Comet Dust Is Driving Nasa Scientists Wild Too!

[buffalo]

**COMET DUST IS DRIVING NASA SCIENTISTS WILD TOO!

** Tiny particles collected from the tail of the Wild 2 comet, by the Stardust spacecraft, are perplexing scientists attached to the project. Back in January 2004, the spacecraft flew within 150 miles of the comet and collected samples of its ‘stardust’ trail. It successfully landed in the Utah desert, U.S.A. on January 15th, 2006, and its samples are now being studied back on terra firma. The project’s purpose is an attempt to ascertain the origin of comets by studying, with precision, their natural composition. www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/main/index.html

     But the Stardust researchers have found a rather big surprise awaiting       them. It turns out that the comet, which traveled a lonely path in the       coldest regions of the solar system, is not just made from ice, space dust       and gasses, as assumed, but contains a large amount of mineral substances       that only form at extremely high temperatures. "Remarkably enough, we       have found fire and ice", confirmed the leader of the project,       Professor Donald Brownlee.

     Evolutionary science hypothesizes that comets form in the deepest,       coldest regions of space. They believe that Wild 2 originated more than       four and a half billion years ago, at the beginning of our solar system,       beyond the orbit of Neptune. Up until 1974, Wild 2 skirted this deepest       region of the solar system until a near collision with Jupiter altered its       course, and brought it into the inner solar system. This made the Stardust       project possible, but the research team were not prepared for the latest       set of data which has presented them with a serious enigma. [www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=23093](http://www.uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=23093)

The out of place minerals, that seem to be getting NASA scientists a bit hot under the collar, consist of forsterite (a type of olivine), calcium, aluminum and titanium. Forsterite condenses at more than 1,120 degrees Celsius and calcium-aluminum inclusions form at even higher temperatures.

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[DaveBj]

I read two astronomy magazines, and I see this a lot.

The 'Stronomers think they have a handle on something, and then something else comes along that just absolutely doesn’t fit, and it blows their previous theories right out of the water.

Like discovering that the Earth and the planets move around the Sun, when we’ve been sure for millenia that the whole sky moves around the earth.

(Just had to throw that in. Sorry.)

(No I’m not )

DaveBj