PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet, 11/2000 - 26 January 2000
--------------------------------
QUOTES OF THE DAY
"At about the same time as the
Spanish iceball reports,
a truck in Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada, was struck
by an apparent iceball coming from on
high. On later
investigation, there was found to be a
residue described as
"a sticky goo mixed with shredded
newspaper".
-- Jeremy Tatum,
University of Victoria, Canada
"The dinosaur-bird fossil, 120
million years old and named
Archaeoraptor, that was displayed until
last week at the
National Geographic Society in
Washington, is not what it
seems. It is either an elaborate fake or
a mistake by its
Chinese discoverers. Hailed as an
important find for the
theory that birds evolved from
dinosaurs, the fossil is a
composite of two creatures. About the
size of a turkey, it
combines a bird-like upper torso and
head with the tail and
claws of a small dinosaur, according to
a Chinese
palaeontologist and a National
Geographic scientist."
-- Ian Brodie,
The Times, 26 January 2000
(1) ICEBALLS NOT RESTRICTED TO SPAIN
Jeremy Tatum <UNIVERSE@uvvm.UVic.CA>
(2) DARWINISTIC FORGERY ?
THE TIMES, 26 January 2000
(3) YUKON METEOR BLAST
Space Science News <express@spacescience.com>
(4) NEAR SPACECRAFT PASSES FINAL TEST
http://near.jhuapl.edu/news/flash/00jan24_1.html
(5) UPDATE ON ROSETTA MISSION TO COMET WIRTANEN
ESA News <sciweb@estec.esa.nl>
(6) EUROPEAN ASTROFEST RETURNS TO LONDON
ASTRONOMY NOW
(7) ASTEROIDS 2001: FROM PIAZZI TO THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
Carlo Blanco <PIAZZI2001@alpha4.ct.astro.it>
(8) THE CHOSEN PLANET
THE TIMES, 26 January 2000
(9) AMINO ACIDS & EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORGANICS
Iain Gilmour <I.Gilmour@open.ac.uk>
(10) THE STRUCTURE OF COMETS AND ORIGIN OF DNA/RNA
Andrew Glikson <geospectral@spirit.com.au>
(11) AND FINALLY: AN ALTERNATIVE CAUSE OF "WEATHERING"
Ed Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
==============
(1) ICEBALLS NOT RESTRICTED TO SPAIN
From Jeremy Tatum <UNIVERSE@uvvm.UVic.CA>
At about the same time as the Spanish iceball reports, a truck in
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, was struck by an apparent
iceball coming from on high. On later investigation, there was
found to be a residue described as "a sticky goo mixed with
shredded newspaper".
Jeremy Tatum
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Jeremy, could you please provide some
additional
sources or references for your rather interesting note.
====================
(2) DARWINISTIC FORGERY ?
From THE TIMES, 26 January 2000
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?999
DIONOSAUR FIND IS A FAKE
Washington: The dinosaur-bird fossil, 120 million years old and
named Archaeoraptor, that was displayed until last week at the
National Geographic Society in Washington, is not what it seems
(Ian Brodie writes). It is either an elaborate fake or a mistake
by its Chinese discoverers. Hailed as an important find for the
theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs, the fossil is a
composite of two creatures. About the size of a turkey, it
combines a bird-like upper torso and head with the tail and claws
of a small dinosaur, according to a Chinese palaeontologist and a
National Geographic scientist.
Copyright 2000, The Times Newspapers Ltd.
====================
(3) YUKON METEOR BLAST
From Space Science News <express@spacescience.com>
http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast25jan_1.htm
Science@NASA Space Science News for January 25, 2000
Yukon Meteor Blast: A thunderous meteor streaked over Canada's
Yukon
Territory last week. Now a NASA airplane has flown through the
debris
cloud in search of extraterrestrial particles.
January 25, 2000 -- Last week, one of the most dramatic meteors
in 10
years streaked across the skies of the Yukon Territory in Canada.
Witnesses reported two sonic booms, a foul odor, and sizzling
sounds
heard all the way from Alaska through northwestern Canada. Based
on
readings from defense satellites and seismic monitoring stations,
scientists estimate that the meteor detonated with the energy of
two
to three kilotons of TNT.
"I have never seen anything quite like this before,"
said Joe Clarke
of Marshlake, Yukon, who saw the meteor at 0845 PST (1645 UT) on
January 18. "When it started, the flash lit up the mountains
15 km
away as bright as daylight, then it just drifted across the sky.
The
contrail looked to me like the ones left by shuttle launches. It
just
hung there for at least 1/2 hour. [It's the] wildest thing I
could
ever imagine seeing."
There was no major meteor shower on January 18. The Yukon
fireball was
probably what astronomers call a sporadic meteor. The inner solar
system is filled with tiny dust particles that have bubbled off
innumerable comets as they pass close to the Sun. These
particles,
called meteoroids, hit the Earth from random directions producing
2 or
3 sporadic meteors per hour every night.
Scientists from NASA and the Department of Defense are interested
in
the the Yukon event. Samples of dust or rock fragments from the
explosion could reveal the origin of the meteoroid. Defense
specialists would also like to know what the meteoroid was made
of to
help calibrate the sensors they used to detect the fireball.
On Friday, January 21 -- just three days after the explosion --
an
Airborne Sciences ER-2 aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight
Research
Center flew to the Yukon Territory of northwestern Canada in an
effort
to collect atmospheric samples of the meteor's lingering debris
trail.
The region, near the town of Carcross, is mostly unpopulated.
Scientists gathered samples of the debris cloud at an altitude
of
65,000 feet with an instrument called the Aerosol Particulate
Sampler
(APS). The APS is a system of two small five-inch by four-inch
paddles
that deploy simultaneously from the ER-2's left wingtip. The
paddles
are coated with a silicon oil that collects particles from the
high
altitude air stream. After a period of exposure, the paddles are
withdrawn into hermetic enclosures that prevent contamination
during
the aircraft's return to Dryden. The paddles will be removed and
sent
to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas for analysis.
The ER-2 also carried a camera capable of taking black and white
photos of eight-mile wide swaths of the region in an effort to
locate
any impact craters and other scarring of the earth, such as
flattened
areas of forest, that may have been caused by the explosion and
impact
of meteorites that separated from the meteor.
On June 30, 1908, a huge explosion occurred in the sky above the
central Siberian wilderness near the Tunguska River in Russia.
The
concussion from the blast, estimated at 20 megatons of TNT,
leveled
trees in an area nearly 40 miles in diameter. Oddly, the
explosion produced no crater or other evidence of impact.
Scientists at NASA and the University of Wisconsin conducted a
computer simulation that strongly suggests that the Tunguska
culprit
was an asteroid, the most common class of meteorite. The
simulation
indicated that an asteroid about 100 feet in diameter and moving
at a
speed of 10 miles per second would disintegrate at a height of
about
five miles above the ground - approximately the same altitude at
which
the Tunguska object is believed to have exploded. Information
gleaned
from the January 18 meteorite in Canada might enhance
understanding of
the Tunguska event.
===================
(4) NEAR SPACECRAFT PASSES FINAL TEST
From http://near.jhuapl.edu/news/flash/00jan24_1.html
NEAR Aces Final Flight Test
January 24, 2000
The NEAR spacecraft passed its final flight test last week,
flawlessly
rehearsing the 30-hour rendezvous sequence that will precede its
orbit
of asteroid Eros.
The sequence includes a low-phase flyby on Feb. 13, during which
NEAR
will fly directly between Eros and the sun. The pass affords a
unique
opportunity to map the minerals on Eros' northern half under
optimal
lighting; a similar operation in October will cover the
asteroid's
southern hemisphere.
NEAR remains on course for its Feb. 14 rendezvous with Eros,
which is
now about 15,250 miles (24,400 kilometers) away from the
spacecraft.
The NEAR team continues searching for small moons or space debris
around Eros, though none appear in the approach images NEAR has
taken
over the past two weeks. The latest pictures from NEAR -- as well
as a
second movie of the asteroid's rotation -- will appear on the
NEAR Web
site this week.
===================
(5) UPDATE ON ROSETTA MISSION TO COMET WIRTANEN
From ESA News <sciweb@estec.esa.nl>
Exactly three years to go before launch! That was the challenge
facing approximately 80 scientists and mission managers from ESA
member countries and the United States as they gathered this week
at
the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in The
Netherlands for a progress report on the Rosetta mission to Comet
Wirtanen.
More at:
http://sci.esa.int/newsitem.cfm?TypeID=1&ContentID=8931&Storytype=11
===================
(6) EUROPEAN ASTROFEST RETURNS TO LONDON
From ASTRONOMY NOW
http://www.astronomynow.com/astrofest/
Europe's premier astronomy and space show returns to London
next
month. For full details see our special European AstroFest pages.
Friday, February 4th, 2000
Session One (morning)
Will the Universe expand forever?
Iain Nicolson
Britain’s place in space
Paul Murdin, British National Space Centre
Stopping the cycle of cosmic catastrophes
Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University
The search for life on extrasolar planets
Alan Penny, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Session Two (afternoon)
Gian Domenico Cassini: pioneer of planetary astronomy
Allan Chapman, Oxford University
Near-Earth Asteroids
Brian Marsden, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Spring asterisms
Ian Ridpath
NASA’s Great Observatories in space: part 1
Steven Hawley, NASA Astronaut
Saturday, February 5th, 2000
Session Three (morning)
Origins of the constellations
Ian Ridpath
Out of the blue: a cosmic history of water
Paul Murdin, British National Space Centre
The Kuiper belt
Brian Marsden, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
One additional lecture to be announced.
Saturday, February 5th, 2000
Session Four (afternoon)
Black holes — the observational evidence
Iain Nicolson
Light, lenses and astrolabes: the golden age of Arabic astronomy
Allan Chapman, Oxford University
Detecting the light from an extrasolar planet
Alan Penny, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
NASA’s Great Observatories in space: part 2
Steve Hawley, NASA Astronaut
Conference programme may be subject to change due circumstances
beyond our control.
European AstroFest 2000 is organised by Astronomy Now magazine.
========================
(7) ASTEROIDS 2001: FROM PIAZZI TO THE THIRD MILLENNIUM
From Carlo Blanco <PIAZZI2001@alpha4.ct.astro.it>
Dear colleague,
among the activities to celebrate the 200th anniversary of
Giuseppe
Piazzi's discovery of 1 Ceres from the tower of Palermo
Observatory on
January 1st 1801, the international conference "Asteroids
2001: from
Piazzi to the 3rd Millennium" has been planned.
Organized by the Osservatorio Astronomico "G.S. Vaiana"
di Palermo,
the Dipartimento di Scienze Fisiche e Astronomiche
dell'Universita` di
Palermo, the Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell'Universita`
di
Catania, the Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania and the
Osservatorio
Astronomico di Torino, it will be held in Palermo from 11 to 16
June,
2001.
The main topics should concern the main belt asteroids with
single
sessions devoted to the interrelationship with Kuiper Belt and
NEA.
Following the conference, the University of Arizona Press will
publish
the book "Asteroids III".
In order to estimate the number of participants, I invite you to
state
your intention to take part in the meeting by filling the
enclosed
form and send it back to
CERES2001@OAPA.ASTROPA.UNIPA.IT
I thank you very much for your contribution to the organization
of
Piazzi conference.
Sincerely yours
Carlo Blanco
-----------
Asteroids 2001: from Piazzi to the 3rd Millennium
Mondello, (Palermo),
Italy, 11-16 June 2001
Name
Surname
Institution
Postal address
Phone
Fax
e-mail
I will participate: yes ( ), may be ( ), no ( )
----------------------------
send back to: CERES2001@OAPA.ASTROPA.UNIPA.IT
=======================
(8) THE CHOSEN PLANET
Form THE TIMES, 26 January 2000
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?999
A new book concludes that we are alone in the Universe.
Nigel Hawkes reports
Why Earth is a lonely planet
Look at the stars and what do you see? A lifeless Universe of
atoms and molecules performing their lonely dance, or a cosmos
teeming with living things, many of them uncannily human in shape
and unexpectedly fluent in English?
There has always been a strong inclination to believe that we are
not
alone, fostered by science fiction and viewable nightly on
television
in the form of Star Trek or The X Files. In the past 25 years
this has
also become the majority view of orthodox science, based largely
on
the sheer statistics.
"Billions and billions of stars" was the mantra of the
late Carl
Sagan, the American astronomer who, with his colleague Frank
Drake,
was largely responsible for changing the intellectual climate.
Given
so many stars - a hundred billion in our own galaxy, the Milky
Way,
alone - and the belief that life on Earth had evolved of its own
accord, it became impossible to believe that similar life had not
evolved elsewhere.
But that is exactly what two American scientists, Peter Ward and
Donald Brownlee, argue in Rare Earth (Copernicus/Springer) due
out in
the next few days. "The underlying theme is that the Earth
is a
charmed place," says Brownlee, Professor of Astronomy at the
University of Washington in Seattle. "We know of no other
body that
is even remotely like it."
Brownlee and Ward (a palaeontologist and Professor of Geology at
the
same university) do not argue that life itself is rare. It would
be
difficult to do so, given recent evidence that bacteria flourish
in
some of the most remote and inhospitable crevices on Earth - deep
in
the crust and around the boiling water that bubbles up from vents
in
the sea floor, to name but two.
The Rare Earth hypothesis, indeed, holds that simple life may be
nearly everywhere, but complex life almost nowhere. "You
need to have
a vast amount of time to let evolution ramp up to animals, and we
think there are only a small number of planets where this could
happen," says Ward.
FULL ARTICLE at
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/Times/frontpage.html?999
========================
LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR
========================
(9) AMINO ACIDS & EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORGANICS
From Iain Gilmour <I.Gilmour@open.ac.uk>
Dear Benny:
There is a misconception about amino acids as indicators of
extraterrestrial organics. The occurrence of isovaline in
particular
is not exactly rare, though its precise biological function is
poorly
understood.
Isovaline occurs naturally as major constituents of cytotoxic
peptides
produced by soil fungi such as Trichoderma viride and Trichodema
reesii (Bruckner and Pryzbylaki, 1984). The last time I visited
Stevns
Klint I would not have described the outcrops there as exactly
soil-free!
Bruckner, H., and Pryzbylski, M. (1984) J. Chromatog 296,
263-275.
Iain Gilmour
Planetary Sciences Research Institute
The Open University, UK
===========================
(10) THE STRUCTURE OF COMETS AND ORIGIN OF DNA/RNA
From Andrew Glikson <geospectral@spirit.com.au>
Dear Benny,
In their letter of 25.1.00 Hoyle and Wickmasinghe suggest
"the
biological molecules would be vastly amplified within cometary
interiors", whereas in a communication to me of the same
date
Wickmansinghe writes: "The amino acid content of
carbonaceous
chondrites, synthesised abiotically, is largely irrelevant to
panspermia. It is the volatile component of cometary
outflows
that carry biological particles and biological molecules in our
model.".
It is generally assumed, although to date not directly observed,
that
comets form loose aggregates including silicate blocks (possibly
including carbonaceous chondrites), ice and vapour. In
terms of Hoyle
and Wickmansinghe's model, whereas the silicate blocks contain
abiologic
amino acids, the ice and vapour contain biologic amino acids (and
possibly also viruses). Such proposed dichotomy in the
composition of
comets overlooks the dynamic interchange of volatiles between
silicates
(ie. the carbon in carbonaceous chondrites), ice and vapour, for
example
during near-sun grazing. Such interchange would hardly
allow spatial
separation of biologic and abiologic amino acids in vapour, ice
and
solids.
So far as "vastly amplified" molecules within cometary
interiors is
concerned, apart from an occupation of the interior of comets by
abiologic amino acids contained in silicates, the authors will be
aware
that (1) the chance of amino acids combining at random into
a protein
molcule - the basic molecule of life - is 1 in 10^130 - a process
likely
to require favourable conditions (temperatures under 150 degrees
celsius) as may exist on some planets, and (2) viruses, which
contain
either DNA or RNA (but never both) can not multiply on their own
except
as parasites within living organisms.
A clarification would be appreciated whether the authors accept
the validity of Ockham's razor principle, namely that no more
variables need be invoked in a scientific hypothesis than
required
by the evidence?
Andrew Glikson
26.1.00
===============
(11) AND FINALLY: AN ALTERNATIVE CAUSE OF "WEATHERING"
From Ed Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
Hello Benny -
I read the note in CC Letters on the theories
of "alternative"
Egyptologists with some amusement. Another cause of
"weathering" in
ancient sandstone monuments is visitors urinating on them. This
may
be seen at Petra, and is probably the case with the Sphinx.
While not as romantic a hypothesis to explain
the wear as an
extremely ancient Egyptian civilization dating back to 10,000
BCE, it
is certainly a more real one.
EP
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