PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet DIGEST 26 June 1998
------------------------
THE GOD OF THE BIBLE: A WINO?
AN EXCERPT FROM A COSMOLOGICAL
CONTROVERSY: HAWKING VS TIPLER
"Similarly for the word 'God.' If
He is identified with the Omega
Point, then the key religious meanings
of 'God' are retained, with
science and religion integrated. [...]
the German theologian
Wolfhart Pannenberg (who has been called
one of the three greatest
theologians of the 20th century) agrees
that the Omega Point is in
all essentials the God of the Bible.
It's easier for a German
theologian to come to this conclusion
than an English speaker.
God's Name, given in Exodus 3:14, was
translated by Martin Luther
as "ICH WERDE WEIN, DER ICH WEIN
WERDE" (Cosmologist Frank
Tipler in his response to Stephen
Hawking's criticism in the
current issue of SKEPTIC, 6:1 1998, p.
21) [For readers unfamilar
with the German language I should
perhaps add that Tipler's
translation means "I WILL BE WINE,
WHO THAT WILL BE WINE."]
(1) CONGRATULATIONS, ELEANOR! LEADING NEO RE-SEARCHER NAMED TO
WOMEN IN
TECHNOLOGY HALL OF FAME
Ed Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
(2) LIFE EXTINCTIONS BY COSMIC RAY JETS
Rolf Sinclair/NSF Physics Division <rsinclai@nsf.gov>
(3) METEORITES, THE RARITY OF CHONDRULES & THE EARLY SOLAR
SYSTEM
D.W.G. Sears, UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS
(4) LARGE KUIPER BELT OBJECTS
D. Jewitt et al., UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII
(5) INVERSION OF SHAPE STATISTICS FOR SMALL SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES
K. Muinonen*) & J.S.V. Lagerros,
ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY UPPSALA
(6) SEARCH FOR AQUEOUSLY ALTERED MATERIALS ON ASTEROIDS
M.A. Barucci et al., PARIS OBSERVATORY
(7) A SKEPTIC'S VIEW OF POTENTIAL CLIMATE CHANGE
S.B. Idso, US WATER CONSERVAT LAB
======================
(1) CONGRATULATIONS, ELEANOR! LEADING NEO RE-SEARCHER NAMED TO
WOMEN IN
TECHNOLOGY HALL OF FAME
From Ed Grondine <epgrondine@hotmail.com>
Benny -
Ron Baalke from JPL sent this announcement about Dr. Eleanor
Helin out
to the meteorite list this afternoon, and my guess is that you
will be
getting a copy of it shortly. Interviews with Dr. Helin may be
found at
http://cnn.com/TECH/9707/31/asteroid.threat.html
and
http://www.abcnews.com/sections/science/DailyNews/asteroid980429.html
It is known that Dan Goldin has set a goal of finding qualified
women
to bring into management roles at NASA. If the quotes in the
articles
are representative, it looks like Dr. Pilcher will have another
very well qualified candidate to consider as head of the new
program.
Additionally, as a practicing asteroid searcher Dr. Helin appears
to be
completely comfortable with the MPC, fellow astronomers, and the
Air
Force.
Best wishes -
Ed
-------------------
From Ron Baalke <BAALKE@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>
MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
Contact: Mary Beth
Murrill
ASTEROID FINDER NAMED TO WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY HALL OF FAME
Asteroid finder and astronomer Eleanor F. Helin of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, has been named to the Women
in
Science and Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame, an
award that
honors women in science and technology worldwide.
Helin will be honored at ceremonies to be held Thursday, June 25,
at 7
p.m., during the WITI 1998 Technology Summit in Santa Clara,
CA. The
largest-ever conference of top women in technology, the WITI 1998
Technology Summit will draw more than 3,500 technologists and
scientists from around the world. WITI Hall of Fame was launched
in
1996 to recognize, honor, and promote the outstanding
contributions
women make to the scientific and technological communities and
society
at large. Inductees are chosen by an independent panel of judges.
Donna Shirley, manager of JPL's Mars Exploration Program, was
inducted
into the WITI Hall of Fame last year, and is a featured speaker
at
Thursday's ceremonies.
Helin has been active in planetary science and astronomy for more
than
three decades at the California Institute of Technology and JPL,
a
division of Caltech managed for NASA. She is the principal
investigator
for the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program, a
collaborative
effort of NASA, JPL and the U.S. Air Force which has already
detected
more than 26,000 objects including 30 near-Earth asteroids.
In the early 1970s, Helin initiated the Palomar Planet-Crossing
Asteroid Survey from Caltech's Palomar Observatory in Southern
California, resulting in the discovery of thousands of asteroids
of all
types including 100 near-Earth asteroids and 20 comets. One
of the
most significant discoveries was that of asteroid 2026 Aten, the
first
asteroid found to have an orbit smaller than the Earth.
Another of her
asteroid discoveries, KD 1992, was recently named the new target
for a
flyby by to be conducted in July 1999 by the NASA/JPL Deep Space
1
spacecraft, due for launch this November.
Helin is a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Service Medal and the
1997
JPL Award for Excellence for her leadership of the NEAT
program. The
International Astronomical Union named asteroid 3267 Helin in her
honor. Helin and her husband reside in Thousand Oaks, CA.
==================
(2) LIFE EXTINCTIONS BY COSMIC RAY JETS
From Rolf Sinclair/NSF Physics Division <rsinclai@nsf.gov>
Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 13:57:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: physnews@aip.org (AIP
listserver)
To: physnews-mailing@aip.org
Subject: update.379
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number
379
June 25, 1998 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein
LIFE EXTINCTIONS BY COSMIC RAY JETS. Several reasons have
been put
forward to explain past periods of mass extinction on the
Earth. An
asteroid, for example, is thought to have killed off the
dinosaurs in
the Cretaceous/Tertiary era 60 million years ago. A new theory by
physicists at the Technion in Israel suggests that jets of cosmic
rays
coming from the collapse of neutron stars or the merger of two
such
stars could initiate a lethal batch of muons in our
atmosphere. They
argue that the ensuing ionizing radiation might have affected the
biosphere in two ways---by killing many species outright and by
causing
the sort of mutations that might result in the abrupt appearance
of
many new species in the aftermath of the of the jet event.
Furthermore, the coming of the cosmic rays might be heralded a
few days
before by the arrival of a gamma ray burst (GRB), presumably from
the
same energetic source. The mechanism behind GRBs is itself
now the
subject of intense astronomical scrutiny. Arnon Dar et al.,
Physical
Review Letters, 29 June; Arnon Dar, arnon@physics.
technion.ac.il,
011-972-4-829-3529; science journalists can obtain the article
from
AIP.)
==================
(3) METEORITES, THE RARITY OF CHONDRULES & THE EARLY SOLAR
SYSTEM
D.W.G. Sears: The case for rarity of chondrules and
calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions in the early solar system and
some
implications for astrophysical models. ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL,
1998,
Vol.498, No.2 Pt1, pp.773-778
UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS, COSMOCHEM GRP, DEPT CHEM & BIOCHEM,
FAYETTEVILLE, AR, 72701
The high-temperature materials in chondritic meteorites, the
chondrules
(silicate spherules produced by hash heating) and refractory
inclusions
(the CAI, or calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions), have been used to
place
major constraints on astrophysical models for the early solar
system.
Among the meteorites falling to Earth, the CAI are rare, being
only 15%
by volume of a class that constitutes 0.84% of observed falls,
however
chondrules are ubiquitous. Here it is pointed out similar to 96%
of the
meteorites entering the atmosphere contain few or no chondrules
because
atmospheric passage destroys such meteorites 1000 times more
effectively than the tougher chondrule-rich material.
Furthermore, the
mechanisms for transferring meteorites from the asteroid belt to
Earth
do not sample the belt representatively, so that even the 4% of
chondrule-rich material entering the atmosphere may be an
overestimate.
Most asteroids have surfaces resembling meteorite classes that
are
chondrule-poor or chondrule-free. Foreign clasts in meteorites,
which
are an independent sampling of asteroidal material, usually
resemble
chondrule-poor or chondrule-free carbonaceous chondrites.
Cosmic-ray
ages and gas-retention ages for meteorites indicate that most
stony
meteorites are coming from just a few asteroids. A strong case
can thus
be made that chondrules and CAI were rare in the inner solar
system
during planet and planetesimal formation and that they do not
provide a
strong constraint on astrophysical ideas for the evolution of the
early
solar nebula. Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific
Information Inc.
==================
(4) LARGE KUIPER BELT OBJECTS
D. Jewitt*), J. Luu, C. Trujillo: Large Kuiper Belt objects: The
Mauna
Kea 8K CCD survey. ASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL, 1998, Vol.115, No.5,
pp.2125-2135
*) UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII, INST ASTRON, 2680 WOODLAWN DR, HONOLULU,
HI,
96822
We describe a large-area ecliptic survey designed to assess the
sky-plane surface density of bright Kuiper Belt objects. We used
an
8192 x 8192 pixel CCD mosaic to image 51.5 deg(2) to a 50%
detection
threshold red magnitude m(R) = 22.5. Thirteen new Kuiper Belt
objects
were identified in the survey, including some of the brightest
and,
presumably, largest known examples. We use Monte Carlo models to
assess
the effects of observational bias in our survey and to examine
(1) the
size distribution of bright objects in the Kuiper Belt, (2) the
possible existence of a cutoff in the size distribution at large
radii,
(3) the intrinsic ratio of Plutinos to nonresonant
(''classical'')
Kuiper Belt objects, (4) the intrinsic ratio of populations in
the 3:2
and 2:1 mean motion resonances, and (5) the radial extent of the
Kuiper
Belt. Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific Information Inc.
==================
(5) INVERSION OF SHAPE STATISTICS FOR SMALL SOLAR SYSTEM BODIES
K. Muinonen*) & J.S.V. Lagerros: Inversion of shape
statistics for
small solar system bodies. ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS, 1998,
Vol.333,
No.2, pp.753-761
*) ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY, BOX 515, S-75120 UPPSALA, SWEDEN
The irregular shapes of small solar system bodies are modelled by
lognormal statistics, i.e., assuming that the shapes are
realisations
of the so-called Gaussian random sphere. The Gaussian sphere is
fully
described by the mean radius and the covariance function of the
logarithmic radius. The stochastic shape is thus given by the
covariance function, or the discrete spectrum of its Legendre
coefficients. A maximum likelihood estimator is here provided for
inverting the covariance function from three-dimensional sample
shapes.
The inverse method is applied to sophisticated shape data on
altogether
14 small solar system bodies: the asteroids 4 Vesta, 243 Ida, 951
Gaspra, 1620 Geographos, 4179 Toutatis, and 4769 Castalia; the
Martian
satellites Phobos and Deimos; the Jovian satellite Amalthea; the
Saturnian satellites Hyperion, Epimetheus, Janus, and Prometheus;
and
the Neptunian satellite Proteus. Inversion yields sigma = 0.245
for the
relative standard deviation of radius, shows that most of the
spectral
power lies in the second-degree spherical harmonics, and gives
Gamma =
32.7 degrees for the correlation angle. Even though the first
results
are promising, caution is recommended because the number of
sample
shapes is still small. Omitting one sample shape at a time and
repeating the inversion shows that the results are not too
sensitive to
any one sample shape. As an example application, thermal light
curves
are simulated for 1000 Gaussian sample spheres in order to study
the
uncertainties in diameters and masses derived for asteroids. As
compared to the Standard Thermal Model that assumes spherical
asteroids, the irregular shape is shown to cause a 5 % systematic
effect with 10 % scatter in diameter estimation whereas, in mass
estimation, the respective numbers are larger at 17 % and 33 %.
Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific Information Inc.
===================
(6) SEARCH FOR AQUEOUSLY ALTERED MATERIALS ON ASTEROIDS
M.A. Barucci*), A. Doressoundiram, M. Fulchignoni, M. Florczak,
M. Lazzarin, C. Angeli, D. Lazzaro: Search for aqueously altered
materials on asteroids. ICARUS, 1998, Vol.132, No.2, pp.388-396
*) PARIS OBSERVATORY, F-92195 MEUDON, FRANCE
The analysis of visible and near-infrared reflectance spectra of
C-class objects has revealed the presence of features that appear
to
indicate a history of aqueous alteration on their surfaces. This
result
can provide constraints on our understanding of the early Solar
System.
We have recorded spectra covering 0.48-0.92 mu m for 29 C-class
objects
with orbital semimajor axes between 2.3 and 3.6 AU, About 70% of
the
observed objects show features produced as the result of aqueous
alteration processes. (C) 1998 Academic Press.
===================
(7) A SKEPTIC'S VIEW OF POTENTIAL CLIMATE CHANGE
S.B. Idso: CO2-induced global warming: a skeptic's view of
potential
climate change. CLIMATE RESEARCH, 1998, Vol.10, No.1, pp.69-82
US WATER CONSERVAT LAB, 4331 E BROADWAY, PHOENIX, AZ, 85040
Over the course of the past 2 decades, I have analyzed a number
of
natural phenomena that reveal how Earth's near-surface air
temperature
responds to surface radiative perturbations. These studies all
suggest
that a 300 to 600 ppm doubling of the atmosphere's CO2
concentration
could raise the planet's mean surface air temperature by only
about 0.4
degrees C. Even this modicum of warming may never be realized,
however,
for it could be negated by a number of planetary cooling forces
that
are intensified by warmer temperatures and by the strengthening
of
biological processes that are enhanced by the same rise in
atmospheric
CO2 concentration that drives the warming. Several of these
cooling
forces have individually been estimated to be of equivalent
magnitude,
but of opposite sign, to the typically predicted greenhouse
effect of a
doubling of the air's CO2 content, which suggests to me that
little net
temperature change will ultimately result from the ongoing
buildup of
CO2 in Earth's atmosphere. Consequently, I am skeptical of the
predictions of significant CO2-induced global warming that are
being
made by state-of-the-art climate models and believe that much
more work
on a wide variety of research fronts will be required to properly
resolve the issue. Copyright 1998, Institute for Scientific
Information
Inc.
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