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(meteorobs) Excerpt from "CCNet 54/2002 - 25 April 2002"
How exciting to hear of the impending launch of CONTOUR! In a few short years,
we humble amateur meteor observers (and theorists) may be awash in challenging
and interesting new data about how comets actually shed those little tidbits.
Clear skies,
Lew Gramer <owner-meteorobs@atmob.org>
------- Forwarded Message
From: Peiser Benny <B.J.Peiser@livjm.acdot uk>
To: cambridge-conference <cambridge-conference@livjm.acdot uk>
Subject: CCNet: NASA COMET-CHASING SPACECRAFT ON TRACK FOR JULY 1 LAUNCH
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 10:06:13 +0100
CCNet 54/2002 - 25 April 2002
-----------------------------
(1) NASA COMET-CHASING SPACECRAFT ON TRACK FOR JULY 1 LAUNCH
Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasadot gov>
[...]
(4) HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT SYMPOSIUM 2003
Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasadot gov>
[...]
(6) HOW LIFE ORIGINATED IN SPACE
Jon Richfield
(7) 1931 HIGH-ENERGY EVENT
Bob Kobres <bkobres@arches.ugadot edu>
[...]
===============
(1) NASA COMET-CHASING SPACECRAFT ON TRACK FOR JULY 1 LAUNCH
>From Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasadot gov>
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Laurel, Maryland
For Immediate Release
April 23, 2002
Media Contact:
Michael Buckley
(240) 228-7536 or (443) 778-7536
michael.buckley@jhuapldot edu
CONTOUR Ships to the Cape
NASA Comet-Chasing Spacecraft on Track for July 1 Launch
All packed up and ready for its long-awaited trip, NASA's CONTOUR spacecraft
left home in Maryland today for Cape Canaveral, Fla., site of its scheduled
July 1 launch toward an unprecedented comet study.
Secured in an air-ride, climate-controlled shipping container, CONTOUR set
out from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt and will reach Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station/Kennedy Space Center later this week. CONTOUR --
short for Comet Nucleus Tour -- had spent the past eight weeks being baked,
frozen, spun, shaken and probed in Goddard's test facilities, getting a dose
of the conditions it will face during launch and in space.
"Our spacecraft is ready and the team is anxious to start final preparations
for launch," says CONTOUR Project Manager Mary C. Chiu, of the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., which designed and
built the compact 8-sided, 6-foot by 7-foot spacecraft.
After a predawn launch aboard a Boeing Delta II rocket, CONTOUR will
encounter two very different comets as they zoom through the inner solar
system. From as close as 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) away, the
spacecraft will snap the sharpest pictures yet of a comet's nucleus, map the
types of rock and ice on the surface and analyze the surrounding gas and
dust. CONTOUR's target comets include Encke in November 2003 and
Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in June 2006, though the mission team can steer the
solar-powered probe toward a scientifically attractive "new" comet should
the opportunity arise.
"CONTOUR will provide the most detailed data yet on these ancient building
blocks of the solar system," says Dr. Joseph Veverka, the mission's
principal investigator from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "By studying at
least two comets, we'll be able to assess their diversity and begin to clear
up the many mysteries of how comets evolve."
CONTOUR is part of NASA's Discovery Program of lower-cost, highly focused
space science investigations. APL manages the mission for NASA and will
operate the spacecraft. Veverka leads a team of 18 co-investigators from
universities, industry and government agencies in the U.S. and Europe. For
more information on CONTOUR, visit www.contour2002.org.
###
The Applied Physics Laboratory, a division of the Johns Hopkins University,
meets critical national challenges through the innovative application of
science and technology. For more information, visit www.jhuapldot edu.
============
(4) HYPERVELOCITY IMPACT SYMPOSIUM 2003
>From Ron Baalke <baalke@jpl.nasadot gov>
http://www.estec.esadot nl/conferences/hvis2003/index.html
Third Announcement and Final Call for Papers
HVIS 2003
Hosted by the European Space Agency's Research & Technology Centre (ESTEC)
7-10 April 2003
Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin
Noordwijk, The Netherlands
The Hypervelocity Impact Symposium is a regular event that is dedicated to
enabling and promoting an understanding of the basic physics of high
velocity impact and related technical areas. This international event
provides a forum for researchers to share and exchange a wealth of knowledge
through oral and poster presentations and technical exhibits.
HVIS 2003 will be the eighth symposium in a series. It will be hosted by
ESTEC and held in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The dates of the conference
coincide with the tourist season in the bulb district and Noordwijk is
located in this district.
The technical sessions will be held at the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin,
Noordwijk during April 7-10, 2003.
All papers presented at the Symposium will be published in a refereed volume
of the International Journal of Impact Engineering.
Symposium topics
* Hypervelocity phenomenology studies
* High-velocity launchers and diagnostics
* Spacecraft meteoroid and debris shielding and failure analysis
* Material behaviour under high velocity impacts
* Fracture and fragmentation
* High velocity penetration mechanics and target response
* Analytical and numerical simulation techniques
* Asteroid impact and planetary defence technology
* Penetration mechanics of shaped charges and explosively formed
penetrators
* Planetary impacts
Call for papers
Abstract of proposed papers are solicited from those actively interested and
involved in hypervelocity impact. The preferred method of submitting
abstracts is using the form on this web site.
If it is not possible to submit your abstract through the web site, it may
be submitted by e-mail as an attachment or by mailing a printed copy, along
with a diskette copy to the following address:
HVIS 2003
ESTEC Conference Bureau
Postbus 299
NL-2200 AG Noordwijk
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-71-565-5005
Fax: +31-71-565-5658
E-mail: confburo@esa.int
Abstract must be received no later than May 15, 2002
Authors will be notified in June 2002 of the review decision for their
proposed paper. An author's packet will be mailed to authors whose abstracts
are accepted.
Acceptance of an abstract indicates preliminary acceptance of a paper for
publication in the International Journal of Impact Engineering, subject to a
technical peer review with final recommendation on the basis of such review.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, see:
HVIS Web site http://www.hvis.org/
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(6) HOW LIFE ORIGINATED IN SPACE
Remarks from Jon Richfield on report by Natalia Reznik via Andrew Yee
<ayee@nova.astro.utorontodot ca>
Hi Benny
A quick note concerning: HOW LIFE ORIGINATED IN SPACE (CCNet, 23 April 2002)
Some readers may be familiar with some of my fulminations on related
subjects during the past few years, and decided that I was unregenerately
resistant to the idea of extraterrestrial life. This is incorrect. For what
it is worth, I expect that there is life of sorts elsewhere in the universe
and that it will have certain correspondences and resemblances to life on
Earth. Whether its frequency is likely to be once per planet in the
biosphere, once per solar system, once per million stars, once per galaxy,
or what, I don't know. There are too many gross uncertainties and I wish we
could devote just point zero one percent of our global budget to related
studies! What gets my goat is a number of incorrect assumptions and
untenable deductions that tend to be associated with such discussions.
I am sceptical about life on Mars and even more sceptical about any of it
getting to Earth and practically dismissive about its having established
itself here if ever it did arrive, either as the origin of Earthly life, or
as a component of Earthly life.
But I am listening...
Meanwhile, E.A. Kuzicheva and N.B.Gontareva from St Petersburg have
apparently produced 5'-AMP under conditions of hard vacuum and UV in the
presence of lunar soil. This is of course interesting, but why they think it
is relevant to the problem, is unclear. If there were no
source of such an important molecule on earth, then maybe it would be more
exciting, but many purine and pyrimidine derivatives have been produced in
circumstances believed to resemble prebiotic terrestrial conditions. The
terrestrial product would have exceeded the input from
space by vast factors.
Terrestrial chemosynthetic products of a far greater variety than those from
space could arise readily and plentifully in our seas and ground water. But
that is not by any means the most important point.
Remember the fact (frequently, though irrelevantly, harped on by
creationists) that to expect combinatorial generation of the substances
needed for functional life is totally unrealistic, and to expect the
generation of living structures is beyond fantasy, even if we filled the
known universe solid with candidate molecules. If one thing is pretty near
certainty, it is that life on Earth originally developed by natural
selection, through complementary interaction of candidate substances. This
would raise the process from stochastic to a cumulatively heuristic
status. (Assuming of course, that neither the chariots of the gods nor
meteorites simply delivered life ready packaged.)
Now, such candidate substances may have been present in space as well as on
Earth, but in space the desiccated, irradiated, isolated molecules were
largely stuck where they originated. On Earth they could move, meet and
interact dynamically, either in solution or adsorbed onto the controlling
and organising surfaces of minerals. The huge rate and range of such
interactions over periods of millions or hundreds of millions of years was
almost certainly vital to the emergence of life. It involved forms of
natural selection practically from the development of the first candidate
biomolecules. Even if we were to accept the concept of the Wickramasinghe
muddy comet, which is a reasonable reaction to this form of argument, that
would not make much difference; suppose the comet were far from the sun --
it would be frozen, so that molecular migration and interaction would for
practical purposes be prevented. On the other hand, if it is frequently
near enough to the sun to melt, it will be desiccated within a few hundred
thousand years. Not a very promising cradle of life, compared to the bulk,
activity and duration of the young planet!
I have a few other niggles with the reports from Russia, though they are
lukewarm in comparison to the foregoing.
>On the Earth the reaction goes in the solution, but there are no
solvents whatsoever in space, therefore the researchers dried them in the
air and got a pellicle. <
"Dried them in the air"??? That already leaves us with serious questions as
to the relevance to the conditions in space. I wonder whether such a
"pellicle" would have developed in a vacuum. Usually vacuum drying gives a
very fine, almost molecular powder, rather than coherent pellets with
well-defined surfaces (if that is what the translator meant by this use of
the word "pellicle".) Also, reaction with various atmospheric gases could
have changed the initial conditions in all sorts of relevant ways. I don't
wish to niggle unreasonably, but I would need more detailed reassurance
than I have time to listen to, before the validity of this procedure would
satisfy me.
"...and the researchers used the lunar soil, delivered to the Earth
by the 'Moon-16' station from the Sea of Abundance, as a model of the
comet, meteorite, interplanetary or cosmic dust. The soil represented
basaltic dust..."
This is not a logical objection, but I don't see why lunar dust should have
been any more interesting in this experiment than ground ancient basalt from
Earth. In fact I should be interested to see a control experiment. My
money says that the two should show very little difference in outcome.
"..dot it has appeared that a small pinch of the lunar soil protects
organic substances from the destructive ultraviolet impact -- the lunar
soil helps to increase the 5'-AMP yield by 2.7 times."
Again, what is so special about the lunar soil? I do not suggest that the
investigators stated that it was in fact special, but putting it like that
makes it sound as though it was the lunar nature of the soil that did the
trick. If that was in fact what they intended, then control runs with
terrestrial basalt would be in order.
>The researchers have made a conclusion that the organic compounds
synthesis could have happened in the outer space environment. The
synthesis could have taken place on the surface of space bodies at
the initial phases of the solar system formation, along with that the
chemical evolution (formation and selection of complex molecules) could have
started in space.<
This is not at issue. All the way back to Oparin, Miller and Urey, this
would have been unexciting.
>By the time the Earth was formed the chemical evolution might have
approached the phase to be followed by the biological evolution.
That implies that life on the Earth most probably did not start from
the elementary organic molecules synthesis, but commenced from the
polymers formation phase or from a further stage. <
Here the wheels come off with a grinding thump. First of all, the amazing
thing about the first emergence of life on Earth is not how fast the first
candidate biochemicals emerged; a few hours, weeks or even millions of years
would be neither here nor there. The breathtaking (and exciting) thing is
how quickly the complex, functional structures emerged, and as I have said,
it is grossly implausible that they could have emerged in space, either in
muddy comets or in desiccated "pellicles". More or less random polymers
form prolifically on Earth and any traces arriving from space are extremely
unlikely to have contributed anything of importance.
Also, how many such pellicles or functionally equivalent structures have
been found on meteorites in or form space? Are our pellicles relevant to
what goes on out there?
Interesting work of course, and I doubt that such an informal report covers
it adequately, but even so, it does not sound like a fundamental new
insight into probable mechanisms of abiogenesis.
Cheers,
Jon
=============
(7) 1931 HIGH-ENERGY EVENT
>From Bob Kobres <bkobres@arches.ugadot edu>
Andrei Ol'khovatov has rekindled interest in a 1931 high-energy event that
was mentioned by John Lewis on page 128 of RAIN OF IRON AND ICE (1996). The
report that appeared in the New York Times is here:
http://abob.libs.ugadot edu/bobk/fball/ohiobl.djvu
E-mails rekindle 71-year-old mystery
Tuesday, April 23, 2002
David Lore
Dispatch Science Reporter
MALINTA, Ohio -- The drainage ditches cut long and deep through the tabletop
farming area southwest of Toledo, channels cavernous enough to swallow any
trace of the mysterious explosion that rocked this Henry County village 71
years ago this spring.
Only a handful of the 300 people who live here today are old enough to
remember the blast, which briefly put the small railroad town on front pages
around the world.
Nobody knows what happened, but the explosion has been ascribed through the
years to a meteor, an earthquake, a gas-well explosion or maybe even a
container of nitroglycerin dumped by nervous bank robbers.
Everybody, in fact, had pretty much forgotten about it until messages from
Moscow started arriving this month. The biggest boom ever to hit Malinta
came during the early morning hours of June 10, 1931. It woke up sleepy
Henry County, snapped off trees and utility poles and rocked houses as far
west as Indiana and as far south as Columbus.
Continued @:
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/news/news02/apr02/1213
078.html
[requires free registration]
Later.
bobk
Bob Kobres
Main Library
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
bkobres@arches.ugadot edu
http://abob.libs.ugadot edu/bobk
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