marcus said:
...The whole thing impresses me as ready for laboratory experiments in low temperature vacuum chamber set-ups, so we might simply have to wait until people with ideas such as what Jonathan Scott just suggested a few posts ago have done some experiments on putative comet material formation and written some papers. I wouldn't count on there already being answers, although there certainly might be!
Well, I didn't know what "putative" meant, so I started there. (It's related to "reputed", as in; "The comet's reputed composition is...". I think.)
Anyways, after 6 hours of googling and reading and skimming, I decided my background in the areas of Geology and Chemistry were too lacking, and I had no comprehension of what I was reading.
It all started out with someone named Jens Biele. Which I thought was kind of a nice name, as I have relatives living in Bielefeld Germany. And is also probably the only reason I remember his name this morning.
Dr Biele, Philae Lander Payload Manager and Lander System Science, had his name on a couple of papers that I looked at:
Which was apparently written for management, as I understood most of what was being said.
The best part of this paper, for me anyways, were the outgassing predictions.
The second paper I looked at, which was about 10 miles long, was, as I said, mostly incomprehensible.
About the only thing I understood, was a single equation.
v
g = 3 π v
t / 8
where
v
t = mean thermal speed at temperature T
v
g = the speed at which the molecules leave the surface
Algebra is about the only thing I can comprehend anymore...
And the chemistry? I don't even know how chemistry works on Earth.
How in the world will I figure out exo-chemistry, if I can't figure that out.
hence, I gave up.
