Open Science Thread

Community

Saturday November 17, 2007 · 6:06 AM PST

2007/11/17 · 06:06

For over 100 years, and probably far longer, an obscure comet known only to a few astronomers as 17P/Holmes traced out a quiet orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Suddenly in late October, it grew 500,000 times brighter, visible to the unaided eye. If it were to make a pass by earth, similar to Comet Halley’s past visits, it would be the sky show of the millennium. Now the mighty eye of Edwin Hubble’s Space Telescope has been turned to the mysterious Comet Holmes looking for an answer:

SFGate -- The most likely explanation for the outburst of Comet Holmes, Weaver said Thursday, is that a coating of relatively stable water ice, less than 10 miles thick around the comet's tiny nucleus, was suddenly blown away by other, far more volatile chemical ices lying beneath the frozen water. As those ices expanded violently in the sun's warmth, he said, they simply blew the outer ice apart in a cosmic explosion.

Speaking of sky shows, thanks to Leo in NJ, the Leonid Meteor shower is predicted to peak starting around midnight tonight though early Sunday morning.

Bora at Blog Around The Clock secured a notable milestone for the PLoS ONE project on a new miniature sauropod called Nigersaurus taqueti.

Robot Science catching up with Robot sci-fi? The robot cockroaches suggest the answer is yes. I wonder how Robot Chicken feels about it?

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

Make YOUR voice heard!

Open Science Thread

Comments are closed on this story.