Comets are weird. And theyre about to get weirder. <\/p>\n
Take Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the 3-mile-wide lump of rock and ice the European Rosetta spacecraft has been orbiting since September, for example. It would smell terrible, it generates a strange radio wave song and it is much darker than expected, even darker than charcoal. <\/p>\n
PHOTOS: Meet Rosettas Beautiful Lumpy Comet <\/p>\n
But now, scientists at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif., have added another oddity to the cometary weird list: comets are best described as scoops of deep fried ice cream. <\/p>\n
The crust is made of crystalline ice, while the interior is colder and more porous, said Murthy Gudipati of JPL, co-author of a recent study appearing in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. The organics are like a final layer of chocolate on top. <\/p>\n
Headed by Caltechs Antti Lignell, the researchers used a lab-based icebox instrument nicknamed Himalaya to reproduce the conditions the icy materials inside a comet would experience in deep space. They found that the fluffy ice on the surface of a comet would crystallize and harden as the comet heads toward the sun and warms up, a NASA JPL news release said. <\/p>\n
7 Intimate Close Encounters with Comets <\/p>\n
During water-ice crystal formation, other carbon-containing molecules are lost to space, leaving a crunchy crust with a dusting of organic material. <\/p>\n
During lab experiments, Lignell and Gudipati flash-froze water vapor mixed with other molecules comets are known to contain, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are found throughout space. This rapid freezing, down to a temperature of 30 Kelvin (-243 degrees Celsius, or -405 degrees Fahrenheit), created a form of ice not found on Earth. The water vapor freezes in place, creating an amorphous ice light, fluffy and filled with pockets of space, like solid cotton candy or aerogel (known as frozen smoke). <\/p>\n
To simulate the cometary material being heated as a comet approaches the sun during its orbit (much like the heating Comet 67P is experiencing now), Lignell and Gudipati warmed their lab-based comet to 150 Kelvin (-123 degrees Celsius, or -190 degrees Fahrenheit) and some interesting chemistry took place. <\/p>\n
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Comets Form Like Deep Fried Ice Cream Scoops<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Comets are weird. Continue reading