Quote:
Originally posted by antoniseb+Jul 15 2005, 12:56 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (antoniseb @ Jul 15 2005, 12:56 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-VanderL@Jul 15 2005, 11:23 AM
Comet Tempel 1 may thus be back to sleep but work only starts for the astronomers
|
I think this line is telling. Granted it is only a science journalist writing a summary, but the implication is NOT that we are done and nothing happened, but rather that the comet is mostly back to normal, and that the scientists have A LOT of work ahead of them to understand the results from this new dataset.
[/b][/quote]
Yes Antoniseb, and my, admittedly cynical, view is that the rest of the story shows that nothing really important happened, meaning no conclusions will be made that "jeopardise" the dirty snowball model.
Quote:
|
I will grant you that they will not explore many far-out alternative explanations for the observations. I expect most studies to assume that the comet was formed 4.6 billion years ago of material in the disk about the distance that Saturn is now, and that this object has been through the inner Solar System losing its volatile materials for millions of years.
|
Well, this part of the story is something that is completely untestable for the moment (and for the foreseeable future), so that assumption will remain standing for a long while. What is clear from the data however, is that not even an "icy dirtball" can form jets when covered in a thick layer of dust. The findings directly contradict the snowball model, a conclusion no one has dared to venture yet (at least not people who are seen as authorities
).
Quote:
|
It does sound like the initial story-line here is that Deep Impact slammed into a layer of dust so thick that the rest of the comet was unperturbed. Concerning the new jets observed in the NOT and WHT images from the Canary Islands, I'd like to see more about them. They seem not to be active now, ten days later. I wonder if they were artifacts of the impact spray only. Again, I'd like to know more about them.
|
Yeah, right, I'm not sure if you read the "defence' mechanism I mentioned in the EU thread, but this is definitely one of them. Did you look at the images and explanation of the NOT people? They are very clear; existing jets became stronger and several new jets emerged (15 hours post-impact). You can even see them with you own eyes. I hope you're not prepared do dismiss those findings?
Cheers.