[X] My Assistant

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

This is the first source I've come across for this, an interview with Carey Michael Lisse, member of the Deep Impact Science Team and Principal Investigator for the Chandra X-Ray and Spitzer telescope Deep Impact spectrometer results:

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID...ategory=Science

Interesting results, including 50% + water ice, limestone-like carbonates and amino acid precursors, just presented at the 9th International Asteroids, Comets and Meteors Conference in Brazil.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Carbonates does not necessary need liquid water to form. They can also form in volcanoes, and there are several instances of carbnate lavas, in Africa and even in Europe. Carbonate lavas may form from phase separations in magmatic chambers, being not mixible with silicate lavas. I must confess I do not really understant how carbonates may sustain such high temperatures: when you heat limestone, it does not melt, instead it decomposes and form lime and carbon dioxid. Maybe carbonatite lavas are mixtures which melt at about 400-500° without decomposing.

And when we look at Temple II it really looks like a complex body exhibiting layers and varied structures. So it may be a part of a much larger body where many chemical reactions were possible. It may happen that even the coldest bodies in the Kuyper belt or Oort belt may have experienced ennough heat during their accretion to have liquid water inside. BruceMoomaw also have arguments to have some caution about carbonates.

That does not mean life, as life requires a constant source of energy to evolve, even the simplest living being consume high energy food and release low energy wastes. They need a medium with somewhere an energy source. Living beings are thermal machines (more complex, but the overal working of a food chain is that of a thermal machine) so they cannot exist in a medium in thermal equilibrium such as the hot inside of a newly accreted body. At best they could oxyde reactive chemical items, but this could last only a while, when the appearance of life may require millions of years.

Ughhh I didn't even know that first link's association to THAT radio show until I got halfway down the page! Eeewwwwww, I feel all dirty now.

I did not noticed no more. Personnally I am not closed to such matters as UFOs, crop circles and the like, but I must admit that most of the stuff published in these domains are only rumors and baseless statements. An example is that serious amateurs groups never found any real base or witness for the famous and infamous Roswell story. This was published in a french UFO review "Ovni presence" n° 54, on a study from the Centre for UFO Studies from Chicago, in 1989, and an inquiry by the US General Accounting Office in 1994. But what did you heard in the medias? That there was a movie with a Roswel corpse!! The owner of this movie awowed afterward it was fake, but the dollars he earned with it were not fake. So who is to blame? And who has the more reasons to be angry? The ones who try to search for the truth, whatever it is, who often spent years to inquire on baseless stories.

This was just a side remark, I do not intend to start a discution on these topics. Please start another topic if you are interested to reply.

[Guest_RGClark_*]

Carbonates does not necessary need liquid water to form. They can also form in volcanoes, and there are several instances of carbnate lavas, in Africa and even in Europe. Carbonate lavas may form from phase separations in magmatic chambers, being not mixible with silicate lavas. I must confess I do not really understant how carbonates may sustain such high temperatures: when you heat limestone, it does not melt, instead it decomposes and form lime and carbon dioxid. Maybe carbonatite lavas are mixtures which melt at about 400-500° without decomposing.

And when we look at Temple II it really looks like a complex body exhibiting layers and varied structures. So it may be a part of a much larger body where many chemical reactions were possible. It may happen that even the coldest bodies in the Kuyper belt or Oort belt may have experienced ennough heat during their accretion to have liquid water inside. BruceMoomaw also have arguments to have some caution about carbonates.

That does not mean life, as life requires a constant source of energy to evolve, even the simplest living being consume high energy food and release low energy wastes. They need a medium with somewhere an energy source. Living beings are thermal machines (more complex, but the overal working of a food chain is that of a thermal machine) so they cannot exist in a medium in thermal equilibrium such as the hot inside of a newly accreted body. At best they could oxyde reactive chemical items, but this could last only a while, when the appearance of life may require millions of years.
....

Rich, thanks for the info on carbonate lavas. I had not seen that before. As a first guess perhaps it could be the high pressure deep underground allows water to remain liquid to allow carbonate to form. It is notable for instance these lavas, though far above 100 C, are still far cooler than most other lavas.
Actually this info on carbonate lavas may be useful for another idea I'm investigating. Let's just say it involves a very warm place in the Solar System.




Bob Clark