Posted on: Tuesday, July 5, 2005
Comet data will take weeks to analyze
By Tara Godvin
Associated Press
As dust and debris shot out of a comet hit by a NASA space probe, Earth-bound scientists gathered reams of data yesterday that will be analyzed over the coming weeks in search of answers to questions about the planet's earliest days.
Sarah Reingewirtz • Associated Press The impact of the probe, which hit the comet Sunday shortly before 8 p.m. Hawai'i time, had the same power as 5 tons of exploding dynamite and caused the comet to shine six times brighter than normal.
That brightness appears to be leveling off, Lyke said.
But astronomers have only just begun to sift through the data from the collision, furiously sending e-mails to colleagues across the globe with their latest observations.
One of the biggest questions to be answered is whether Earth's water came from millions of comets crashing into the planet and its atmosphere, he said.
The collision may provide evidence that the same isotopes of hydrogen found in Earth's water are also present in the comet, he said.
"If they're different, that's also very important because it says ... if the water was delivered by comets it was changed somehow, or there has to be some other source of this water," he said.
However, it is still too soon to tell whether or not the data will be clear enough to yield that answer.
Scientists will likely be sharing some preliminary conclusions over the next several weeks, but more developed observations won't likely be published until a month from now, he said.
Scientists hope that by blasting into the core of the rocky, ice-filled comet they will learn more about the origins of the sun and planets. A giant cloud of gas and dust collapsed to create the solar system about 4 1/2 billion years ago, and comets formed from the leftover building blocks of the solar system.
Jim Lyke, support astronomer at W.M. Keck Observatory in Waimea, said a day later dust and gas were still spewing from the impact site of the comet. The Big Island observatory planned to view the comet again last night.
Dan Kubitschek, left, and Steve Collins celebrated the Deep Impact probe's crash with the Tempel 1 comet on Sunday at a California lab.
