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Category Archives: Comets

Comets Face Tough Challenge But Remain Unbeaten

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December 13, 2014 - Major Arena Soccer League (MASL) Missouri Comets INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (December 13, 2014) "" Led by former Comets Head Coach and player Kim Roentved, the Wichita B-52s kept Missouri scoreless in the first quarter, however the home side had a spectacular third quarter and won their eighth consecutive match in the 2014/15 MASL season with a 12-3 victory at the Independence Events Center.

Colombian midfielder John Sosa was elected the Borden Man of the Match with two goals and three assists while league leader Leo Gibson notched one goal and had five assists and now stands with 37 points in first place. A total of nine players scored for the Comets.

After getting a solid 13-3 victory against Wichita last November 22, the B-52s entered the match with two straight victories and surprised the Comets in the first half showing great improvement from their last visit to Kansas City but Head Coach Vlatko Andonovski's team scored 12 goals in the second half.

After a scoreless first quarter, the home team was able to find the back of the net twice in the second stanza when Coady Andrews pushed the ball from the goal line after a rebound before Sosa tallied his first one of the night to end the first half 2-0.

The third quarter saw the most action during the match with seven goals scored between both teams. A brace from team captain Vahid Assadpour and a tally from Max Touloute gave the Comets a 5-0 lead before Roentved's team notched their first one of the evening scored by former Comets player Johnny Markey to make it 5-1.

Gibson, Alain Matingou and Robert Palmer would each score one goal to end the quarter 8-1.

Wichita fought hard in the last fifteen minutes and beat Danny Waltman twice, however Bryan Perez, Sosa, Touloute and Brian Harris scored one more time to end the match with a final score of 12-3.

Next up, the Comets will try to remain undefeated when they host the San Diego Sockers on Saturday, December 27 for the first time in history at the Independence Events Center.

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Comets Face Tough Challenge But Remain Unbeaten

Rosetta Mission Finds That Comets May Not Be The Source Of Earth’s Water – Video

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Rosetta Mission Finds That Comets May Not Be The Source Of Earth #39;s Water
Scientists involved with the Rosetta Mission are saying that contrary to popular belief, comets are not the source of water on Earth. The theory that Earth got its water via delivery by a...

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Rosetta Mission Finds That Comets May Not Be The Source Of Earth's Water - Video

Rosetta Spacecraft's Comet Water Discovery: What It Means for Earth

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Where did Earth's water come from? Comets? Asteroids?

New data from the Rosetta spacecraft exploring Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko show that comets once thought responsible for seeding Earth with water might not have delivered most of the planet's water after all. The new finding is giving scientists a more nuanced view of the solar system and its plethora of cosmic bodies.

An instrument called ROSINA on the European Space Agency's Rosetta has found that the molecular makeup of the water on Comet 67P/C-G is very different from the water found in Earth's oceans. This deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio throws a hitch into the theory that comets from Comet 67P/C-G's region of space brought water to the Earth not long after the solar system formed, Kathrin Altwegg, principal investigator for ROSINA, said. [See comet images from Rosetta]

If even a small number of comets like 67P/C-G impacted Earth in the early days of the solar system, it still would have greatly changed the molecular composition of the planet's water today, according to Altwegg. Therefore, it seems unlikely that these kinds of comets brought water to Earth. Altwegg thinks it's more probable that asteroids brought water to Earth.

"We knew that Rosetta's in situ analysis of this comet was always going to throw up surprises for the bigger picture of solar system science, and this outstanding observation certainly adds fuel to the debate about the origin of Earths water," Matt Taylor, ESAs Rosetta project scientist, said in a statement.

While asteroids are dry, rocky bodies now, it's possible that these space rocks were water-rich during the early days of the solar system. Altwegg thinks that asteroids may have bombarded the Earth about 800 million years after the formation of the solar system, bringing water to the early planet once it cooled after formation.

Scientists have measured the D to H ratio in meteorites from asteroids and found that the water content in these tiny samples is comparable to Earth's water composition, Altwegg said.

Thanks to Rosetta, scientists now think that Kuiper Belt comets found orbiting the sun beyond Neptune are much more diverse than expected. In other words, not all comets are the same.

Although Comet 67P/C-G has a 6.5-year orbit that brings it near Jupiter, researchers still think that it originated in the Kuiper Belt.

Scientists measured the comet Hartley 2's D to H ratio in 2011 and found that it was very close to that of Earth's, leading scientists to conclude that comets like Hartley 2 (a Kuiper Belt comet) may have delivered water to the early planet. But because the ratio for Comet 67P/C-G is so off, it doesn't seem like the comets from the Kuiper Belt could have seeded the planet with water.

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Rosetta Spacecraft's Comet Water Discovery: What It Means for Earth

Rosetta finds comets carry more 'Star Trek' fuel than expected

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Rosetta researchers think comets are less likely to be the source of Earth's water than previously thought, which also makes them a great source of fuel for fictional starship warp cores.

Don't let the Klingon marauders get hold of this gold mine! ESA

Data sent back from Rosetta's observations of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that Earth's oceans may have originated from collisions with water-bearing asteroids rather than comets.

CBS News has the full story on those findings, but what's gone unreported so far is the converse discovery that while comets might be a less likely source of our ocean water than previously thought, they contain higher than expected levels of a key component in the fuel for the U.S.S. Enterprise.

I'm talking about deuterium here folks, also known as "heavy hydrogen" -- a stable hydrogen isotope that's found in small amounts in our oceans. The thing is, the water that's hitching a ride on Rosetta's comet has about three times as much deuterium as water here on Earth. So, comet water is different enough from Earth water that it casts a little bit of doubt on to the popular hypothesis that cometary collisions with early Earth "seeded" our planet with the water we all take for granted.

That's the real science that's being debated by smart people right now. But let's get down to the real science fiction implications of this.

In the "Star Trek" universe, starships like the U.S.S. Enterprise-D carry around deuterium in tanks because it's a key component -- along with tritium -- in matter-antimatter reactions that help fling ships between galaxies.

At various points on the different series, we encounter oppressive Klingon marauders that run a deuterium mine, strange and dangerous life forms made up in part of the stuff, and at least one anomalous instance of deuterium scarcity that leads to conflict.

Perhaps we can avoid some of these future science fiction scenarios by starting to mine comets for deuterium right now.Take away the Klingon marauders' leverage while they're still technically just made up characters, I always say. Thanks, science!

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Rosetta finds comets carry more 'Star Trek' fuel than expected

COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER – BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV – MARS ZOO 1080p – Video

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COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER - BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV - MARS ZOO 1080p
Rosetta results: Comets #39;did not bring water to Earth #39;. Rosetta #39;s results are forcing scientists to think again, as David Shukman reports in this BBC news clip. Scientists have dealt a blow...

By: ArtAlienTV - MARS ZOO

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COMET 67p CONTAINS HEAVY WATER - BBC NEWS 10th Dec 2014. ArtAlienTV - MARS ZOO 1080p - Video

Rosetta: Earth's Water Didn't Come from Comets

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Comet 67P as seen by the Rosetta probe. (ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM CC BY-SA IGO 3.0)

Europes Rosetta mission has only been in orbit aroundComet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for a few months but its already shed light on one of the central questions it was launched, ten years ago, to answer: Where did Earths water come from?

Based on evidence of the comets water, Rosetta scientists announced this week that it adds evidence that, contrary to prevailing theory, comets didnt supply Earth with its water. The new findings instead suggest that asteroids were the likely bearers of life-giving H2O on our planet.

Since August, the Rosetta probe has been orbiting Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and on Nov. 12, as you may already know, its Philae lander touched down on the surface a first for mankind. But back aboard Rosetta, an instrument called Rosina has been taking measurements of the gasses spewing out of 67P.

Using two mass spectrometers, Rosina can sift through the comets gas emissions and identify a unique signature of its water: the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen. On Earth, you can find three deuterium atoms for every 10,000 water molecules. So, the thinking goes, if you can find objects in space with the same deuterium to hydrogen ratio as water on Earth, those objects become prime candidates for sources of Earths water.

Asteroids and comets are ideal subjects to study because they are essentially time capsules of what happened during the formation of our solar system and our planet. By examining comets today, we get a glimpse billions of years into the past.

According to data from Rosina, the deuterium to hydrogen ratio on 67P is roughly three times higher than that of Earths oceans. The findings build upon previous measurements from other comets, and the story is getting clearer: comets werent the primary source of water on Earth.

According to the European Space Agency, of the 11 comets we have deuterium to hydrogen measurements for, only two matched the unique signature of Earths water. However, meteorites originating from asteroids in the Asteroid Belt have matched the Earths water signature.

Although asteroids carry less water, a high overall number of impacts could supply enough water to fill the oceans, according to the ESA. They published their findings Wednesday in the journal Science.

With the recent revelation that weve only identified 10,000 of an estimated 1 million asteroids that could hit Earth, Rosettas findings are another reminder of Earths love-hate relationship with these cosmic drifters.

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Rosetta: Earth's Water Didn't Come from Comets

You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water

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TIME Science space You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water Comet 67P: Does this thing look like it could quench your thirst? ESA A new finding from the Rosetta spacecraft upsets a longstanding theory

There was no shortage of drama when the European Space Agencys probe Philae set down on a comet last monththe first such landing in history. First Philae bounced, then it bounced again, ending up with one of its three legs sticking up in the air, and in the shadow of a cliff that prevented its solar panels from recharging its batteries. For two days, the probe hurried to complete whatever science it could.and then everything went black.

But that hardly spelled the end of the mission. Philaes mother ship, Rosetta, has continued to orbit comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, as its been doing since August, taking measurements and images of unprecedented quality. And with nearly a year of close-up observations to go, Rosetta has already come up with one result, described in a new paper in Science, that chief scientist Matt Taylor, of the European Space Agency, labeled fantastic: Earths oceans, the scientists have concluded, were evidently not created by impacts from comets rich with water ice, despite earlier evidence to the contrary. We have to conclude instead, said lead author Kathrin Altwegg, a planetary scientist at the University of Bern, at a press conference, that the water came from asteroids.

Thats a big reversal from what scientists were thinking just a few years ago. Back in 2011, the European Herschel space telescope took a hard look at Comet Hartley 2 and determined that its own cache of water, detected as vapor boiling away as Hartley approached the Sun, had a chemical composition very similar to what we see on Earth. Its all H2O, but some of the H is a rare form of hydrogen known as deuterium, whose atoms carry not just a proton like the ordinary stuff, but a neutron as well. Water molecules made with deuterium are known as heavy water, and about three in a thousand water molecules on Earths surface are the heavy kind.

Measurements of Halleys Comet back in the mid-80s showed a deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio about twice that high, which argued against the idea that comets delivered water to a bone-dry Earth early in the Solar Systems history. But Halleys came from the Oort Cloud, a spherical swarm of proto-comets orbiting at the far edges of the Solar System. Hartley 2 came from the Kuiper Belt of comets, which lies just beyond Neptunenot exactly nearby, but a whole lot closer. Given what Herschel found at Hartley 2, it appeared that Kuiper belt comets are chemically different from those that hail from the Oort cloud. If so, our water could have cometary origins after all.

The new results from Rosetta say no: Comet 67P, which also comes from the Kuiper belt, has an even greater proportion of heavy water than Halleys and other Oort cloud objects. Even if significant numbers of comets do have Earthlike water, some clearly dontand even a relative few would have made Earths proportion of heavy water higher than it is. Its arguable that 67P is pretty much unique among its Kuiper Belt brethren in having so much deuterium. Thats not impossible, said Altwegg dubiously but.

If comets didnt bring us water, and if the Earth was too hot in its youth to hold on to what surface water it might have started out with, theres still one plausible water carrier. Today, said Taylor at the press conference, we know asteroids have very little water, but that was probably not always the case. The solar system was bombarded by asteroids early in its history, and if they were indeed wetter than they are now, that explains where the water in our oceans, in our seltzer bottles, in our bodies and everywhere else comes from.

Important as this new finding is, its likely to be only the first of many Rosetta will make as it rides along with 67P for the next year or so, watching carefully as the warming rays of the Sun bring the comet to life. Its a nice start to the science phase of the mission, Taylor said.

And if you think youve heard the last of the Philae lander, think again. Mission controllers are still trying to pinpoint Philaes precise location on 67Ps surface. That will allow scientists to do at least one more experiment: theyll send radio pings from Rosetta through body of the comet to bounce off Philae and back to Rosetta. By examining how the radio beams are altered en route, they will be able to figure out whether 67Ps insides are rock-solid or held together relatively loosely.

Locating Philae would also allow scientists to calculate whether the lander might be brought back from the dead six months from now. Its just possible, said Taylor, that a change in 67Ps orientation could bring Philae back into the sunlight, allowing its solar panels to recharge its batteries. If that happens, the prospects for extraordinary science from this already wildly successful mission will be even greater.

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You Can Quit Thanking Comets for Your Water

Rosetta Data Suggests Comets Were Not The Source Of Earth's Water

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December 11, 2014

Image Caption: This four image mosaic comprises images taken with Rosettas NAVCAM on 2 December from a distance of 30.1 km from the centre of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The image resolution of the mosaic is about 3.1 m/pixel, and it has been cropped to measure 4.5 x 3.6 km. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM CC BY-SA IGO 3.0

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Terrestrial water most likely did not come from comets like 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, meaning that the H2O found on Earth was most likely brought here by asteroids, scientists involved with the ESAs Rosetta mission reported Wednesday in the journal Science.

The study, which was led by Kathrin Altwegg of the University of Bern in Switzerland using information provided by the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument, measured the amount of deuterium (a heavier isotope of hydrogen) found in water vapor on the comets surface, said Dan Vergano of National Geographic.

While normal water contains regular hydrogen atoms, water that contains deuterium is known as heavy water, and Altwegg found that ice on the surface of 67P/C-G had a ratio of heavy water to normal water that is roughly three times that of the planets oceans. As a result, the researchers said that it is unlikely that terrestrial water came from Kuiper belt comets, as there would have been more deuterium-rich heavy water here on Earth.

Kuiper belt comets, which are formed outside of Neptunes orbit, have long been one of three entities believed to have been responsible for bringing water to the Earth during the later stages of its evolution, according to NASA. The other two likely sources are asteroid-like objects from the region of Jupiter or Oort cloud comets formed inside of Neptunes orbit, the US space agency added. The ROSINA data effectively eliminates Kuiper belt comets as a possible source.

This composite is a mosaic comprising four individual NAVCAM images taken from 19 miles (31 kilometers) from the center of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Nov. 20, 2014. The image resolution is 10 feet (3 meters) per pixel. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

We knew that Rosettas in situ analysis of this comet was always going to throw us surprises, said Matt Taylor, Rosettas project scientist from the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands. The bigger picture of solar-system science, and this outstanding observation, certainly fuel the debate as to where Earth got its water.

Nearly three decades ago, mass spectrometers on board the European Giotto mission to comet Halley were able to measure the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H ratio) in a comet. Those readings revealed a deuterium level twice that of Earth, concluding that Oort cloud comets such as Halley could not have been the original source of the planets water. Several other Oort cloud readings have produced similar D/H ration readings.

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Rosetta Data Suggests Comets Were Not The Source Of Earth's Water


  1. Comets