comet rendezvous

Originally posted by twhitehead
That hole looks too small for 1 ton of TNT, but then I am not an explosives expert.

It did come out of the blue however.

Originally posted by sonhouse
It did come out of the blue however.

The waffle below the picture in the article Humy linked to mentions that the crater is near Managua's international airport and an air force base. Given the governments enthusiasm about a meteorite strike and NASA's scepticism - possibly the Nicaraguan air force need to be a little more careful about attaching the bombs to the bottoms of their jet fighters...

Originally posted by DeepThought
The waffle below the picture in the article Humy linked to mentions that the crater is near Managua's international airport and an air force base. Given the governments enthusiasm about a meteorite strike and NASA's scepticism - possibly the Nicaraguan air force need to be a little more careful about attaching the bombs to the bottoms of their jet fighters...

It's a thought🙂

Jets of heated material are seen at the neck of the comet.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/rosetta/pia18823/rosetta-comet-fires-its-jets/#.VC7NN_ldWAg

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
Jets of heated material are seen at the neck of the comet.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/rosetta/pia18823/rosetta-comet-fires-its-jets/#.VC7NN_ldWAg

I wonder how much rocket like thrust that represents? Grams? Milligrams? I think it safe to reject kilograms of thrust...

Originally posted by sonhouse
I wonder how much rocket like thrust that represents? Grams? Milligrams? I think it safe to reject kilograms of thrust...

I don't have a feel for the answer to that, but I am reminded of what Bill Nye says about another place where there is a stream of material coming up.

YouTube#t=153

A Europa orbiter could gather enough geyser effluent to search for microbial life.

Hope that happens in my lifetime!

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
I don't have a feel for the answer to that, but I am reminded of what Bill Nye says about another place where there is a stream of material coming up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_R2bUpyRpc#t=153

A Europa orbiter could gather enough geyser effluent to search for microbial life.

Hope that happens in my lifetime!

That would be something, for sure. The next thing to find out, assuming that were true, does it use our style DNA or is it something totally alien?

Originally posted by sonhouse
That would be something, for sure. The next thing to find out, assuming that were true, does it use our style DNA or is it something totally alien?

Mainly to give our descendants something to laugh about, I'll predict that life off the earth will have genes based on something outside the category of DNA.

(Assuming this board survives in some digital form for decades to come, and somebody peruses it.)

Not exactly on topic, but really remarkable: comets have been detected in a different star system.

http://www.universetoday.com/115493/two-comet-groups-discovered-around-beta-pictoris/?utm_content=buffere00ed&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer