PLEASE NOTE:
*
From:
Benny J Peiser <B.J.PEISER@livjm.ac.uk
Subject: CC
DIGEST 1/11/97
To:
cambridge-conference@livjm.ac.uk
Priority: NORMAL
CAMBRIDGE-CONFERNCE DIGEST, 1 November 1997
(1) DREADFUL SORRY, CLEMENTINE: Washington brushes
off the
asteroid threat
(2) UA SCIENTIST HEADS TO ANTARCTICA AS PART OF METEORITE
SEARCH
TEAM
============================================================================
Partial text from Time Magazine, October 27, 1997:
DREADFUL SORRY, CLEMENTINE: Washington brushes off the asteroid threat
Leon Jaroff
During the 3 or 4 billion years that it has existed on Earth,
life as been
devastated, and on occasion nearly wiped out, by the explosive
impact of
giant asteroids or comets. Now terrestrial life has finally
evolved to the
point where it is intelligent and capable enough to defend itself
against
such threats from space -- if it has the will to do so.
That is why some scientists are so distressed by President
Clinton's
line-item veto last week of the $30 million that Congress had
allocated for
the Clementine II project next year. Clementine is a
spacecraft that was to
be launched in 1999 to approach an asteroid named Toutatis and
send a
camera-equiped rocket barreling into it. . . . .
Reasons for the veto, an Administration spokeman explained,
included
concern that the project might violate the Antiballistic Missile
Treaty,
that it was a thinly-disguised supplement to other Pentagon
projects and
more logically belonged in the NASA budget. Another -- but
unspoken --
reason, say scientists familiar with the budget debate, is the
"giggle
factor", the tendency of many in government to scoff at the
danger posed by
asteroids.
[A paragraph follows explaining the risk of impact]
In an attempt to assess the danger, a few dedicated
astronomers have been
scanning the skies, borrowing time on large telescopes, building
their own
detectors out of off-the-shelf parts and barely scraping by on
the $1
million or so NASA contributes annually to the total
effort. Their goal is
to identify and determine the orbits of the still undiscovered
near Earth
asteroids. That would enable them to predict, sometimes
many years in
advance, the possibility of a disastrous encounter. Those
predictions and
knowledge gained from missions like Clementine would give Earth's
defenders
time to mount the appropriate defense, using missiles to deflect
or destroy
a threatening intruder.
With a bit more funding and access to the Air Force's
satellite tracking
telescopes, say astronomers, they could find and track the most
threatening
asteroids within a decade. The cost to taxpayers, they
estimate, would be a
few million dollars more a year. If you think of it as an
insurance policy
for the entire planet, it's a small price to pay.
==========================================================================
University of Arizona News Services
From: Lori Stiles, UA News Services, 520-621-1877,
lstiles@u.arizona.edu
Contact(s): Timothy D. Swindle, 520-621-4128,
timswindle@ccit.arizona.edu
October 29, 1997
UA SCIENTIST HEADS TO ANTARCTICA AS PART OF METEORITE SEARCH TEAM
Timothy D. Swindle has been studying meteorites for the past
15 years.
Now he's heading to Antarctica to hunt them.
By the time he hits the high, ice-desert polar plateau in
December,
maximum daytime temperatures will hover between minus 20 degrees
and plus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And this is summer, so the sun
never
sets. Returning Antarctic meteorite hunters say they miss
darkness, and the
color green. Why go?
"I have never found a meteorite. I have an urge to find a
great
meteorite. And I get to go to a place that people who have
visited say is
absolutely gorgeous," said Swindle, an associate professor
of planetary
sciences at The University of Arizona in Tucson. He is on a team
of eight
going to the South Pole as part of the 1997-98 Antarctic Search
for
Meteorites program (ANSMET).
Swindle, 42, who joined the UA in 1986, specializes in
analyzing the
noble gases in extraterrestrial materials to understand the
chronology of
the solar system. His research projects include determining the
ages of
impact craters, finding when the earliest solids formed in the
solar system
and discovering when liquid water flowed on Mars.
Roughly 3,000 meteorites were known before 1976, when the
National
Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs funded the first of
its
annual ANSMET expeditions, Swindle said. ANSMET researchers since
have
recovered another 8,000 meteorites. These are curated at the NASA
Johnson Space Center in Houston and ultimately belong to the
Smithsonian Institution. Scientists apply for ANSMET meteorite
samples
for study to an NSF-funded committee of meteorite experts called
the
Meteorite Working Group, a body on which Swindle has served.
ANSMET meteorites currently represent "the only reliable,
continuous
source of new, non-microscopic extraterrestrial material, and
will
continue to be until future planetary sample-return missions are
successful," said Ralph P. Harvey of Case Western Reserve
University,
principal investigator of the ANSMET program. "Their
continued
retrievel is the cheapest and only guaranteed way to recover new
things from
worlds beyond the Earth," Harvey said in his extensive Web
page at
http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/geolog/ANSMET/.
Swindle and Harvey talked about the possibility of Swindle
joining an
ANSMET team a few years ago. Swindle was invited to join the
1997-98
team early this year. He quickly telephoned Guy Consolmagno of
the
Vatican Observatory and the UA Steward Observatory, a member of
the
1996-97 ANSMET team. Despite some illnesses, bad weather and a
greater-than-usual number of visits from film crews, Consolmagno
and
his six colleagues collected 390 meteorites last year.
Swindle's team will fly from Christchurch, New Zealand, to
McMurdo
Station, Antarctica, about Dec. 1. There they will pack all the
food
stores and supplies they need for six weeks or more on the ice.
Each
team member has his or her own snowmobile and at least two nansen
sledges piled high with supplies. Swindle and his teammates also
put in a
few days' training on some necessary field routines -- pitching
tents,
operating snowmobiles, and practicing crevasse rescues. There are
significant crevasse hazards surrounding potential
meteorite-bearing fields.
After about a week at McMurdo, the expedition is flown a
couple of
hundred miles inland to the meteorite stranding surface selected
as the
season's field site. In Swindle's case, the target area is near
Walcott
Neve, south of the Queen Alexandra Range in the 1,900-mile length
of the
Transantarctic Mountains. Unofficially, this meteorite-rich
hunting ground
is called "Foggy Bottom." The volume of ice flowing
through the Walcott is
diminishing rapidly, according to Harvey. Aside from the
meteorites it
offers, this area may be a useful example of how the East
Antarctic ice
sheet is responding to climate change, Harvey noted in his Web
page.
Antarctica is showered with no more meteorites than anywhere
else on
Earth, Swindle said. But it's easy to spot rocks against
blue-white
ice. Also, the East Antarctic ice sheet flows from the center to
the
edges of the South Pole continent, and meteorites naturally
collect
where the sheet flows against the mountains. The tell-tale
signature of a
meteorite as opposed to a rock is a millimeter-thick black fusion
crust that
covers the surface, Swindle said. The crust formed when the rock
melted by
friction as it sailed through the Earth's atmosphere.
After six weeks on the East Antarctic ice sheet, Swindle said
he's sure
he'll want to return to civilization, and, particularly, to his
wife and two
kids.
But finding a special meteorite would be a worthwhile prize.
The most
special meteorite to him would be a meteorite from Venus, Swindle
said. He
and a student have thought about how a Venusian meteorite could
be
identified. No one's found one, yet.