PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 4/2001 - 9 January 2001
-----------------------------
"Some contend that the rest of the world - especially the
United
States and its space agency - is not sufficiently serious about
defending
the planet from soaring rocks. After a British government report
in
September spelled out threats to humankind from hunks of cosmic
debris, some members of Parliament said they could not rely on
NASA to spot
all such natural missiles well enough in advance. They urged the
United Kingdom to take up the lead as the world's asteroid
cop."
-- Charles W. Petit, U.S. News, 9 January 2001
"The virtual observatory would probably mean a change in the
perception of the astronomer's job, De Young said. "There
will no longer be
the tradition of the lone astronomer in the dark, adjusting the
telescope by hand," he said. Instead, many astronomers will
just go to
their computers and log in."
-- Deborah Zabarenko, Exite News, 7 January 2001
(1) HEADING OUR WAY: BRITISH SCIENTISTS ARE NERVOUS ABOUT SPACE
DEBRIS
U.S. News, 9 January 2001
(2) ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN MISSION PLANNED
SpaceDaily, 9 January
(3) US TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH BRITISH VIRTUAL SPACE OBSERVATORY
Excite News, 7 January 2001
(4) QUADRANTIDS 2001
Rainer Arlt <rarlt@aip.de>
(5) MYTHOLOGISTS QUESTION GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR BIBLICAL FLOOD
LEGEND
The New York Times, 9 January 2001
(6) RECONSIDERING PRIORITIES FOR SPACE MISSIONS
Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
(7) THE CATASTROPHIC YEARS AROUND 850 AD
Joel Gunn <jdgunn@mindspring.com>
(8) AN ACT OF GOD?
Duncan Steel <D.I.Steel@salford.ac.uk>
================
(1) HEADING OUR WAY: BRITISH SCIENTISTS ARE NERVOUS ABOUT SPACE
DEBRIS
From U.S. News, 9 January 2001
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010115/asteroid.htm
By Charles W. Petit
Anxiety about asteroids is afoot in Britain. Indeed, some contend
that the
rest of the world - especially the United States and its space
agency - is
not sufficiently serious about defending the planet from soaring
rocks.
After a British government report in September spelled out
threats to
humankind from hunks of cosmic debris, some members of Parliament
said they
could not rely on NASA to spot all such natural missiles well
enough in
advance. They urged the United Kingdom to take up the lead as the
world's
asteroid cop.
Banging the drum loudest is British Army Major Jonathan Tate. His
day job is
to help run the nation's air-defense system, but all his spare
time goes to
planetary defense as leader of a private group called Spaceguard
UK. "This
is among the few natural catastrophes we could predict in
advance, and head
off," he argues. He figures a good system could give many
decades warning,
enough time to engineer a solution - whether to nudge the
asteroid off
course with rocket engines, an atomic explosive, or other means.
Under the gun is Lord Sainsbury, the British science minister.
Science
budgets in Britain are tight, but he is expected to decide by
February
whether to authorize $15 million or so in public funds for an
advanced
telescope designed to detect and track faint asteroids. The
instrument would
likely be mounted somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.
"This is not science
fiction," Sainsbury has already declared. "The risk is
extremely remote, but
it is real."
Lurking in space. NASA supports several U.S.-based surveillance
teams, with
the goal to detect at least 90 percent of asteroids about half a
mile across
whose orbits may someday approach Earth. Experts think about
1,000 exist,
and nearly 500 are already charted. So far, none poses any
immediate threat.
Asteroids of that size could devastate continents, or even
threaten
civilization. But they are unlikely to hit more often than every
few hundred
thousand years. The British worry that smaller, yet still
dangerous, meteors
ranging down to a few hundred feet wide are more common but are
being
ignored. A rock (or possibly a comet fragment) estimated at less
than 100
yards across exploded in the sky over Siberia in 1908, flattening
forests
for hundreds of square miles. Such potential city busters could
come along
every century or so, says Brian Marsden, director of the Minor
Planet Center
at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass.
Still
smaller ones are more common. In November 1999, Dutch scientists
detected a
meteor exploding near the edge of the atmosphere over Germany
with the
energy of 1,500 tons of TNT, the equivalent of a small nuclear
bomb.
© 2000 U.S.News & World Report Inc. All rights reserved.
MODERATOR'S NOTE:
==============
(2) ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN MISSION PLANNED
U.Arkansas Targets Asteroid Sample Return Mission
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/asteroid-01a.html
Fayetteville - Jan 8, 2001
In the wake of NASA's successful Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
space
mission, a University of Arkansas researcher is putting together
a team of
scientists to take asteroid research to the next level --
bringing asteroid
samples back to Earth.
Derek Sears, professor of chemistry and director of the Arkansas-
Oklahoma
Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, has proposed a mission
called Hera
that will visit three near-Earth asteroids, obtain samples from
them and
return the samples to Earth. The project is named for Hera, a
Greek goddess
and mother of the three graces, joyfulness, bloom and brightness.
The Arkansas-Oklahoma center will provide the infrastructure and
support
required to produce the mission.
Such a mission has only recently become possible, according to
Sears. But
with the advent of new engines for driving interplanetary
spacecraft, the
NEAR spacecraft completing a successful mission, and the
discovery of 1,000
or more near-Earth asteroids in the past two years, the mission
has become
feasible.
"We have the right engines, another space craft doing a dry
run, and we have
plenty of targets," Sears said.
According to current plans, the spacecraft will feature a
touch-and-go
sampler designed by Steven Gorevan and Shaheed Rafeek of Honeybee
Robotics,
Inc. The sampler will hover above the asteroids and extend a
high-speed
drill into the surface. The probe will capture fragments from the
drilling
and store them in containers aboard the spacecraft.
The craft will also contain cameras, spectrometers and other
scientific
equipment that will record information about the asteroids.
Sears and his colleagues recently gathered at the Lunar and
Planetary
Institute in Houston to discuss various aspects of the mission.
They talked
about the scientific case for sample return, spacecraft maneuvers
in the
vicinity of small asteroids, sample collection devices and
planetary
protection issues, and the implications for resource utilization,
impact
hazard mitigation and human exploration and development of space.
The mission will address some of the most fundamental questions
in science
as defined by NASA's Space Science Enterprise Plan in 1997. Hera
addresses
seven of the 11 goals set by NASA in the plan, including:
Information on the formation of the solar system
Stellar evolution and the relationship between stars and planet
formation
The origin of molecules necessary for life on Earth
The possibilities of life on other planets.
A record of solar activity
Prediction and possible deflection of Earth-bound objects
A precursor to human exploration and colonization of space
Researchers at NASA's Glenn Research Center determined the
mission
trajectory. Hera would launch in January 2006, reaching the first
asteroid,
1999 AO10, after eight months. It would spend about 99 days at
the first two
asteroids, AO10 and 2000AG6, and 205 days at the third, 1989 UQ,
returning
to earth in November 2010.
The current team of researchers planning project Hera includes:
Sears, Don
Brownlee of the University of Washington, Carle Pieters of Brown
University,
M. Lindstrom of the University of Tennessee, D. Britt of Johnson
Space
Center, B.C. Clark of Lockheed Martin Astronautics, L. Gefert of
Glenn
Research Center, S. Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics and J.C. Preble
of
SpaceWorks, Inc.
Copyright 2001, SpaceDaily
==============
(3) US ASTRONOMERS CONTEMPLATING TO CATCH UP WITH BRITISH VIRTUAL
SPACE
OBSERVATORY
From Excite News, 7 January 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010107/18/science-space-virtual-dc
ASTRONOMERS FORESEE VIRTUAL SPACE OBSERVATORY
By Deborah Zabarenko
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - In the near future, anyone with a computer
modem and a
clever idea may be able to explore the cosmos in a virtual space
observatory
-- online.
The idea of a national virtual observatory, offered as part of
the U.S.
space community's plan for the next decade, could become reality
within five
years at an estimated cost of $25 million and a global version
could be in
place by 2010, according to Stephen Strom, head of planning and
development
at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO).
A lot of astronomical data is already available to the public,
through NASA
and the space agencies of Europe and Canada. But what scientists
envision,
in work to be discussed at this week's meeting of the American
Astronomical
Society in San Diego, is a complete archive of the burgeoning
observations
from telescopes on the ground and orbiting Earth.
The sheer amount of data can be daunting, because of parallel
explosions in
the 1990s in the ability of space scientists to collect material
and in the
capacity of computers to store it, Strom said by telephone from
Tucson,
Arizona.
"There is a revolution in detective ability; every 18
months, our ability to
image the sky doubles," Strom said. Right now, there are
many terabytes --
trillions of bytes -- of astronomical data available for study.
By the end
of the decade, the amount of data will be many petabytes. Each
petabyte is a
thousand terabytes.
By contrast, a personal computer these days is considered to have
a large
memory if its hard drive can hold 20 gigabytes, or 20 billion
bytes of
information.
DIGITAL MOVIES OF INCOMING ASTEROIDS
If petabytes of space data were available online, Strom said
astronomers and
others could map so much of the sky that it might be possible to
make a
digital movie of certain fast-moving features, such as asteroids
threatening
Earth or comet-like objects orbiting the Sun outside the orbit of
the planet
Neptune.
George Djorgovski of the California Institute of Technology has
been a
proponent of the virtual observatory, and was scheduled to offer
insights on
its creation at the San Diego conference.
Djorgovski has argued that using data from many telescopes --
from the
orbitting Hubble Space Telescope to the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
to
Earth-based telescopes -- would give unprecedented accuracy in
observing
celestial phenomena.
Strom and others working on this proposed project recognize that
one
stumbling block is a cultural one. While the National Aeronautics
and Space
Administration has long had a principle of sharing data collected
on large
space missions with the public, the same does not always hold
true for
scientists working with ground-based observatories.
"The data have been viewed largely ... as the property of
the individual
investigator," Strom said. "We lack the culture of
broad public access."
There also needs to be standardization of what would amount to a
massive
online database of information, aimed at the world's nearly
10,000
astronomical researchers but also available in some form to the
public.
"It's not just a repository of information, but tools to
deal with it," said
David De Young of NOAO, who has also worked on the proposed
project.
These tools would help scientists and others recognize patterns
in what they
were seeing, and would put together impressions of objects using
observations from X-ray, gamma ray, radio waves and optical
telescopes,
giving a more complete picture, De Young said by telephone before
his
arrival in San Diego.
The virtual observatory would probably mean a change in the
perception of
the astronomer's job, De Young said.
"There will no longer be the tradition of the lone
astronomer in the dark,
adjusting the telescope by hand," he said. Instead, many
astronomers will
just go to their computers and log in.
MODERATOR'S NOTE: The virtual space observatory U.S. astronomers
are
contemplating to develop in the next decade has already become a
reality in
Britain. The UK's National Schools' Observatory
(http://www.schoolsobservatory.org.uk/),
based at JMU's Astrophysics
Research Institute, will be inaugurated this year. Once up and
running, it
will provide *every* pupil in Britain open access - via the
internet - to a
number of large robotic telescopes situated around the globe. The
current
developments in observatorional astronomy are not just a
'revolution in
detective ability;' What we are witnissing is the democratisation
of a
scientific activity that used to be the sole domain of a select
few. Space
is opening up to all interested in our cosmic environment!
===============
(4) QUADRANTIDS 2001
From Rainer Arlt <rarlt@aip.de>
-------------------------------------
I M O S h o w e r C i r c u l a r
-------------------------------------
QUADRANTIDS 2001
Favorable lunar conditions accompanied the maximum of the
2001 Quadrantid meteor shower. Peak activity was expected
near 12h UT on January 3, corresponding to a solar longi-
tude of lambda=283.16 deg.
Observers were satisfied by good Quadrantid rates in the UT
afternoon and evening hours of January 3, 2001. Radio forward-
scatter observations as reported by Hiroshi Ogawa, Japan,
showed increased Quadratid activity until 20h UT on January 3,
compared with the background activity of December 30-January 1.
Geometrical effects of radiant direction changes will play
a significant role though.
The highest ZHR value is found for 13h30m UT on January 3
or a solar longitude of lambda=283.24 deg (J2000.0). The
ZHR of about 130 is a typical value for the Quadrantids,
but the number of reports for the peak period is very small
whence conclusions are tentative. The peak time may easily
shift by one hour to either side once a more comprehensive
dataset is available.
We are very grateful to the following 23 observers who sent
their reports to the Visual Commission or to the various
mailing lists in time for this first activity overview:
ANDBI Birger Andresen (Norway) MEIMA Marcel Meima (UK)
BIVNI Nicolas
Biver(USA) NICTE Ted A.
Nichols II (USA)
BURWI Wlliam Burton (USA)
PUNNI Nilesh Puntambekar (India)
DAVMA Mark Davis
(USA) RENJU
Jurgen Rendtel (Germany)
GLIGE George W. Gliba (USA) SPAGE George
Spalding(UK)
GODSH Shelagh Godwin (UK)
STOWE Wes Stone (USA)
HALWA Wayne T. Hally (USA) TAIRI
Richard Taibi (USA)
HASTA Takema Hashimoto (Japan) TUKAR Arnold Tukkers (the
Netherlands)
HOSDA Dave Hostetter (USA) UCHSH
Shigeo Uchiyama (Japan)
JOHCA Carl Johannink (Germany) YOUKI Kim S. Youmans (USA)
LINMI Mike Linnolt
(USA) ZHUJI Jin Zhu
(China)
MCBAL Alastair McBeath (UK)
---------------------------------------------------
Date Time (UT) Sollong nObs nIND
nQUA ZHR
---------------------------------------------------
Jan 02 2300
282.63 2 2
17 13 +- 9
Jan 03 0230
282.78 5 3
40 26 +- 4
Jan 03 0510 282.89
13 5 109 17
+- 3
Jan 03 0740
283.00 9 5
98 56 +- 6
Jan 03 0940 283.08
10 8 192 61
+- 4
Jan 03 1120
283.15 6 4
90 68 +- 7
Jan 03 1330
283.24 3 2
33 131 +-23
Jan 03 1500
283.31 4 3
53 118 +-16
Jan 03 1720
283.41 5 3
76 82 +- 9
Jan 03 1910 283.48
10 5 217 95
+- 6
Jan 03 2110
283.57 5 4
98 79 +- 8
Jan 04 0400
283.86 2 1
19 16 +- 4
---------------------------------------------------
Solar longitudes refer to equinox J2000.0. nObs is the number
of individual observing periods, nIND is the number of individ-
ual observers providing them, nQUA is the number of Quadrantids
seen. The radiant position was assumed at alpha=230, delta=+49,
the population index used was r=2.1. The expectation value of the
ZHR,
ZHR = (1 + sum
nQUA) / sum(Teff/C),
was used for the averages here, where Teff is the effective
observing time and C is the total correction composed of limiting
magnitude, clouds, and zenith correction. Times are rounded to
the nearest 10 minutes.
Rainer Arlt & Vladimir Krumov,
2001 January 4
===============
(5) MYTHOLOGISTS QUESTION GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR BIBLICAL FLOOD
LEGEND
From The New York Times, 9 January 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/science/09FLOO.html
Experts Face Off on 'Noah's Flood'
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
AN DIEGO, Jan. 8 - Two marine geologists from Columbia University
in 1996
advanced the idea that a flood of water from the Mediterranean,
rushing
through the Bosporus with the force of 20 Niagaras, entered the
Black Sea
7,600 years ago. In months, at most two years, the Black Sea
rose, inundated
surrounding plains and attained its present dimensions.
As a consequence, the geologists suggested, people in the region
had to
flee, and this could explain the rapid spread of early
agriculture into
eastern and northern Europe. It was even possible, they said,
that the
cataclysm became a part of folk memory, inspiring the Babylonian
flood myth
in the epic of Gilgamesh and, in time, the biblical story of
Noah.
The geologists, Dr. William B. F. Ryan and Dr. Walter C. Pitman
3rd of
Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, elaborated their
hypothesis in
a book, "Noah's Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries about
the Event That
Changed History," published in 1999 by Simon & Schuster
Inc. They could not
have waved a redder flag in the face of some scholars.
Although many fellow geologists have found the research
persuasive and the
Black Sea flood plausible, and still do, archaeologists and
historians were
skeptical from the start. They expressed their doubts and
objections,
politely but firmly, in an encounter with Dr. Ryan and Dr. Pitman
here on
Saturday at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of
America.
The geological evidence for the flood may be sound, the critics
said, but
they thought it a stretch to ascribe to it such widespread
consequences for
ancient culture and mythology.
"The large claim connecting the Black Sea flood and Noah's
flood can no
longer be sustained," Dr. Andrew M. T. Moore, an
archaeologist and dean of
liberal arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said in an
interview
afterward.
Dr. Stephanie Dalley, a historian at Oxford University in England
and a
specialist on Babylonian mythology, said that the "supposed
similarities"
between the Black Sea event and the flood story of Gilgamesh
"are random and
wrong."
For one thing, Dr. Dalley said, it is questionable that a folk
memory would
have persisted over more than 4,000 years. But suppose it had. If
refugees
from the Black Sea flood carried the memory with them into the
Middle East,
where it was eventually written on clay tablets, why is there no
flood
mythology in the ancient cultures of Eastern Europe, where other
refugees
may have migrated?
Most scholars suspect that the periodic flooding of the Tigris
and Euphrates
Rivers is the inspiration for the Babylonian flood story. In this
account,
it rained seven days and nights and all dry land vanished; there
were no
survivors, except those in a boat. On a philosophical level, Dr.
Dalley
noted, the Gilgamesh epic made the point that "before the
flood, people
could live forever or until the next disaster, and after the
flood, people
died of old age."
By contrast, the Black Sea flooded not by rain but from rising
sea levels
far away. The water encroached steadily, but land never vanished
from sight
and people had time to flee.
Dr. Dalley concluded that Dr. Ryan and Dr. Pitman "have
misunderstood the
meaning of the flood myth in Mesopotamia, and its use in the
hypothesis
should be abandoned." Then she added, "But the rest of
the hypothesis is
fine, as far as I'm concerned."
Copyright 2001, The New York Times
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(6) RECONSIDERING PRIORITIES FOR SPACE MISSIONS
From Jens Kieffer-Olsen <dstdba@post4.tele.dk>
> FLIGHTS TO CERES & VESTA UNDER CONSIDERATION
> From NASANews@hq.nasa.gov
> Don Savage
> * The Dawn mission intends to orbit Vesta and Ceres, two of
the largest
> asteroids in the solar system. According to current
theories, the very
> different properties of Vesta and Ceres are the result of
the asteroids
> being formed and evolving in different parts of the solar
system. By
> observing both asteroids with the same set of instruments,
Dawn would probe
> the early solar system as well as determine in detail the
properties of each
> asteroid. Dr. Christopher T. Russell of the University of
California at Los
> Angeles would lead Dawn at a total cost to NASA of $271
million.
Dear Benny,
The above mention of the Dawn mission in conjunction with Dr.
Gritzner's
paper "The NEO impact hazard and Option for Mitigation"
(pointed to by Bob
Perry on CCNet last Wednesday ) led me to reconsider our
priorities for
manned space flight.
Surely the Moon had to be our first port of call, and surely our
long-term
target is to terraform Mars, but for the next couple of centuries
the most
rewarding destinations for mankind to explore ( and establish
bridgeheads on
) are bound to be asteroids.
In his summary Christian Gritzner describes phase 2 in the
prevention of
future NEO impacts as follows ( phase 1 of course is the
execution of NEO
detection programmes ): "In-situ exploration of NEOs is very
important to
obtain more information about their mass distribution, shape,
internal
structure, etc. There are already some asteroid and comet (
including NEO )
exploration missions on the way or in preparation. The research
goals of
current and future exploration missions should be
extended..."
Landing a manned space craft on an asteroid is considerably
easier than
safely areobraking through the tenous atmosphere of Mars. Leaving
the
asteroid is a walkover compared to launching a return rocket from
the dusty
surface of Mars.
Furthermore NEAs offer the advantage of regular close fly-bys of
Earth,
thereby potentially shortening astronauts' journey through space.
Delta-v
requirements may vary correspondingly, but Hohmann transfer
orbits are not
relevant anyway for missions relating to threatening
NEOs.
'Living off the land' as Robert Zubrin envisages early astronauts
on Mars to
do, is no less a possibility on an asteroid ( even if Mars offers
the
benefit of an atmosphere rich in CO2 ). And deliveries from
Earth are
feasible to-day as demonstrated by the NEAR mission to Eros.
Naturally the two Martian moonlets qualify as targets for manned
exploration
too, but the landing on Mars itself will remain for a long time a
deceptive
beacon with the potential of siphoning funds off the NEO
protection
programmes. How ironical it would be, if Earthlings found
themselves struck
by an object while celebrating the conquest of Mars!
Jens Kieffer-Olsen, M.Sc.(Elec.Eng.)
Slagelse, Denmark
=============
(7) THE CATASTROPHIC YEARS AROUND 850 AD
From Joel Gunn <jdgunn@mindspring.com>
John Mccue,
I have been wondering about the time around the turn of the 8-9th
century
A.D. as well. Lamb reports particularly difficult winters in
Europe between
760 and 840, with the Nile freezing over in 829. I know from
another source
that the Carolingian trade sphere in the North Sea collapsed
suddenly in 829
ff. A series of bad winters may also suggest that Charlemagne,
who visited
the Pope on Christmas Day of AD 800, may have been more
interested in his
well stocked table that making nice with the papacy as historians
generally suggest.
I saw a note in an astronomy journal about an important comet
moving inside
the earth's orbit in A.D.710, which reportedly increase the space
dust
blocking incoming radiation to the planet. At that time in
certain regions
in North America radiocarbon dates become very rare in the two
centuries
following.
Some research needs to be done in that time range. It is the
nadir of sea
level decline following the A.D. 536 event according to Bill
Tanner's 50
year interval sea level determinations. The high frequency of
comets your
research reveals suggest some sort of connection that needs to be
sorted
out.
(Citations are reported in The Years Without Summer,
Archaeopress.)
Joel Gunn
=============
(8) AN ACT OF GOD?
From Duncan Steel <D.I.Steel@salford.ac.uk>
Dear Benny,
Someone's scanner seems to have suffered an aberration - perhaps
an act of
God?
>Dombard AJ, McKinnon WB:
>Long-term retention of impact crater topography on Ganymede
>GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS 27: (22) 3663-3666 NOV 15 2000
> ...
>By applying improved understanding of theologic
>parameters and initial crater shapes to a viscoelastic
model...
I think that should read "rheologic"!
Another correction. I wrote that no total lunar eclipse would be
visible in
its entirety (after January 9th) from the UK until November 2003.
In
addition, a total lunar eclipse will occur on
16 May 2003 that may be seen as the Moon sets in the morning.
This gives the
possibility, for early risers, of seeing both the rising Sun and
the
eclipsed Moon in the sky at the same time.
Duncan Steel
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