Their impact was comparable to an event that took place
in 1908, when an object of about 100 metres entered the atmosphere over
Siberia.
A great fireball passed low over the town of Kirensk, outshining the sun,
and exploded about 8kms above a remote part of Siberia. It was seen as far
as 1,000km away and the explosive power was equivalent to more than 650
Hiroshima bombs.
At the time of the building of the pyramids such events were almost
certainly a regular occurrence, bringing massive floods and destruction in
their wake[???]. The public was deeply fearful of the power of the
star-filled skies.
The construction of the three most famous pyramids at Giza began with the
mighty Pharaoh Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid in around 2.500BC. This
stupendous structure covering 13 acres is quite simply the most astonishing
engineering feat in history. It took 4,000 people to move the 6million tons
of precisely cut quarry stone, and Khufu relied on systematic taxation to
raise the funds to build them. He was also dependent on the extraordinary
masonry skills and labour of his people who followed intricate
specifications on the positioning of the pyramids.
The traditional theory that the pyramids were simply royal tombs for the
pharaohs, who were seen as living gods, has always raised more questions
than it has answered.
However revered the pharaohs may have been, why was there such a huge input
of energy, skill and money into the pyramids? And why were they constructed
on such precise alignments with points of the compass? A construction
engineer and amateur Egyptologist, Robert Bauval, first pointed out that
overhead photographs of the three Giza pyramids show an astounding
similarity to the disposition of the three brightest stars in Orion's belt.
This includes the distances between the pyramids and their size in relation
to the brightness of the stars. It even includes the minute detail of a kink
in the lines connecting the pyramids that matches a similar kink in the
lines joining the stars in the sky.
The link to the Orion belt shows up even more strikingly in the alignment of
a passage or channel that passes through the Great Pyramid, connecting the
King's chamber to the outside world.
Astronomers have calculated that at about the time the pyramid was built,
this channel would have pointed precisely in the direction of the brightest
star in Orion's belt, when the star rose to its highest point in the sky.
Another enticing hint that they were built as stairways to the stars was
uncovered by accident in 1879, by an Arab foreman. When he followed a jackal
into the base of a pyramid at Saqqara, he was led into a chamber covered in
a mass of exquisite carved hieroglyphics, decorated with turquoise and gold.
These pyramid texts were initially dismissed by Egyptologists as 'magical
charms and fragments of old myths.' Their message was largely ignored.
But the texts backed up Bauval's findings. Over and over, they stressed the
belief: 'O king, you are this Great Star, Companion of Orion..dot behold,
Osiris has come as Orion...O king, the sky conceives you with Orion.'
It seems almost certain that these pyramids, where the star faith was
inscribed in obsessive detail, were indeed far more than mere hollow tombs
and memorials. They were both a replica of the astral destination of a dead
Pharaoh and a launching pad to speed his soul starward.
Their link to the rock filled skies is clear. Orion's belt also appeared to
be the source of the meteors and deadly missiles that were a constant threat
to the Egyptian people.
My own favourite theory is that not only were the pyramids not simply royal
tombs and gateways to the stars, but they also actually served the kings
before their death as a kind of air raid shelter, to protect them from the
explosions of these cosmic missiles.
The channel within the Great Pyramid, pointing in the direction of Orion's
belt, could have been used to observe the progress of an offending meteor
stream, focusing on the point in the sky from which the missiles would have
appeared to come.
Other archaeological discoveries point to the remains of cosmic air-raid
shelters for lesser mortals during the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, which
collapsed in around 2300BC. Groups of bodies were discovered with arms over
their heads, bodies in contorted positions, strongly suggesting that they
were the hapless victims of an unexpected assault from the skies.
This theory is also supported by a pioneering new science, dendrochronology,
the study of the thickness of tree rings at different times in the past. The
thinning of tree rings has been discovered in oaks across the entire period
2354 to 2345BC which comes close to the final decades of the Old Kingdom.
The most simple explanation is due to the frequent arrival of cometary
missiles, that would have dusted the atmosphere and dimmed the light from
the sun, depriving trees of much needed energy. Here is yet further evidence
that the Egyptians were under a regular torrent of missiles from above. One
thing is certain. The pyramids were planned and built with meticulous care
and their construction involved an effort that comes close to being
superhuman. The Giza pyramids have survived for 5,000 years. Yet they will
never entirely give up their mystery. Instead, they will continue to keep
teaching each generation new lessons about human endeavour and our
relationship with the universe.
The ancient Egyptians were ever wary of the skies, keeping constant watch
for imminent danger. In the year 2001 we are at long last making some
progress in recognising that such threats are not entirely a thing of the
past.
Again we are turning our heads skywards, and looking out for possible
dangers under the Spaceguard programme. If they can teach us anything, it is
humility.
[Chandra Wickramasinghe's new book Cosmic Dragons is published by Souvenir
Press in September]
Copyright 2001, Daily Mail, London
-------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CAMBRIDGE-CONFERENCE NETWORK (CCNet)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The CCNet is a scholarly electronic network. To subscribe/unsubscribe,
please contact the moderator Benny J Peiser <b.j.peiser@livjm.acdot uk>.
Information circulated on this network is for scholarly and educational use
only. The attached information may not be copied or reproduced for
any other purposes without prior permission of the copyright holders. The
fully indexed archive of the CCNet, from February 1997 on, can be found at
http://abob.libs.ugadot edu/bobk/cccmenu.html
DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in the articles
and texts and in other CCNet contributions do not necessarily reflect the
opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the moderator of this network.
------- End of Forwarded Message
To UNSUBSCRIBE from the 'meteorobs' email list, use the Web form at:
http://www.tiacdot net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/subscribe.html
Follow-Ups: