- 3601 - COMETS - Pummel Earth, Earth Strikes Back? Comets and asteroids are basically the same thing, debris orbiting the Sun, zipping around the Solar System like us. Except, comets are softer and tend to have been formed farther out from the Sun. Asteroids are harder rocks and tend to have formed closer into the Sun.
--------------------- 3601 - COMETS - Pummel Earth, Earth Strikes Back?
- Finally, a billion years later Earth hits back. On July 4th, 2005 the NASA mission, “Deep Impact“, shot an 800 pound copper ball into the “Comet Tempel 1” and watched the fireworks that resulted from the impact. The goal of the mission was to learn what comets were made of.
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- If we knew the material in comets and we know the make up of Earth, we could learn how much of the Earth was created by incoming comets and how much was already here, or created by other means.
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- The Big Bang only created hydrogen and helium (and a few other light elements). It was the exploding stars in supernovae that created all the other higher level, heavier elements in the periodic table. 118 elements have been identified on Earth.
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- When this 800 pound probe smashes into the comet the compression pressure will cause an explosion on the surface. The elements that are vaporized by the impact will release radiation that we can measure on instruments that are on the satellite that delivered the probe to “Tempel 1“.
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- Just hitting the comet was a major feat. It was like shooting a bullet, that fired another bullet, that hit a third bullet traveling at 23,000 miles per hour. Nice shot!
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- The radiation released by the impact was analyzed by instruments called spectrometers. A flash of visible light was part of this radiation that was released. We saw the flash. Our eyes are a type of spectrometer. The rods and cones in our retinas detect red, green and blue colors in visible electromagnetic radiation, light. The cones detect only the three colors.
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- The wavelength of these frequencies are what the retina cones are sensitive to. These wavelengths are about the size of bacteria. The spectrometers that scientists use see all the colors. There are millions of different colors in visible light. The spectrometers see them all.
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- Spectrometers also see the invisible radiation that has shorter wavelengths than visible light. They can detect ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays which have wavelengths the size of molecules. They can see longer wavelengths. Infrared, microwaves, wavelengths size of baseballs, radio wavelengths, wavelengths the size of people, radio towers, and the tallest buildings.
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- The entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation is being studied. Each element and molecule has different configurations of electrons in the shells around their nucleus. As these atom configurations are broken apart each emits a specific radiation. As the atoms recombine they absorb these same frequencies of radiation. It is this emission and absorption the scientists study with the spectrometers.
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- The emissions show up as brighter lines and the absorptions show up as darker lines in the spectrographs. Each element and molecule has its own unique signature that can be identified with the trained eye of scientists.
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- The first thing we learned was that comets are extremely porous. The comet is mostly empty like a dirty snowdrift. There is no bulk of solid ice. The ice is all in the form of tiny grains. This material is unbelievably fragile. It is loose powder-like particles held together by weak gravity.
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- The particles are laced with carbon which some experts believe may well have been what kick-started life on Earth billions of years ago. Comets are found tocontain a substantial amount of organic material:
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---------------------- Water vapor
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---------------------- Carbon dioxide, vapor from “dry ice”
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---------------------- Clays
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---------------------- Iron compounds
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---------------------- Carbonates, like found in seashells
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---------------------- Crystallized silicates, like olivine found on beaches and in the gemstone peridot
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---------------------- Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
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---------------------- Carbon compounds, like found in car exhaust and burnt toast
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---------------------- Spinel, the reddish-brown gem
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- Scientists studying the data see that the porous composition of comets is very complex. They contain many of the higher level elements that we find on Earth. The contain even organic material that we find in life on Earth.
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- The largest asteroid so far discovered is “Ceres“. It is 580 miles in diameter, the size of the state of Texas. Studies of this asteroid indicate that it is rich in water ice. In fact, it has more fresh water ice than the fresh water on Earth.
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- Earth has 1,400,000,000 kilometers^3 of water, 41,000,000 of which is fresh water. Ceres has 200,000,000 kilometers^3, five times as much as Earth. Possibly all the water on Earth came from these incoming comets and asteroids.
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- Both asteroids and comets have pummeled Mother Earth for billions of years. You could say comets and asteroids are what Earth came from. You might even say that is where you came from, or, at least, the material you are made of. It is the conscious mind inside that material that I am still not sure about. That is what is reading this!
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June 14, 2022 COMETS - Pummel Earth, Earth Strikes Back? 549 3560
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