PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 92/2001 - 23 August 2001
------------------------------
"Sorry to be the one to break this news, b Impactor Asteroid
has
just been announced by
NEODys, and this one...
1) Is very big
2) Is on the same order of magnitude of impact probability as
2001AV43
3) Will possibly impact the Earth in the very near future!"
--Tom, 17 August 2001
"Over the years his provocative and occasionally outrageous
theories
were a constant source of fascination and inspiration. Fred's
independent
thinking and contempt of the establishment were a refreshing
antidote to
academic stuffiness. It was a scandal that his irreverence
probably cost
him a Nobel prize for his ground-breaking work on
nucleosynthesis."
-- Paul Davies, 22 August 2001
"The UK has a history of failure to engage in subtanial
space
development. If this statement is taken to mean that advocacy of
more
wide ranging and cost effective launcher and space programmes for
the
UK and ESA countries is to be forbidden, then the possibility of
putting
asteroids and comets into a postitive context will be lost. All
that would
then be possible either a bland exercise in reassurance that
there is not
really much of a threat anyway, or that only military style
nuclear
solutions are envisaged. We should move purposefuuly away from
such
powerlessness towards the ability to avert the threat and convert
it
into an asset. Failing this, in time, the public would regard it
the NEO
Information Centre as pure spin."
--Michael Martin-Smith, 22 August 2001
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ASTEROID ALARM
Benny J Peiser <b.j.peiser@livjm.ac.uk>
(2) ASTEROID 2001 PM9
Brian Marsden <brian@cfaps5.harvard.edu>
(3) UK GOVERNMENT INVITES PLANS FOR NATIONAL NEAR EARTH OBJECTS
CENTRE
BNSC, 20 August 2001
(4) STATEMENT OF WORK FOR UK NEO CENTRE
British National Space Centre, 20 August 2001
(5) ASTEROID (COSMIC COLLISION) MAY HAVE CREATED HAWAII
SPACE.com, 1 August 2001
(6) URANUS, NEPTUNE, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
Planetary Science Research, 21 August 2001
(7) SIR FRED HOYLE
The Independent, 23 August 2001
(8) PROFESSOR SIR FRED HOYLE
The Times, 22 August 2001
(9) SIR FRED HOYLE
Paul Davies <pcwd@ozemail.com.au>
(10) INTERNATIONAL SPACE COOPERATION WORKSHOP REPORT AVAILABLE
Hans Haubold <Hans.Haubold@oosa.un.or.at>
(11) THE "OUT OF THIS WORLD" THREAT
Alan Fitzsimmons <A.Fitzsimmons@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK>
(12) WILL NEO CENTRE PRODUCE MORE THAN SPIN?
Michael Martin-Smith <martin@miff.demon.co.uk>
(13) WILL THE NEW UK NEO CENTRE MENTION RIO CUARTO?
E.P. Grondine epgrondine@hotmail.com
(14) DOUBTS ABOUT PLANETARY DEFENSE
John Michael Williams <jwill@AstraGate.net>
(15) AND FINALLY: SATELLITE IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK
Space.com, 23 August 2001
==================
(1) ANOTHER FALSE ASTEROID ALARM
>From Benny J Peiser <b.j.peiser@livjm.ac.uk>
Over the last five or six days, a number of web sites have
published a new
asteroid scare, this time regarding asteroid 2001 PM9. It all
seems to have
started last Friday, when the following asteroid alarm, based on
impact
calculations published by NEODys, was announced at
http://www.thehotsheets.com/Boards/Forum2/HTML/000069.html
"Sorry to be the one to break this news, b Impactor Asteroid
has
just been announced by
NEODys, and this one...
1) Is very big
2) Is on the same order of magnitude of impact probability as
2001AV43
3) Will possibly impact the Earth in the very near future!
Let me introduce you to Asteroid 2001PM9.
a) Discovered on August 11, 2001 and observed up until August
16th.
Its orbit was computed and posted today.
b) It's Absolute Magnitude suggests it is anywhere from 530m to
1.2km in diameter...that's up to nearly 3/4 of a mile in
diameter!
c) It will make a relatively close pass to within .089AU on May
10,
2003. The first possible impact date calculated and the one with
the
highest probability of occurring is set for June 17, 2005. If it
misses
Earth on that pass there are another 28 possible impact dates
calculated between 2005 and 2079.
Dear Readers, following are some facts that ought to set you
right
back in your chair, grow you some grey hairs - or cause a certain
amount of lost sleep.
If 2001PM9 impacts the Earth...
1. It will be the kind of impact event that only happens once
every
25,000 to 500,000 years.
2. It will impact with a force of somewhere between 100,000 to
800,000 Megatons
3. It will be somewhere between a "Large Sub-Global
Event" to a
"Nominal Global Effect Threshold" Event.
4. It is estimated that an impact of this order would result in
the
loss of anywhere between 500,000 and 1.5 Billion lives (depending
on
exactly where it hit).
Ladies and Gentlemen, if and when 2001PM9 impacts the Earth...
a) If it hits in the Ocean tsunamis could reach "global
scale".
b) If it hits land it could completely destroy an area the size
of
California
c) Could raise enough dust to affect the climate and freeze
crops.
d) Create a crater up to 30 km in diameter (18 miles around).
e) Cause ozone layer destruction on a global scale.
If you worried a little about 1998OX4 and 2001AV43...be very
concerned about this one.
We really need to push the button on this one (get the word out
and
get a lot more information)."
>From what I can discern, this latest impact threat was
disseminated rapidly
among a number of other web sites (see e.g.:
http://www.forumco.com/morgana/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3871&FORUM_ID=10&CAT_ID=3&Topic_Title=New+and+VERY+DANGEROUS+Impactor+Discovered&Forum_Title=Asteroids%2FComets
).
I received news about the latest scare (in form of a URL with the
headline
"New Asteroid Discovered - Possible Collision Path With
Earth",
http://www.rense.com/general12/collision.htm)
on Tuesday evening. By that
time, new observations of the object had already eliminated
NEODys' initial
impact calculations - as usual. That did not, however, prevent
amateur orbit
calculators to announce that the asteroid was now going to impact
Mars in
2040.
As Brian Marsden points out below, this latest scare shows, once
again, that
there are still major deficiencies in the way the NEO community
presents its
findings (and impact calculations) to the public, i.e. in such a
way that
people are not *unnecessarily* alarmed or distressed, and that
does not
damage the integrity of the NEO community.
What the 2001 PM9 scare also illustrates, in my view, is the
considerable
interest orbit and impact calculations attract nowadays among
quite
knowledgeable and highly interested members of the public. Given
the
information made publicly available by a number of professional
impact
simulators, we shouldn't blame amateurs for using this
information in an
often incompetent manner. It is the responsibility of the NEO
community to
ensure that the information presented to the public is easily
comprehensible
so that interested but mostly untrained public can understand the
meaning of
tentative, rapidly changing orbit and impact calculations.
I wonder how many more asteroid scares it will take before the
NEO community
will heed the recurring calls for adjustment and make a
determined effort to
resolve this thorny issue.
Benny J Peiser
============
(2) ASTEROID 2001 PM9
>From Brian Marsden <brian@cfaps5.harvard.edu>
Dear Benny,
The claims in this "rense" website are indicative of
the problems that arise
because of the way NEODyS, in particular (but also to some extent
JPL),
deals with potential impactors. This is not to say that
NEODyS, or any
other professionals working in the area, is doing "bad
science". It is very
clear, however, that our community continues to flounder in the
way such
information is made public. In that sense, there has really
been no advance
whatsoever since the situation involving 1997 XF11--a situation
that for the
possible Oct. 2040 earth impact indicated by the three-month arc
of
observations after discovery was every bit as
"dangerous" as any of the
cases discussed subsequently. From a scientific point of
view 1997 XF11 was
a pioneer: from a public-relations point of view it was a dismal
failure--like all the subsequent "scares".
2001 PM9 was placed on the NEODys riskpage last Friday, Aug. 17,
with
indications of better-than-one-in-a-million earth-impact
probabilities for
2005 and 2007. If it were just a matter of a quiet placement
there, for the
benefit of astronomers, that would be fine, for the message made
it clear
that the calculation was based on observations made only from the
five-day
arc following the Aug. 11 discovery. But, no, announcements
had to be made
by the Spaceguard Central Node and JPL, and before long--all
throughout the
weekend, in fact, I was receiving enquiries from concerned
members of the
public about the "likely" danger of this
close-to-kilometer-sized object
only four years hence.
Of course, the weekend brought further observations, disseminated
by the
MPC, and updates of the orbit were provided by both the MPC and
NEODyS.
These computations reduced to zero any earth-impact possibility
for 2005 and
2007. Unfortunately, while the NEODyS "search page" for
2001 PM9 was
appropriately and automatically updated each day, the "risk
page" continued
to contain Friday's document with the possible dangers for 2005,
2007 and
later in the century. The risk page did not disappear until
Tuesday, Aug.
21. And at that time, as usual, it really did disappear. As
I have pointed
out before, this kind of complete elimination of history is
inappropriate.
Illogical though it may seem to us, some people tend to assume
that such
removal means that the object has in fact become _more_
dangerous, not
less--and that the astronomers are involved in a cover-up.
A simple posting
to confirm that the object is no longer dangerous would work
wonders.
Instead, we now have to contend with uninformed nonsense that
suggests that
it is Mars that is in danger, with the impact of 2001 PM9 on Mars
in Jan.
2040 apparently inevitable. My calculations suggest that the
object cannot
pass much within 0.15 AU of Mars in Jan. 2040--this despite the
uncertainty resulting from the approach to about 0.02 AU from the
earth in
June 2038. Of course, those who believe that the satellites of
Mars and
comet 76P somehow managed to annihilate each other when this
comet passed as
much as 0.04 AU from them in June 2000 are not going to be
convinced that
all is well, but it surely does not hurt to say that it is.
One small point about 2001 PM9 does bother me. Did anybody else
notice that
the 2005 impact probability rated a 1 (or very close to it) on
the Torino
Scale? Yet there was no IAU-stipulated 72-hour period in which
others
"checked" the calculation. I realize that this is
advertized as a
voluntary exercise, but NEODyS has availed itself of this service
on
previous occasions when an earth-impact possibility rated 1 or
close to it
on the Torino Scale. I am curious as to whether the reason the
service was
not used this time was that most of the 72 hours were over the
weekend.
Regards
Brian
=============
(3) UK GOVERNMENT INVITES PLANS FOR NATIONAL NEAR EARTH OBJECTS
CENTRE
>From BNSC, 20 August 2001
http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/downloads/neo_centre_press_release.pdf
Department of Trade and Industry
1 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0ET
http://www.dti.gov.uk
20 August 2001
P/2001/444
GOVERNMENT INVITES PLANS FOR NATIONAL NEAR EARTH OBJECTS CENTRE
The Government today invited organisations to submit plans for a
UK centre
for Near Earth Objects (NEOs). NEOs are asteroids or comets whose
orbit
brings them close to the Earth.
Plans for the centre, which will provide accurate information and
increase
public understanding of NEOs, will be sought from a range of
academic
institutions, museums and public information centres. The Science
Minister,
Lord Sainsbury, said:
"There are currently no known large NEOs whose orbit puts
them on collision
course with Earth but while the risk of being hit is very remote,
the
potential for damage exists.
"I believe it is important that reliable information on NEOs
can be made
available to the public and hope that organisations will be able
to respond
positively to our call for proposals.
"This call represents the latest step in the Government's
four-point package
in response to recommendations made last year by the Near Earth
Object Task
Force. "
The centre will have a fully interactive exhibition, will host a
web-site
and provide education packs. The aim of the centre will be to:
* provide information on the nature, number and location of NEOs;
* explain how these objects can impact the earth and its
atmosphere;
* provide information on the effects of collisions of comets and
asteroids
with planets;
* explore the history of impacts within our solar system;
* explain the risks posed by NEO impact and the likelihood of
occurrence,
comparing them with more frequently encountered and widely
understood
hazards;
* explain the value of observation from the ground for detecting
and
tracking
NEOs; and,
* highlight the importance of space missions to encounter and
rendezvous
with
NEOs to increase understanding of their characteristics.
NEOs are believed to be the remnants from the formation of
planets. Most
asteroids are composed of rock while comets can be a mixture of
rock organic
molecules and frozen gases. The Earth's atmosphere protects
against most
NEOs smaller than about 50m but larger objects can penetrate the
Earth's
atmosphere. Fortunately large impacts occur infrequently and
objects above
50m in diameter impact on the Earth less than once every hundred
years, on
average.
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. The Government's response to all the NEO Task Force
recommendations is
available on the Near Earth Object website at
http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk/
and the NEO Task Force report can be found online at
http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk/
2. The Task Force was chaired by Dr Harry Atkinson (chairman),
formerly of
the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC)
and past Chairman of
the European Space Agency's Council. He was joined
by Sir Crispin
Tickell,
British diplomat and Professor David Williams, past
President of the
Royal
Astronomical Society.
================
(4) STATEMENT OF WORK FOR UK NEO CENTRE
>From the British National Space Centre, 20 August 2001
http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/downloads/statement_of_workf.pdf
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Many asteroids and comets orbit the Sun. Only a tiny fraction
of these
bodies follow paths that bring them near the Earth. These Near
Earth Objects
(NEOs) range in size from pebbles to mountains and travel at high
speeds.
Such objects have collided with the Earth since its formation but
the impact
threat that they represent has only recently been recognised and
accepted.
The threat from NEOs raises major issues, amongst them the
inadequacy of
current knowledge, confirmation of the hazard after initial
observation, and
reliable communication to the public.
1.2 In response to growing interest in the NEO phenomenon, on 4
January 2000
the Minister for Science, Lord Sainsbury, announced the setting
up of a Task
Force on Potentially Hazardous Near Earth Objects (NEOs). The
Task Force was
invited to make proposals to the Government on how the United
Kingdom should
best contribute to international effort on NEOs; and to:
1. confirm the nature of the hazard and potential levels of risk;
2. identify the current contribution to international efforts;
3. advise the Government on what further action to take in the
light of
1 and 2 above and on the communication of issues to the public.
1.3 The Task Force presented its Report to the Director General
of the
British National Space Centre (BNSC) in August 2000. In its
Report the Task
Force made a series of 14 Recommendations. The final
recommendation made by
the Task Force was to set up a centre to provide information to
the public
on NEOs in a clear and balanced manner.
1.4 In its response, the Government supported the principle of
the Task
Force's recommendation, stating that it foresaw that a key role
for such a
facility would be to act as a showcase for the public on NEO
issues,
providing clear and balanced information and hence assisting in
the public
understanding of science. The text of the Task Force's Report,
including the
full set of recommendations, and the preliminary Government
response can be
found at www.nearearthobiects.co.uk.
1.5 The Government response confirmed that BNSC will continue its
lead role
in Whitehall of developing policy and bringing together those
Government
Departments and Research Councils in the United Kingdom that have
an
interest in the NEO issue. The opportunity now exists for an
external
organisation or group of organisations to take on the role of an
information
centre for communicating the issues and providing background
information on
NEOs to the public and the media in an objective and impartial
manner.
2 SPECIFICATION OF ANTICIPATED ROLE & REQUIRED TASKS
2.1 During the initial stages of implementation the information
centre for
NEOs will be expected to work closely with BNSC and develop its
activities
in accordance with BNSC objectives. The organisation will be
required to
maintain an effective interface with BNSC through frequent and
regular
contact. The successful bidder will report to BNSC on a quarterly
basis and
submit formal technical and financial progress reports on a
quarterly basis.
The primary role of the information centre is envisaged to be as
follows:
Provide advisory service to public
Communicate background issues to the public in a factual,
objective and
impartial manner
Develop and provide educational resources (e.g. education packs)
Relating to NEOs
Respond directly to public enquiries
Develop and maintain access to publicly accessible catalogue of
NEOs
Provide an advisory service to the media
Communicate background issues to the media in an objective and
impartial
manner
Develop and provide media resources relating to NEOs
Respond directly to media enquiries
Establish and maintain a panel of recognised experts who could be
called
upon for media interviews
Working with other professionals around the UK and
internationally
Provide liaison with science centres & museums
Establish links for communicators to scientists, projects and
facilities
3 REQUIRED COMPETENCE
3.1 BNSC is seeking the services of a professional organisation
which has a
commitment to Total Quality Management. Tenderers will need to
submit
information to demonstrate that they possess the competencies to
undertake
the activities of this tender in an effective and efficient
manner. To
ensure that the multidisciplinary nature of NEO activities is
represented
correctly, tenderers must be able to demonstrate an objective
approach to
the subject area. The following are some of the factors which
will be
considered in evaluating the tenderers' competence.
3.2 The successful bidder(s) will need to:
Demonstrate an established track record of communicating complex
science
issues to the public in an impartial, clear and comprehensible
manner
Demonstrate an established track record of developing and hosting
permanent
and temporary exhibitions for communicating science issues
Demonstrate that they are a financially sound organisation with
the
necessary resources at their disposal to conduct the proposed
activities
Demonstrate existence of an efficient Public Relations Department
with
established media and PR links
Demonstrate a strong ability to develop in-house interactive IT
tools for
the communication of science issues
Demonstrate a good track record for the development of
educational tools and
resources, preferably in conjunction with the National Curriculum
Demonstrate a good track record for attracting co-funding support
with the
ultimate aim of self-financing of exhibition activities
Demonstrate how this activity will move to non-Government funding
over the 3
year period of support envisaged by BNSC
Demonstrate a strong involvement with the academic and research
community in
the field of Near Earth Objects and related activities
Demonstrate an established web presence with the ability to
attract
significant interest in science issues and to develop in-house
internet
resources
Demonstrate the extent to which the tenderer's team includes
technical
expertise covering a broad spectrum of relevant skills,
qualification and
experience
Demonstrate a successful record of working with Government and
other
external sponsors
Public Understanding of Science, Engineering and Technology
(PUSET)
3.1 The activities of such a facility should be consistent with
the overall
objectives of the public understanding of science initiatives. In
particular
the activities of the facility should promote the understanding,
appreciation and awareness of relevant science areas and provide
information
on the important issues affecting the country, acting as a means
of
providing dialogue between experts, communicators and concerned
citizens.
4 PROVISION OF FACILITIES & DELIVERABLES
4.1 It is envisaged that two primary facilities will be provided
by the
successful bidder(s): one physical, in the form of a permanent
exhibition;
the other virtual in nature, in the form of a website.
Exhibition Function
4.2 It is envisaged that the information centre will host a
physical
exhibition communicating the broader issues associated with NEOs.
In
particular it should consider the nature, number and location of
asteroids
and comets. It should demonstrate how these objects interact
within our
solar-terrestrial environment and how we encounter them. The
exhibition
should also consider the environmental effects of planetary
collision with
comets and asteroids and explore the history of impacts within
our solar
system. The exhibition should also explain the risks posed by NEO
impact and
the likelihood of occurrence, comparing them with more frequently
encountered and widely understood hazards. The exhibition should
also
explain the role and value of observation from the ground for
detecting and
tracking NEOs and highlight the importance of missions to
encounter and
rendezvous with NEOs to increase understanding of their
characteristics. The
exhibit should contain an interactive element in which visitors
can access
FAQs and can be given pointers to further information and
resources.
Website Function
4.3 A website has already been established by BNSC to provide
access to
independent information on NEOs
(httD:llwww.nearearthobiects.co.uk). It is
intended that responsibility for maintenance of this web resource
will
migrate to the successful bidder(s). This existing website
provides
background information on asteroids and comets and explains
related
terminology. The site also presents information on the
environmental effects
of NEO impacts and identifies both past impacts on the Earth and
predicted
future close approaches. The site also presents a series of
Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs) and an updated list of anticipated near term
close
approaches derived from scientific sources. It is anticipated
that a role of
a NEO information centre would be to maintain this existing site
and enhance
it with additional information, making it more public-friendly.
BNSC would
reserve the right to retain editorial control over the web-site,
if
required, to ensure impartiality of the information presented and
consistency with related organisations. In particular it is very
important
that the information on the website is verified and coordinated
with
complementary information presented by other related
organisations such as:
The Minor Planet Centre (MPC) at the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory
NASA's NEO Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA Ames Research Centre Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards
web-site
The Near Earth Objects Dynamic web-site at the University of Pisa
The European Asteroid Research Node
4.4 It is anticipated that regular updating of the information
presented on
the site will be required, in particular:
Information summarising known NEOs including size distributions
and number
discovered.
Information listing Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)
covering a
defined timescale into the future.
Information listing objects determined to have a possibility of
intersection
with the Earth and an explanation of the uncertainties/errors
involved.
4.5 The website should maintain consistent branding and
presentation
throughout. This format must be approved initially by BNSC.
4.6 It is important that the site is updated with new information
as it
becomes available from the data sources. This ensures that the
site is seen
as a valuable and up to date source of information. As and when
new
information is available on the web site, interested individuals
or
organisations may wish to be notified. A register should be
established to
enable relevant individual/organisations to be contacted
automatically.
Different formats need to be considered for different users, e.g.
public,
media, institutions and automated links and notification
implemented.
4.7 In addition educational packs (both in the form of hard copy
and
electronic) should be produced to facilitate the study and
discussion of NEO
issues and to emphasise the multidisciplinary nature of the
topic. Such
educational packs should be consistent with, and integrate into,
the
appropriate science elements of the National Curriculum.
4.8 The NEO information centre shall be responsible for the
effective and
efficient execution of the facilities and services to be
provided. BNSC may
provide some initial support to facilitate the transition of the
existing
website from BNSC responsibility to that of the NEO information
centre.
4.9 It is anticipated that funding support will be provided by
BNSC on a
sliding scale for a period limited to no more than 36 months
after which
time it is expected that the activity will become self-financing,
or funded
internally as part of the host organisation's wider remit. BNSC
would
anticipate making from £75,000-£100,000 available in years 1
and 2, reducing
to no more than £50,000 in year 3.
=================
(5) ASTEROID (COSMIC COLLISION) MAY HAVE CREATED HAWAII
>From SPACE.com, 1 August 2001
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/volcano_asteroid_010731.html
By Michael Paine
Special to SPACE.com posted: 01 August 2001
It's bad enough when, every few million years, an asteroid rocks
our planet.
It's worse if the impact triggers regional or global volcanic
activity,
which is not only hazardous to nearby plants and animals but can
choke
Earth's atmosphere with deadly gases for months or years.
But there's also a possible bright side, like the birth of nice
places like
Hawaii.
For more than three decades, scientists have explored the
question of
whether an asteroid impact could cause significant volcanic
eruptions, hot
spots that spring up out of nowhere and create new landforms or
rearrange
old ones. The process might have given birth to the Hawaiian
islands, for
example. The idea of linking space rocks and lava goes back to at
least the
1960s, and in recent months the debate has heated up like a
volcano ready to
erupt. Though no firm answers have emerged, controversial
computer modeling
in recent years has shown what might happen, and why.
Old and buried
Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University makes a
living by
hunting for signs of ancient impact craters, many of which are
not readily
visible, some of which are buried under oceans that didn't used
to be where
they are now.
In several recent papers, Glikson maintains that the large
craters found so
far on Earth only account for about one-fifth of the actual
number of major
impacts predicted over the past 3.8 billion years. These impact
predictions
are based on a number of factors, including the vast numbers of
craters on
the Moon, which don't disappear on the geologically dead and
atmospherically
challenged satellite.
During these billions of years it is likely that there were at
least 10
impacts producing craters more than 125 miles (200 km) in
diameter and 30
impacts producing craters more than 60 miles (100 km) in
diameter, Glikson
figures. And he argues that at least 50 percent of these impacts
would have
struck locations in ancient oceans where the Earth's crust was
much thinner
than continental crust and, in particular, some 10 percent would
have struck
the thin crust adjacent to mid-ocean ridges.
A volcanic eruption is much more likely to occur if an impact
occurs at one
of these sites and, paradoxically, evidence of the impact is
likely to be
buried under the eruption and lost forever if that area is later
folded, or
subducted, into the Earth's crust.
But Jay Melosh, a crater expert from the University of Arizona,
doubts this
and other links between asteroids and volcanoes. Melosh presented
his views
last July at a conference on catastrophic events in Vienna.
"There is not a single clear instance of volcanism induced
by impacts,
either in the near vicinity of an impact or at the antipodes
(opposite side)
of the planet," Melosh concluded. "The possibility of
impact-induced
volcanism must therefore be regarded with extreme
skepticism."
Researchers who are independently working on various impact
mechanisms say
Melosh's reasoning is flawed. Hermann Burchard is a mathematician
at from
Oklahoma State University. He notes that there are several
examples where
either a volcanic eruption is speculated to be associated with a
known
impact or an undiscovered impact is speculated to be associated
with a major
eruption. Again the problem is that such eruptions tend to
obliterate
evidence of an impact.
Rocking the other side of the planet
Mark Boslough and his colleagues at Sandia National Laboratories
have
modeled asteroid impacts. In a 1996 paper, they predicted that
the seismic
energy from an impact travels through the Earth and is strongly
focussed at
the antipode to the impact, near the boundary of the crust and
the hot,
molten mantle.
This, they argue, generates instability in the upper mantle that
can produce
a "hot spot" under the surface, like the one that
continues to form the
Hawaiian Islands. They also claim that geologists have no
satisfactory
explanation for the generation of hot spots by other means, other
than that
they arise "spontaneously."
Melosh expressed skepticism about the focussing idea after
calculating that
the seismic energy delivered to the antipode would be
insufficient to melt
the rocks. Boslough counters that melting is not needed to
generate an
instability -- the increased temperature of the region may be
sufficient to
trigger the start of a hot spot.
Clues on the Moon
Dallas Abbott from Columbia University, New York has taken a
different
approach to the whole question.
Using terrestrial evidence and crater evidence from the Moon,
which retains
a record of bombardment going back nearly 4 billion years, Abbott
has
analyzed the timing of large impacts compared with major volcanic
eruptions,
or mantle plumes.
She found a strong correlation between the two and speculates
that large
impacts strengthen existing mantle plumes. She describes the
ancient and
dormant Deccan Traps volcanism, an area that is presently part of
India. At
the time of the Chicxulub asteroid impact, which occurred in
Mexico 65
million years ago and likely led to the demise of the dinosaurs,
the Deccan
Trap region was near the antipode of the impact.
Others have suggested this coincidence could be possible evidence
that
impact antipode effects initiated the Deccan Traps. However,
Boslough says
the Deccan Traps would have been several thousand kilometers away
from the
antipode to Chicxulub. Abbott says the Deccan Traps were active
well before
the Chicxulub impact, and so could not have been initiated by
that event,
but she observes that the Deccan plume was strongest immediately
after the
impact and this phase lasted less than one million years.
At the least, it appears to be a strange coincidence.
Despite advances in computer modeling, there is no clear physical
evidence
of a link between space rocks and lava, but the models are coming
up with
mechanisms by which an impact could cause, or at least speed up,
a volcanic
eruption.
And proponents of the idea are quick to point out that geologists
have not
come up with a better explanation for how the Earth's hot spots
got started.
Michael Paine is a member of the Planetary Society Australian
Volunteers.
Information related to this story and the threat of asteroids can
be found
at his web site:
http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/spacegd.html
Copyright 2001, Space.com
=================
(6) URANUS, NEPTUNE, AND THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
>From Planetary Science Research, 21 August 2001
http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Aug01/bombardment.html
Written by G. Jeffrey Taylor
Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
--- The tardy formation of Uranus and Neptune might have caused
the
intense bombardment of the Moon 3.9 billion years ago.
Huge circular basins, marked by low regions surrounded by
concentric
mountain ranges, decorate the Moon. The giant holes may have
formed during a
short, violent period from about 3.9 to 3.8 billion years ago.
Three hundred
to 1000 kilometers in diameter, their sizes suggest that
fast-moving objects
with diameters of 20 to about 150 kilometers hit the Moon.
Numerous smaller
craters also formed. If most large lunar craters formed between
3.9 and 3.8
billion years ago, where were the impactors sequestered for over
600 million
years after the Moon formed?
One possibility has been studied with computer simulations by
Harold Levison
and colleagues from the Southwest Research Institute (Boulder,
Colorado),
Queen's University (Ontario, Canada), and NASA Ames Research
Center in
California. The idea, originally suggested in 1975 by George
Wetherill
(Carnegie Institution of Washington), is that a large population
of icy
objects inhabited the Solar System beyond Saturn. They were in
stable orbits
around the Sun for several hundred million years until, for some
reason,
Neptune and Uranus began to form. As the planets grew by
capturing the
smaller planetesimals, their growing gravitational attraction
began to
scatter the remaining planetesimals, catapulting millions of them
into the
inner Solar System. A small fraction of these objects crashed
into the Moon
and rocky planets, sculpturing the surfaces with immense craters.
Calculations suggest that the bombardment would have lasted less
than 100
million years, consistent with the ages of craters and impact
basins in the
lunar highlands.
Reference:
Levison, H, F., Dones, L., Chapman, C. R., Stern, S. A., Duncan,
M. J., and
Zahnle, K. (2001) Could the lunar "late heavy
bombardment" have been
triggered by the formation of Uranus and Neptune? Icarus, vol.
151, p.
286-306.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Basins, Craters, and the Lunar Cataclysm
Except for their soft glow in reflected sunlight, there is
nothing subtle
about the highlands of the Moon. They are a cratered mess, a
rubble pile
where craters are more tightly packed than commuters at rush
hour. There are
thousands of craters tens of kilometers across, and about 45 that
are larger
than 300 kilometers in diameter. The largest is the South
Pole-Aitken basin,
2500 kilometers across, the distance from San Francisco to Kansas
City. This
was a blitzkrieg.
Impacts of large, fast-moving projectiles have sculpted the lunar
highlands,
as shown on the left. The large crater in the center is
Tsiolkovsky, about
180 kilometers in diameter. It is flooded with dark mare basalt
lava flows.
Tsiolkovsky sits in an older, larger crater called the
Tsiolkovsky-Stark
basin, which is about 700 kilometers in diameter. About 45
craters on the
Moon are larger than 300 kilometers across; lunar geologists call
these
basins. The prominent ring of the Orientale Basin (right) is 930
kilometers
in diameter and marks the highest rim of the basin.
This topographic map obtained by the Clementine mission shows
some of the
most prominent basins on the Moon.
When did all these craters form? Almost all are clearly older
than the lunar
maria, which fill low spots in the big basins and contain far
fewer craters.
The maria have ages younger than about 3.8 billion years, so the
intense
bombardment of the highlands and the formation of the basins took
place
before that. Some lunar scientists believe that the bombardment
took place
between 4.5 billion years (when the Moon and planets formed) to
3.8 billion
years. In this view, the bombardment rate decreased drastically
from 4.5 to
3.8 billion years ago. Experts in the formation of planets from
swarms of
planetesimals tend to favor this idea. The leader of this school
of thought
is William Hartmann (Planetary Science Institute, Tucson).
An alternative view holds that the impact rate declined very
rapidly soon
after the Moon formed, but then increased dramatically during a
short
interval between about 3.9 and 3.8 billion years ago. This idea,
dubbed the
"lunar cataclysm," was first proposed by Fouad Tera and
Gerald Wasserburg
(Caltech) in 1975 on the basis of the ages of rocks returned by
astronauts
from the lunar highlands. The idea suffered benign neglect until
Graham
Ryder (Lunar and Planetary Institute) revived it in 1990 and has
since found
additional evidence for it among Apollo samples. The ages of
melted chunks
of rock in meteorites from the lunar highlands also seem to favor
a sharp
cutoff at about 3.9 billion years. [See PSRD article: Lunar
Meteorites and
the Lunar Cataclysm.] So, many scientists specializing in the
analysis of
lunar samples believe this story. (Many, not all. There are
naysayers, as
explained below.)
To test the idea of the lunar cataclysm we must determine the
ages of the
large basins. To do this we need samples whose ages were
completely reset by
the impact that blasted out a specific basin. The only samples we
can be
sure were reset are those that were melted during the impact.
Unmelted
samples retain a memory of their pre-impact origin, so cannot be
used. In
fact, most of the material tossed out of a growing crater,
although
fractured and partly pulverized, is not even heated enough to
reset rock
ages at all. We need impact melts. And we need them from impact
basins.
Ancient impact events can be dated only by finding pieces of rock
that were
melted during the formation of a crater or basin. This one from
the Apollo
16 site helps date the Nectaris basin. The photo, 2.9 millimeters
across,
was taken in polarized light, giving false colors diagnostic of
the minerals
in the rock. The gray to white one is plagioclase feldspar. The
lath-like
shapes of the feldspar crystals provide unambiguous evidence for
crystallization from molten rock.
We can use the number of craters on a planetary surface to
determine
relative ages. Crater counts allow us to safely say that all the
maria are
younger than the Orientale basin, the youngest and freshest of
the great
impact basins. The oldest mare rocks are 3.80 billion years.
Thus, all
impact basins are older than that age.
The Imbrium basin is older than the non-mare lava flows of the
Apennine
Bench Formation, which samples from the Apollo 15 mission show
formed 3.84
billion years ago. (The uncertainty in the age is plus or minus
0.02 billion
years. This means that the age of the lava flows of the Apennine
Bench
Formation is somewhere between 3.82 and 3.86 billion years.)
Impact melts
from the Apollo 14 and 15 missions can be used to date the
Imbrium impact,
although none can be proved to have been produced by theevent
itself.
Nevertheless, they were collected in the debris pile thrown out
of Imbrium,
so either were formed by the event or existed before it. These
ages,
determined by Brent Dalrymple (Oregon State University) and
Graham Ryder
(Lunar and Planetary Institute) suggest Imbrium formed 3.85
billion years
ago (give or take 0.02 billion years).
Samples of impact melt collected during the Apollo 17 mission
allow
Dalrymple and Ryder to date the Serenitatis basin, as the Apollo
17 landing
site is inside that basin. Those ages are 3.893 (plus or minus
0.009)
billion years, clearly older than Imbrium. The Luna 20 mission
landed on the
rim of the Crisium basin. It returned lunar regolith (soil), so
the samples
are all small rock fragments. Nevertheless, analytical
capabilities are so
good that we can determine the rock type from microscopic study,
the bulk
chemical composition, and the age on a little rock only a
millimeter or two
across. Those ages, determined by Tim Swindle (University of
Arizona) and
colleagues, came out to be 3.85 to 3.90 billion years. The best
guess is
that Crisium is somewhat less than 3.90 billion years old,
perhaps 3.89.
Apollo 16 landed on ejecta from the Nectaris basin. One group of
impact melt
rocks at the site is considered by many lunar scientists to have
been
produced by the Nectaris impact. Those rocks have ages of less
than 3.92
billion years. Graham Ryder argues that the age of Nectaris is
likely to be
about 3.90 billion years. All these ages indicate that the five
dated basins
formed between 3.9 and 3.8 billion years ago. In addition, by
noting which
basins deposited debris on other basins, we can determine the
relative ages
of lots of basins. Using that geologic data, it is clear that at
least seven
other basins formed during the same time interval. It is possible
that
most--maybe almost all--lunar basins formed during that short
time interval.
As G. J. Wasserburg said in a talk at the Lunar Science
Conference in 1975,
"It must have been a hell of a show to watch!"
As usual in science, not everyone agrees. Larry Haskin
(Washington
University in St. Louis) and others argue that the impact that
blasted out
the Imbrium basin distributed materials very widely and reset
ages all over
the place. The result, they argue, is that the narrow interval of
less than
100 million years is only apparent. We are dating just the
Imbrium event.
Most of us do not agree with this point of view. We point out
that the
chemical compositions of the impact melts vary from landing site
to landing
site. More important, the ages are distinguishable from one
another-there is
a genuine age difference between the rocks collected at Apollo 14
and 15
(Imbrium) compared to those at Apollo 17 (Serenitatis), Lunar 20
(Crisium),
and Apollo 16 (Nectaris). We will not resolve this debate until
we get more
samples from lunar basins. In the meantime, we'll argue with each
other.
The Moon was not the only object bombarded long ago. The ancient
surfaces of
Mercury and Mars are cratered severely, with many multi-ring
basins. Did the
same population of objects that pummeled the Moon also dig up the
surfaces
of Mercury and Mars? In fact, what about the heavily cratered
surfaces of
the icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn? (Venus and Earth are
too active
geologically to have preserved much of a record of the early
bombardment.
There are rocks older than 3.8 billion years on Earth and some
investigators
are trying to use them to understand the early bombardment of the
Earth.)
The surfaces of Mercury (left) and Mars (right) show the same
kind of
circular scars as the Moon. The Caloris basin, 1300 kilometers in
diameter,
on Mercury dominates the left half of the photograph. Numerous
craters are
visible in the image of Mars, including the basin Schiaparelli
(400
kilometers in diameter), located in the top center of this Viking
mosaic.
Planetary scientists agree that these basins are very old, but
their precise
ages are unknown.
Uranus and Neptune: Late Bloomers
There was nothing gentle about planet formation. Dust grains
glommed
together, making clumps. The clumps stuck together to make big
chunks, until
objects were large enough to begin to attract material with their
gravity
fields, producing objects the size of asteroids (up to a few
hundred
kilometers in diameter). This led to a period of runaway growth
in which
tens of objects much larger than the Moon formed. Finally, these
huge
objects whacked into each other, creating larger planets, but a
smaller
number of them. The entire process was dominated by large
impacts.
The accretion of the planets swept up much of the debris, so it
is logical
to expect that the impact rate on a given planet would decrease
with time.
In the case of the Moon, ages of impact melts should cluster
towards the
time when the impact rate was highest--right after the Moon
formed 4.5
billion years ago. Instead, the ages cluster around 3.9 billion
years. What
gives?
Imaginative planetary scientists have proposed several
explanations for the
dramatic increase in the impact rate at about 3.9 billion years
ago. One is
the leftovers model. This idea proposes that there were a lot of
small
bodies left over after the formation of the inner planets, enough
to make
about a Moon's worth. They were swept up fairly rapidly, but
there might
have been enough left over to do a lot of planetary pummeling
about 3.9
billion years ago.
Another idea is that a large asteroid broke up and the fragments
showered
the inner planets. This requires the break up of a hefty
asteroid, one as
large as the largest surviving asteroid, Ceres (about 1000
kilometers in
diameter). Objects that big are difficult to bust apart. Others
have
suggested that a passing star could have disturbed the orbits of
comets in
the Oort cloud, the vast collection of comets far beyond Pluto,
and sent
them zipping through the solar system. And then there's the
delayed
formation of Uranus and Neptune, an idea proposed originally in
1975 by
George Wetherill (Carnegie Institution of Washington).
Harold Levison and his coworkers have begun a series of detailed
studies of
all these ideas. They begin with the late blooming of Uranus and
Neptune.
Now you would think that if huge planets were going to form, they
would do
so early, when we think the inner planets, Jupiter, and Saturn
formed.
Computer calculations, in fact, predict formation times of about
100 million
years--but not for Uranus and Neptune. The problem is that the
part of the
solar system where Uranus and Neptune now reside was populated by
small
bodies that were widely spaced. This made it difficult for them
to attract
each other. Closer to Jupiter and Saturn, however, there were
more objects
available for planet construction. One controversial idea
developed by
Levison and his colleagues Edward Thommes (Queen's University,
Ontario) and
Martin Duncan (Southwest Research Institute, Boulder) is that
Uranus and
Neptune formed in the region of solar system where Jupiter and
Saturn
formed, and then were scattered outwards by the immense gravity
fields of
the gas giants. They end up in their present locations, ready to
fling
planetesimals towards the inner solar system.
Scientists understand so little about the formation of Uranus and
Neptune
that Levison states, "...the possibilities concerning the
formation of
Uranus and Neptune are almost endless." That being the case,
their delayed
formation or their transport from near Jupiter and Saturn are as
likely as
their early formation in their present locations. So, Levison and
his
colleagues assume that the two planets formed 600 million years
after the
beginning of the solar system, and examined whether their
assembly caused
impacts in the inner solar system.
Let's set the stage. In the story examined by Levison and
coworkers, in the
early solar system the planets ended at Saturn. Beyond Saturn
there was
nothing but a huge number of cold, icy planetesimals in orbit
around the
Sun. After 600 million years or so, something causes some of them
to accrete
to a couple of larger objects. This causes a rapid growth of the
objects,
eventually making Uranus and Neptune. Their large gravity begins
to alter
the orbits of the remaining planetesimals. Some are flung
outwards, others
inwards. A small percentage of those hurled inwards smack into
the icy
satellites of Saturn and Jupiter, and into Mars and the rest of
the inner
planets, including the Moon.
Their calculations indicate that the scattered planetesimals
would have
bombarded the inner solar system for only a few tens of millions
of
years--the duration of the lunar cataclysm. The calculations also
indicate
that only one in about 100 million of the scattered objects hit
the Moon.
This means that there must have been a lot of material in the
region where
Uranus and Neptune formed, about 30 Earth masses worth. Most
models of the
solar system indicate that there was at most only 50 Earth masses
way out
there, consistent with the calculations. The whole process also
scatters
asteroids, which add to the impacting population in the inner
solar system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Testing the Late Arrival of Uranus and Neptune
The overdue birth of Uranus and Neptune seems to provide a
satisfying
explanation for the spike in the bombardment history of the Moon.
However,
before we declare this case closed, some additional tests need to
be done.
One is to determine the ages of more lunar basins. Dating impact
melt rocks
inside lunar meteorites, as Barbara Cohen and her colleagues have
done is a
good start. [See PSRD article: Lunar Meteorites and the Lunar
Cataclysm.] An
even better way would be to collect samples from the floors of
large basins
on the Moon. This could be done with automated sample return
missions.
It is also crucial to determine the ages of basins on Mars. This,
too, will
require samples to be returned to Earth because it is impossible
to make age
measurements remotely to the precision and accuracy needed to see
if the
basins formed between 3.8 and 3.9 billion years ago. Ages from
Mercury would
be helpful, too, but sample returns from that planet are very
difficult.
Returning a sample to Earth requires a gigantic, expensive rocket
to blast
away from the nearby Sun's huge gravity field.
Detailed studies of the satellites of Jupiter will also be
important.
Levison notes that about 500 basins would have formed on
Callisto, the
second largest of Jupiter's satellites. The heat generated by the
impacts
would have melted the surface to a depth of perhaps 150
kilometers, possibly
erasing almost all of the basins. The fact that there are only
four basins
known on Callisto is consistent with the late formation of Uranus
and
Neptune, but more detailed studies of all the icy satellites need
to be
done.
It will be equally important for those studying how planets form
to develop
consistent stories for the formation of Uranus and Neptune.
Levison and
colleagues conclude their paper by noting: "the model
presented in this
paper must be viewed with skepticism until formation models of
Uranus and
Neptune are available that are consistent with this late
arrival." It seems
certain that scientists will view it all skeptically!
The study of the bombardment history of the Solar System is
fundamental to
understanding the formation of the planets and their early
histories. It
also requires an interdisciplinary approach. The bombardment
history of each
planet and moon must be worked out from geological studies and
analyses of
samples returned from them. All those data can then be used to
test the
calculations done by scientists like Levison and his coworkers.
Cohen, Barbara A. "Lunar Meteorites and the Lunar
Cataclysm." PSR
Discoveries. Jan. 2001
<http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Jan01/lunarCataclysm.html>.
Hartmann, W. K., Ryder, G., Dones, L., and Grinspoon, D. (2000)
The
time-dependent intense bombardment of the primordial Earth/Moon
system. In
Hartmann, W. K., Ryder, G., Dones, L., and Grinspoon, D. (2000)
The
time-dependent intense bombardment of the primordial Earth/Moon
system. In
Origin of the Earth and Moon (K. Righter and R. Canup, eds.), p.
493-512.
University of Arizona Press.
Levison, H, F., Dones, L., Chapman, C. R., Stern, S. A., Duncan,
M. J., and
Zahnle, K. (2001) Could the lunar "late heavy
bombardment" have been
triggered by the formation of Uranus and Neptune? Icarus, vol.
151, p.
286-306.
Spudis, P. D. (1993) The Geology of Multiringed Basins: Cambridge
Univ.
Press, New York.
Thommes, E. W., Duncan, M. J., and Levison, H. F. (1999) The
formation of
Uranus and Neptune in the Jupiter-Saturn region of the Solar
System. Nature,
vol. 402, p. 635-638.
============
(7) SIR FRED HOYLE
>From The Independent, 23 August 2001
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=90111
Professor Sir Fred Hoyle
23 August 2001
Throughout a long and distinguished career stretching over six
decades Fred
Hoyle sought to answer some of the biggest questions in science.
How did the
Universe originate? How did life begin? What are the eventual
fates of
planets, stars and galaxies? More often than not he discovered
answers to
such questions in the most unsuspected places.
Hoyle believed that, as a general rule, solutions to major
unsolved problems
had to be sought by exploring radical hypotheses, whilst at the
same time
not deviating from well-attested scientific tools and methods.
For if such
solutions did indeed lie in the realms of orthodox theory upon
which
everyone agreed, they would either have been discovered already,
or they
would be trivial.
Hoyle had no respect for the boundaries between scientific
disciplines,
which were artificial social constructs that often stood in the
way of a
proper comprehension of the cosmos. The Universe does not respect
the
differences between physics, chemistry and biology, he would say,
and his
career in astronomy progressively embraced all these disciplines.
With
meticulous attention to detail he proceeded to master whatever
discipline
was needed in order to explore the Universe. Nor was Hoyle ever
daunted by
the enormous difficulty of some of the problems he tackled. With
resolute
determination and a fearless independence of mind he devoted a
lifetime to
understanding the world in which we live.
Hoyle will also be remembered as one of the greatest popularisers
of science
in the 20th century, following in the distinguished traditions of
H.G.
Wells, James Jeans and Arthur Eddington. He had a rare gift of
explaining
complex scientific concepts in the simplest of terms, and in so
doing he
never failed to captivate huge audiences on radio and television,
in public
lectures as well as through his popular books.
In 1950 he gave an historic series of radio talks on the BBC
Third Programme
(which was published the following year as a book, The Nature of
the
Universe). Millions of listeners and readers of Hoyle the world
over admit
to having been enticed into science by the power of his arguments
and his
inimitable style of exposition. His more serious scientific work,
meanwhile,
served as an inspiration to three generations of astronomers.
Hoyle taught
us by his example to explore the world and search for truth
objectively and
fearlessly, without prejudice, being guided only by the
compelling
trajectory of logic.
Hoyle often condemned the enormous social pressures that are
brought to bear
on scientists nowadays to conform. He sneered at the modern
practices of
peer review and science umpiring conducted by journals, declaring
them to be
an invitation to unconstructive conformism, an impediment to the
progress of
science. For expressing such forthright views, he was criticised
by the
scientific establishment and he made many enemies.
Hoyle's researches during the period 1945-72 were carried out at
Cambridge
University, where in 1958 he became Plumian Professor of
Astronomy and
subsequently the founder director of the Institute of Astronomy.
He retired
from this position in 1972, then continued to work actively in
many areas of
astronomy, attached loosely to a variety of universities,
principally, from
1975, to University College, Cardiff.
Although he might be best remembered for his more daring
scientific pursuits
- his unorthodox cosmology and more recently his support of
panspermia -
there is scarcely an area of astronomy that has not been touched
in some way
by Hoyle's genius.
Hoyle's work on nucleosynthesis in collaboration with William A.
Fowler and
Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge led to our present-day
understanding of the
origin of chemical elements in stars. It was Hoyle's original
prediction of
the presence of an excited state of the nucleus of the atom
Carbon via his
studies of the structure and evolution of stars that heralded a
long and
profitable collaboration with the Caltech nuclear physicist Willy
Fowler.
In the 1940s Hoyle collaborated with R.A. Lyttleton and Hermann
Bondi in
laying the foundations of the theory of accretion - the mechanism
by which
stars "suck in" nearby interstellar matter. A little
later, he had worked
out a theory of how interstellar clouds can break up into
fragments to form
stars, which again forms the basis of all modern theories of the
formation
of stars.
In the 1950s Hoyle, together with Bondi and Thomas Gold,
propounded the
Steady State Theory of the Universe. This was to challenge the
then
fashionable cosmological theory that supposed the Universe to
begin with the
explosion of a super atom some 15 billion years ago. Hoyle and
his
colleagues found such a theory philosophically unsatisfactory -
it could
not, for instance, answer the question: what was there before the
initial
explosion? In order to denigrate the theory that he disliked
Hoyle coined
the term "Big Bang Cosmology", a term that has stuck
for nearly half a
century.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s a fierce battle raged between the
proponents
of the two schools of cosmology: Steady State vs Big Bang. I was
privileged
to come to Cambridge as Hoyle's research student in 1960 and
witnessed the
scientific-sociological struggle between two rival camps first
hand. With
the flimsiest of evidence, particularly from studies of radio
galaxies by
Martin Ryle at Cambridge, each side was making strong claims for
itself and
the debate turned bitter and acrimonious at times.
The discovery of a background of microwave radiation in the
Universe by A.
Penzias and R. Wilson in 1964 tipped the balance strongly against
the
original version of the Steady State Universe, the radiation
being explained
as the cooled-off relic of the heat of the Big Bang. Hoyle,
together with
myself and Jayant Narlikar, did not accept these data to be a
defeat for the
Steady State, and have indicated many reasonable ways in which
the
background radiation can be produced without a Big Bang. For
instance, the
light of galaxies could be absorbed by iron whiskers expelled
from
supernovae and these whiskers then emit microwaves. In a recent
book by
Hoyle, with Narlikar and Burbidge, A Different Approach to
Cosmology (1999),
a revised form of the Steady State Theory, known as the
"Quasi-Steady State
Cosmology", is shown to be fully consistent with all the
astronomical
observation.
In 1962 Hoyle and I sought to understand the nature of cosmic
dust, those
gigantic clouds of obscuring matter that could be seen in
photographs of the
Milky Way. At the time we began our researches the generally
accepted view
was that these cosmic dust particles are similar to the
micron-sized ice
crystals found in the cumulus clouds of the Earth's atmosphere.
We
challenged this paradigm by showing that carbon particles are a
more
plausible model for the dust, and over the years astronomers have
come to
accept this carbon (graphite) grain theory as being close to
proven.
We ourselves moved on from inorganic carbon dust to organic dust
and finally
to biological particles for the composition of the interstellar
dust. In
1977 Hoyle and I argued that the origin of life on Earth must
have involved
the importation of viable cells from space, thereby challenging
another Holy
Grail of science, "The Primordial Soup Theory", for the
origins of life. At
first this theory, known as "panspermia", was regarded
as heretical, but new
evidence from many directions appears be moving towards a
vindication of
this point of view.
Last month the first evidence of microbes at the edge of the
Earth's
atmosphere at 41km was presented in a paper to a meeting of the
Society of
Optical Engineering. Hoyle himself was unable to see the final
form of this
paper although he was a co-author and mentor of this work. Now,
34 years on,
some form of panspermia theory of life's origins appears to be
gaining
ground.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Hoyle's work involves
the ideas of
pathogenic bacteria and viruses arriving from space, and that the
evolution
of life may be directed from outside. This work has raised fierce
hostility
in some circles.
Hoyle was sometimes unfairly presented as one who courted
controversy for
the sake of it. My knowledge of Hoyle as a friend and colleague
convinces me
that this criticism is unfounded. He was always the most
charitable of
people and he never failed to acknowledge debts to earlier work
or to others
wherever they were due. In his more unorthodox scientific
ventures he simply
pursued the path that logic led him, or so he thought. Sometimes
his
intuition may have been wrong, but more often he turned out to be
right. On
the biggest questions of the origin of the Universe and the
origin of life
the last word has surely not been said, and Hoyle would have been
the first
to admit that.
Fred Hoyle was born in 1915 in Bingley, and educated at Bingley
Grammar
School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he studied
Mathematics. In
1939 he was elected a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and
in 1945,
following Admiralty Service during the Second World War, joined
the
Cambridge University Department of Mathematics as an Assistant
Lecturer.
Although he paid little attention to accolades, awards and
approbations, he
received many honours and distinctions. He was awarded the UN
Kalinga Prize
for the popularisation of science in 1968. In 1997 the Swedish
Academy of
Sciences awarded him the Crafoord Prize designed to honour work
in fields
that were not eligible for the Nobel Prize. In 1957 he became a
Fellow of
the Royal Society, in 1969 a Foreign Associate of the US National
Academy of
Sciences, and in 1971 the President of the Royal Astronomical
Society. He
was knighted in 1972. He was an Honorary Fellow at both St John's
College
and Emmanuel College, and an Honorary Professor at Cardiff
University since
1975.
Chandra Wickramasinghe
---------
There are very few things stranger in the world of literature
than a
scientist having fun, writes John Clute. And, of all the
scientists who
wrote novels in the 20th century, few were stranger - or had more
fun - than
Fred Hoyle.
His scientific credentials may have been impeccable, and many
readers were
fooled by them to read his science-fiction tales as expositions
of how to
think extremely hard; but underneath the deadpan, rapid-fire
surface of
novels like Fifth Planet (1959), A for Andromeda (1962, with John
Elliot),
or In Deepest Space (1974), could be discovered the buried
signposts of a
genuine trickster at work.
The Black Cloud (1957), which was Hoyle's first novel, has been
understood
as an attempt to dramatise the thought processes and procedures
of a
scientist at work. It is, in fact, like all its successors, a
dramatic
exercise in escaping the tension and rigour of those thought
processes: as
we learn, a very large black cloud has drifted from out of
nowhere into our
solar system, and has taken up residency around the Sun. In the
nick of
time, an adventurous scientist discovers that the cloud is (or
has) a brain,
and talks to it. The intensity of this experience drives him
insane, but the
rest of us are saved.
In Ossian's Ride (1959) another unsedentary scientist rollicks
about
Ireland, chasing after dire knowledge. When he reaches Dublin, he
finds it
has been transformed into a vast skyscraper-dominated metropolis.
In the
end, this cure for Ireland's woes is revealed to have been
inspired by
aliens exiled on our planet. Hoyle's hero enthusiastically joins
in.
It is impossible to know for certain how serious Hoyle was about
this
solution to the mud and ire of the real world and its problems.
In one of
the last of his 15 novels to show genuine exuberance - The
Inferno (1973),
written with his son Geoffrey - the old gay brutality remains
intact. Waves
of radiation are about to make life on most of Earth impossible.
The
governments of the world (as always in Hoyle's fiction) are both
incompetent
and corrupt. The scientist who has discovered the radiation
becomes dictator
of those who manage to survive.
These tales may have been meant simply as mind games, intended to
divert
author and audience from a frustratingly complicated world. But,
whether or
not they were froth on the daydreams of a hard-nosed physicist
whose
real-life experiences were not entirely jovial, Hoyle's
science-fiction
novels convey a surreal pugnacity of argument, a deep and
sometimes
hilarious oddness of mien, that makes them instantly
recognisable. They are
brilliant, uncouth, gadfly, impertinent, joyful; but more than
anything -
more than almost any other science fiction ever written - they
are strange.
They are from another planet.
Copyright 2001, The Indepdendent
===============
(8) PROFESSOR SIR FRED HOYLE
>From The Times, 22 August 2001
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,60-2001291637,00.html
Astronomer who propounded the 'steady state' theory of the
Universe and
defended it energetically in defiance of orthodox cosmology
Between 1945 and 1970, the range and significance of Fred Hoyle's
contributions to astrophysics and cosmology probably surpassed
those of any
other scientist in the world, and he was internationally
acclaimed for his
original work on stars, galaxies, gravity and the origin of
atoms.
Although he also became known as a populariser of science and as
a science
fiction author, he will always be associated with his
"steady state" theory
of the Universe, which he first proposed in 1948. His views were
shared by
Hermann Bondi and Tommy Gold, and followed earlier suggestions by
James
Jeans and Paul Dirac, but it was Hoyle's name with which they
were
principally associated.
>From the outset, Hoyle propounded the theory with great
energy, and it
became a popular talking point. He became simply "Fred
Hoyle" to all and
sundry at a time when other astrophysicists tended to be styled
by their
academic titles and public honours. When, in 1950, he gave his
memorable
Third Programme talks on The Nature of the Universe, it was said
that they
won greater audiences not only than Bertrand Russsell and C. E.
M. Joad, but
than such popular figures as Tommy Handley and Wilfred Pickles.
The theory of the steady state took direct issue with orthodox
cosmology,
the expanding Universe, which Hoyle ironically styled the
"Big Bang theory".
This much older idea was that the Universe had started life a
finite time
ago in a single huge explosion, and that the present expansion,
though much
slower, is the result of these violent origins. Hoyle, however,
argued that
the galaxies moved apart, and envisaged that new ones form in the
gaps
between them.
This theory had the virtue of being testable by observations, and
throughout
the 1950s and 1960s it was the focus of noisy and often
acrimonious
disagreement. The findings of radio astronomers at Cambridge, who
were able
to discover new types of galaxies and to measure their radio
emissions,
tended to support the Big Bang theory, suggesting as they did
that very
remote galaxies must be a part of the expanding Universe process.
Hoyle and
his associates objected that these radio counts were inaccurate
and defended
their position.
By the mid 1960s Hoyle's theory was generally on the retreat
after two
American engineers working on a short-wavelength radio system for
a
different purpose discovered to their surprise that low-level
radiation was
uniform in every part of the sky. This was interpreted as being
left over
from the hot Big Bang, evidence that the Universe had cooled so
that matter
became dominant over the intense radiation of the early epoch.
Although by the late 1960s the evidence for the Big Bang theory
was, to most
cosmologists, compelling, discussion on the relative merits of
both theories
continued. Hoyle can be credited with having led a revolution in
British
astrophysics which at least banished an uncritical acceptance of
cosmological orthodoxy. He had also personally done a great deal
to clarify
the theory of the Big Bang, though he was never fully reconciled
to the
evidence. His recent book, A Different Approach to Cosmology,
presented a
robust defence of a compromise "quasi-steady state".
Hoyle's achievements ranged much wider, however. He retained his
engaging
wit and relish for an argument throughout his long life, and
stirred debate,
for instance, with his belief that life is not unique to Earth,
but was
brought here by organisms from outer space.
His inventiveness and originality also extended to science
fiction, which he
wrote successfully for more than three decades, winning a devoted
following.
His most famous novel was October The First Is Too Late, in which
Britain
and Hawaii remain in 1966, the Americas are switched back to the
15th
century and the Soviet Union exists in a future time when the
surface of the
Earth is a plate of glass.
Hoyle also wrote the television serial A for Andromeda and the
children's
play Rockets in Ursa Major. When this was performed in 1962 at
the Mermaid
Theatre, one critic wrote: "Seldom can scientific
mumbo-jumbo have sounded
so convincing." This writing, Hoyle believed, complemented
his serious work,
in the middle of which he would stop to indulge in what he called
"whimsical
fantasies." He was convinced that really important
discoveries were most
likely to come from an exercise of creative imagination.
With his independence of mind, he retained all that was agreeable
of the
natural manner and voice associated with his native Yorkshire,
and this
captivated millions who intuitively appreciated his genuineness
and the
profundity of his knowledge. Huge numbers of people (including
many who
later won scientific distinction) received initial inspiration
from his
famous BBC radio talks, and from books such as Frontiers of
Astronomy.
Fred Hoyle was born at Bingley in Yorkshire, the son of a wool
merchant
descended from Huguenot refugees. His mother had worked in the
woollen
mills, but had saved enough money to take herself to the Royal
College of
Music. During the First World War she played the piano to
accompany silent
films, but was sacked for working in Beethoven's sonatas.
By the age of nine or ten Hoyle could navigate by the stars, and
by the age
of 13 he was staying up all night sometimes with a telescope.
From Bingley
Grammar School, Hoyle went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in
1933 to
read maths. There he developed rapidly, the first herald of his
distinction
being the Mayhew Prize, which he won in the Tripos of 1936,
followed in 1938
by the first Smith's Prize. He was elected to fellowship of St
John's in
1939 for a thesis on quantum electrodynamics.
Although concentrating at first on theoretical physics, he became
fascinated
by the theoretical work of men such as Sir Arthur Eddington and
Sir James
Jeans in Britain, and by the great observational advances of
distant
galaxies then being made in the United States by Edwin Hubble and
others.
His first papers concerned what it is that makes stars shine, and
he soon
began to make his mark by propounding original hypotheses - some
of them
with R. A. Lyttleton - about how stars evolved by accreting
interstellar
gas. These ideas were not always favourably received by his more
conservative elders.
The war took Hoyle away from Cambridge to engage in technical
projects for
the Admiralty, such as radar. He found himself working with
Hermann Bondi
and Thomas Gold, and in spare moments they shared ideas that were
to figure
prominently in Hoyle's postwar researches. The most celebrated
outcome of
this collaboration was the steady state theory.
>From 1945 Hoyle was based in Cambridge, first as lecturer in
maths, and from
1958 as Plumian Professor of Astronomy. But he made regular
visits to the
United States, where, with a series of distinguished
collaborators, he
contributed key ideas on the physics of stars and galaxies.
One of his outstanding and durable contributions was his pivotal
role in
discovering that the elements of the periodic table are the
outcome of
nuclear reactions in stars and supernovae. He argued that all the
atoms of
carbon, silicon, and iron on Earth (and in our bodies) were
forged from
hydrogen in faraway stars which lived and died before our solar
system
formed.
The details emerged during a long and fruitful collaboration with
the
nuclear physicist William Fowler, who made many of the key
laboratory
measurements needed to make this theory quantitative. A classic
book-length
article which Hoyle wrote in 1957 with Fowler and their
longstanding
collaborators Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, codified this
theory of
"nucleogenesis". This presentation of the theory has
largely stood the test
of time, although Hoyle and others added details, particularly
regarding the
role of supernova explosions.
In parallel, Hoyle kept up his researches in solar physics, on
the origin of
the solar system, the structure of galaxies, quasars, and the
nature of
gravity. During the 1960s, with his former student and long-term
collaborator J. V. Narlikar, he formulated a new theory of
gravitation,
though it never achieved wide acceptance.
His theory was based on ideas resembling those earlier applied to
electromagnetism, which held that influences passing both
forwards and
backwards in time had to be taken into account. This idea,
however, was
bypassed by the dramatic advances in relativity theory made by
Roger
Penrose, Stephen Hawking and their associates.
Committee work and administration held little attraction for
Hoyle but
nonetheless, during the 1960s and early 1970s particularly, he
served
effectively on the Science Research Council, the Council of the
Royal
Society, and other national bodies. He was knighted in 1972.
In Cambridge, his energetic advocacy and fundraising led to the
creation in
1966 of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy, of which he
became the first
Director. Among the younger members of that institute were
Hawking, Brandon
Carter and Martin Rees, and others who later achieved prominence,
with
encouragement from Hoyle despite differences of scientific
perspective.
Hoyle was also pivotal in establishing the Anglo-Australian
Observatory,
which for the first time guaranteed British astronomers access to
a
world-class optical telescope, in Coonabarabran, New South Wales.
A regrettable dispute about funding and appointments led to Fred
Hoyle's
premature retirement from Cambridge in 1972. He thereafter based
himself for
many years in the Lake District (hill-walking being one of his
lifelong
enthusiasms), and held visiting positions at various
universities.
The first of his many science fiction novels, The Black Cloud
(1957) - about
an alien intelligence embodied in a cloud of interstellar gas
that threatens
to engulf the Earth - is a classic. His frank and entertaining
autobiography
Home is Where the Wind Blows (1994) offers a specially fine
evocation of his
early life in Yorkshire.
In later life his scientific interests diversified, and he became
frequently
enmeshed in controversy on issues from epidemiology to
archaeology. With the
encouragement of Glyn Daniel he wrote a book arguing that
Stonehenge was an
elaborate astronomical observatory, and he also made regular
appearances in
the broadsheets' letters columns.
On one occasion he wrote to say that life could not have
originated on Earth
but was - and is still being - transported here on comets, the
modern
version of the Tanspermia theory, which he worked on with Chandra
Wickramasinghe. On another occasion he claimed that BSE was the
result of
small particles of bacterial and viral sizes descending through
the Earth's
stratosphere during the winter months. He also declared that
patterns of
winter epidemics, and in particular of influenza, which spread
according to
where individuals lived and worked rather than according to the
people with
whom they were in contact, suggested a viral agent falling
through the
atmosphere.
His thoughts were also recalled in letters from other readers,
one of whom
remembered Hoyle saying: "I find myself wondering whether
somewhere there is
a cricket team that could beat the Australians."
Hoyle received many honours from learned societies and
international bodies,
including the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, the UN Kalinga
Prize, and
the Balzan Prize. It was widely felt that he should have shared
William
Fowler's Nobel Prize, but the Swedish Academy made at least
partial amends
by later awarding him its 1997 Crafoord Prize.
He is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he married in 1939, and
by his son
and daughter.
Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, FRS, astronomer and writer, was born on
June 24,
1915. He died on August 20, 2001, aged 86.
Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(9) SIR FRED HOYLE
>From Paul Davies <pcwd@ozemail.com.au>
Dear Benny,
I should like to express my personal sadness over the death of
Sir Fred
Hoyle. Fred was both a friend and mentor. He gave me my first
job, as a
Research Fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in
Cambridge in
1970. It was after listening to him lecture on the
Wheeler-Feynman absorber
theory of electrodynamics at The Royal Society in 1968 that I
developed a
lifelong interest in the nature of time. Over the years his
provocative and
occasionally outrageous theories were a constant source of
fascination and
inspiration. Fred's independent thinking and contempt of the
establishment
were a refreshing antidote to academic stuffiness. It was a
scandal that his
irreverence probably cost him a Nobel prize for his
ground-breaking work on
nucleosynthesis.
Although I was never persuaded by Fred's ideas on panspermia, his
work with
Chandra Wickramasinghe on the astrobiological significance of
comets has
proved remarkably prescient. I wish Fred's collaborators well in
continuing
to develop his imaginative ideas.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Davies
=================
(10) INTERNATIONAL SPACE COOPERATION WORKSHOP REPORT AVAILABLE
>From Hans Haubold <Hans.Haubold@oosa.un.or.at>
Dear Dr. Peiser,
In item (13) of the CCNet Special 90/2001 - 20 August 2001, you
refer to an
International Planetary Protection (PP) Workshop of AIAA. The
full Report of
the "6th International Space Cooperation Workshop:
Addressing Challenges of
the New Millennium", Seville, Spain, 11-15 March 2001, is
available since 30
July 2001 at the http address given below. It contains, among
other results and reviews, also the findings of Working Group 2
on "An
International Approach to Detecting Earth-Threatening Asteroids
and Comets
and Responding to the Threat They Pose".
Thank you for your cooperation.
Regards,
Hans J. Haubold
UN Office for Outer Space Affairs
--------------
Date: 30 Jul 2001 14:34:03 -0400
From: Judy Carrodeguas <judyc@aiaa.org>
Subject: International Space Cooperation Workshop Report
Available
Dear Workshop Participant,
This is to inform you that the Report from the 6th AIAA
International Space
Cooperation Workshop held in Seville, Spain, March 2001 is now
available.
Harcopies of the Report will be sent to you in the mail. However,
the Report
can be downloaded from the AIAA international pages of the
website at
http://www2.aiaa.org/international/information/PDF/ISCW-6_report.pdf
--
Judith Carrodeguas
International Program Specialist
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Suite 500
Reston, VA 20109-4344
Tel: (703) 264-3842
Fax: (703) 264-7551 PLEASE INCLUDE COVER LETTER
e-mail: judyc@aiaa.org
website: http://www.aiaa.org/information/international.html
===============
(11) THE "OUT OF THIS WORLD" THREAT
>From Alan Fitzsimmons <A.Fitzsimmons@Queens-Belfast.AC.UK>
Dear Benny,
I enjoyed reading your interview (CCNet 22/07/01). I thought you
got over a
lot of good points. However I think that your response to the
completeness
rates of the NASA-sponsored surveys should be clarified. The goal
of
detecting 90% of NEOs with diameters >1km in 10 years was not
really arrived
at because of cost, but is based on purely scientific grounds.
When
considering NEO surveys, the discovery rate of the population
above a
certain size drops off exponentially. It's always going to take a
lot longer
to clear up the last 10% of NEOs >1km than it took to get the
first 10% for
any given survey. Also, I would say that this target was
"commendable"
rather than "modest".
Best Wishes,
Alan
Dr. Alan
Fitzsimmons
Tel: 02890-273124
APS
Division
Fax: 02890-438918
Dept. of Pure & Applied
Physics
e-mail: a.fitzsimmons@qub.ac.uk
Queen's University of
Belfast WWW: http://star.pst.qub.ac.uk/~af/
Belfast BT7 1NN
Northern Ireland
==================
(12) WILL NEO CENTRE PRODUCE MORE THAN SPIN?
>From Michael Martin-Smith <martin@miff.demon.co.uk>
" On its website, the British National Space Centre (BNSC)
which
will commission the information centre, says the successful
contractor
will have to "accept some
limitations on its freedom to promote views on space
policy". "
The UK has a history of failure to engage in subtanial space
development. If
this statement is taken to mean that advocacy of more wide
ranging and cost
effective launcher and space programmes for the UK and ESA
countries is to
be forbidden, then the possibility of putting asteroids and
comets into a
postitive context will be lost. All that would then be possible
either a
bland exercise in reassurance that there is not really much of a
threat
anyway, or that only military style nuclear solutuions are
envisaged.
A great chance would be lost, since this development offers ,
potentially ,
a great opportunity to foster a truly space minded public
opinion - in turn
a major step on the road to a spacefaring civilzation. I continue
to believe
that the likeliest and most postiive eventual result of
neo-catastrophism,
astrobiology, and NEO research will be a strengthening cae
for building a
dispersed ET civilization.
It would be a lost opportunity if promotion of this view were to
be limited
, and would, in my view, seriously damage the credibility of this
exercise.
We would be left with blind fatalism covered by a figleaf.
Already I see in
Ceefax pages the criticism that Lord Saisbury is
watching the asteroid threat but is powerless in the event of a
discovery.
We should move purposefuuly away from such powerlessness towards
the ability
to avert the threat and convert it into an asset. Failing this,
in time, the
public would regard it the Information Centre as pure spin.
Dr Michael Martin-Smith, author of "Man Medicine and
Space"
===============
(13) WILL THE NEW UK NEO CENTRE MENTION RIO CUARTO?
>From E.P. Grondine epgrondine@hotmail.com
Hello Benny -
Before commenting on the UK Goverment's funding proposal for a
NEO
information center, I want to point out a very bizarre set of
behaviours,
with the hope that bringing them up will lead to some discussion
of them
among Conference participants.
In the context of the press reaction to Lord Sainsbury's
announcement, it is
very interesting to note the current low level of general public
awareness
of the very real NEO hazard which exists, this after no less than
2 major
motion pictures on the hazard were widely viewed by many.
Along these lines, it needs to be noted that when the English
speaking press
reported on the UK Government's proposal, they put it into the
context of
both Barringer Crater in Arizona, which is ancient (49,000 BCE),
and
Tunguska, which while not ancient is both small (100 kilotons or
so) and
distant (Siberia). In their efforts to put this story into
context for their
readers, the reporters were unable to remind them of the Rio
Cuarto Impact
Event, which is both recent (ca. 3 millennium BCE), large (350
megatons),
and immediate, in that wherever they lived on the planet Earth,
it can be
fairly estimated that between 75-90% of the people died starving,
due to the
failure of their crops and forage in the ensuing climate
collapse.
Way back in January, 1992 Schultz fully demonstrated the Rio
Cuarto Impact
Event, and his results were published in no less a journal than
NATURE, and
as the cover story at that. (Peter H. Schultz & Ruben E.
Lianza, Recent
Grazing Impacts on the Earth Recorded in the Rio Cuarto Crater
Field,
Argentina, NATURE, 16 January 1992, cover and pages
234-237). It is now
2001, some 9 years later, and I think I'm safe in saying that for
the most
part since 1992 Schultz's conclusive demonstration has largely
been ignored.
Certainly the UK NEO Taskforce missed Rio Cuarto entirely; many
NASA web
sites give it bare mention. The questions which I would like
Conference
participants to reflect on are these: Why is the Rio Cuarto
Impact Event
largely ignored or forgotten?
Why does this this fundamental mental disconnect exist among the
public at
large? Why wasn't the UK NEO Taskforce alerted as to Rio Cuarto
Impact
Event? What happened?
Let us examine the cases of the Barringer Crater impact, the
Tunguska
impact, and the Rio Cuarto impact comparatively.
Barringer Crater lies along a major route for trans-continental
travel, and
has been a major tourist attraction since the automobile came
into wide use
in the United States, say sometime around the 1920's. While
Tunguska is
remote, the daring expeditions led by Kulik into farthest
Siberia to investigate the site as a source of iron recieved
coverage in the
press througout the world. In the case of the Rio Cuarto Craters,
they are
in Argentina, which is still re-covering from the isolation its
military
coup leaders brought on it by their invasion of the Falkland
Islands.
In terms of the political power of the countries of their
location,
Barringer Crater lies in the United States; Tunguska lies in
Russia, which
was formerly part of the Soviet Union; and the Rio Cuarto crater
field lies
in Argentina.
In terms of publicity and public awareness, the attempts by
Barringer to
commercially exploit iron from his Crater attracted wide press
coverage in
the United States. In the case of the Tunguska impact, there was
a second
wave of publicity after that first obtained by Kulik. For
Tunguska, one has to remember that Shoemaker's services were
sought after by
the US military, as when the Early Warning System was first
deployed, the
air bursts of small impactors were repeatingly setting it off. My
suspicion
is that these same pressing concerns of the US
military were also reflected in the publication of two articles
by the
magazine "Reader's Digest", which enjoyed a nearly
universal circulation at
that time. (I'm using the term universal" here in a
commercial, and not
astronomical sense.) I remember reading these articles as a
youth: the
first of them concerned a nearly-catastrophic false alarm in the
late
1950's, one which had been caused by a meteor storm triggering
the Early
Warning System; the second of these articles was a "book
length" piece on
the Tunguska impact.
In the case of the Rio Cuarto Impact Event, Schultz published his
work in
"NATURE", a publication which is very protective of its
intellectual
property rights, to put it mildly. While there was a
re-publication of some
of the Rio Cuarto material in "Sky and Telescope", I do
not know of
any major re-publication of any of it in the more popular and
more publicly
accessable magazines.
Nevertheless, the fact is that Schultz published the Rio Cuarto
impact in
NATURE at the beginning of 1992, a place where the scientific
community as a
whole could easily see it. What were the responses of the
scientists of the
anthropological and climatology communities to Schultz's
findings? As near
as I can tell, there were none. For both the anthropologists and
climatologists, such recent large impacts were impossible,
despite the
existence of these extremely large holes in the ground, the
evidence of
their explosive formation, the prescence in them of debris from
space, and
their carbon dating.
In the anthropological community, the only person I know of who
was working
on the Rio Cuarto Impact Event was Bruce Masse, but what has
happened to
him, whether his work was possibly delayed by either the recent
fires at Los
Alamos or by problems with the referees for his paper, I just
don't know. I
have never seen any public mention of any work done on the Rio
Cuarto Impact
Event within the community of climatologists, in particular those
climatologists involved with the modeling of the potential
results of a nuclear "exchange".
At this point, we now have to come to an examination of the
responses of the
scientists in the meteoritical, astronomical, and NEO communities
to
Schultz's 1992 publication. (In other words, it's time to look in
the
mirror.) One clear fact that needs to be acknowledged in
analyzing this
response is that since the Rio Cuarto Impact Event was not widely
known
about by the public, in part for the reasons listed above, it was
up to the
specialists to alert the Taskforce about it. Perhaps this was
simply a case
where everyone thought that someone else would be certain to
inform the
Taskforce members about the Rio Cuarto Impact Event, with the end
result
that no one did.
On the other hand, perhaps this was not the case. The reason why
this
explanation does not seem quite adequate to me is that in every
public
presentation by these scientists on the NEO hazard that I've ever
attended,
there has been either no mention of the Rio Cuarto Impact Event,
or at best,
the scientists have called no particular attention to it.
Perhaps, just
perhaps, this reflects to some degree the presenters' subconcious
concerns
about scaring their audiences, scaring them by telling them of an
impact
event which was neither ancient or remote. Again, this may go
some way
toward explaining the general lack of public awareness of the Rio
Cuarto
Impact Event, but it still does not seem to me to be a completely
sufficient
answer.
At this point in our comparison we are forced to consider the
roles played
by the leaders of the community of NEO scientists in this lack of
awareness.
The reason for this need is evident, as without facing up
squarely to the
NEO community's own responsibilities in the failure to alert both
the public
and government officials of the significant and well proved Rio
Cuarto
Impact Event, there is little hope of avoiding these mistakes in
the future,
which is to say in every future demonstration of every small
impact event of
this type. For it is certain, that the Rio Cuarto Imapct
Event is both well
and fully proved.
In the case of Barringer Crater, the leading US meteoriticist
Nininger spent
a number of the years of his life working there, and he had built
a
commercial museum nearby, where he sold not only meteorites from
the crater
but books and pamphlets on it as well. Barringer Crater later
served as one focus for Shoemaker's studies, and then as an
analogue for
lunar craters during the Apollo program for many NASA scientists.
In the case of Tunguska, Kulik's work was well known among the
meteoritic
and astronomical communities. As noted earlier, US defense forces
had a very
real need for further work on impacts of the Tunguska type, and
indeed they
currently still have this need, as each and every
year the sensors on US early warning satellites are set off some
13 or so
times by smaller air blast events of the Tunguska-type. The
same occurs
with the Russian defense satellites, and scientists from both
countries are
involved in this effort.
In the case of Rio Cuarto, of necessity I have to start with the
analysis of
the roles of the most publicly well known leaders of community of
NEO
scientists; the Big Names, as it were. It appears that Schultz
performed his
work in isolation from all of them. My guess (and let me
emphasize that this
is simply a guess) is that Shoemaker and Morrison were aware of
Schulz's
work, but not directly involved. Shoemaker was involved in
research in
Australia, quite far from Rio Cuarto, and died before the UK NEO
Taskforce
was commisioned. Morrison, who was involved in fighting
Velikovsky's rubbish
in the 1950's, dismisses all current research on smaller impact
events as
Velikovskian rubbish as his first reaction, no matter who is
investigating
them, or which small impact event they are:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/373938.asp
Steel had been involved in working on the Australian Great Wall
of Water
impact event, and was not involved in research on Rio Cuarto.
Clube and
Napier, for their part, had focused their work on smaller impacts
on records
recovered from the relatively near-by and familiar Middle
East. Since their
works (Cosmic Serpent, 1982, and Cosmic Winter, 1990) were
completed and
published before Schultz's work on the Rio Cuarto Impact Event
became
available, it is not surprising that there is no mention of it in
either of
them.
That's about as far as my speculations go, and I apologize to
Yeomans,
Lewis, Chapman and anyone else whom I failed to mention in this
part of the
analysis. I suppose that they will all have to consider their own
actions in
regards to their handling of Schultz's publication of the Rio
Cuarto Impact
Event, and I look forward to hearing from each of them about it.
In the end, all of this speculation still does little to explain
how
everyone missed alerting the UK NEO Taskforce Team, and earlier
the public,
about the Rio Cuarto Impact Event, and so I will now try to
move down to a
more general level. I think that it is entirely possible that the
rest of
the answer may lie much closer to home than most of us would
admit.
Personally, I know that when people ask me what I am reporting
on, I tell
them impact events, and then immediately mention Tunguska, hoping
that it
might somehow be something that they are vaguely familiar with.
Oh, yes. The subject at hand is the UK government's request that
some
£250,000 ($400,000 or so) be allocated to the establishment of a
NEO
information center, and Lord Sainsbury's sadly mistaken comments
which
accompanied that announcement. Let's look on the bright
side first:
£250,000 is at least $400,000 more than Bush Jr.'s Science
Advisor has
specifically requested be allocated by NASA for informing the US
public
about the NEO hazard. Given the buffeting that the UK economy has
taken
recently as a result of Mad Cow Disease, Hoof and Mouth Disease,
and the
increase in oil prices, it is to the credit of the Blair
government that
they have requested any money at all, given other very pressing
public
needs. One could hope that this is simply their way of getting
the camel's
nose into the tent, so to speak, with the rest of the animal to
follow along
shortly.
But having looked on the bright side, we must now examine the
dark side as
well. Despite Lord Sainsbury's statements, on the evidence of the
Rio Cuarto
Impact Event alone we know that there is an immediate and serious
hazard;
and while we don't know exactly how "immediate" that
hazard is, we do know
that it is far, far worse than Lord Sainsbury stated, or that the
UK NEO
Taskforce reported to him. We know that as a fact, and we can
demonstrate
it. Given this fact, as well as all the others which we know too
well, this
initial government response bears an uneasy resemblance to the
way in which
the previous government handled Mad Cow Disease. If this
"information
centre" money is simply used to re-assure the public that
there is no hazard
from NEOs, then we can be assured that the representatives of the
public at
large will not fund the UK NEO Telescope, as that public will
have been told
regualrly and repeatedly at government expense that there is
simply no need
for it.
I ask that those UK citizens among the Conference participants to
forgive my
boldness in speaking about their internal affairs; but at the
same time I
also ask as well that they remember that this telescope will play
a large
role in helping to ensure the lives and safety of hundreds
of millions of people living elsewhere on this planet. I need
also to
emphasize here beforehand that these comments are my own, and not
those of
other Conference participant or its moderator.
That said, I would hope that some member of the Parliament would
use
Questions and Answers to bring the Rio Cuarto Impact Event to
both Prime
Minister Blair's and Lord Sainsbury's attention. I would hope
that they
would seek specific clarification as to why the Rio Cuarto Impact
Event
was not mentioned in the report of the UK NEO Taskforce. My
apologies
beforehand to the hard-working gentlemen of the Taskforce, for as
was shown
above this omission was not their fault - but the
failure to correct this
error after it was well known is most clearly a failure which
belongs to
this government, and it is pecisely and exactly this failure
which I hope no
one will allow them to gloss over.
I would further hope that that member would question both the
Prime Minister
and the Science Advisor on their understanding concerning the
implications
of this failure. Once again, this is simply my opinion, and
not that of
many other Conference participants or its moderator, but I
can do nothing but conclude that AS IT NOW STANDS, the report of
the UK NEO
Taskforce has failed utterly in satisfying either of its twin
stated goals,
that of advising the Government, or that of adequately informing
the public
and their representatives, as to the severity of the danger they
face from
the impact of asteroids and comets. For myself, I certainly can
not idly sit
by and allow this report to stand quitely uncorrected for
reference by any
member or employee of my own government. The hazard is simply to
grave to
allow me to do that.
Some here, if not most, may differ with me at first on this, as
the
government's Taskforce did in their report propose the
construction of a NEO
Telescope in the UK. But while this is true, that the Taskforce
concluded
that there is a need for a UK NEO Telescope, given the failure -
so far - of
the Blair government to adopt their proposal, I can not but
conclude that
without that report's mention of the Rio Cuarto Impact Event, the
Taskforce's demonstration of the need for such a telescope was
hopelessly
crippled.
Clearly, the impact hazard as it is currently known is
sufficiently grave
that baring movement in Commons on the matter, I would then have
to hope
that the matter would be raised by a member of the House of
Lords, with full
open inquiry to follow if need be.
Most forelorn of hopes, I could hope that perhaps the Government
would issue
its own clarifying statements on the hazard over the next few
days.
So much for my hopes or delusions, as the case may be. In the
meantime,
having looked on the bright side and the dark side of the UK
government's
response to the NEO hazard, allow me now to return to the look at
the real
side of the Rio Cuarto Impact Event. It will be of great interest
to some
Conference participants to learn that the Argentinian private
sector has
recently stepped up its efforts to commercialize the Rio Cuarto
crater
field, and they may wish to check at http://64.87.101.179/Crateres/
for
their vacation travel needs. Given these private sector
efforts, it would
seem to me that perhaps at this point in time the best manner in
which the
UK government might use £250,000 to inform the UK public about
the NEO
hazard may possibly be to take a part of that money to send Lord
Sainsbury
there on a brief holiday, before he makes any more bone headed
statements on
the impact hazard in public again.
Best wishes -
Ed
============
(14) DOUBTS ABOUT PLANETARY DEFENSE
>From John Michael Williams <jwill@AstraGate.net>
Hello.
"Scientists argue that detecting asteroids early is not just
an
academic exercise. The dinosaurs were powerless to help
themselves,
but the development of rockets and nuclear bombs means that
humans might be able to destroy or divert asteroids that are
heading for
Earth before they strike."
--Eben Black, Chief Political Correspondent, The Sunday
Times, 19 August 2001
Not being British, I don't at all mind expressing views which,
even though
true, might contradict the British Government.
A nuclear bomb operates mainly by release of immense amounts of
heat. The
only way it creates mechanical stress at any significant distance
is because
of changes in air pressure caused by the
heating. Everyone reading this must be familiar with the
mushroom-shaped
cloud, which represents the leftover heated air, that which did
not
contribute to the shock wave in nearby air. A nuclear bomb
probably would do
little more to an approaching "killer asteroid" than to
make it red hot, too
hot to touch. Not only would the asteroid destroy everything, but
it would
hurt, too!
John
jwill@AstraGate.net
John Michael Williams
==========
(15) AND FINALLY: SATELLITE IN SEARCH OF NOAH'S ARK
>From Space.com, 23 August 2001
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/noahs_ark_010823-1.html
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
Satellites Search for Ancient Artifact
WASHINGTON -- Military and private satellite snapshots of Mount
Ararat in
eastern Turkey reveal an anomaly that researchers say might be
the remains
of Noah's Ark.
A soon-to-be-launched commercial spacecraft will focus powerful
cameras on
the mysterious mountainside oddity to help unravel its true
nature.
In the past, expeditions permitted to search the area for what
some claim
are the ruins of Noah's Ark, while failing to conclusively prove
its
existence, have succeeded in sustaining debate. The area itself
is a
geopolitical and religious hot spot, with Mount Ararat sitting in
the far
eastern frontier of Turkey, near the borders of Armenia, Georgia
(formerly
part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the USSR) and
Iran.
Even the late Apollo 15 moonwalker James Irwin was repeatedly
drawn to Mount
Ararat in hopes of finding Ark wreckage. Through his High Flight
Foundation,
a non-profit evangelical organization based in Colorado Springs,
the former
astronaut made six treks to Mount Ararat in an unsuccessful quest
to find
remains of the ark.
Irwin's last expedition in 1990 ran into trouble. Turkish police
detained
him following allegations that he engaged in spying while looking
for the
Ark. Since 1991, the mountain has been closed due to Turkish
military
operations against Kurdish rebels in the area.
Today the exploration of 17,000-foot Mount Ararat and the search
for Noah's
Ark has moved to higher ground -- thanks to high-tech satellite
flyovers.
Flood of data
To get up to speed on this search, it helps to start with the
Bible.
Noah was instructed by God to save his family and the world's
animals during
a great flood that would cover the Earth. To do so, Noah built a
large
vessel, an ark. What followed was a pouring rain lasting 40 days
and 40
nights. According to the Book of Genesis, as the Great Flood
receded, the
ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
Now jump to 1949.
An image from the June 19, 1949 U.S. Air Force Mission that
captured a
panoramic view of what is simply called "the Ararat
Anomaly".
Aircraft imagery of Mount Ararat taken in June of that year and
analyzed by
U.S. intelligence officials includes a unique feature at the
15,500-foot
level on the Northwestern Plateau. Then in 1973 and 1976, through
the lenses
of classified satellites, this "whatever-it-is" also
purportedly stirred up
the same community.
"It's called the 'Ararat Anomaly'," said Porcher
Taylor, an assistant
professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and an
expert in
satellite imaging diplomacy and the news media. He has been
gathering
evidence on the novel feature since 1993, including a set of
those 1949
aerial shots of the area, now declassified.
Taylor said that arguments have erupted within intelligence
circles for
decades as to what truly has been seen on Mount Ararat.
"Debates center on whether or not it's a strange rock
formation, a crashed
airplane, perhaps a fortress or some other structure hundreds of
years old
... or maybe something more interesting of potentially biblical
proportions," Taylor told SPACE.com. Certain individuals in
the know, he
added, believe what is visible in certain satellite pictures is
the bow of a
ship sticking out of a glacier.
The anomaly is apparently more than 600-feet long (183 meters),
Taylor said,
at least that part of it jutting out as seen in aerial and
satellite
imagery. One expert, a naval engineer and architect, when looking
at the
photos believes "prongs" or "ribs" of the
keel of an ancient marine
structure can be identified, he said. [....]
Copyright 2001, Space.com
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