[X] My Assistant

[Guest_paulanderson_*]

I thought the analysis results, as they come in, deserved their own thread. I'm interested in how these findings relate to the "weird crystals" found and reported on in the previous Nature article.

A couple more updates, from Space.com and MSNBC:

Stardust Mission Yields Ancient Comet Dust
http://space.com/scienceastronomy/060220_s...ust_update.html

Comet Dust Sparks Scientific Intrigue
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11460590

"The early results reveal that the 4.5 billion-year-old comet contains iron, sulfides, glassy materials, olivine, and what the scientists termed potentially interesting isotopic traces. They believe that these materials were also available during the formation of other objects in our solar system.

What's even more amazing is how well the first round of analysis is matching expectations. Brownlee and other Stardust scientists are holding back their first formal reports for a scientific meeting in Texas next month — but during Monday's news conference, Brownlee said the samples studied so far contain iron sulfides and glassy material such as crystalline silicates. Those ingredients are found in meteorites as well.

Later, Brownlee told MSNBC.com that there were preliminary indications of organic compounds, based on telltale infrared readings. He cautioned that the initial indications were tentative and could still be traced to contaminants.

In the weeks and months ahead, Sandford and his team will be analyzing the types of carbon found in the samples — not only to trace the organics, but also to determine whether such compounds predated the formation of the solar system."

[dvandorn]

In re this first press conference...

First, why no mention of the organic materials we've been hearing rumors about? A lot of discussion of minerals, but it took a reporter's question about organics for them to discuss it at all. And when they did, all they discussed was how difficult it is to differentiate between real organics in the samples and contamination from the lab. Are we to take it that we won't get *any* discussion of possible organics in the samples, because they're too gun-shy to ascribe organics to the samples themselves?

Second, these guys seem really blown away by seeing high-temperature-differentiated minerals (olivines, pyroxines, anorthosites, etc.) in a body that accreted in the outer solar system. Anyone ever mention the T-Tauri winds to these guys? It's been known for a long time that the Sun blew all of the loose material from the solar nebula out into a shell at *least* as far out as the Kuiper belt during its T-Tauri stage. So why does it surprise anyone that we find grains of high-temperature minerals in bodies that accreted in the Kuiper belt? After all, those bodies had to have vacuumed up a lot of the dust and gasses pushed out from the inner system during the T-Tauri epoch, right?

I guess it's just surprising to me how amazed these guys get when their results support decades-old theories...

On the plus side, I heard one of the panel members state that Stardust@Home ought to get going in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to hearing from them.

-the other Doug