More Stardust news
A NASA press release on Stardust just sent out says that scientists working on the samples have found particles which were formed at high temeperatures, which could challenge theories of comet formation. From the press release:
"The interesting thing is we are finding these high-temperature
minerals in materials from the coldest place in the solar system," said
Donald Brownlee, Stardust principal investigator from the University of
Washington, Seattle.
They were expecting to find mainly volatile species, stuff that exists only at low temperatures as that is the environment in which the comets formed, but these findings suggest that, in its early days, the Sun was throwing non-volatile compounds right out to the edges of the solar system. They also found bits of a compound known as olivine, something that is very common on the surface of the Moon. It all sounds really exciting, can't wait to see what they find next!
Posted by Megan on Monday 13th Mar 2006 (22:57 UTC) | Add a comment | Permalink
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