Juno Observes Sprites and Elves in Upper Atmosphere of Jupiter

Oct 30, 2020 by News Staff / Source
Rohini S. Giles et al. Possible Transient Luminous Events observed in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, published online October 27, 2020;

http://www.sci-news.com/space/jupiter-sprites-elves-09004.html

This illustration shows what a sprite could look like in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016. One of its instruments is the ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS), which is primarily used to make ultraviolet images of Jupiter’s auroras. During the first four years of the mission, the UVS instrument has observed 11 transient bright flashes. These flashes look similar to lightning, but are located much higher in the atmosphere than the cloudy regions of Jupiter where lightning is generated. In a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, researchers suggest that these are observations of transient luminous events in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere. In particular, they suggest that these events are elves, sprites or sprite halos, three types of transient luminous events that produce spectacular flashes of light very high in the Earth’s atmosphere in response to lightning strikes between clouds or between clouds and the ground.

Sprites, named after a mischievous, quick-witted character in English folklore, are transient luminous events triggered by lightning discharges from thunderstorms far below.

On Earth, they occur up to 97 km (60 miles) above intense, towering thunderstorms and brighten a region of the sky tens of miles across, yet last only a few milliseconds.

Almost resembling a jellyfish, sprites feature a central blob of light — on Earth, it’s 24-48 km (15-30 miles) across, with long tendrils extending both down toward the ground and upward.

Elves (Emissions of Light and Very low frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic pulse sources) appear as a flattened disk glowing in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

They, too, brighten the sky for mere milliseconds but can grow larger than sprites — up to 320 km (200 miles) across on Earth. Their colors are distinctive as well.

“On Earth, sprites and elves appear reddish in color due to their interaction with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere,” said lead author Dr. Rohini S. Giles, a postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute.

“But on Jupiter, the upper atmosphere mostly consists of hydrogen, so they would likely appear either blue or pink.”

Planetary scientists predicted these bright, superfast flashes of light should be present in Jupiter’s immense roiling atmosphere, but their existence remained theoretical.

Dr. Giles and colleagues analyzed data from Juno’s UVS instrument and discovered something unexpected: a bright, narrow streak of ultraviolet emission that disappeared in a flash.

“UVS was designed to characterize Jupiter’s beautiful northern and southern lights,” Dr. Giles said.

“But we discovered UVS images that not only showed Jovian aurora, but also a bright flash of UV light over in the corner where it wasn’t supposed to be.”

“The more our team looked into it, the more we realized Juno may have detected a transient luminous event on Jupiter.”

“We’re continuing to look for more telltale signs of elves and sprites every time Juno does a science pass,” she added.

“Now that we know what we are looking for, it will be easier to find them at Jupiter and on other planets.”

“And comparing sprites and elves from Jupiter with those here on Earth will help us better understand electrical activity in planetary atmospheres.”

Recommend this post and follow Sputnik's Orbit

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

SPACE - S0 - 20201031 - Near-Sun Density, Nearby Stars Flaring, Space Skull

SPACE - S0 - 20201031 - Near-Sun Density, Nearby Stars Flaring, Space Skull

Good Morning, 0bservers!

   

    

S P O O K Y   H A L L O W E E N   R E P O R T

We seem to be somewhat stabilized in the solar wind speeds, they've fluctuated mostly in the 390-440 KPS range most of yesterday, but that's moved into the 400-420 KPS range now. Temperature and Particle Density remain steady to slightly lower. The KP-Index was far calmer yesterday, with mostly KP-1 readings, but we did have a KP-3 reading in the last update. X-Ray flux has calmed significantly when compared to the last few days, partly due to the departure of the sunspot groups both North and South. Seeing some new coronal hole development reaching toward the lower latitudes from the South polar region, and some new bright spots are about to crest the Eastern lim.

Please Recommend this page and be sure to follow the Sputnik's Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/ 

AND WHILST YOU ARE HERE BE SURE TO FOLLOW AND RECOMMEND THE COCONUT WHISPERER https://disqus.com/home/forum/the-coconut-whisperer/

SPACE - S0 - 20201030 - Plasma Universe, Time Traveler, Cosmic Rays

SPACE - S0 - 20201030 - Plasma Universe, Time Traveler, Cosmic Rays

Good Morning, 0bservers!

   

    

Solar winds continued their slowdown and accelerated it, from a high yesterday of 520 KPS to around 410 KPS at 0200 UTC. It now sits in the 420-450 KPS range. Particle density is also on a downward slope, as is the temperature. The KP-Index remained in the upper range of green, but we did have one KP-4 spiking into the minor geomagnetic storm range, but it calmed back to the KP-2 level after that. Electron Flux remains above the threshold as it has for several days now, and we're still seeing elevated X-Ray Flux readings from the sunspot groups. Not as many Class C spikes as a few days ago, but they're still pretty active. A bit more quiet on the lithosphere, with a Mag 5.1 about 60 miles SSE of Sand Point, Alaska, and a Mag 5.9 along the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Please Recommend this page and be sure to follow the Sputnik's Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/ 

AND WHILST YOU ARE HERE BE SURE TO FOLLOW AND RECOMMEND THE COCONUT WHISPERER https://disqus.com/home/forum/the-coconut-whisperer/

Defense News: Another littoral combat ship breaks down on deployment

 

Another littoral combat ship breaks down on deployment

By: David B. Larter, Defense News, October 28, 2020

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/10/28/another-littoral-combat-breaks-down-on-deployment/

The Freedom-class littoral combat ship Detroit sails through the Caribbean Sea. Detroit suffered a casualty to its propulsion system and is returning to port in Florida for repairs. (MC2 Anderson Branch/U.S. Navy)

WASHINGTON – The littoral combat ship Detroit is limping back to Mayport, Florida from a deployment to South America in a move that marks the latest setback for the Freedom variant’s complicated propulsion system.

Three sources familiar with the situation told Defense News the casualty is in Detroit’s combining gear, which is a complex transmission that connects power from two large gas turbine engines and two main propulsion diesel engines to the ship’s propulsion shafts, which propels the ship through the water with water jets.

Detroit will redeploy to Southern Command when repairs are completed, U.S. 4th Fleet Commander Rear Adm. Don Gabrielson said in a statement.

“USS Detroit (LCS 7) experienced an engineering casualty during routine operations, and a technical evaluation determined that in-port repairs would be required,” the statement read. “USS Detroit has been a vital and productive asset and will be redeployed as soon as possible.”

Detroit’s Freedom-class sister ship Sioux City and the trimaran Independence-class LCS Gabrielle Giffords remain on station, Gabrielson said.

The Freedom-class LCS has been bedeviled by issues with its combining gear, which is an imperfect solution engineered to meet the 40-knot-plus speed requirement. The ship can make between 10 and 12 knots with just its diesel engines, but to go any faster it must engage the gas turbine engines. The combining gear fuses and transmits the power to the propulsion shafts, but is a system with a lot of moving parts and has proven unreliable.

The string of combining gear casualties dating back to at least late 2015, when the LCS Milwaukee broke down on its maiden voyage to its home port in Mayport, Florida, and had to be towed into Little Creek amphibious base in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Early the next year, the littoral combat ship Fort Worth suffered a casualty to the combining gear in port when sailors accidentally ran the system without lube oil running through it.

The trimaran Independence-class also suffered breakdowns in 2016, including a serious casualty on the Montgomery and the Coronado. The Navy has proposed decommissioning the first four littoral combat ships, citing misalignment with the rest of the fleet. The Navy has procured 35 littoral combat ships.

Several sources familiar with the issue who spoke to Defense News said the Freedom variant’s propulsion train has proven generally unreliable when the combining gear needs to be engaged.

USNS Grapple tows the littoral combat ship Milwaukee, LCS-5, to Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek, Va., on Dec. 11, 2015. (Mike Morones/Staff)

The LCS was built to be fast and modular, able to swap between mine warfare systems, surface warfare systems and anti-submarine warfare systems during short port visits. But the Navy ditched that system in the Fall of 2016, after a string of breakdowns and accidents, and decided it was going to make each ship single-mission: Either ASW, mine warfare or surface warfare, and the systems would be semi-permanently attached to the ships.

The Navy also backed off a three-crew system where three crews would rotate between two hulls to maximize how much time each ship could spend underway. But the ships have not proven reliable enough to support such a system. Operating unreliable ships prone to needing emergent repairs will put an increasing burden on already strained surface ship maintenance budgets and, depending on how extensive the repairs, ship repair facilities.

The reliability issues should force the Navy into significant changes in how it deploys the ships, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

“You have to fall back and do essentially what the Navy has done, and say, ‘We’re going to do sub-frigate missions,’” Clark said. Part of that may mean that ships that were designed to go fast will need to travel below 16 knots all the time so as not to incur damage to a fragile propulsion train.

It also means that the Navy will have to make a decision about whether it wants to spend the money on systems that are being designed for the hulls, such as the mine warfare and anti-submarine mission modules, which are both years late.

‘We need to get on with it’

The issues with LCS reliability are not lost on the Navy’s senior leaders.

In a July interview with Defense News, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he was committed to addressing the reliability issues with the platform.

“There are things in the near term that I have to deliver, that I’m putting heat on now, and one of them is LCS,” Gilday said. “One part is sustainability and reliability. We know enough about that platform and the problems that we have that plague us with regard to reliability and sustainability, and I need them resolved.

“That requires a campaign plan to get after it and have it reviewed by me frequently enough so that I can be sighted on it. Those platforms have been around since 2008 — we need to get on with it. We’ve done five deployments since I’ve been on the job, we’re going to ramp that up two-and-a-half times over the next couple of years, but we have got to get after it,” he added. “LCS for me is something, on my watch, I’ve got to get right.”

The littoral combat ships Independence, Manchester and Tulsa sail the Eastern Pacific. (MC Shannon Renfroe/U.S. Navy)

The Navy has already begun to try some new approaches to boosting reliability, said Gabrielson, the Fourth Fleet commander. The Navy deployed the expeditionary fast transport ship Burlington, operated by Military Sealift Command, along with the Gabriel Giffords, Sioux City and, until lately, the Detroit to act as a kind of tender for the ships to conduct repairs and maintenance as needed.

“USNS Burlington (T-EPF-10) is deployed to test her utility as an afloat staging base supporting the Planned Maintenance Availabilities (PMAV) for deployed LCS ships, showing real promise,” his statement said.

LCS 19 (St. Louis) acceptance trials took place in December 2019. (Courtesy of Lockheed Martin)

As for operations in Latin America, the show will go on without Detroit until it is able to return, Gabrielson said, with the annual “Unity in the Americas” exercise preparing to kick off.

“Both Gabrielle Giffords and Burlington will participate in the upcoming UNITAS exercise hosted by Ecuador, joined by 8 other partner nations contributing 10 ships, along with U.S. Marines, naval aircraft, as well as U.S. Air Force aircraft, a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter, and a U.S. Army ship, building and exercising regional maritime readiness,” the statement reads.

For Gilday, the continued reliability issues on LCS are a lesson the Navy needs to learn as it pushes forward with new classes of ships and unmanned surface vessels as part of a push to grow the Navy, he told Defense News.

“I go back to: Do I really need a littoral combat ship to go 40 knots?” Gilday mused. “That’s going to drive the entire design of the ship, not just the engineering plant but how it’s built. That becomes a critical factor. So if you take your eye off the ball with respect to requirements, you can find yourself drifting."

Please recommend this page & follow the Sputniks Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

Technology News: Israeli start-up makes vertical farms to grow crops in city parking lots

 

Israeli start-up makes vertical farms to grow crops in city parking lots

Vertical farms subvert the space limitations of cities by allowing for portable, shipping container-esque produce farms that can operate in any urban environment.

By AARON REICH  The Jerusalem Post, OCTOBER 28, 2020 

https://www.jpost.com/jpost-tech/israeli-start-up-makes-vertical-farms-to-grow-crops-in-city-parking-lots-647244

Vertical Field’s Urban Crops offers an ideal alternative to traditional agriculture. (photo credit: VERTICAL FIELD)

An Israeli agri-tech start-up has created vertical farms in urban environments, allowing for fresh produce to be grown in cities.

These vertical, sustainable farms were developed by Ra'anana-based Vertical Field through the use of geoponic technology, agricultural expertise and smart design. This is especially useful in "urban food deserts," which are often lacking in available space for crop cultivation. 

Vertical Field farm, April 12, 2020

The vertical farms subvert this limitation by creating vertical growing platforms to essentially farm produce on walls. These greenhouse crop-fields are portable, and are around the size of shipping containers ranging from 20 feet to 40 feet, which can fit right in a parking lot, allowing supermarkets and groceries to grow and sell their own home-grown produce right outside the door.

  

The farms come with a number of other advantages over traditional farming. It's container-like nature provides a controlled growing environment, ensuring more sterility and keeping it safe from bugs and therefore not needing pesticides. It also allows for automated crop management, which limits human contact and allows for consistent quality.

Furthermore, it also produces less waste, as well as a 90% decrease in the amount of water needed.

But perhaps most importantly, it isn't limited by traditional seasons for produce, with all crops being "in season" year-round, having shorter overall growing cycles and longer shelf lives.

And, by growing produce locally, it also reduces wasted emissions in the supply chain.

Vertical Field Urban Crops, Feb.9, 2020

The development builds off of Vertical Fields's successes in 2019, where it was recognized among the top start-ups to watch by Silicon Review and World Smart City.

“Vertical Field offers a revolutionary way to eat the freshest greens and herbs, by producing soil-based indoor vertical farms grown at the very location where food is consumed,” said Vertical Field’s CEO Guy Elitzur, who is hoping to place his vertical farms in retail chains and restaurant establishments in cities throughout the US.

“Not only do our products facilitate and promote sustainable life and make a positive impact on the environment, we offer an easy to use real alternative to traditional agriculture. Our urban farms give new meaning to the term ‘farm-to-table,’ because one can virtually pick their own greens and herbs at supermarkets, restaurants or other retail sites.”

The development of these vertical farms comes at the perfect time, with the coronavirus pandemic cutting off the produce supply chain on both local and global levels. And with the population still growing, and projected by some to reach 10 billion in around 30 years, the need to maintain a sustainable source of fresh produce has become a mounting concern.

 

This also ties in with a growing demand for fresh and organic foods on the global market. As seen at Tuesday's 2020 Israeli Culinary Expo, more and more consumers are seeking plant-based food products, which translates to a growing demand for fresh produce.

But with Vertical Field's innovative new crop cultivation method, everyone from restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, architects and urban developers can have their own ready supply of local produce.

Hagay Hacohen contributed to this report.

Please recommend this page & follow the Sputniks Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

SPACE - S0 - 20201029 - Centaur Activates, Nova Events, Electric Jupiter

SPACE - S0 - 20201029 - Centaur Activates, Nova Events, Electric Jupiter

Good Morning, 0bservers!

   

    

Solar wind speeds stayed mostly steady yesterday, riding the 480-520 KPS range, with the particle density pretty much flatlining and a slight dip in temperature after 0200 UTC. The Phi Angle seems to have stabilized after being discombobulated most of the day. The KP-Index was riding the high end of the green range, mostly KP-3s, but it didn't pop into the solar storm range. Electron Flux remains above the threshold, and the X-Ray Flux continues to point to the increased sunspot activity. There were a number of small Class C spikes, but the background remained elevated in mid-Class B. The Southern sunspot group was crackling pretty heavily at the end of the 173Å video, and it showed an intra-atmospheric plasma filament release as well. That spot, and its smaller counterpart in the North, are both closing in on the Western lim, and I'm not seeing any new pending activity on the incoming side of the disc. We saw a bit more blot echo activity in the crust yesterday, as well as a Mag 5.8 North of La Serena Chile, a Mag 5.4 in the South Shetland Islands with Mag 5.1/5.0 follow-up temblors, and a Mag 5.3 in the Easter Island region.

Please Recommend this page and be sure to follow the Sputnik's Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/ 

AND WHILST YOU ARE HERE BE SURE TO FOLLOW AND RECOMMEND THE COCONUT WHISPERER https://disqus.com/home/forum/the-coconut-whisperer/

Defense News: US Army gets first Infantry Squad Vehicle from GM Defense

US Army gets first Infantry Squad Vehicle from GM Defense

By Jen Judson, Defense News, October 27, 2020

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/10/27/us-army-gets-first-infantry-squad-vehicle-from-gm-defense/

GM Defense LLC, a subsidiary of General Motors, delivers the first Infantry Squad Vehicles (ISV) — light and agile all-terrain troop carriers based off the 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck architecture — to the U.S. Army on Oct. 27, 2020, in Milford, Mich. ( GM Defense photo )

WASHINGTON — GM Defense delivered its first Infantry Squad Vehicle to the U.S. Army in an Oct. 27 ceremony at its proving grounds and production facility in Milford, Michigan, just 120 days after being chosen to build the new troop carrier.

The Army awarded the company a $214.3 million contract to produce 649 vehicles by the end of fiscal 2024. The service is planning to procure a total of 2,065 ISVs.

Designed to carry a nine-soldier squad, the ISV was specifically put together to be light enough to be sling loaded from a UH-60 Black Hawk and small enough to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook, to provide maximum flexibility for deployment.

GM’s design is based off the company’s 2020 Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck and uses 90 percent commercial parts including a 186-horsepower, 2.8L Duramax turbo-diesel engine and performance race components. It also features a custom rollover protection system.

( GM Defense photo )

While the first low-rate initial production vehicles — 27 in total — will be built in Michigan, GM has a long-term plan to move its ISV manufacturing to Morrisville, North Carolina, where it is standing up a facility to manage its higher volume ISV production.

Infantry Squad Vehicle Off-Road | GM Defense, Oct.27, 2020

The Army first identified a need for a light infantry vehicle in 2015 when its most recent combat vehicle strategy was released, but nothing materialized until Congress forced the Army to launch the competition as part of the FY18 National Defense Authorization Act. The Army awarded $1 million contracts to three teams in August 2019 to develop offerings — GM Defense, a team of Oshkosh Defense and Flyer Defense LLC and an SAIC and Polaris team.

“One hundred and twenty days from contract award to delivery is a significant milestone, and I am very proud of the team for this accomplishment,” David Albritton, president of GM Defense, said in a statement. “We’re leveraging General Motors' engineering prowess and immense manufacturing capabilities to bring transformative solutions to the military vehicle market. Our initial success with the ISV shows our commitment to our customer and highlights our unique right to win in the military mobility market.”

GM Defense has a “very, very talented team," Albritton said during the ceremony, and “their innovation, attention to detail, flexibility when incorporating soldier feedback during testing and a magnitude of other factors helped us to win this ISV contract and gives me great hope for how we will tackle other pursuits in the future.”

( GM Defense photo )

The first vehicles will be going to the 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd Airborne Division, but ultimately 11 IBCTs will be outfitted with 59 vehicles each under the first contract covering the 649 ISVs.

The vehicles are slated to go through tests in the coming year, including further analysis of its air-deployable capability, as well as verification the maintenance manuals are complete. The first unit equipped will take the ISV through an initial operational test and evaluation.

With the success of the ISV, GM Defense is setting its sights on other opportunities with the Army and other military services.

“We have a strong interest in the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle Program,” Albritton said. The Army is planning to re-compete for the JLTV and for new Humvees to round out the tactical vehicle fleet.

“If you look at the size and scale of this program, obviously, this is closer to a commercial-size vehicle, but as you step up in class and step up in weight, we believe we have a right to win in vehicles sizes of that size,” he added.

( GM Defense photo )

“That doesn’t limit us there, as well. There are only a few ground vehicle programs across the [Defense Department] right now, but we believe that other than doing a fully integrated vehicle like we do on ISV or what we potentially could do on JLTV in partnership with other companies, we can look at programs like the Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle for the U.S. Marine Corps, or we can look at the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle," Albritton said. “But if you think about power and propulsion solutions, you think about light weighting, think about cybersecurity, there’s other types of capabilities that we can apply in partnership on a variety of platforms as well.”

GM spent several recent years helping the Army evaluate a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle using a ZH2 Chevy Colorado and the Army is now taking some renewed steps at getting after an electric vehicles in its fleet to include the pursuit of an electric light reconnaissance vehicle.

Please recommend this page & follow the Sputniks Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

Space News: Aliens on nearest 1,000 stars to Earth may be watching us

 

Aliens on nearest 1,000 stars to Earth may be watching us

By Chris Ciaccia, Fox News, October 27, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/10/27/aliens-on-nearest-1000-stars-to-earth-may-be-watching-us/

Cornell astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger and Lehigh University's Joshua Pepper have identified 1,004 main-sequence stars - similar to our sun - that might contain Earth-like planets in their own habitable zones within about 300 light-years of here, which should be able to detect Earth's chemical traces of life. 

If indeed aliens do exist, they may be watching us from not too far away in space, a new study has found.

The research found there are 1,004 star systems that might contain Earth-like planets within 300 light-years of Earth that might be able “to detect Earth’s chemical traces of life.”

“If observers were out there searching, they would be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our Pale Blue Dot,” the study’s lead author, Lisa Kaltenegger, a Cornell University astronomer, said in a statement. “And we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes.”

The research has been published in the scientific journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

More than 4,000 exoplanets have been discovered by NASA in total, approximately 50 of which were believed to be potentially habitable as of September 2018. They have the right size and the right orbit of their star to support surface water and, at least theoretically, to support life.

Transit observations ‒ when astronomers look at a star and see it dim because another object has crossed in front of it ‒ have allowed astronomers to discover these planets, Kaltenegger added. This type of observation will be expanded when NASA launches its James Webb Space Telescope in October 2021. The JWST was delayed due in part to the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News previously reported.

If an extraterrestrial civilization had its own advanced equipment, similar to the JWST, they might be able to see us as well.

However, not all of the 1,004 star systems could observe us for an extended period of time: only 508 of them “guarantee a minimum 10 [hour] long observation of Earth’s transit,” the researchers wrote in the study.

“Only a very small fraction of exoplanets will just happen to be randomly aligned with our line of sight so we can see them transit,” study co-author Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University, added. “But all of the thousand stars we identified in our paper in the solar neighborhood could see our Earth transit the sun, calling their attention.”

The majority of the planets are likely able to support life for billions of years, leaving the researchers intrigued about studying them further.

“If we found a planet with a vibrant biosphere, we would get curious about whether or not someone is there looking at us too,” Kaltenegger explained. “If we’re looking for intelligent life in the universe, that could find us and might want to get in touch. We’ve just created the star map of where we should look first.”

In September, a separate group of researchers from Australia completed “the deepest and broadest search” looking for technological signs of extraterrestrial civilizations at more than 10 million star systems and came up empty.

Please recommend this page & follow the Sputniks Orbit 

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/

'Fireball' meteorite contains pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds

OCTOBER 27, 2020, by Field Museum

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-fireball-meteorite-pristine-extraterrestrial-compounds.html

The meteorite fragment that fell on Strawberry Lake which contains pristine extraterrestrial organic compounds. 

Credit: (c) Field Museum

On the night of January 16, 2018, a fireball meteor streaked across the sky over the Midwest and Ontario before landing on a frozen lake in Michigan. Scientists used weather radar to find where the pieces landed and meteorite hunters were able to collect the meteorite quickly, before its chemical makeup got changed by exposure to liquid water. And, as a new paper in Meteoritics & Planetary Science shows, that gave scientists a glimpse of what space rocks are like when they're still in outer space—including a look at pristine organic compounds that could tell us about the origins of life.

"This meteorite is special because it fell onto a frozen lake and was recovered quickly. It was very pristine. We could see the minerals weren't much altered and later found that it contained a rich inventory of extraterrestrial organic compounds," says Philipp Heck, a curator at the Field Museum, associate professor at the University of Chicago, and lead author of the new paper. "These kinds of organic compounds were likely delivered to the early Earth by meteorites and might have contributed to the ingredients of life."

Meteorites, simply put, are space rocks that have fallen to Earth. When things like asteroids collide in outer space, fragments can break off. These pieces of rock, called meteoroids, continue floating through space, and sometimes, their new paths collide with moons or planets. When a meteoroid breaks through the Earth's atmosphere and we can see it as a fireball or shooting star, it's called a meteor. If pieces of that meteor survive the trip through the atmosphere, the bits that actually land on Earth are called meteorites.

When the fireball arrived in Michigan, scientists used NASA's weather radar to track where the pieces went. "Weather radar is meant to detect hail and rain," explains Heck. "These pieces of meteorite fell into that size range, and so weather radar helped show the position and velocity of the meteorite. That meant that we were able to find it very quickly."

Security camera footage of the fireball in the sky over Toledo, Ohio. Video footage can be found at https://www.amsmeteors.org/videos/?video_id=999 and can be shared with credit. 

Credit: T. Masterson and the American Meteor Society

Less than two days after it landed, meteorite hunter Robert Ward found the first piece of the meteorite on the frozen surface of Strawberry Lake, near Hamburg, Michigan. Ward worked with Terry Boudreaux to donate the meteorite to the Field Museum, where Heck and Jennika Greer, a graduate student at the Field and the University of Chicago and one of the paper's authors, began to study it.

"When the meteorite arrived at the Field, I spent the entire weekend analyzing it, because I was so excited to find out what kind of meteorite it was and what was in it," says Greer. "With every meteorite that falls, there's a chance that there's something completely new and totally unexpected."

The researchers quickly determined that the meteorite was an H4 chondrite—only 4% of all meteorites falling to Earth these days are of this type. But the real thing that makes the Hamburg meteorite exceptional is because of how quickly it was collected and how well-analyzed it is.

"This meteorite shows a high diversity of organics, in that if somebody was interested in studying organics, this is not normally the type of meteorite that they would ask to look at," says Greer. "But because there was so much excitement surrounding it, everybody wanted to apply their own technique to it, so we have an unusually comprehensive set of data for a single meteorite."

Meteorite hunter Robert Ward with the meteorite on Strawberry Lake near Hamburg, Michigan. Credit: Robert Ward

Scientists aren't sure how the organic (carbon-containing) compounds responsible for life on Earth got here; one theory is that they hitched their way here on meteorites. That doesn't mean that the meteorites themselves contain extraterrestrial life; rather, some of the organic compounds that help make up life might have first formed in an asteroid that later fell to Earth. (In short, sorry, we didn't find any aliens.)

"Scientists who study meteorites and space sometimes get asked, do you ever see signs of life? And I always answer, yes, every meteorite is full of life, but terrestrial, Earth life," says Heck. "As soon as the thing lands, it gets covered with microbes and life from Earth. We have meteorites with lichens growing on them. So the fact that this meteorite was collected so quickly after it fell, and that it landed on ice rather than in the dirt, helped keep it cleaner."

The buzz around the meteorite when it landed also helped scientists learn much more about it than many other meteorites of its kind—they used a wide variety of analytical techniques and studied samples from different parts of the meteorite to get a more complete picture of the minerals it contains. "You learn a lot more about a meteorite when you sample different pieces. It's like if you had a supreme pizza, if you only looked at one little section, you might think it was just pepperoni, but there might be mushrooms or peppers somewhere else," says Greer.

"This study is a demonstration of how we can work with specialists around the world to get most out of the small piece of raw, precious piece of rock," says Heck. "When a new meteorite falls onto a frozen lake, maybe even sometime this winter, we'll be ready. And that next fall might be something we have never seen before."

Recommend this post and follow Sputnik's Orbit

https://disqus.com/home/forum/thesputniksorbit-blogspot-com/