PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 134/2000 - 18 December 2000
--------------------------------
"The collision gouged a crater nearly eight miles deep and
sent
12,000 cubic miles of rock, dirt and debris spinning into the
earth's
atmosphere. The material blocked the sun, causing extreme changes
in
the Earth's climate, which many scientists believe resulted in
mass
extinctions."
--Mary Lenz, University of Texas-Austin
"The rock and dust kicked up by an asteroid impact 65
million years
ago were not enough to kill the dinosaurs, according to
researchers -- but
the debris may have sparked a deadly global chemical reaction in
the
atmosphere."
--Matthew Fordahl, AP, 18 December 2000
(1) COSMIC WINTER HYPOTHESIS OF K/T MASS EXTINCTION QUESTIONED
New Jersey Online, 18 December 2000
(2) K/T IMPACT CHANGED SHAPE OF EARTH'S CRUST
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(3) DRILLING TO FIND CLUES TO DEMISE OF DINOSAURS
The New York Times, 18 December 2000
(4) DESPITE PERIODIC PUMMELING, CONDITIONS ON EARLY EARTH WERE
RIPE FOR LIFE
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(5) HERE WE GO AGAIN: CONFUSED RUSSIANS ISSUE WILD ASTEROID ALERT
James Oberg <JamesOberg@aol.com>
(6) REDUCING THE DANGERS POSED BY VOLCANOES
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(7) A SPORADIC ORIGIN FOR THE 29th NOVEMBER DAYLIGHT FIREBALL
Josep M. Trigo <trigo@exp.uji.es>
(8) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR ARTHUR!
Robert E. Strong <strongro@wlsc.wvnet.edu>
(9) CNUCE UNCONTROLLED RE-ENTRY CLASSIFICATION
Luciano Anselmo <luciano.anselmo@cnuce.cnr.it>
(10) PANSPERMIA VS SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
Max Wallis <wallismk@Cardiff.ac.uk>
(11) BIOLOGICAL REASONING
Jon Richfield <jonr@iafrica.com>
=================
(1) COSMIC WINTER HYPOTHESIS OF K/T MASS EXTINCTION QUESTIONED
From New Jersey Online, 18 December 2000
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0405_BC_Dinosaurs-Asteroid&&news&newsflash-national
Asteroid impact crater examined for clues to dinosaurs' demise
By MATTHEW FORDAHL
The Associated Press
12/18/00 12:35 AM
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The rock and dust kicked up by an asteroid
impact 65
million years ago were not enough to kill the dinosaurs,
according to
researchers -- but the debris may have sparked a deadly global
chemical
reaction in the atmosphere.
New studies show the Chicxulub impact crater on the coast of
Mexico's
Yucatan Peninsula is smaller than once thought, making dinosaur
extinction
difficult to explain completely. Researchers presented those
findings Sunday
at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting.
"If you rely on little pieces of debris actually clobbering
organisms, then
you're in trouble," said Virgil "Buck" Sharpton of
the Geophysical Institute
at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.
Since 1980, research on the dinosaurs' disappearance has focused
on the
125-mile crater and the 10-mile-wide asteroid believed to have
created it.
Dust from the impact was thought to have blocked out sunlight for
years.
Now, however, drilling around the Yucatan crater indicates the
presence of
carbonates and sulfate rocks. The new theory is that these were
vaporized by
the asteroid impact, a process that would have released chemicals
that
produce sulfur and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
The sulfur compounds would be especially toxic, Sharpton said.
"They do nasty things. They form little globules that
persist in the
atmosphere for some considerable amount of time -- decades to a
hundred
years," he said. "They also mix with water in the
atmosphere and produce
sulfuric acid."
So besides old theories about a nuclear winter-type global
cooling,
researchers believe the giant oxygen-breathing reptiles also may
have choked
on carbon dioxide and suffered showers of caustic acid.
"How do you initiate the global crisis? It had to be
atmospheric chemistry
of some sort," Sharpton said. "That's the only
way you can transport the
effect globally of something that dumps the majority of its
energy into a
single spot on the Earth's surface."
Rock and dust alone from Chicxulub probably would not have been
sufficient
to snuff out life on the other side of the globe, Sharpton said
-- even a
small pocket of life would have repopulated the planet.
To test the theories further, Sharpton and colleagues plan to
drill 1.5
miles into the crater and retrieve samples of the rock present in
what was a
shallow sea when the asteroid hit. The project, located 50 miles
south of
Merida will not begin before June.
Studies of Chicxulub have more value than explaining the dinosaur
extinction, said Gail Christeson of the University of Texas
Institute for
Geophysics in Austin.
"We're interested not just because it's the point of impact
but because of
what we can learn about other asteroid impact craters," she
said.
Scientists hope to learn what might happen if a future asteroid
or comet
crashes into Earth.
Other studies presented at the AGU meeting compare Chicxulub with
the much
older Sudbury crater near Ontario. By comparing different levels
of melted
rock at the bottom of both craters, researchers are more
confident that
Sudbury was formed by a high-velocity comet and Chicxulub by a
slower-moving
asteroid.
Comets are chunks of dirty ice; asteroids are giant rocks.
Such large impacts are estimated to occur only once every 350
million years.
That makes such craters -- especially well-preserved ones such as
Chicxulub
-- difficult to find on Earth.
"We've got an opportunity, a unique opportunity on the face
of the Earth, to
study a crater in three dimensions that has been preserved almost
in
pristine shape," Sharpton said. "And that's really what
we want to do."
Copyright 2000, New Jersey Online
===============
(2) K/T IMPACT CHANGED SHAPE OF EARTH'S CRUST
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Office of Public Affairs
University of Texas-Austin
P O Box Z
Austin, Texas 78713-7509
(512) 471-3151 FAX (512) 471-5812
Contact:
Mary Lenz, Office of Public Affairs
December 15, 2000
UT Austin scientist reports results from study of Yucatan crater
linked to
mass extinctions of dinosaurs
AUSTIN, Texas -- Scientists at The University of Texas at Austin
Sunday
(Dec. 17) will present a report offering new geophysical clues to
a
cataclysmic event that may have killed off the dinosaurs.
This report on Mexico's Chicxulub crater will be presented by Dr.
Gail
Christeson, a research associate at UT Austin's Institute for
Geophysics
(UTIG), at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in
San
Francisco. UT Austin's involvement in the project was sponsored
by the
National Science Foundation.
The Chicxulub structure was formed 65 million years ago when a
large
celestial body -- a comet or an asteroid -- slammed into the
Yucatan
Peninsula with a force that makes a nuclear blast seem like a
firecracker.
The impact produced fires, acid rain and tsunami-like destructive
waves. The
collision gouged a crater nearly eight miles deep and sent 12,000
cubic
miles of rock, dirt and debris spinning into the earth's
atmosphere. The
material blocked the sun, causing extreme changes in the Earth's
climate,
which many scientists believe resulted in mass extinctions.
The collision marked the abrupt end of the Cretaceous period in
geologic
time and the start of the Tertiary period. And many scientists
currently
believe that the event wiped out 80 percent of all living species
in the
ocean. It also may have destroyed many terrestrial species,
including the
dinosaurs.
Christeson and UTIG senior research scientists, including Dr.
Richard T.
Buffler and Dr. Yosio Nakamura, worked with an international team
of
scientists to survey the Chicxulub crater, which remains as an
unusual
circular feature buried beneath 1,000 meters of sediments under
the northern
Yucatan Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. Co-authors on
Christeson's
presentation are Jo Morgan and Mike Warner from Imperial College
in London,
and Colin Zelt from Rice University in Houston.
The aim of the researchers was to determine the Chicxulub
crater's actual
size and to characterize its internal structure. Such details
should make it
easier for scientists to understand how the crash actually could
have caused
mass extinctions. It should also allow them to assess the
present-day risk
posed by the thousands of comets and asteroids that cross earth's
orbit.
The team collected seismic reflection, refraction, gravity and
magnetic data
over the crater. This research has provided the first direct
evidence of a
crater with the multi-ring basin shape that is typical of the
largest impact
craters on the moon and Venus.
The impact was so enormous it changed the shape of the earth's
crust -- 22
miles below the surface of the planet. The Chicxulub crater is
the first
location where deformation at the base of the crust has been
found in a
terrestrial impact crater.
The scientific team concluded that the Chicxulub crater is about
125 miles
in diameter, and that 12,000 cubic miles of debris was blasted
out of the
earth by the impact. The impact carved out a cavity about 7.5
miles below
sea level. Mount Everest, in comparison, is 5.5 miles high. Prior
to this
research, the size and morphology of the Chicxulub crater had
been in
dispute, with estimates of its diameter ranging between 180 and
300
kilometers.
Such a large discrepancy in size translates to a factor of ten
differences
in the energy of the impact with quite different consequences for
the
Earth's environment. The energy released by the impact that blew
out the
Chicxulub crater was equivalent to about 100 million megatons,
many orders
of magnitude greater than the nuclear explosion at Hiroshima, a
15-kiloton
blast.
To collect the seismic data in the Gulf of Mexico, the scientists
deployed
an array of Ocean Bottom Seismograph (OBS), instruments which had
been
developed at UT Austin's Institute for Geophysics for undersea
projects such
as this one. The OBS instruments were deployed from the UT Austin
Marine
Science Institute vessel RV Longhornbased out of Port Aransas.
Additional analysis of the OBS data revealed that a region at the
center of
the crater about 22 miles in diameter has been uplifted by about
11 miles as
a result of the impact and removal of overlying material.
During the AGU meeting, Christeson will be a panelist at a press
conference
organized by AGU on large impact events.
For more information, contact Dr. Katherine Ellins at UT Austin's
Institute
for Geophysics at (512) 232-3251 or click on "research"
and "OBS" at the
Website: www.ig.utexas.edu
For information from the American Geophysical Union meeting in
San
Francisco, contact Harvey Leifert at the AGU press room at (415)
905-1007,
or e-mail: hleifert@agu.org
==============
(3) DRILLING TO FIND CLUES TO DEMISE OF DINOSAURS
From The New York Times, 18 December 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/18/science/18CRAT.html
By REUTERS
AN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17 - Scientists have begun a project to drill
into the
gaping crater caused by an ancient asteroid impact, hoping to
determine once
and for all what led to the global extinction of the dinosaurs
millions of
years ago.
The asteroid impact near the tip of Mexico's Yucatán peninsula
about 65
million years ago has long been believed to be a potential cause
for the
death of the dinosaurs, which vanished at roughly the same time.
Now scientists are looking at new ways of exploring the vast
Chicxulub
crater in the hope of discovering how the impact triggered an
environmental
catastrophe that extinguished dinosaur life around the globe.
"It's a 100 million-year event - they don't occur that
often, thank God,"
Buck Sharpton of the University of Alaska Fairbanks said at news
briefing
today at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San
Francisco.
Mr. Sharpton and Luís Marín of the Mexican National University
are
spearheading a project to drill a 1.2- mile hole into the crater,
to
understand the force of the collision and its environmental
results.
Drilling is scheduled to start about 50 miles south of Mérida,
Mexico, in
June. The researchers will be examining rock samples for signs of
how a
huge, but relatively isolated, explosion might have wiped out
dinosaur life
even halfway around the planet.
Discovered in the 1970's by oil drilling teams, the Chicxulub
crater was
relatively unstudied until the 1990's, when scientists linked it
to theories
that asteroid impact may have spelled the dinosaurs' doom.
Other scientists hypothesize that a huge surge in volcanic
activity on the
earth itself killed the dinosaurs.
The asteroid impact was like nothing recorded in human history.
Millions of
years before humans even existed, a huge meteorite measuring
about six miles
across and weighing perhaps billions of tons crashed into the
planet in a
ball of fire, shrouding the Earth in a dense cloud of dust that
blocked out
sunlight and sent temperatures plummeting.
Estimates now put the crater's size at about 125 miles in
diameter,
indicating a force of impact equivalent to an earthquake about
10,000 times
stronger than the one that leveled San Francisco in 1906.
Copyright 2000, The New York Times
===============
(4) DESPITE PERIODIC PUMMELING, CONDITIONS ON EARLY EARTH WERE
RIPE FOR LIFE
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Office of Public Relations
University of Rochester
Rochester, New York
CONTACT: Tom Rickey, (716) 275-7954
December 15, 2000
DESPITE PERIODIC PUMMELING, CONDITIONS ON EARLY EARTH WERE RIPE
FOR LIFE
Even during an extraordinarily violent era in Earth's early
history, when
our young planet was being whacked by asteroids and comets so
frequently
that scientists refer to it as "Late Heavy
Bombardment," conditions most of
the time at the Earth's surface were quite hospitable for the
microbes that
lived here, according to research being presented in an invited
talk this
week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in
San
Francisco. The work has also been accepted by the Journal of
Geophysical
Research.
By making fine measurements of a kind of stardust carried to
Earth by
asteroids and comets some four billion years ago, a team of
scientists led
by University of Rochester geochemist Ariel Anbar has determined
that only
rarely -- perhaps once every 30 to 100 million years -- was the
bombardment
from the skies so severe that microbes would have had a difficult
time
surviving at the Earth's surface. Even in such instances,
scientists say
that hardy bacteria and viruses could have found sheltered
places, such as
beneath the Earth's crust, deep in the ocean near thermal vents,
and other
hiding spots, to ride out the storm.
Many scientists have assumed that no life could have survived the
Late Heavy
Bombardment period, but the team's research indicates that most
of the time,
conditions on Earth during this time weren't so bad. The work
makes it
feasible that life on Earth's surface existed earlier than
scientists have
considered.
"It's been the conventional wisdom that with all this
bombardment, life
should be very hard to maintain, and some scientists have argued
that the
Earth's surface wasn't habitable," says Anbar, assistant
professor of earth
and environmental sciences and of chemistry. "It was a
violent period in
Earth history. Sure, every 30 million years or so, life would
have been
really challenging. But if microbes could find places to ride out
the big
impacts, there is no reason that they wouldn't be able to
repopulate the
surface and flourish. We're continually finding that life is
incredibly
hardy and adaptable, and it's plausible that bacteria could have
survived
these high-impact environments."
Anbar's team included Rochester graduate student Gail Arnold, who
made
sensitive measurements of the metal iridium, which is rare on
Earth but
abundant in space-borne objects; Kevin Zahnle of the NASA Ames
Research
Center in Palo Alto, Calif., who developed a computer model to
simulate
Earth under bombardment; and Steve Mojzsis of the University of
California
at Los Angeles.
Mojzsis had previously discovered evidence of ancient microbial
life in the
oldest sediments ever found on Earth -- 3.85 billion years old --
from
Akilia Island in southern Greenland. He and Anbar decided to
study the same
sediments for signs of bombardment. In several rocks from Akilia
Island
Arnold measured the level of iridium: If asteroids and comets
struck the
Earth continually, the sediments should have shown high levels of
iridium.
Instead, the rocks contained little iridium, indicating a break
in the
bombardment.
"We looked in these sediments fully expecting to find high
levels of
iridium. If Earth was getting pummeled, we thought we should see
it. But
these rocks were quite clean of iridium," says Anbar.
Since other evidence that Earth was heavily bombarded during this
time is
very strong, the finding initially puzzled the researchers. The
team decided
to carefully estimate the rate of bombardment at that time. Their
estimates
showed that during most of the bombardment period, large asteroid
or comet
impacts would have been rare enough that their traces wouldn't be
seen in
sediments like the ones they studied. They estimate that every
several
hundred thousand years or so, an asteroid a few miles wide -- the
size of
the object that likely wiped out the dinosaurs -- would have
plunked into
Earth. They say that much larger objects, those capable of
killing off most
microbial life on Earth, slammed into Earth much less frequently,
probably
only once every 30 to 100 million years. The most severe
bombardment
happened in very distinct episodes, with conditions in between
quite livable
for microbes.
"Sure, conditions at this time were nastier than today, with
objects
constantly hitting the Earth, but it was really quite rare for an
object big
enough to vaporize the upper part of the ocean and do a
tremendous amount of
damage to hit the Earth," says Anbar, whose work is funded
by NASA's
Astrobiology Institute and the National Science Foundation.
"It's been
estimated that it would only take a few tens of thousands of
years for the
planet to recover from such an event. So it would be just very
short periods
of time millions of years apart when it would have been difficult
to
maintain life."
==============
(5) HERE WE GO AGAIN: CONFUSED RUSSIANS ISSUE WILD ASTEROID ALERT
From James Oberg <JamesOberg@aol.com>
From The Moscow Times, 16 December 2000
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2000/12/16/003.html
RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS WARN OF WORLD-ENDING ASTEROID THREAT
By Kevin O'Flynn
Russian scientists warned this week that life as we know it could
end as
early as Monday (sic), if any one of the massive asteroids
whizzing through
the cosmos should happen to be making a beeline for Earth.
"There is a threat to humanity," said Vadim Simonenko,
deputy head of the
Institute of Technical Physics.
Simonenko was among the impressive array of experts attending a
news
conference with a title straight from a 1950s B- movie:
"Asteroid Danger:
How to Save the Earth From Cosmic Catastrophe."
The conference, held Thursday at the House of Journalists,
brought together
astronomers, physicists and nuclear experts to urge global
cooperation in
saving the world from a devastating asteroid collision that could
leave
millions dead or even wipe out civilization entirely.
With asteroids measuring up to 10 kilometers in diameter and
traveling at
speeds of up to 20,000 kilometers an hour, Earth would stand
little chance
if it was hit by a big one.
The Thursday gathering, including Simonenko, whose institute is a
part of
the Russian Nuclear Center, called for the organization of a
world body to
scour space for incoming objects and destroy any potentially
dangerous
flying objects with nuclear missiles.
In the case that preemptive measures fail, the citizens of the
world should
be prepared to relocate to the moon (sic), the scientists added.
"After a collision with one of these asteroids, there'll be
only fragments
left of Earth (sic)," said Alexander Bagrov, senior
scientist at the
Institute of Astronomy.
Bagrov added that current technology allows experts to detect
incoming
objects no earlier than three days ahead of time (sic) hence the
suggestion
that the day of reckoning may come as early as Monday.
Bagrov, a tall, thin balding man with a moonlike face, led the
rallying cry
of the doom-mongers, telling grim tales of other planets done in
by
asteroids.
Five billion years ago, he said, the planet Phaeton (sic),
located between
Mars and Jupiter, the area where the orbit of most
asteroids lie, exploded
into millions of bits after being hit by an asteroid 1,000 meters
wide
(sic).
"And [Phaeton] was many times bigger than Earth,"
Bagrov warned. "After a
collision with one of these asteroids there'd by only fragments
left of
Earth."
The asteroid that destroyed Phaeton also went on to cause the
demise of life
on Mars (sic), when one of the fragments of the shattered planet
whacked
into Mars (sic), causing it to sink into a grim nuclear winter
that killed
all life forms and turned it the bright red color it is today.
The only trace of life left on Mars is a "face with tears on
its cheek"
(sic) visible on the planet's surface, Bragov said.
Comets and asteroids have been slamming into Earth since time
began. A huge
asteroid that hit the planet 65 million years ago is believed to
have killed
off the dinosaurs.
But it has only been in the last 10 to 20 years that scientists
have started
to seriously consider the threat that asteroids, comets and other
so-called
NEOs, or Near Earth Objects, potentially pose to contemporary
civilization.
"Ten years ago it was thought fantastic," Simonenko
said of the concept that
life on Earth could be wiped out by a NEO hit.
Everything changed, however, when an American scientist proved
that a huge
crater in the state of Arizona was caused by a meteorite and not,
as
previously thought, by volcanic activity.
Scientists now agree that there are millions of asteroids out
there that
have a chance of hitting the Earth.
If an object of more than 10 kilometers in diameter hits the
Earth then
there's not much chance of anyone surviving, according to a
British task
force that earlier this year published research on NEOs. Luckily,
the chance
of that happening is about once every hundred million years, the
research
said.
More dangerous are smaller objects of one kilometer or more which
could
destroy cities (sic), change the climate and cause huge tidal
waves all over
the Earth.
There are roughly 1,000 such asteroids, roughly half of which
have been
identified as unlikely to strike the Earth.
An ongoing project at NASA hopes to identify an additional 40
percent of the
asteroids within the next decade.
Even smaller objects, those under a kilometer, would still cause
devastation
equivalent to a number of nuclear bombs, but few of these have
been
detected.
Russia has already been hit by two large asteroids in the last
100 years.
In 1908 an asteroid crashed into Tunguska, a remote area of
Siberia, causing
devastation across an area the size of London.
Nearly 40 years later another asteroid hit Sikote-Alin, also in
Siberia,
smashing more than a hundred craters into the land.
If one of these asteroids had hit a city then millions of people
would have
died.
Alone, Russia has little funding to devote to NEO studies.
According to Anatoly Zaitsev, the head engineer at the Scientific
Production
Association, a manufacturer of satellites, an international body
is needed
to track all flying objects and act quickly with nuclear missiles
if needed.
Zaitsev said that there is also a need to discuss the practical
and moral
problems associated with NEO vigilance.
Do you really want to tell the citizens of Perm that a meteorite
is headed
for their town square, he wondered, pointing to the rash of
suicides and
general panic caused two years ago in the United States when the
Haley-Bop
(sic) comet came unusually close to Earth.
If the big one does come, Zaitsev added, people should be
prepared to
evacuate the planet - potentially relocating to the moon (sic).
But how will we choose who goes, someone asked.
"Ah, that's the problem," Zaitsev said.
Copyright 2000, The Moscow Times
MODERATOR'S NOTE: "How to save the world from cosmic
catastrophe?", Russian
researchers asked last Thursday at a Moscow press conference
reported above.
May I suggest to start with accurate information presented to the
public
rather than this kind of ridiculous hotchpotch of misleading
scare stories.
The report sounds more like an April fool's trick. Perhaps some
of our
Russian subscribers could help to enlighten us about this latest
noice
coming out of Moscow.
============
(6) REDUCING THE DANGERS POSED BY VOLCANOES
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Public Affairs (PA)
Los Alamos National Laboratory
CONTACT: David Lyons, davidlyons@lanl.gov,
505-665-9198
00-166
Los Alamos Volcanologist: apply lessons from meteorology
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 15, 2000 -- Reducing the danger posed by
volcanoes
will require volcanologists to integrate data from throughout
volcanology to
build predictive simulations and models, according to Greg
Valentine, a
volcanologist at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National
Laboratory.
By effectively integrating geological, geochemical, geophysical,
and
remote-sensing data through the use of geographic information
systems, or
GIS, volcanologists will be able to create easy-to-understand
visualizations of volcanoes.
Valentine pointed to the field of meteorology, which for years
has
integrated satellite images and surface measurements into
effective
predictive models and visualizations, as a well-known, successful
example of
this approach.
"In order to see major advances in reducing volcanic danger,
volcanologists
must come together and integrate their various subfields and
specialties,
which until now have often remained separate. Much good work is
done in
volcanology, but just as it happens in other fields, too often we
don't talk
to our colleagues and try to put all of the pieces
together," said
Valentine, who leads the Geoanalysis Group at Los Alamos.
Valentine put out this call to his volcanologist colleagues in a
presentation made at today's (Dec. 15) session of the American
Geophysical
Union fall meeting in San Francisco. His talk was part of an AGU
session on
the future of volcanology.
Valentine, who co-authored the talk with Geoanalysis Group member
Gordon
Keating, said that his goal is for volcanologists in the future
to be able
to predict potential eruptions and provide meaningful information
and
warnings to city planners, emergency responders and nearby
populations. To
accomplish this, he said that researchers will need to start
working
together to integrate data and research from all of the subfields
of
volcanology.
This integration, he said, can be greatly facilitated by relying
on
Internet-based GIS and numerical simulations to build digital
models of a
given volcanic system, from its deep magma plumbing up to its
surface
expression, including infrastructure and other societal data in
the vicinity
of the volcano.
Valentine said that approximately 200 million people live near
active
volcanoes and could some day be directly impacted by an eruption.
Similarly,
he said that volcanic information could be helpful for city
planners and
others looking at development.
"Volcanologists are in luck, though, because there are great
examples in
other fields of how this type of cooperation and integration can
take
place," Valentine said. "For instance, you don't have
to look further than
your local television news to find examples from
meteorology." Other
examples exist in environmental remediation and petroleum
reservoir
management.
Meteorologists rely heavily on predictive models and
visualizations that can
be easily understood by the public. Similarly, scientists
involved in
environmental cleanup or remediation efforts have successfully
integrated
geologic and hydrogeologic models of cleanup sites with detailed
data of the
known contaminant boundaries to build simulations that predict
the extent of
contaminant plumes.
Valentine believes that volcanology is ripe for the same types of
integration that have led to successful outcomes in other fields.
Integrating information such as fluid and solid dynamics models
of magma
chambers with GIS databases allows for effective simulation and
visualization. Based on this information, decision makers can
predict
eruption dynamics for different scenarios, overlay model
predictions on
infrastructure and other cultural data, and ultimately come up
with improved
risk estimations.
Integration efforts similar to those described by Valentine were
articulated
by Flavio Dobran and his colleagues in Italy around a decade ago
and are
beginning to take root in the volcanic hazards programs of some
countries.
However, Valentine said, the power of this integrated approach
needs to be
recognized and more broadly adapted throughout the volcanology
community.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of
California
for the U.S. Department of Energy.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(7) A SPORADIC ORIGIN FOR THE 29th NOVEMBER DAYLIGHT FIREBALL
From Josep M. Trigo <trigo@exp.uji.es>
We would correct an important mistake appeared in a press release
published
in CCNET the past December 11th. We suggested that the daylight
29th Nov.
fireball could be associated to the Leonids shower but it was a
mistake due
to an incorrectnes on the calculated rise and set times of this
radiant. In
fact, although the angular velocity and orientation would be
adequate, the
Leonids radiant was a lot of degrees under the horizon when the
fireball
appeared!. Considering this fact, our data suggests that this
fireball had a
sporadic origin, probably coming from the apex source. Perhaps in
next weeks
we can obtain detailed trajectories from other sites
to adjust its approx. radiant.
In connection with this mistake some people ask us on the
possibility to see
a fireball when its radiant is under the horizon. It is
practically
impossible but, sometimes, very active showers can produce
extreme cases of
visible meteors (or fireballs) when its radiant is in or lightly
(a few
degrees) under the horizon.
Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez
SPANISH PHOTOGRAPHIC METEOR NETWORK (SPMN)
Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)
Dept. Astronomy & Astrophysics, Univ. of Valencia
Dept. Experimental Sciences, Univ. Jaume I
Dept. Inorganic Chemistry, Univ. Barcelona
SPMN homepage: http://www.spmn.uji.es/
E-mails: trigo@exp.uji.es /
jllorca@kripto.qui.ub.es
===========
(8) HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SIR ARTHUR!
From Robert E. Strong <strongro@wlsc.wvnet.edu>
Dear Benny Peiser,
The Near Earth Object Foundation is partnering with West Liberty
State
College, Grand Vue Park, and the Space Studies Institute to
sponsor the Sir
Arthur C. Clarke Near Earth Object
Observatory. The Sir Arthur C. Clarke Near Earth Object
Observatory was
created as a prototype observatory to develop techniques and
perform
observations to discover, characterize, and monitor near Earth
objects
(NEOs) which may potentially impact the Earth. The Sir Arthur C.
Clarke NEO
Observatory's goals include not only observational astronomy, but
the
advancement of observational technology and the education of
those who in
the future will carry on our mission.
The dedication of the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Near Earth Object
Observatory
coincided with Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 83rd birthday, Saturday
December 16,
2000. The dedication site will be at the Observatory itself
behind the
residence of 1916 Warwood Avenue, Wheeling West Virginia.
The Near Earth Object Foundation plans to eventually have a
thousand such
NEO observatories around the world collectively dubbed the
k-SkyWatch
Survey, a program to survey the Earth's sky for near Earth
objects (NEOs),
such as asteroids and short and long period comets whose orbits
cross the
orbit of the Earth. These NEOs have a potential of
catastrophically
colliding with the Earth, resulting in possible severe
devastation and
widespread species extinction.
The Near Earth Object Foundation staff is a dedicated group of
Wheeling area
amateur astronomers (The NEO Group) assembling the materials and
skills to
start the grand vision of a
global NEO defense survey - k-SkyWatch Survey. The Sir Arthur C.
Clarke Near
Earth Object Observatory is the first NEO Observatory in the
k-SkyWatch
Survey.
The heart of the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Near Earth Object
Observatory is a
fully computerized Meade LX200 12" f/10 telescope complete
with CCD camera.
The telescope is housed in a 6' HOME DOME from Technical
Innovations. The
entire functioning of the observatory will eventually be remotely
controlled.
If you would like to learn more about this research and
educational
endeavor, please visit us at our website at www.neofoundation.org
Sincerely,
Robert E. Strong
===========
(9) CNUCE UNCONTROLLED RE-ENTRY CLASSIFICATION
From Luciano Anselmo <luciano.anselmo@cnuce.cnr.it>
Dear Benny,
Perhaps you may be interested in a classification scheme of
uncontrolled
satellite re-entries (see the attached document), introduced at
CNUCE/CNR in
1995, to present the associated risk in a synthetic way.
Sometimes, a quantitative impact risk on the ground for a known
spacecraft
may be evaluated, but the fine details of the satellite
manufacture and very
complex software codes are needed to obtain accurate results.
However, when
such information/tools are not available, the CNUCE
classification can
provide a reasonable qualitative guess of the risk for each
specific event.
Regards
Luciano
Anselmo
Phone: +39-050-315-2952
Spaceflight Dynamics
Section
Fax (G3): +39-050-313-8091
CNUCE
Institute
Fax (G4): +39-050-313-8092
CNR - Area della Ricerca di Pisa
Via Alfieri 1
Loc. San Cataldo -
Ghezzano E-Mail: Luciano.Anselmo@cnuce.cnr.it
56010 San Giuliano
Terme CNUCE
URL: http://www.cnuce.pi.cnr.it/
Pisa -
Italy
CNR Area URL: http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/
----------
CNUCE UNCONTROLLED RE-ENTRY CLASSIFICATION
(Space Debris Monitor, No. 4, CNUCE Institute, CNR, Pisa, Italy,
April 1995)
Luciano Anselmo
In order to express the associated risk in a synthetic way, the
re-entry in
the Earth's atmosphere of uncontrolled space objects is
classified in terms
of mass categories and event classes. The re-entry category [M]
is defined
by the following relationship:
m
M = Log_10 ---
100
where m is the mass of the space object in kg. Table 1 shows the
CNUCE scale
in detail, together with an approximate risk descriptor. At
present, the
re-entry events closely monitored are those with M ³ 1.6,
corresponding to a
space object mass of 4000 kg, or larger.
Table 1
CNUCE UNCONTROLLED RE-ENTRY SCALE
Category Risk
Descriptor
Mass [kg] Scale (M)
100 0 Negligible
1,000 1 Small
10,000 2 Minor
100,000 3 Moderate
1,000,000 4 Substantial
However, the space object mass is not sufficient to characterize
a re-entry
event. Therefore, some re-entry classes were defined as well, as
presented
in Table 2.
Table 2
CNUCE RE-ENTRY EVENT CLASSES
Re-entry Event Description
Class
Possible nuclear, biological or chemical contamination C
Complete object disintegration in the high atmosphere
D
Fall of large fragments (³ 10 cm) on the ground
F
Object able to maintain its structural integrity during the
re-entry S
CNUCE CLASSIFICATION EXAMPLES
· Cosmos 1900: 1.6 CF
· Salyut 7: 2.6 F
· FSW-1 5: 0.8 S
· TSS 1R: 0.8 D
REFERENCES
This note is based on a translation of "Classificazione dei
Rientri", Space
Debris Monitor, No. 4, Istituto CNUCE, Consiglio Nazionale delle
Ricerche,
Pisa, Italy, April 1995, p. 2.
==========
(10) PANSPERMIA VS SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
From Max Wallis <wallismk@Cardiff.ac.uk>
Andrew Glikson responded (CCNet 13 Dec.) to my critique (CCNet 11
Dec.) of
his essay calling panspermia a "philosophical notion"
(CCNet 1 Dec.). For
all his diversionary points, Andrew Glikson cannot deny that
panspermia is
accepted as a "working hypothesis" by a range of
scientists, including many
participants in CCNet. Diverse experimental and theoretical
studies nowadays
get funding from official bodies and are published in pucker
refereed
journals.
Mainstream scientists are keen to be involved in publications, as
the
strings of names on the Mileikowsky/Icarus paper and last week's
on
magnetite crystals in the Allan Hills meteorite demonstrate.
Panspermia even satisfies Glikson's Popperian criterion of being
testable,
re. interplanetary dust and meteorites. The same does not apply
to the Drake
equation which he outlines.
The Drake equation is numerology of disconnected systems. It
implies life
does not abound astronomically, but is confined to relatively few
planets
and stars. At heart it's philosophical and untestable, just a
methodology
for dissecting an issue. It breaks down if the likelihood of life
developing
spontaneously is minuscule compared with infection, whether
natural or
planned (by intelligent beings).
Let's ask how does panspermia compares with its competitor - the
spontaneous
generation of life on earth - the hypothesis favoured for most of
the last
century.
The tens or hundreds of experiments following Urey-Miller ran
into sand.
Self-organising principles from coacervate drops to crystal
substrates
provided a little progress. But the rot started once the
atmospheric
chemistry of the early earth was realised to be more oxidising
than
reducing, and the necessary pre-biotic chemicals were deemed
easier to
obtain infalling from space.
So spontaneous generation on earth is no longer a very healthy
hypothesis.
Spontaneous generation might indeed occur in some other solar
system
environment, as opposed to the pre-solar nebula being seeded with
life.
Panspermia could be said to include the former as well as the
latter option.
On the other hand, Glikson seems to advocate a new organising
principle for
spontaneous generation, in writing "the biosphere is founded
on... quantum
information laws", justifying this philosophical notion only
by reference to
the writer-populariser Paul Davies.
Early in his writing career, Davies did get to grips with the
concepts of
quantum theory [1], that signals have to travel across space
without
travelling through space; and that collapse of the wave function,
caused by
an observer, occurs instantaneously. Quantum theorists did not
resolve these
problems [2], but went on to construct grander edifices.
At the basis of the ill-defined quantum information notion is
"quantum
entanglement", which led me last week to challenge the
experimental basis of
the latter. It's the experimenters and physics journals [3]
that ascribe
the term "crazy" to the photon-entanglement
interpretation of the optical
crystal experiments - "crazy" because of conflicts with
locality and
causality.
That does not mean that Glikson and Davies are crazy to accept
it. But
scientists are honour-bound to consider material critiques and
references
[3-5] rather than rush to rejection. And to acknowledge
that spontaneous
generation has rebuffed experimental efforts, reducing belief in
that
hypothesis to the philosophical more than the scientific.
[1] Ian Brown and Paul Davies: The Ghost in the Atom (Camb. U.P.
1986)
[2] Trevor Marshall and Max Wallis: A sceptic at large in the
magical maze
(New Sci. 136, p.44 (24 Oct. 1992)
[3] Greenberger D, Zeilinger A, Quantum theory still crazy after
all these
years, Physics World, 8, 33-38, 1995.
[4] Wallis M K, Contemporary Phys. 39, 483-486, 1998; New
Scientist letters,
23 May 1998
[5] Marshall T W, webpage - www.keyinnov.demon.co.uk/antiqm.htm
==============
(11) BIOLOGICAL REASONING
From Jon Richfield <jonr@iafrica.com>
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible
you may
be mistaken."
--Oliver Cromwell
In any matter concerning scientific research, speaking as experts
or
research workers or the like, we should refuse to make any
statement unless
we are sure that every observation is controlled and every
pronouncement
logically valid, precisely worded and cogent.
Or should we? Life really is short and resources, including our
goodselves,
are meagre. Our hunger for discoveries that matter to us is
such that we
must skimp the effort that would be demanded by sustained
punctiliousness in
items that we see as trivialities or secondary concerns.
Nor can we really
insist on perfect composition and le mot juste for every
statement of what
we see as obvious. A certain impatience is understandable
when nigglers
demand plodding preparation
and polish before accepting support for the central theme of our
passions.
The big names in the history of science were not always
punctilious. In
fact, the papers reporting some of the greatest discoveries would
give any
professor a stroke if he caught any of his research students
publishing
anything so cavalier today. Surely we should make some
allowance to respect
the very instincts that underlie our human insights?
And yet sometimes, I beseech you, think it possible you may be
mistaken,
even in what you see as truisms. The evidence you took for
granted may be
misleading, the knowledge you took for granted may be delusion,
and horror
of horrors, the penetration of your razor-keen insight may fail
you in
proportion to your own self indulgence in taking it for
granted. There is
no fool like an old fool or a young fool unless it is a
middle-aged fool
whose subject knowledge and professional confidence are at their
peak, and
whose contempt for quibbles and time wasting doubts thrice arm
him against
dithering dissent.
And what is the Jeremiad about THIS time, I hear you sigh?
Nothing special.
Just me, ungracious partisan, and unsporting sod that I am, and
unregenerate
with it, I assure you, carping yet again at the sterling
new work
supporting the theses of the panspermists!
Well, make the most of it. While they are at it, critics might as
well add
that I wax increasingly acerbic as the bull market in crushing
demonstrations and watertight panspermic arguments waxes
increasingly
euphoric. With all respect for the delicate feelings of the
impatient
vanguard, every new thrill in the last few months has seen me out
by the
same door as in I went. Cosmic bacteria were conjured from
tarry collisions
in space, micro-nodules in lunar and putative Martian material
have been
represented as palpable bacterial fossils, and now we have
bacterial
magnetite from Mars. We read that it cannot be anything but
bacterial,
because some of the specimens examined are indistinguishable from
known
terrestrial bacterial magnetites in five of six characteristics
observed for
biogenically controlled mineralization of magnetite
crystals. No one so
far, it seems, has succeeded in obtaining such crystals other
than from
bacterial sources.
So what am I bitching about? If someone had made similar
observations of
magnetite crystals in say, lacustrine sediments on Earth, would I
have been
equally virtuously curmudgeonly? Is there something about
local sediments
that renders them less likely to harbour surprises and temptation
to error,
than Martian meteorites? You are quite right. I am
maintaining double
standards of vigilance. I am fairly relaxed about letting a
booboo pass, concerning a few
terrestrial observations, even if it leads to quite a major blind
alley,
such as in the case of polywater, or the role of Al as cause of
Parkinsonism, or the ability of rats to control the blood
pressure in their
ears. All such blots on the record of speculation and
research will come
out in the wash in due course, usually in pretty short order too.
Yes, I should be ashamed of myself, holding the Purity of
Research and the
Responsibility of the Scientist in such low regard, but there it
is and
there is <shudder!> worse. Not only are my standards
double, but they are
biased! In some affairs, such as that of polywater, I swallowed
the new
line, and in others, such as cold fusion and the Benveniste
homeopathy
fiasco, I mocked it! Is it possible to sink so low? Could I
possibly
justify my sin or expiate my guilt?
Mebbe, mebbe not.
In all such cases, in due course all is revealed. There are
plenty of rats,
of putative polywater and Parkinsonism for anyone to duplicate or
fail to
duplicate the crucial observations. Where I accepted as
sound evidence,
material that proved to be radically erroneous or at least
unrepeatable, and
in particular if it was in a field beyond my competence to
evaluate, I
shrugged off my innate gullibility with philosophy or with
irritation,
depending on the details. How else? Am I to do a crash
course at post
graduate level, including field experience, in the research
techniques in
every discipline concerning every claim that interests me, or
about which,
as a responsible member of the public I am required to form
cross-disciplinary opinions and insights? Then I fall
miserably short. Mea
culpa, maxima culpa!
Please don't misunderstand, this is my repentant expression:
:-)
And until someone tells me of a good alternative, that is how
repentant I
remain. John Maynard Keynes is quoted as saying: ""When
someone convinces me
that I am wrong, I change my mind; What do you do?"
For my part I think
that I am not much harder to convince of my own fallibility than
most, but
of course, I may be wrong. If so, feel welcome to change my mind
for me.
Conversely I see no reason to change my mind any faster than
that, whether
the proselytizer happens to be one of my personal heroes or one
of the
pullulating Gellers or von Daenikens of our population of fakes,
fads and
fallacies in science or fantasy. Nor can I recommend any
other attitude to
anyone else, even if the the proselytizer happens to be
myself. One
develops an opinion and changes it in the light of information,
insights and
tastes, apprehensions and misapprehensions, and in the light of
the case
presented by workers publishing in the respective fields.
If the case
doesn't hold water in the light of my insight and experience, I
tend to be
hard-nosed, otherwise I tend towards gullibility and believe me,
I can be
very, very gullible!
Good heavens, I even swallowed Neo-Darwinism and have not yet so
much as
developed a case of hiccoughs!
But when I am told that someone has observed material that
strikes me as a
priori implausible, when it demands a serious paradigm shift,
when it is
very, very hard to get control observations, when the evidence is
pretty
tenuous (such as inferring space-faring bacteria from putative
tar-puffs)
and when the biological assumptions and deductions strike me as
inconsistent
and unpersuasive (such as selective standards favouring
abiogenesis in space
and forbidding it under far more plausible circumstances on
Earth) why, then
I wax positively refractory!
I may be wrong, as I have been wrong in the past, but if so, it
is the facts
I shall be wrong about, not about the arguments. Bad
material and bad
reasoning are not improved by referring to sound subject matter.
Assumptions about the biological origin of material on Earth
usually can be
supported or invalidated by examination of associated evidence.
Are the
particles the only evidence? Are they just a selected
sample of particular
parameters in a much more extensive range? Are they associated
with other
microbial material, or is it all igneous or metamorphic? Is the
source
definitely lacustrine? Etc etc. Competent workers
have a number of other
things to bear in mind, whether unconscious or ticked off on
check-lists.
The history of palaeontology abounds with delusions stemming from
isolated
observations out of context. And who are you and I to
sneer? What branch
of science is immune to misleading incidental evidence? Certainly
not
physics! Definitely not astronomy!
Even cosmologists are said to be occasionally just a little
eclectic in the
items of hard evidence they employ in their construction of hard
theories.
Must we then reject everything that we cannot support with
chapter and
verse? Certainly not. For some material, context will eventually
turn up.
Even some for which there is never specific support, can be of
value in our
mental filing cabinets, when we have to synthesise our mental
structures for
dealing with a field. We can respect our capacity for
making errors, even
stupid errors, on the road to new insights and new
demonstrations. But
dealing with such material is very different from dealing with
cogent,
repeatable measurements or presenting cogent arguments.
And wishful thinking is a poor substitute for logic. If I
discover an object
that I have not (yet) succeeded in replicating, nor observed to
my own
satisfaction under other circumstances in nature, it need not
follow that
only divine agencies, or even that only a particular biological
agency,
could have been responsible. To prove that would require proving
a negative;
not even the discourtesy of refusing to accept that something is
impossible just because
someone has failed to do it, will drive me to accept that failure
as proof.
Suppose a specific form of magnetite crystal does turn out to
require an
organic component for its formation, it does not follow that the
organic
material has to be of biological origin. There are many
organic materials
of abiological origin. And the fact that no one has seen
such a crystal
form outside a bacterium, does not prove that every such crystal
formed in a
bacterium.
Especially if the crystal is one-sixth unlike the warranted
original
bacterial product.
Now, you will be familiar with the reports that gave rise to this
diatribe,
but do not misunderstand. I never read the original, only
an abstract and
an essay incorporating apparent interview material and lines
like: "ISU
SCIENTIST ON TEAM THAT FINDS COMPELLING EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT LIFE
ON MARS".
So I am not at this point calling anyone working in the field a
damned fool.
But I hope it will be clear why that compelling evidence does not
yet have
me flinging myself onto my horse and galloping off madly in all
directions.
Not yet!
Cheers,
Jon
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