NASA Overjoyed at Catch From Stardust

mknewman wrote to mention a New York Times report that the Stardust project has exceeded NASA scientist's expectations. From the article: "While they had expected mostly microscopic samples, the researchers said, a surprising number of the particles were large enough to be seen with the naked eye ... The cargo in the Stardust's sample container, which was opened Tuesday, 'was an ancient cosmic treasure from the very edge of the solar system,' Dr. Brownlee said. Scientists believe that these particles are the pristine remains of the material that formed the planets and other bodies some 4.6 billion years ago."

Comments

We are all made of stars

[saskboy]

It's excellent that we'll have a chance to study this material close up. Metorites are valuable, but this Stardust material is even more precious, because it will give us a look at unformed planetary material that was not likely ever part of a planetary body. Some of the meteorites we've studied may have been part of a smashed planet, or mal-formed planet, but comet material could have very interesting molecular structures I predict.

quarantine?

[ChipMonk]

What steps has NASA taken to isolate the collected sample before analysis?

Re:There goes interstellar travel

[cnettel]

Actually, I think we should know these from the probes. Compare with the Pioneer effect and the overall trajectory calculations for the probes to the outer planets. Also observe the minimal number of failures during actual travel (but rather during takeoff/entering orbit/landing).

Re:$212 Million???

[product byproduct]

There's a pyramid of knowledge, with maybe baseball at the bottom, and the Stardust mission somewhere at the top. The top of the pyramid can get surprisingly large funding, because the scientists that are pushing for research at the top have some of the most economically valuable skills.

Maybe you sit somewhere in the middle of the pyramid, with baseball too simple, and stardust too sophisticated for your interest. Don't worry, there's funding for the stuff you care about too. But if people with advanced skills say "let us do X because that interests us" please let them too.

Re:Go Nasa

[Ardeocalidus]

Update: The link to participate (soon) is http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/index.html

It will be March 1st, 2006 before the first image is available for searching, but NASA seems confident that enough users will be into is and that they'll meet an Oct 1st, 2006 deadline.

You can pre-register here: http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/prereg.html

Re:There goes interstellar travel

[mendaliv]

I'm not saying that it isn't a problem, but I'm not sure that this is indicative of how bad the space junk problem really is.

TFA says that the gel is "99.8% air", so a hole the size of a small human finger might "only" leave a dent in the side of a pressurized spacecraft.

Also remember, the spacecraft did complete its mission successfully, even though at least part of it passed through the tail of a comet, intending to get hit by particles.

Re:why doesn't some of air get sucked out of gel?

[Xeger]

IIRC aerogel has a rigid structure, but it isn't divided into cells or pockets of air. Rather, it consists mostly of empty space (or air), with some structural elements in between.

I would guess that NASA put the aerogel in a chamber and slowly lowered the pressure to near-vacuum, in order to evacuate the air from the aerogel without damaging its structural integrity. Then they packaged it, and come showtime, exposed it to empty space.

This is just a guess though.

Stardust and Genesis

[amightywind]

Stardust was an superb mission considering the nice samples and clear images of Wild2 (almost an afterthought). The related mission Genesis has been out of the news after its hard landing, but apparently many of the samples are in good shape, too.

Re:Let's be careful not to bring back a plague

[shawb]

While this is a reasurring thought, nature really doesn't live up to it. Ecologists know all too well about the havoc invasive species can bring upon an existing, thriving ecosystem. One might say that it's very unlikely that any organism brought back to Earth would be suited to a terrestrial habitat, but we really have no way of knowing that. However, I also believe that the likelihood of us actually bringing anything back is pretty small. While it is probable that there is life somewhere else in the universe, I feel that it is unlikely that it originated close enough to us to actually get to it. Since the universe is estimated to be on the order of 10-15 billion years old (We'll just assume 15 billion for this discussion) we can not get information or materials from anything more than 15 billion light years away from us. Also, bringing the distance of contact is quite less than that considering that A)it is not likely that organisms were formed right away after the big bang, it would have taken a while for everything to settle out just right and B)There is no viable way to get an organism to move at anything approaching the speed of light. It would take infinite energy to get an object with any rest mass to acheive light speed, barring some shortcut that I am unaware of (such as spatial folding.)

But back to the point, I suppose it could possible that life did survive somewhere that was knocked off of Earth, or that life on Earth itself originated elsewhere and we are just a descendant of some other ecosystem and could possibly meet up with something else that evolved from that ecosystem. There would be the possibility of biological/ecological harm from mixing the two different ecosystems if a sample was brought to Earth.

And of course, if you were to come across another intelligent being then all bets would simply be off.

Re:Go Nasa

[Lord_Dweomer]

As a side note, for those wondering what else makes AeroGel so friggin cool...read some of the captions for the pictures in the link the parent provided. I forget the science behind it, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but basically these things are near perfect insulators. Not only that, but since they are made up of 99.8% air, they are basically immune to heat. And I remember someone once saying something to the extent of if you had a room covered in the stuff, and lit a single candle in the room...you would eventually burn alive in there since the stuff is such a good insulator that no heat would escape from the room, thus continually increasing the temperature. But I don't know the science behind it so that might be complete bullshit.

Re:4.6 billion?

[Jeremi]

God is still here as well. Without faith you are blind to him.

God does indeed exist, as do all the other gods that have believers who think about them. Dieties are a type of meme, and as such are organisms just as real as any biological organism you could name. The difference is that while fish, lemurs, and humans are self-reproducing entities made up of collections of organic cells, memes are self-reproducing entities made up of human beings' collective thoughts and beliefs.

Like their organic counterparts, memes compete for resources (i.e. human attention), fight each other, interbreed, become extinct, adapt and evolve. It's even possible that they could be sentient, although since they are limited by the speed of their "neurons" [i.e. human communication], I suppose they must think and perceive very slowly (perhaps years or decades to complete a thought?).

Note that there isn't anything mystical or supernatural involved here: it's a simple application of functionalism: a clock made out of steel tells the time just as well as a clock made out of wood, (or water, or silicon), and likewise an organism that uses humans as "cells" and speech as its method of reproduction is also valid.

So while I'm rambling, I'd like to point out some of the adaptive features the "Christian God" meme has evolved to help make it so robust and evolutionarily successful in the modern environment:

1. Exclusivity. "Thou shalt have no other God before me". Like a sperm plug placed by a mating crab in the female to prevent competitor's sperm from gaining access later, this commandment ensures that competing dieties will find it very difficult to gain access to the believer's mind at a later date
2. Aggression: Variants of this meme often seek not only to snuff out remnants of competing memes in its own followers' minds, but will also direct followers to seek out and destroy competing memes whereever else they exist. This aggressive behaviour helps the meme keep competition to a minimum
3. Faith. By requiring the believer to reject critical thought and rely on faith alone, the God meme minimizes the risk of rejection by its hosts in response to countervailing evidence.
4. High communicability: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men". In its Evangelical forms, the Christian God meme can be highly contagious and can spread through new communities in relatively short periods. The meme often sends out runners across oceans and invades foreign ecosystems. By continually finding new niches in which to establish itself, the meme greatly decreases the likelihood of its being wiped out or marginalized by other memes.
5. Adaptability: Unlike less flexible memes that only flourish in their native culture, the Christian God meme has proven itself adaptable to many different conditions. For example, in capitalist nations, God takes on capitalist qualities... when the mood is war-like, God supports war. When peace is desired, God is for peace. Because the meme is so abstract, followers are able to easily integrate it into their existing mindsets, and this allows the meme to spread to the greatest number of people
6. Mimicry: The meme has learned how to mimic the qualities of other memes as a way to attract additional followers. Early Pagan and Roman rituals in particular were incorporated into Christianity for this purpose, and remain present there today.

So yes, God exists, and as a memetic organism it is doing quite well -- it's certainly in the top tier of "charismatic megafauna" of memes, along with Buddha, Allah, Technology, and Money. Congratulations on picking a winner!