Comet Dust Seems More like Asteroid dust

he NASA Stardust mission sampled dust from a comet and brought it back to earth--where the now studied dust seems more like what asteroids should be made of.

Remember the good old days when we understood our solar system? Then we found out Pluto wasn’t a planet. And now a new study puts comets in question. The data come from NASA’s Stardust mission—that’s the one that scooped up particles from comet Wild 2 and returned to earth two years ago. The conventional wisdom is that comets originated in the outer solar system, then the sun or a planet nudged them into weird orbits.

Well, this study in the journal Science contradicts that wisdom. Turns out that the particles from Wild 2 look like they belong not to a comet but to an asteroid from the inner solar system. In fact, Stardust didn’t capture any of the pre-solar-system stuff that comets should be made of. This means that the distinction between asteroids and comets may be surprisingly blurry. Some comets might have migrated out from the inner solar system. Or there could be lots of inner solar system stuff in the outer solar system. Either way, it’s time to start rewriting those astronomy textbooks…again.

www.sciam.com

This is a simple example in which old science was wrong, but eventually self-corrects given better data.


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[edit on 27-1-2008 by Jbird]

Every time we learn something new, we learn there is even more we don't know. This is a very interesting find. I am curious what else we will be able to figure out about it.

Yeah this is the only tidbit i saw on it . I'm hoping a better story will come out with a more scientific explanation.

This has been predicted in plasma cosmology a long time ago...!

"According to Electric Universe theory, comets and asteroids are not necessarily of different composition ....". read more about cometshere and here

This is from 2004... So once again plasma cosmology is right in a prediction that "stuns" standard science! this is great!

reply to post by Bluess


Thanks for the links . I will give them a look as this stuff interests me .