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: 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.