[meteorite-list] ANOTHER BORRELLY ENIGMA TO PONDER

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:55:39 2004
Message-ID: <20020104013703.50803.qmail_at_web10401.mail.yahoo.com>

============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================

(13) ANOTHER BORRELLY ENIGMA TO PONDER

>From Worth Crouch <doagain_at_jps.net>

Dear Dr. Peiser:

After reading the latest article about comet Borrelly,
I thought it sounded strange when I read, "Comet
Borrelly dishes out so much material from its
midsection -- some 2 tons every minute -- that it will
likely break in half within 10,000 years, says
Laurence Soderblom, U.S. Geological Survey researcher
who led the imaging team." Consequently, I tried to
discover the mass of Borrelly and found that because
of many
factors such as the following the mass was difficult
to discover.

In the published article Observations of comet
19P/Borrelly with the
integral field spectrograph TIGER. By spectrograph
TIGER.Festou M.C.,
Observatoire Midi-Pyrinies (Toulouse, Fr, and
Southwest Research
Institute, Boulder, CO, USA), Bacon R. (Observatoire
de Lyon, Fr) and
Barale O. (Observatoire Midi- Pyrinies, Fr) they
wrote, "If the behavior
of the comet were monitored along its orbit, it would
then become
possible to precisely model the jet action on the
nucleus resulting from
the of the nuclear gases, to derive the magnitude and
orientation of the
resulting force that perturbs the comet motion and
finally deduce the
mass of the nucleus."
Thus, I realized that the mass had not yet been
determined, because the behavior of the comet was not
monitored along its orbit long enough. However,
without determining the mass of Borrelly I thought it
strange that the comet had been calculated to break
apart in
10,000 years.

Later in another Space.com article by Robert Britt (18
September
2000), he wrote, "In the comet, called LINEAR, the
density of water was
no more than 30 kilograms per cubic meter, far less
than the figure of
500 often assumed." Therefore, I concluded that if I
used the asteroid
Asclepius, which is about 50 million tons,
(0.4-kilometer) wide, and
about 1/20 the size of Borrelly, and if its' mass is
used as an example
to extrapolate data for Borrelly the following
calculations can be made.

Assuming that 1/2 of the 8 kilometer Comet Borrelly,
or 4 kilometers, is the proportional size/mass of
Asclepius and with reference to LINEAR's
density of water at 30 kilograms per cubic meter then
the following should be true: 500,000,000 tons
(min/2ton) (hr/60 min)(day/24hr) (year/365 day) = 475
years would be the life expectancy of Borrelly.
However, that doesn't seem like a sound conclusion,
consequently someone
has made the wrong calculations. As a matter of fact
it seems that Borrelly would have to have a mass of
about 20 times 500 million tons
to
exist 10,000 more years and break in half. However, I
didn't say my calculations were correct either.

I am baff[]led,

Worth Crouch (Talako)
cosmiccatastrophe.com

----------- Original Message ------------
(5) SPACECRAFT SWANSONG: DS1'S SURPRISING, PUZZLING
FINAL COMET
ENCOUNTER

>From Space.com, 2 January 2002
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ds1_swansong_020102.html

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
 
+++SNIP!+++

The comet's activity may come with a price.

Borrelly dishes out so much material from its
midsection -- some 2 tons every minute -- that it will
likely break in half within 10,000 years, says
Laurence Soderblom, U.S. Geological Survey researcher
who led the imaging team.

There are other Borrelly enigmas to ponder.

Researchers announced earlier this month that Borrelly
is darker than any other known object in the solar
system, reflecting less than 3 percent of
the sunlight that hits it and absorbing the rest.

As black as photocopier toner, they say. Yet the
brightest minds don't fully understand how anything in
space can be so dark. The finding points to a surface
made of carbon and iron, but experts say they aren't
sure of this.

And no one yet knows what's inside a comet.
+++SNIP!+++

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Received on Thu 03 Jan 2002 08:37:03 PM PST