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Less than a month before the end of the Rosetta mission, the space probe was just 1.9 km above the surface of Chury as it flew through a dust cloud from the comet. This resulted in a direct impact of dust in the ion source of the mass spectrometer ROSINA-DFMS (Rosetta Orbiter Sensor for Ion and Neutral Analysis-Double Focusing Mass Spectrometer), led by the University of Bern. Kathrin Altwegg, lead researcher on ROSINA and co-author of the new study published today in the prestigious journal Nature Astronomy, says: "This dust almost destroyed our instrument and confused Rosetta's position control."
[...] Extensive laboratory work was needed in order to prove the presence of these salts in cometary ice. "The ROSINA team has found traces of five different ammonium salts: ammonium chloride, ammonium cyanide, ammonium cyanate, ammonium formate and ammonium acetate," says the chemist on the ROSINA team and co-author of the current study, Dr. Nora Hänni. "Until now, the apparent absence of nitrogen on comets was a mystery. Our study now shows that it is very probable that nitrogen is present on comets, namely in the form of ammonium salts," Hänni continues.
The ammonium salts discovered include several astrobiologically relevant molecules which may result in the development of urea, amino acids, adenine and nucleotides. Kathrin Altwegg says: "This is definitely a further indication that comet impacts may be linked with the emergence of life on Earth."
As far as the origins of life are concerned, comets do seem to have the right stuff.
Kathrin Altwegg et al. Evidence of ammonium salts in comet 67P as explanation for the nitrogen depletion in cometary comae, Nature Astronomy (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0991-9
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 22 2020, @12:37PM (16 children)
They were the only ones who predicted philae would bounce off 67P. The "scientists" assured the engineers that a harpoon and spikes sufficient to penetrate ice would be enough, and not to listen to the crackpots who said it would be harder based on all past evidence regarding comets (vs people who would let a decade long mission fail before spending a negligible amount extra but giving up their sacred cow).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:33PM (1 child)
Who is they?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 22 2020, @01:49PM
https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014/08/06/in-orbit/ [thunderbolts.info]
More here:
https://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15172&sid=db354c8abfc687f4fbb5e969cccb2759 [thunderbolts.info]
(Score: 3, Touché) by khallow on Wednesday January 22 2020, @02:59PM (12 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 22 2020, @03:06PM (11 children)
Go away with your strawmen.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @03:45AM (10 children)
What will all these explosive arcs, capable of burning the surface of a comet black, do to a closely approaching spaceship with the wrong charge on it? Hint: it won't be pretty.
Destruction of the spacecraft is not a straw man, but a natural consequence of the EU comet model. That they've now moved the goalposts to claim merely that the surface will be hard is not significant. Many things could cause the surface of a comet to be hard (such as repeated passes by the Sun could bake off volatiles leaving a hard surface) so that no longer provides a useful test of the model.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @03:46AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @04:04AM (8 children)
I posted their exact (a priori) prediction here: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=35674&page=1&cid=946821#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
You can argue with that instead of coming up with your own strawman version of what they predicted.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @04:17AM (7 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @04:43AM (6 children)
You don't seem to know how science works. To start with your primitive idea is called "popper0", which Popper and everyone else who thought about it rejects.
http://personal.lse.ac.uk/ROBERT49/teaching/ph201/Week05_xtra_Lakatos.pdf [lse.ac.uk]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @05:22AM (5 children)
Second, "Popper0" is merely the idea that previous models are outright rejected when any falsification, no matter how minor, is found. My falsification was not minor - this observation is grossly at odds with the predictions of the model. You can't recover merely by tweaking aspects of the theory. And as I noted above, I don't extend the falsification beyond the scope of the model. Thus, I show I'm not following the "Popper0" approach.
Second, given the presence of a valid rival theory, the popular model of comets as mostly ices with little EM effect (with dynamics of comets explained by solar heating), I'm not following Popper1 which among other things rejects theories even when no better theory exists. Popper2 looks a good candidate for my reasoning here since we can grow the popular model to a better fit in a way that is unavailable to the EU comet model. The popular model explains how spacecraft can make near approaches to comets without being destroyed by electrostatic discharges or passage through intense EM fields by having weak EM fields around comets. If that is done for the EU comet model, discarding the claims of intense EM phenomena, then you've just throw away what makes that model different.
The present prediction, a relatively hard surface to the comet, mentioned in this thread, is an example of moving the goalposts. No good will come of it. Either they'll guess right and claim a verification of the EU theory as a whole even though the prediction doesn't distinguish between EU theory and normal astrophysical theory. Or they'll be wrong and they'll come up with a new prediction down the road and the pretense will continue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @05:40AM (4 children)
Your predictions are derived from some strawman you came up with yourself. This is trivially proven by just reading the predictions of the people you claim to be representing. Please just stop.
It is worse than that ikanread idiot who never heard the term "disease state" and goes around ranting that other people know less about biomed than them even though it is used on the Wikipedia page for disease. No, it's not worse than that actually...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:00AM (3 children)
The EU model of comets came from here, not my imagination. What straw man is there to come up with when a spacecraft has to allegedly fly through that EM crap and yet survives?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:05AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:25AM (1 child)
The EU prediction for 67P came from observing that comets were made of rock in prior missions. Anything else you are adding is your own BS I have no reason to investigate unless you use it to make a prediction that comes true.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 24 2020, @04:22AM
Nobody else observed that. And what happens to volatiles-heavy asteroids? Do they never approach the Sun?
Sorry, you don't get to ignore inconvenient predictions of the model. The same processes that turn a comet to "rock" while simultaneously creating a huge flare of plasma will affect nearby spacecraft too. That they don't indicates that we don't need to consider minor predictions which don't actually distinguish between EU and other theories.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 22 2020, @09:57PM
Yeah, that harpoon loving crowd can be really tough and they really stick to those sacred cows. I heard of this one guy who just wouldn't let go of this thing about white whales. It's all he ever talked about!