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Re: ATM - Asaf's Comet Hunting
Richard and others,
Glad to see I have found an audience in my comet ideas. I
recall some very intelligent postings you have offered, so
I was even more pleased to hear that you might be interested
in a concept of detecting comets by their composition.
I know that comets have a lot of water ice, CN and apparently
some more complex species. Mumma and I once had a chat about
some experiments I did with chambers of simple organics
representing cometary composition. I mentioned in my system
what kind of organics I got out after providing UV and electric
disharge energy to drive reactions. I then asked him if he had
ever found evidence for any of the compounds I was able to
derive. I figured that as a comet approaches the sun, the UV
hitting the water ice could drive internal reactions with
poly-aromatic hydrocarbons. He was very happy to hear this,
apparently, but he also mentioned that the detection of many
of these compounds had not been made. After throwing a few
emails back and forth, it was clear that the reason for not
finding many of these organics was not that they are not
present, but rather, the limits of detection had been reached.
I believe he was planning on some direct sampling or probes
that can get much closer in order to improve on the
detection. At that time, he also made it clear that some
simpler bi and poly-atomic organics had been detected, but it
just wasn't possible to detect the diversity that I found in
my make-shift laboratry (I was a teenager at the time, working
in my parent's garage). As an afterthought, I now realize
that I need to look back at the published spectral data and
see if there are peaks that can be used for detecting comets.
I doubt amateurs would find any of the species I was interested
in, like ketones, quinones, etc as these are higher up in the
IR and outside atmospheric window in many cases, so you won't
likely make any novel discoveries about comet composition. But,
with proper design, I am starting to think, one could detect
incoming comets when they are rather far out. I am looking into
this possibility. We should all thank Asaf from bringing this
up... it might go somewhere.
Cheers,
Dominic
North 59 37' 30"
East 17 48' 10"
_______________________________________
Dominic-Luc Webb, doktorand
Lab:
Department of Molecular Medicine
Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit
Rolf Luft Center for Diabetes Research
Karolinska Hospital L6B:01
S-17176 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: Int+46-8-517-75727
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