Comet dust contains "fire and ice"

[The Peon]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/14/stardust.results/index.html

 

Im a little confused here... what does this all mean? Were the comets part of cataclysmic collisions between planets and they broke off, thus creating the "fire" part to them, and then floated around collecting cooled off pieces of debree creating the "ice" part? Im so lost...

[Martin]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/03/14/stardust.results/index.html

 

Im a little confused here... what does this all mean? Were the comets part of cataclysmic collisions between planets and they broke off' date=' thus creating the "fire" part to them, and then floated around collecting cooled off pieces of debree creating the "ice" part? Im so lost... [/quote']

 

 

Smart question

notice that the person they quote most in the CNN article is

Donald Brownlee

 

and he gives an explanation he says two possible ways. In both cases the comets condense out of gas and dust in cold distant places like the Oort cloud ( pluto and beyond)

[for more info about this see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet ]

they are dirty snowballs that condense in gobs from clouds of grit particles and gaseous stuff that can freeze (methane carbondioxide water etc

 

the only question is WHERE DOES THE DIRT in the dirty snowballs COME FROM

he says two possibilities

 

1. made in close to the sun just like earth moon venus mercury mars----we know that early on there were horrific collisions------things the size of the moon crashing into things the size of earth etc.

so there would be a lot of broken rock and splats of lava flying out of craters etc.

 

the question then is what process could have catapulted that crud from deep solar system (mercury venus earth mars) where the rocky planets are outwards to where the comets were forming?

 

what could have flung that crud all the way out past pluto where the comets the dirty snowballs condense and collect?

 

and one can imagine gravitational slingshots that could have cleaned a lot of the debris out of the inner solar system and flung it to the outer, or even clear out

 

2. And then there is another idea Brownlee gave. that the rocky crud that enriches the cometforming Oort cloud could COME FROM OTHER STARS.

 

again there are known processes-----stars explode and act up in various ways that can blow rocky dust from inner regions out into the vastness, and it can just drift until it finds our solarsystem Oort cloud where our comets are condensing and mixes in with the rest

 

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also I'm not an expert in this so check up and be skeptical of everything I ===========

 

also Peon, look here

 

http://arxiv.org/find

 

type in the name Brownlee in the author box and press search

 

http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+brownlee/0/1/0/all/0/1

 

it is a way of getting scientific articles by the guy the CNN talked to

 

sometimes it doesnt work, like this time it only found one article

but it is always something to try

 

in this case the article could be interesting it is about the chemical evolution of the habitable zone and where do the various kinds of necessary and useful crud come from that make a habitable planet

[Edtharan]

In a rfecent New Scientist article they talked about "tubes" of gravitational potential that crisscross the solar system. These tubes can allow an object (like dust or rocks or even space craft) to travel throughout the solar system with only a little push (say from debree thrown off in an asteroid collision with a planet or another asteroid).

 

This kind of "Interplanetary Highway" would allow particles formed in the inner solar system to be transported to the outer solar system. this could be another explaination of how these particles formed and ended up in the oort cloud without the need for phenominal amounts of energy.

[Martin]

In a rfecent New Scientist article they talked about "tubes" of gravitational potential that crisscross the solar system. These tubes can allow an object (like dust or rocks or even space craft) to travel throughout the solar system with only a little push (say from debree thrown off in an asteroid collision with a planet or another asteroid).

 

This kind of "Interplanetary Highway" would allow particles formed in the inner solar system to be transported to the outer solar system. this could be another explaination of how these particles formed and ended up in the oort cloud without the need for phenominal amounts of energy.

 

thanks if you can provide a link, or some quotes, please do.

 

I dont have a subscription so I could not follow a link but maybe others could.

or maybe you have a link to a brief free summary?

[The Peon]

Thanks martin that answered alot of questions! *where is the thumbsup smiley when you need it?*