Life's Secrets From A Comet's Tail

An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Guardian report on the return trip of the Stardust mission, which has snatched material from the tail of a passing comet. From the article: "Scientists are particularly interested in comets because they believe they are rubble left over from making the solar system, which later played a profound role in the development of Earth. They probably delivered most of the water for Earth's oceans and bombarded our planet with complex organic compounds that could have been crucial to the evolution of life here. For these reasons, researchers have sought a source of comet molecules and designed Stardust to provide it." Wow, this thing has been out there a long time. When I Googled to make sure this wasn't a dupe, I ran across CmdrTaco's post about the Stardust probe entering the comet's tail - almost exactly two years ago.

Re:Duping

[pnewhook]

This article isn't a dupe; its a followup.

Re:Duping

[metricmusic]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/2 3/0158245&tid=236&tid=160&tid=14 [slashdot.org]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/2 2/0145212 [slashdot.org] :p

Give it time.

[Anonymous Coward]

PS: I'm aware this article isn't duped.
Yet.

Re:Duping

[1u3hr]

PS: I'm aware this article isn't duped.

Stardust to Return January 15 [slashdot.org] On December 23rd, 2005 with 143 comments
accessdeniednsp writes "Seven years ago, the Stardust probe was sent to intercept Comet Wild 2, gather dust particles, and return to Earth. Stardust is...

Dust Samples Returning to Earth at 28,860 mph [slashdot.org] On December 22nd, 2005 with 48 comments
DjBenBen writes "After a 2.88 billion mile round-trip journey, NASA's Stardust mission is nearing Earth with comet and interstellar dust particles tha

Re:Duping

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

My guess is that because the editors see a *ton* of submissions, they often forget which ones they actually posted. Think about it: Do you remember every post you've modded up or down?

Boo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Least entertaining article ever to contain the words "Snatch" and "Tail" in the first sentence...

Re:Boo!

[TubeSteak]

Snatch [imdb.com]
An American Tail [imdb.com]

btw- yes I searched google for snatch+tail and no, none of the first 10 results were porn-related.

Thought I'd get that out of the way

I dunno... there has to be some joy in watching...

[leonbrooks]

...scientists trying to explain how bone-dry and dusty comets got to deliver water anywhere.

There are a lot of things about comets which it's fun watching armchair philosophers and myopic my-theory-fits-everything scientists trying to explain.

For a few interesting examples:

• Why was Hubble able to see a flash from the Shoemaker-Levy components from below the horizon and before they were due to impact Jupiter?
• Why was tiny little Hyakutake able to throw a "dusty" tail over half a billion kilometers to where i

Not often that I reply to an AC, but...

[leonbrooks]

...was there any specific point to your post beyond the (obvious) emphasis of the lack of concrete answers? I'm left with a very I'm-being-blonde feeling that I missed something.

OMG DUPE!

[killeena]

OMG OMG! This is a du-...... Errr, nevermind.

This comment, or the article?

[leonbrooks]

If the comment, it's a pre-emptive dupe. (-:

Re:No!

[FinestLittleSpace]

DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS

Re:Hand of God or Comet Dust?

[FinestLittleSpace]

Are you for real? You are just PRECIOUS!

Re:Hand of God or Comet Dust?

[misanthrope101]

You are one of those rare individuals who make satire superfluous. I thank you, for you make the world a more joyous place in which to live.

Re:Hand of God or Comet Dust?

[IAAP]

But there are a lot of awesome reasons that you should learn about God

Isn't that what science is all about: regardless of your religious beliefs? See Newton and other scientists who considered their quest for knowledge as learning about God. Which in my case, has a lot more meaning than the myth in the Bible and other scriptures.

Re:Hand of God or Comet Dust?

[oztiks]

Dood, no disrespect (not caring that i'll be rated offtopic) but I believe in allot of things and i'm not saying what you claim is false but one thing i've also learned in my own experiences its sometimes best just to keep your mouth shut and let the world go by, that way you seem to be liked a whole lot more by everyone else around you and you never have to worry about being reported to your local psychiatric facility for a brain scan to make sure your not certifiable.

Okay yeah it sounds nasty but then aga

Re: Hand of God or Comet Dust?

[Black Parrot]

> I have intense religious experiences on a frequent occurance

Dude, that's your hand, not God's.

what ever happened...

[Adult film producer]

to that space dust collecting module that sort of crashed into the ground (parachutes failed to open) last year? I guess it was supposed to be caught by a helicopter but the damn chute screwed up. Wasn't that supposed to have collected some of this magic dust?

Re:what ever happened...

[jacksonj04]

Almost. The Genesis probe was to collect solar wind particles, and had no actual chute failure. What had happened was that accelerometers designed to trigger the chutes once the unit had reached the appropriate speed were installed backwards.

As is to be expected in this situation, the probe wasn't flying backwards when it needed to trigger the chutes and subsequently it hit the desert with a rather satisfying thud.

This mission to the comet's tail is very, very similar with an almost identical 'landing' planned. Lets hope the same guy didn't fit components on both.

Re:what ever happened...

[lubricated]

That's not exactly correct.
The genesis project was a program designed to grant life where there is none.
It was doomed by the use of unstable protomatter.

Zonk's New Year's Resolution..

[Stalyn]

Was it...

a. No more dupes.

b. Use Google more.

c. More commentary in story submissions.

no, sorry the answer was CowboyNeal.

Re:Zonk's New Year's Resolution..

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot :

d. No more dupes.

Re: Zonk's New Year's Resolution..

[Black Parrot]

> a. No more dupes.

"Dupes" is such an ugly word. Try to think of them as "stories about stories carried on Slashdot".

Offtopic: Damn slashdotters

[ViceVirtue]

Why is it that so often the discussion of a story is about some silly technical detail, the fact that the story is a duplicate, or some side issue?

Re:Offtopic: Damn slashdotters

[homebrewmike]

It's funny that your message was moderated as insightful. While I certainly agree with you - it seems /. is filled with spiteful 15 year olds (or 26 year olds posing at spiteful 15 year olds), if the moderators were on top of things, it really should have been moderated off topic. (And, of course, THIS reply.)

However, what the moderators seem to miss completely, is all the "Ooooh! Ooooh! I'm obsessive enough and anal enough to point out that a message is a dupe!" Not sure why - maybe it's some sort of

Use /. to Search for Dupes, not Google

[Somegeek]

Dear Editors,

Slashdot actually has a search function built-in! There is a little search box down in the lower left of the webpage that anyone can use. It is especially usefull when searching for dupes. Check out this example:

http://science.slashdot.org/search.pl?query=stardu st [slashdot.org]

You can see that this very story was posted twice already on the 22nd, not to mention all of the older references.

Dupe? (from Dec 22)

[JohnnyDoesLinux]

Didn't this qualify?

Stardust to Return January 15 [slashdot.org]

Ooops, I already violated my New Year Resolution not to be a total bastard!!

Sorry.

w00t!

[Elitist_Phoenix]

Screw the secrets of the universe. Someone checked to make sure it wasn't a dupe!

Wrong date?

[Tim C]

When I Googled to make sure this wasn't a dupe

Zonk, it's January the first, not April! Guess someone's still under the influence from last night's celebrations...

Re:Wrong date?

[Breakfast Pants]

It was his New Years Resolution, and don't worry, like all New Year's Resolutions this won't last long.

Re:Organic, eh?

[Urusai]

Shh, don't let the W find out, or we'll be invading the Kuiper Belt. Talk about a long deployment!

A long time?

[NotWallaceStevens]

Voyager has been out there a long time. Pioneer has been out there a long time. This spacecraft has 128MB of memory on board. In my day, we made probes with 64K of memory, and we liked it.

Re:A long time?

[ImaLamer]

I don't see any reason probes will ever need more than 256MB of memory...

News flash........

[slashname3]

/. editor reports searching for duplicate story before posting article. The reports are sketchy but many at the scene report large amounts of alcohol may have been involved as well as a badly timed joke to make Zonk think it was April 1st instead of January 1st. Reports have also come in showing that /. editors have been using an etch-a-sketch to run duplicate searches. This may answer once and for all why so many duplicate stories get posted!

In other news speculation continues that /. editors are no

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:News flash........

[slashname3]

It's not like the editors would notice the difference. :)

And since when did writing skill have anything to do with /.? :D

Check out the site

[McBainLives]

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/photo/comet3d.html [nasa.gov] -

Stardust's mission has gone relatively smoothly- I've been checking in every few months because I can't help but be impressed by scale of this experiment. And this time, they ever thought to put a parachute in the return capsule, unlike that other probe which captured solar wind particles, then smashed into the desert floor when the stunt 'copters didn't make the catch. (The sun must've been in their eyes...) The comet pass-through two years ago might have been overshadowed by the Mars Rover(s) story- one of 'em landed just around the same time as Stardust's Wild 2 encounter.

Fix Slashdot's search engine

[Brad Lucier]

When I Googled to make sure this wasn't a dupe, ...

So, even the editors recognize that Slashdot's seach engine is useless.

problem with cometary orign of earth's water

[iggymanz]

comets appear to contain much more deuterium than the concentration we find in earth's water (even allowing for half-life of deuterium). See: Blake, G. A., Qi, C., Hogerheijde, M.R., Gurwell, M. A., and Muhleman, D. O. "Sublimation from Icy Jets as a Probe of the Interstellar Volatile Content of Comets," Nature, 398, 213 (1999).

Re:problem with cometary orign of earth's water

[potpie]

I was under the impression that Earth's water came from the outgassing of volcanoes. Thus it is not that Earth got water while the other terrestrial planets didn't, but that Earth simply retained it.

Re:problem with cometary orign of earth's water

[Mostly Monkey]

"retained it."

"Do I look fat in this crust?" -Earth

How many dupes do you want?

[thesnarky1]

Nice, he used Google (gotta get that name out there) to find one dupe from two years ago. Yet using his OWN search here [slashdot.org] he could have found out that this was reported TWICE just two and a half weeks ago. Also MULTIPLE times two years ago. The 1st, 2nd and 21st of January, 2004. And there's more back there, I just felt like only using the first 15 results.

All snarky [reference.com] (provided for my new years resolution to stop grammar nazis. Yes I realize that just begs for more flaming) comments aside I thought this was a