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Rosetta Spacecraft Makes Nitrogen Discovery On Comet

Posted by samzenpus on from the what's-that-smell dept.

An anonymous reader sends word that the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has detected traces of molecular nitrogen on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. "A peculiar mix of molecular nitrogen on the comet target of Europe's Rosetta spacecraft may offer clues to the conditions that gave birth to the entire solar system. Molecular nitrogen was one of the key ingredients of the young solar system. Its detection in Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which Rosetta is currently orbiting, suggests that the comet formed under low-temperature conditions (a requirement to keeping nitrogen as ice), according to officials with the European Space Agency."

17 comments

  1. America's academic community waits for the news by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: -1, Troll

    Of what shirts the guys in the control room were wearing.

    What I'm really hoping for is that some woman in the control room can give the media a detailed technical explanation of what is going on with Rosetta while wearing an I WISH THESE WERE BRAINS T-shirt.

    1. Re:America's academic community waits for the news by sacrilicious · · Score: -1, Troll

      The space agencies should be promoting themselves by having large-breasted females do reporting while wearing wet t-shirts broadcast from zero-gravity environments. While slightly chilly.

      --
      - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
    2. Re:America's academic community waits for the news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shirtgate is just a smokescreen for the real idiocy. Where is the ice on 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko? Stop saying there is ice on that comet which seeded the oceans when at best you detected tiny traces of it.

    3. Re:America's academic community waits for the news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is the comet-size elephant in the room alright...

    4. Re:America's academic community waits for the news by Dr+Bip · · Score: 1

      "Stop saying there is ice on that comet" Well, it's 2AU from the Sun, therefore not terribly warm, so any water released will have come from a solid phase, and *it* is generating water vapour. I'd say that that suggests (very strongly) that it contains water ice. "when at best you detected tiny traces of it" Mass fluxes of the order of 10kg/s so far - we may not see the hundred-tonnes per second release rate of Hale-Bopp, but that was a far larger object.

  2. How's Shirtgate? Should sexists be banned? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    How's shirtgate going? Should sexist males who work on projects be prohibited from doing so? Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

    Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

    A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

    The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

    With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

    * Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
    * Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
    * Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
    * Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
    * Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

    and

    * What are the consequences of not doing this

    Citations:
    (0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
    (1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
    (2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
    (3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
    "Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
    "Thanks everybody for speaking up."
    (4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
    (5) Linux "Code of Conflict"

    1. Re:How's Shirtgate? Should sexists be banned? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're fucking stupid.

  3. Useless waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Are your lives better because there's nitrogen on a heap of dirty snow, Space Nutters? All those resources wasted on a useless program while Europe is in the grip of a financial crisis. If you had an ounce of humanity you would be ashamed of yourselves, ogling at some useless rock nobody will ever visit while people here on Earth need help NOW. Terminate this waste now. Reassign resources to social programs and if those scientists are really that smart, they will find other jobs. Space is dead, finished, over. Cry your eyes out and move over. Meanwhile I'll jerk off to some scat bestiality snuff porn.

    1. Re:Useless waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "a heap of dirty snow"

      Whats the evidence for this?

    2. Re:Useless waste by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      The finding of dirty snow is literally worth more than gold to space colonists. Gold would have market value if brought back, net of whatever large expense that would take, while water for "local" use is one more vital consumable that will not have to be hauled up through Earth's gravity well.

    3. Re:Useless waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There will never be space colonists, you comic-book-worshiping fool.

    4. Re:Useless waste by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's Brazilian tranny porn, you fool. You telling me you'd turn down Jessica Versace??

    5. Re:Useless waste by fateblossom · · Score: 1

      And people will never fly. Or people will never go out in space. Or people will never go to the moon.

      Just because we can't do it now then it dos not mean that it's impossible and we wont do it in the future.
      And the more knowledge we get about space the closer we are to prove you wrong.

      So knowledge is good. Even if it wont help us colonies the space in our life time. Then it can help future generations.

  4. Voodoo science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More likely it's just a worthless discovery that might someday be fodder for a phd thesis.

  5. Nine Posts, Seven of Which are ACs... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 2
    ... and the other two refer to a poor choice of shirt?

    Slashdot should just close down now.

    The fact that we know that this comet is a thing is amazing in itself. The fact that we sent a probe to intercept it, orbit it and make these kind of measurements is beyond amazing.

    Nitrogen is one of the main constituents of biological chemistry; knowing where it came from and how it affected Earth's, hence our, development is more interesting than apparel choices.

    Sheesh

    --
    "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    1. Re:Nine Posts, Seven of Which are ACs... by InfiniteLoopCounter · · Score: 1

      I know what you mean and I wish people were more active in talking about these things. However, the people who organise the public engagement aren't really that good and there is a sense that the missions are going only ever so slowly forwards.

      Whenever we get a picture from Mars it is in black and white with "color correction" when they have a perfectly good colour camera on-board and a sunset is taken. Here in the article we have a relatively dull picture with lots of writing that can't easily be read embedded into it. I think people would be more inclined to comment if it was more apparent what this is all about and exactly how this discovery is an incremental improvement in our understanding of the early solar system formation. (Maybe with a link to something like The History of the Earth for those new to this topic)

      The other thing that makes me a little unhappy with the Rosetta mission is the Philae lander being the "poster child" for solar panel success. Of course the thing landed in a cavity and promptly lost all its ability to make new power. Even the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity used nuclear thermal power to make sure the solar panels would still be able to work without problems. This kind of political interference wasn't needed I don't think.

      That all said, yes, it is great that the Rosetta mission is achieving things we haven't done before and is a testament to human endeavour.

  6. Nitrogen is in the solar wind too, and more by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Routine solar wind experiments don't look for Nitrogen, but there is plenty of it there. The data linked below isn't adjusted for sensitivity differences. The solar wind composition, high speed streams especially, is expected to be essentially the same as that of the source nebula for our system. The nebula came from an exploding star which makes our sun second (or later?) generation, resulting in added heavy elements.

    http://umtof.umd.edu/pub/full_...

    The Genesis mission collected samples from the solar wind to return to Earth for more precise analysis. Not all made it, but in spite of a crash landing in Utah, some good science resulted.

    http://genesis.lanl.gov/public...