Celestial News  II

It is a case that can best be called The Case Of

THE COMET THAT SPEAKS SUMERIAN

On July 4th 2005, a NASA spacecraft named Deep Impact thrust out a metal probe devised to collide with a comet named Tempel-1.  The purpose of the planned collision was to ascertain the true makeup of such a primordial comet by observing and analyzing the impact and its resulting debris.

The successful collision observed from the spacecraft and a variety of Earth-placed and Earth-orbiting instruments, caused a spectacular flare and an expanding ball of ejecta.  As the reports of what had been observed begin to trickle out, it becomes evident that the scientific community is facing a major puzzle:  The blast, instead of confirming the comet as a celestial body formed in the solar system’s deep-frozen outer fringes, “set loose key ingredients of Earth” (according to the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle of 9/9/05).

Among the perplexing emerging findings are these:

•  Comets are described as ‘frozen balls of dirty ice’; the findings from Tempel- 1 indicate that it is made of broken up rocks that contain clays and carbonates -- the minerals of limestones and seashells that are formed only in liquid water.

 “How do clays and carbonates form in frozen comets where there isn’t liquid water?” asked Dr. C.M. Lisse, a Mission scientist, according to the New York Times of September 7, 2005; “Nobody expected this,” he said.

•  The Spitzer space telescope also detected in Tempel-l crystalline silicates - a form of the mineral that requires at least 1300 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures to form.

 “How do you put that stuff into a comet that forms out by Pluto?” asked the puzzled Dr, Lisse.  How, indeed, do you get mineral-melting temperatures in a region of absolute cold?

 …And Life’s Chemicals Too

Reporting some of the initial puzzling findings at a scientific meeting at Cambridge University in England on September 7-8, 2005,  Dr. Lisse (of John Hopkins University), Dr. Michael A’Hearn (University of Maryland) and other scientists expanded the list of Earthlike components discovered in the comet to include chemicals associated with living organisms. 

They listed (in addition to clays and silicates) carbonates, iron sulfides, alumina, and compounds called PAHs “which are among many organic chemicals that show up in living organisms on Earth.” 

Another reported surprise: “The team has detected an unexpectedly high concentration of methyl cyanide; biologists say methyl cyanide is a key player in reactions that form DNA” (Christian Science Monitor).

 A Comet in The Wrong Place 

Comet Tempel-1 is not a new comet.  It was discovered in 1867 by Ernst W. L Tempel of Marseille, France, and its very short period of less than six (Earth) years was determined that same year by C. Bruhns of Leipzig, Germany.  It was thereafter observed on and off until it and its slightly changed orbit were re-determined in 1963 by the American astronomer B.G. Marsden. 

“Comets form way out in the frigid edges of the solar system, and their nuclei remain deeply frozen during most of their passage through the inner solar system,” said Dr. Lisse in pointing out the problems astronomers and astrophysicists now face. Yet it is beyond doubt that the comet has been orbiting the Sun in a relatively limited and nearby part of the solar system, between Mars and Jupiter, as the NASA-released skymap shows: 

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