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Do Comets go Poof?
lwbecker2 writes "IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering Magazine has a free story online about scientists try to solve the mystery of where all the missing comets are going. Do they go Poof? Interesting information on the modelling and simulation of the Universe including the use of Mathematica and Beowulf clusters."
They just get more and more eccentric!
I know it is simplistic to think this way but, I'm glad we do not see that many comets on a regular basis. The less we see the less hit the earth, yes I know one day the Earth's luck will run out and my buried remains will be thrown all over space but to live in the ignorance of the moment makes me happy.
I have a Beowulf cluster of... COMETS!!!!!
;)
Does this mean that beowulf cluster comments will actually be ON TOPIC?
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Well -- you see ... the comments only can be seen when they are near the sun, and when they have a tail. They don't go poof. They just hide for a few hundred years.
You know, the ice exposed to heat effect.
- - - - - - -
Orppf urp mf y.ppcxn. yflcbi otcnnov C am yflcbi yr n.apb Ekrpatv (Dvorak -> Qwerty)
Somebody tell me, where are the missing comments?
*chirp*
*chirp*
Repeal the DMCA!
Now it seems comets are coming out...
If comets have a tail, I guess they're losing mass. If I lose mass on a regular basis, I won't go *poof*: I'll just gradually disappear. Or I'll gently break up in pieces that will make the mass-loss even more evident.
It's "Solar System Warming" that is killing off all of the coments. This is where our Global warming is REALLY coming from! And all those silly scientists thought is was man-made materials doing it! Now we have the proof!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
space dust (ice, rock, hydrogen binded together)
this is not a sig.
...call my comet a poof? Oh wait, I thought you said pint...
Stick Men
Some theorists have speculated about mirror matter. This hypothetical stuff is exactly like ordinary matter but only interacts with ordinary matter gravitationally. They theorize that comets disappear because they are a thin matrix of ordinary molecules gravitationally bound to a large mirror object (perhaps a mirror asteroid in the mirror universe). The sun drives off the ordinary stuff, but the mirror object goes unchecked. I'm not making it up!
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I was looking at this comet and then it was like "Poof". And then, like, the comet was gone, and I was like, "huh?"
It was a really good comet.
It was kind of a bummer.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
The same article goes on to mention that, in 1998, we passed through a cloud shed by that comet in 1333. Unless Tempel-Tuttle is picking up new material when it is at the apogee of it's 33 year orbit, then we are witnessing a comet slowly go *poof* - the material is not vanishing into oblivion, though - it is being left behind as space pollution.
The same goes for the Perseids (comet Swift-Tuttle), and every other meteor shower that the Earth plows through each year.
It's too bad that the original article did not mention this - was the real-life data overlooked, or did the model take this into account, and it still shows that 99% of the expected comets are missing?
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
long live ellen
fred
I have lots of respect for the type of work Levison is doing. However, in order to start it you have to have pretty firm beliefs about the origin of the solar system (an event we did not see directly - nor have we seen other solar systems form; the process is slow so we won't.)
What his work is really showing is that either: (a) one (or more) of his assumptions in his simulation is wrong or (b) there were not so many comets in the early solar system. I think this is why Levison says he is trying to prove his prior work wrong (e.g. he is looking for potential errors in his assumptions.)
Here is a poster on early solar system abundance of small comets. In this example, they count craters on Europa, a moon of Jupiter, to get an indication of how many there were in the early solar system.
An example of an simple statement which, although unlikely to be true, has to worry Levison in the back of his head somewhere, would be along the lines of: at some time in the past, our solar system passed through a debris field which created many of these craters, thus the large number of craters, but it only happened once (or very, very rarely) and this is throwing off our counting.
Such projects can putter along for years but have the potential to return fabulous results. Its the kind of project graduate students are interested in, but worried they cannot get a solid thesis project out of. It is also tough to fund such projects in America these days. Thus I have respect for these people, and wish them good luck.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Praise $diety, the waiting is over! At last we have a real article about Beowolf clusters!! After all the fake "how about a cluster of those" comments in all the other articles, we finally have a genuine, informative article about clusters. And unlike those other projects that are searching for non-existent aliens, this project is doing real research -- searching for non-existent comets.
Now I can die happy. Or at least log out happy.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
find /milkyway/sol -iname *comet* -exec rm -rf {} \;
... sorry, bad joke...
"Where did all my comets go?"
http://perso.club-internet.fr/vadeker/ipri/sl9_rum eur/SL-9e.htm
The report forgets to mention that the comet tail mostly contains substantial amount DHMO. Does that mean that the CIA is asking NASA to investigate whether the "axis of evil" is using some rocket cum satellite technology to bombard the US with the dreaded white solid substance (a.k.a letest Bond flick Die Another Day) acquired from the comets which go 'poof'? The report also fails to mention that finding of the DHMO in large quantities in regions of hot temperature is highly unlikely, for it melts above 0 (zero) degree Celsius. The report also fails to mention that the US society is in a state of severe degenaration because they perceive that the powdery DHMO is threatning to life (severe alcohol dependence is the cause????) as this same powder in its molten form is the basis of all life!!!!! DHMO (Di Hydrogen Mono Oxide) has the chemical formula H2O, and is popuraly known as water in the English language, in both the old (now believed to be archaic) British version as well as the new yuppy American avatar, as well as its numerous colloquial versions the world over.