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In my day work I am no stranger to government bureaucracies and “programs” manipulating information about their activities until it suits them to do otherwise. The WISE mission is no different. In March of this year David Shiga wrote an obviously informed article revealing early results of the WISE mission (below). Six weeks into WISE’s [...] NASA put out another one of those creepy home made news articles today regarding the WISE mission finding dark objects. This one is even more condescending than usual, with the inane lede, “Imagine you are a Brontosaurus….” Well, I am not a “Brontosaurus.” But I am keenly interested in what the hell WISE is finding up there and [...]
Richard Muller and a Serpent The Nemesis theory — that a dark, comet launching, orbital companion to our sun lurks between our star and others — seems to be gaining traction among those who matter. [Astropbiology Magazine Exclusive: Getting WISE about Nemesis] As the Cosmic Tusk has revealed in earlier posts, NASA appears to be in an exceptionally enlightened mood since the the WISE mission was launched. In addition to the agency recently declaring it is indeed looking for dark and dead comets — a first — key researchers are also suddenly chatting up the possibility that the orbiting infrared telescope might find the long speculated Nemesis companion star. Continue reading NASA: Comet launching companion star to sun “Not crazy” This is not breaking news, but rather a brief breakdown of information gleaned from David Shiga’s great New Scientist article last week regarding the findings of the recently launched WISE infrared space telescope. The information from the article, though unattributed, is presumably from the mission scientists themselves: In its first six weeks of observations, it has [...] Here’s the full press release about WISE mission finding dark comets.
WISE spies a Comet With its Powerful Infrared Eye, NASA\Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Feb 11, 2010 Officially named “P/2010 B2 (WISE),” but known simply as WISE, the comet is a dusty mass of ice more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) in diameter. It probably formed around the same time as our solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago. Comet WISE started out in the cold, dark reaches of our solar system, but after a long history of getting knocked around by the gravitational forces of Jupiter, it settled into an orbit much closer to the sun. Right now, the comet is heading away from the sun and is about 175 million kilometers (109 million miles) from Earth. “Comets are ancient reservoirs of water. They are one of the few places besides Earth in the inner solar system where water is known to exist,” said Amy Mainzer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer is the principal investigator of NEOWISE, a project to find and catalog new asteroids and comets spotted by WISE (the acronym combines WISE with NEO, the shorthand for near-Earth object). “With WISE, we have a powerful tool to find new comets and learn more about the population as a whole. Water is necessary for life as we know it, and comets can tell us more about how much there is in our solar system.” Continue reading The February 11 JPL Press Release on dark, dead comets and the WISE mission
Now visible comet from WISE in infrared In an earlier post I noted that last month NASA had mentioned WISE finding dark and dead comets for the first time (at least as recorded on the Internet). I thought it kind of odd that well into a mission the agency begins speaking [...] |
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