Dave says:
06/01/2015 at 16:19
Summary 2014- Rosetta surprises and anomalies through the past year
There were many surprises during 2014 thanks to ESA, and many others, what a fabulous mission and fabulous execution in getting a Lander on to the comet and then succeed in getting some data from the surface.
I have briefly listed some of the major surprises, who could of predicted that the comet should turn out so different to expectation. How much more interesting has the project been because of these surprises, and how much more will we learn about the environment we live in from the unexpected data?
1. Comet activity Flared up briefly while still very far from the sun, and before Rosetta had caught up with it, Not so much was made of this, but it seemed to be too far away from the sun to be warming from the sun. It remains to be adequately explained
2. Density was revised slightly early on , 0.3 to 0.4 if my memory is correct. So dirty snowball people thought it too high, but people expecting something like rock, based on pictures from recent comets were still thinking the figures could almost be up to an order of magnitude out.
Then the comet was found to have a hard shell with no ice present, then the figures from Consert declare that the comet is homogeneous – So no voids, this puts the current density figure even further into the spot light. Figures from Consert though don’t explain what the core is made of, it was designed specifically to detail ice structures, so is there any in the core? Is the density also homogeneous?
At one stage the discussion about the density on the blog was one of the most contested, so I guess this will result in a lot of interest.
-Can the density really be so far out? – What can be the cause? Is there something we still need to understand. (Its difficult sometimes to trust Gravity, especially when our galaxies refuse to fly apart. So is there something we are missing)
This anomaly may threaten to be one of the biggest conundrums
3. Temperature (average) of the Comet surface was then measured to be about 30 degrees higher than expected.
Again not too much made of it and still not adequately explained, when temperature maps were issued they were not much to help ascertain what was going on, also resolution of the temperature maps was a bit coarse. Could of it been electrical activity? The sun was a long way away when first measured.
This too, so far has not been adequately described.
4. Dust, for the first particles captured very early on, there was surprise that dust had been detected from so far away, there was also surprise at the sizes, there was a promise to update when some analysis was available, although this was done, not much was given away.
Then the most recent article on dust (MiDAS atomic force microscope), The particles were too big to fit the microscope. A bit of a surprise, although the designer says not totally unexpected, the equipment was not set up to measure such large pieces of dust, also it was said to be Fluffy, from which you could infer it may of been of electrical origin
5. Ice, Not detectable on the surface, from Rosetta instruments, it then became very puzzling that people have continued to state that sublimation was the cause of the jets of gas and dust even though no ice is available to sublimate from the surface.
The argument then changed stating that ice was below the surface. This also seemed odd, as not even Consert has so far found ice under the surface, and it was designed specifically to detect ice and its structures.
Not only that the visible evidence is just not there, when you look at the carved areas, especially the neck, there still appears no ice visible or detectable.
Phillae landed and we had the statement, that the hammer and hit something not inconsistent with hard Ice. Thus confirms only that the surface is hard but not how hard, so far Phillae has not detected ice on the surface either.
Recently though, information released from Ptolomy indicates that h2o is in the atmosphere just above the ground. At last some information, but how did it get there if there was no surface ice to sublimate it? So even with this experiment there is still a large anomaly to solve, we have water in the thin 67p atmosphere but seemingly not on the comet.
In a further release from ESA, it confirmed that the shiny bright patches on the comet are not Ice.
Again this is confirmation that the surface is not sublimating, IT IS A BIG SURPRISE
If we look at the proposed model for sub surface sublimation, we have been asked to accept that ice close to the surface sublimates through a jet/nozzle in the ground as it heats up and sublimates. The surprise is we cannot see this happening anywhere yet. The origin of many jets can be traced back to flat ground or possible sharp edged features or even boulders.
The mechanism suggested for the pressurised jet from underground sublimation is compared with high pressure gas exiting a high pressure vessel with a small hole, hence very high ejection speeds can be achieved. This could be true but as the vent equalises its pressure with the light atmosphere of the comet, then the pressure will drop and so too will the ejection speed, until the source is spent.
This does not appear to be seen either. Shots taken days or weeks apart of the jets of gas & dust seem to be coming from the same place, and although there is some wax & wane in output, there seems to be a steady increase in intensity from the same area. How can this be explained by such a model?
So it would be surprising if these sublimation mechanisms were the cause of the jets because there has so far been no ice detected on the comet from which to sublimate and the mechanism suggested for sub-surface ejection, does not seem to reflect what we see.
In addition to all that, the jets of gas and dust that we can see have large diameters so how can this be produced from a small hole in the surface of the comet, and what makes the ejected material stay in a collimated stream, certainly not any effect from the hole it came from.
It is surprising that so far there is not much of a steer from the rosetta team that could give us a better idea on the mechanism. There should be good quality photos, and if the method is electrical in nature, not mechanically forcing gas through a small hole, then there are plenty of instruments to detect what is happening. Rosetta can measure magnetic fields, plasma and current flow, so far there has been little release of this information.
However in one of the last blogs from ESA before Xmas, they did mention that the jets coming off the head of the comet were due to electrical sputtering of the surface, an extremely surprising statement to come from the team
6. Morphology Its one of the craziest landscapes you will ever see, so definitely a very big surprise, as one person commented, ‘Its no dirty snowball is it ?’
It will certainly take some explaining, most of the craters do not look like collision or volcanism, so I guess it was no surprise, that nothing was presented at the AGU. I think more time is probably required.
7. Electrical activity, It must be a surprise that virtually nothing has been reported, considering the equipment that is available. Also nothing reported at the AGU. There has been huge discussion on the blog, so some data to confirm what level of activity there seems overdue.
Some of the disagreements on the blog need some info ie - No ice so how can there be sublimation vs not enough power to sputter bulk material electrically- looks likely to continue until there is some data.
8. No use of enthusiastic amateurs to help find Phillae. Plus phillae still lost !
This is a surprise and it has been used on other projects, great to have some extra hands and great for schools and overall engagement in space science. Another PR opportunity lost I think, even if it had turned out to be futile.
9. The wrong water
This was probably the most surprising statement from the mission so far, not merely did it state that it was the wrong water, it also stated that there was no possibility that comets like 67p could have been involved in seeding the earths oceans.
It was therefore surprising that the Ambition video was not taken off the blog, it directly contradicts the hard statement above. The video also states ‘making science fiction science fact!’ which also appears wrong when compared to the above statement.
There was little or no explanation of the heavy water (I have not seen the paper) and how the comets water came to be so different, Is the comet from a completely different region of space or is the water in the coma made from much younger material than the seas on the earth? Does it have any impact of the accretion theory of our solar system?
Anyway an answer was found very swiftly,
-it must be the asteroids that have seeded the earth’s oceans?
This is in itself a very striking statement, with apparently not too much to back it up. We have always taken asteroids to be made of rock! If there is water in them (some evidence for it in some types of asteroid) or in the rock they are made of. Then when hundreds of thousands or more hit the earth to seed the oceans, what has happened to all the rock that the asteroids would also bring? How can two thirds of the earth be ocean, if the process of seeding brought with it an overabundance of rock. I think it would be very surprising if it were true.
Anyway no sooner was this made public then the AGU started, and from two different sources came the revelation that the earths mantel could contain enough water to fill the pacific! I think one paper was presented at the AGU and another similar paper was published in a science journal from a different university.
Surprise, Surprise, do we need asteroids and comets at all to give earth water?
Where does all this leave us?
Many, many surprises, probably a new comet model required, not just the construction and the evolution of the comet, but surely the theory that the earth’s main source of water must have been seeded, surely this has to die also, the current model is just not believable, even the evidence above indicates no water ice on comets and the water that was made in the comets atmosphere is not the kind of water that’s suitable for earth!
How many more nails do we need before we throw the std model away and start again based on good data, ESA must have some great data, so must be in the forefront for a guide to a new model.
2014 was an exciting year thanks to ESA, with many surprises, lets hope 2015 is even better. Lets hope some of the surprises begin to make more sense and a common narrative begin to form.
Reply
THOMAS says:
07/01/2015 at 13:12
Great summary Dave. I wanted to do something similar just to while away the time but the time somehow whiled itself away all by itself and I didn’t get round to it….
You’ve put your finger precisely on the most serious problem of all concerning the various anomalies you have listed, which is the non communication by virtually every one of the Rosetta instrument teams of anything but the most succinct information or surmise. They necessarily have huge amounts of henceforth deciphered data which is simply being withheld. We actually learnt almost nothing new about 67P’s characteristics and behaviour from the AGU presentations, as symbolized in particular, and from the very outset, by Claudia Alexander’s diversionary video presentation of the totally hypothetical Grand Track accretion model for planetary formation during the opening press conference on the Wednesday. It was if we were being prepared to expect the worst in terms of the quality of the “information” to come. We were thus neither particularly surprised nor disappointed by what followed. Claudia Alexander truly set the tone.
The only slight omission I can find in your summary concerns the persistent refusal of the OSIRIS team to share the body of their close-up images, even with the other Rosetta and Philae instrument scientists, presumably for fear of leaks by competing (?) teams… The OSIRIS images necessarily hold keys to several of the major anomalies you describe. They also add still further mysteries for the standard theory, such as the “dinosaur eggs” observed at the bottom of “pits” and embedded in cliff walls. Mouth-watering!
Humanly speaking, we can fully understand the reported exasperation of other Rosetta instrument teams with their OSIRIS ‘fellow scientists’. It’s as if the cameraman on a major, publicly-funded, geographical documentary project simply did a bunk with his footage so as to be able to publish it independently, leaving the other members of the team (anthropologists, botanists, geologists, biologists, zoologists, etc. etc.) to make do, in the meantime, with whatever information they had garnered and recorded personally.
Scientifically speaking, everyone is naturally free to draw his/her own conclusions from this withholding of essential information. My personal hunch is that the findings by EVERY instrument team are so utterly discordant with standard theory that the data (along with the required patches) will truly be a long time coming.
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