For a while now, I've thought that I should add a few words about some interesting results
that we've obtained in the UCLA MegaSIMS lab. The "MegaSIMS" is the new million-volt mass spectrometer that Kevin and his colleagues have designed and assembled for the GENESIS mission to measure the isotopic composition of the solar wind. There is actually a little bit of the Sun (literally!) in the lab at UCLA and we have been working to determine the relative abundances of the three isotopes of oxygen (16-O, 17-O, and 18-O) which will tell us something about how the planets formed from the original swirling mass of gas and dust that we call the "solar nebula". How that works is a bit complicated, but you can hear more about it (if you want - it's at least 20 minutes long) at this podcast, which is from an interview that Kevin gave following an astrophysics seminar at the University of Manchester (broadcast at jodcast - an astronomy podcasting site at UM, created "by a bunch of astronomers for anyone who is interested in things out of this world").Our first results indicate that the Earth and all the planets of the inner solar system (at least) are fundamentally different than the Sun, which must represent the average composition of the original starting material. The difference is due to a major chemical processing that happened (probably) just before the accretion of planetary materials. Since oxygen is the most abundant element in rocky planets like Earth, this is a big deal. Kevin presented these data at a well-attended talk at the Lunar & Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March and the story was picked up by several high-profile science magazines as well as the BBC and a few other places. He has also lectured about these results a couple of times in France, as well as England, and last weekend in Wisconsin. There are a few loose ends to be tied up, but the first detailed paper ought to be submitted for publication by early fall.
Well- that's enough work for now; after all, it is Friday night!
2 comments:
is that Danny's drawing that is in the lab??
Yes, Danny made the drawing - both the electronic version and the painted mural. The Artist tells me that Dizzie Gillespie is the Sun!
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