UFO UpDates Mailing List
From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:39:00 -0400
Fwd Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:39:00 -0400
Subject: Re: Research Shows Space Snowballs
Thanks to Steven Kaeser <steve@konsulting.com>
for the lead to the following.....
ebk
_______________________________________________
From:=20
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-05/29/125L-052997-idx.ht=
ml
Cosmic Snowballs Detected
Pelting Earth's Atmosphere
Objects Vaporize, Eventually Become
Rain
By Kathy Sawyer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 29 1997; Page A01
The Washington Post=20
BALTIMORE, May 28 -- Earth is bathed by a steady "cosmic
rain" from previously undetected objects from outer space that
pour vast quantities of water into the atmosphere, according to
startling new evidence released today.
The objects, 20- to 40-ton snowballs the size of two-bedroom
houses, streak into the atmosphere by the thousands each day,
disintegrate harmlessly 600 to 15,000 miles up and deposit large
clouds of water vapor that eventually fall on Earth's surface as
rain, according to Louis A. Frank of the University of Iowa. He
led the research team that for the first time has captured images of
these objects.
The ramifications of the discovery are potentially enormous,
Frank and other scientists said. If Frank's interpretation of the
evidence is confirmed, it could force scientists to revise long-held
beliefs about how Earth and the solar system evolved, how the
building blocks of life first arose, how the oceans formed and
whether fluxes in the cosmic rain could have caused the ice ages
and mass extinctions of living species.
Scientists might also be compelled to study the impact of this alien
precipitation on Earth's climate, the "greenhouse" effect and the
"hole" in the ozone layer over Antarctica.
The discovery suggests that the volume of water on Earth is
increasing. It also has implications for the evolution of other
planets, such as Mars, that should be getting bathed in the same
extraterrestrial drizzle.
"This relatively gentle cosmic rain -- which possibly contains
organic compounds -- may well have nurtured the development
of life on our planet," Frank said. He presented the
unprecedented images, with graphs and analysis, to a riveted
crowd of colleagues at a meeting of the American Geophysical
Union here. "When it rains," he added, "look up and smile. You
never know where it came from."
The evidence of snowballs from outer space comes from images
taken at both ultraviolet and visible wavelengths by Frank's
specially designed instrument aboard NASA's year-old POLAR
spacecraft. One shows an object streaking across the sky and
bursting over Europe last Sept. 26. Researchers noted that the
snowballs disintegrate at altitudes well above the orbits of human
occupants aboard U.S. shuttles and the Russian space station.
The new evidence resurrects a theory widely rejected as
preposterous when Frank first proposed it in 1986: that a strange
population of stealthy, relatively small comets made of almost
pure ice has been spraying water into Earth's upper atmosphere
at a sufficiently high rate over the 4.5 billion-year life of the planet
to have created all the oceans.
This week, several of Frank's leading former critics said the new
evidence appears solid. The scientific community must now
confront the host of extremely difficult questions the findings raise,
they said -- the same questions that made the initial evidence
seem so implausible.
One puzzle, for example, is how these objects could have
streamed through Earth's history undetected by humanity until
now. In addition, if these comets are raining down on Earth, they
should also be hitting the moon, where they should have been
detectable as seismic events.
The findings also challenge scientists to account for the putative
cosmic drizzle in Earth's known water "budget," thought to be a
fixed amount of water constantly recycled through rain,
evaporation and other processes. The planet's annual average
precipitation is just under 34 inches, and Frank estimates the
cosmic snowballs contribute enough to spread one
ten-thousandth of an inch of water over the Earth's surface
annually. That seems a pittance, unless it is multiplied over millions
or billions of years. In any case, several experts said, it is not a
trivial amount.
The consensus among scientists who have reviewed Frank's data
prior to its pending publication is that the space physicist has
indeed discovered a population of objects that is raining huge
amounts of water into the Earth's atmosphere. But several
cautioned that more data will be required before his interpretation
of the evidence -- particularly as to the quantities of water
involved over time -- can be accepted.
Thomas Donahue of the University of Michigan, an expert in
planetary atmospheres who was among the most influential of
Frank's earlier critics, said in a telephone interview from
Switzerland: "There are objects in the solar system we did not
suspect were there. Nobody would believe it. Now, I think
they're going to have to believe it. . . . I'm glad to see Lou
vindicated."
Alex Dessler, former editor of the journal Geophysical Research
Letters, which published Frank's initial evidence on April Fool's
Day 1986, later became known as Frank's most aggressive
adversary. In a telephone interview, he said that he will not be
convinced until a second instrument and a researcher other than
Frank confirm the observations. He conceded that "there's no
question something's happening" in the new data.
Frank, 58, who describes himself as a cantankerous,
publicity-shy loner, said in an interview that he always understood
the criticism: "The implications are enormous. They are
breathtaking." He reiterated his contention that, as he is gradually
proven right, "the textbooks in a dozen sciences will have to be
rewritten. . . . We just have to take a different perspective on our
origins."
The new objects are different in kind from the extraterrestrial
dust, rock and other material that is known to rain into Earth's
atmosphere regularly, some of it forging fiery meteor trails across
the sky, experts said. And they are different from the known large
comets, such as Halley and this year's Hale-Bopp, of which water
is a primary component along with dust and other ingredients.
Comets are believed to be pristine remnants from the cloud of gas
and dust that formed the solar system.
"This is all one whole new population of objects," Frank said. The
evidence suggests the small ice comets move in a stream around
the sun at more than 25 miles per second, slightly outpacing Earth
and most likely also showering other bodies as far out as Jupiter,
he said. They could come from a vast disc of comets that
astronomers have theorized is circling beyond the planets, Frank
said, but their source is basically another huge question mark.
The objects must be composed of something other than icy
water, or they would never survive the sun's heat as they hurtle
toward the inner solar system. Frank has suggested they travel
through space cloaked in a protective mantle of carbon that
functions like a plastic food wrap, preventing them from visibly
losing their substance like ordinary comets with their glowing tails.
The black carbon coat would help render such small ice comets
virtually undetectable.
Water comets had never been proposed in any theory until Frank
and his assistant, John Sigwarth, stumbled onto the notion in 1982
as they analyzed data from NASA's Dynamics Explorer satellite.
It had taken pictures of Earth in the invisible ultraviolet "dayglow"
emitted when sunlight is scattered by the atomic oxygen in the
upper atmosphere. But the glowing sunny side of Earth was
annoyingly speckled with thousands of puzzling dark spots,
according to Frank's 1990 book on the controversy, "The Big
Splash."
Only after analyzing more than 10,000 images did they conclude
that these were not paint flecks on the camera or some other flaw
-- but something real out there absorbing the light and creating
30-mile-diameter "holes" in the uniform glow of Earth. Frank
gradually eliminated all the explanations except huge vapor clouds
from comet-like snowballs. But over the intervening decade,
Frank's "holes" were dismissed by most scientists as "noise," not
real objects.
His pleasure was evident during his presentation today. Now he
not only has detailed, extensive images of the "holes" moving
below his orbiting cameras, but also, streaking above the
cameras, unexpected images of the actual incoming objects. "We
were surprised by the massive trails," he said.
His team spent more than a decade developing the special
three-camera Visible Imaging System (VIS), which he said is
unique in the civilian scientific world.
Frank was "disputed by just about every other scientist on Earth.
He persevered and he's been vindicated. This almost never
happens," said NASA space scientist Stephen Maran of
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
In recent months, VIS has routinely recorded light trails of the
objects streaking through Earth's upper atmosphere at a global
rate of five to 30 per minute, or thousands per day, or millions per
year, Frank said.
Also -- using a filter that detects visible light emitted only by
fragments of water molecules -- the research shows that the
objects consist primarily of water.
Space scientist Robert Meier of the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory called the light signature a "kind of `smoking gun' for
water."
Lead POLAR scientist Robert Hoffman, of Goddard, said at
least one military agency with appropriate detectors in orbit has
agreed to consider using those assets to study the new
phenomenon.
He said NASA had already begun to receive other informal
proposals for projects to study cosmic rain.
SNOWBALLS FROM OUTER SPACE
Thousands of snowballs the size of houses are believed to be
falling toward Earth each day. At the start of its descent the
comet is dark, coated with a carbon mantle. Eventually it hits the
Earth as rain. Here is how a typical comet makes its trip.
1. Incoming small comet. 40 feet in diameter
2. Comet breakup. 800 miles from Earth
3. Comet vaporization. Cloud 30 miles in diameter
4. Dispersal of water vapor by winds. Condensation of water
vapor into atmosphere
5. Condensation of water vapor into atmosphere.
SOURCES: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of
Iowa(Drawing not to scale)
@CAPTION: The trail of an object over the Atlantic Ocean,
recorded in 1996 by Visible Imaging System, is seen
superimposed over a view of Earth.=20
=A9 Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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=20
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