Deep Impact ... Deafening Silence -- UPDATED - 7/7/2005

Well, it's been about four days now since Comet Tempel 1 (literally!) ran over NASA's Deep Impact "Impactor spacecraft" -- at more than 6 miles per second ... while its surviving "other half" stood off at a safe distance (about 5000 miles) and relayed back to Earth truly spectacular images, like this one--

In these same four days, several of the the ground-based institutions participating in the world-wide Tempel 1 observing network, created by NASA to assist in this unprecedented interplanetary Mission, have begun to "check in" with different (and obviously far more distant) images.

These range from one particularly striking color time-exposure (below) -- taken by one of the European Southern Observatory's 8.2-meter Very Large Telescopes in Chile -- showing a new fan-shaped spray of debris stretching out tens of thousands miles, liberated from Tempel 1's interior in the hours immediately after the hypervelocity impact--

To a set of revealing "before" and "after" comparison shots from the Hubble Space Telescope itself (below).

However, singularly missing from this "trickle" of post-impact data (curiously, it's not really a "flood," even after several days ... and despite all the pre-impact hype about "the astronomical importance of this event") ... is any corresponding (and far more critical) post-impact spectra of this "major celestial collision."

With the exception of one mid-infrared scan just posted to the ESO Website (below) -- which is significantly missing any accompanying (critical) element or molecular identifications--

[BULLETIN: within minutes of the posting of this blog last night, this major link to the ONLY published post-impact Tempel 1 spectrum was suddenly withdrawn!! This morning (7/7/2005) , just as mysteriously, the spectrum was RETURNED!]

There has been (so far) a complete and fascinating lack of any "independent," non-NASA, detailed post-impact spectral observations of Tempel 1 -- published by any of the dozens of professional observatories and hundreds of astronomers participating in this world-wide observation program re Tempel 1!

As to official NASA spectra of this same "critical" Event: they too have been (even more mysteriously ...) also completely non-existent--

NASA itself, in the days just before the Deep Impact climax, deliberately fanned wide-spread public interest and expectation of "rapid answers to these age-old questions ...." to be contained within these measurements: the headline on the official Deep Impact Website (below) still shouts:

"Your First Look Inside a Comet!"

Which is, of course, just a tad misleading ... without the curiously missing spectral data to accompany it!

Anyone with any degree of scientific or astronomical sophistication knows that just "looking" at a picture (like the one above) essentially tells you NOTHING about what is really going on inside such a celestial object; that, the REAL story in that headline is the promise of specific compositional and physical details, from those long-anticipated spacecraft spectra, of that spectacular flash ... and what came out from the interior immediately afterward.

So -- where are those essential spectra??!!

The only semi-numerical data on the composition of Tempel 1, post-impact, comes from a single ESA spacecraft -- the XMM Newton X-Ray Telescope -- with the publication of a set of six narrow-band blue and UV images from its "Optical Monitor" (below).

Looking at the hydroxyl emissions from Tempel 1 post-impact (lower UV images), the spacecraft recorded a brightening of this molecular fragment (OH) -- interpreted by the ESA caption writer as "the direct decay product of water."

In fact, this is NOT confirmation of significant amounts of water being released from Tempel 1 by Deep Impact. Many other complex, rocky minerals (and even organic molecular compounds), once released by the Impactor and excited by exposure to the sun's raw ultraviolet light, could also yield "OH radicals."

There is also something called "interstitial water" or "water of crystallization" -- which is water literally trapped in rocky compounds between the mineral crystals which, heated to high temperatures (like those associated with the Deep Impact collision), will immediately release this water into space. Certain classes of carbonaceous meteorites which fall to Earth, and their parent asteroids, when measured by remote sensing instruments have been found to contain up to 20% of such "interstitial water" by weight!

So, the OH that the ESA Newton satellite has recorded could easily have come from the "baking out" of such interstitial water from a "carbonaceous object" -- if Tempel 1 is, in fact, a fragment of former exploded planetary crustal material ... and not a traditional "comet." To properly assess where this specific OH came from, a complete spectrum from the comet will be necessary ... which is precisely what JPL (and it's collaborators) are still NOT publishing.

The special JPL Web page (below) -- specifically set up to report on such exciting post-impact spectral observations -- for four days now, has remained exactly as it was BEFORE Impact ... with only one pre-impact spectrum still displayed ....

By sharp contrast, on the optical "front" ... as can be seen by the variety of amazing time-lapse movies created and released from the Deep Impact imagery by JPL in these same three days (below) ... there are stunning physical properties obviously contained within those first few seconds of data after Impact -- including, the potentially highly revealing chemical composition of that literally "white-hot, super-heated 'plume'" jetting outward into space from deep inside the comet.

It's precisely that type of critical information which the Deep Impact on-board instruments were designed to acquire, in the chaotic seconds immediately after Impact, which by now should have been sent home to JPL ... in terms of "plasma temperatures," "exit pressures," and, most importantly, "the specific kinds of atoms and molecules" making up that amazing white-hot jet ....

So -- where is this vital information!? And why -- in the face of obvious keen public interest in these results (representatives from NASA Headquarters at the press conferences bragged that their "web hits" for this Mission had exceeded all previous records ...) would NASA (apparently) be deliberately withholding it ... and after more than 90 hours post-Impact?

As someone here commented earlier (I'd credit them properly, but they obviously wish to remain "anonymous" ... I guess, because they fear that NASA will come after them ...):

"They must be shocked about something ...."

So, what could have so "shocked" the legion of professional astronomers and planetary science folks -- both on the Deep Space Mission, as well as at all the "independent observatories" all around the world -- as to have them ALL apparently tongue-tied regarding simply publishing these most exciting Deep Impact spectra on the Internet ... even without comment ... for the rest of us to see ...?

What indeed?

You don't suppose that -- instead of "a gush of water vapor and a host of frozen carbon compounds," like they expected to see -- the actual composition of that amazing plume (and the resulting dust cloud it created, now so visible even from Earth ... over 80 million miles away) contained complex rocky materials (and even pure metals) no one in their right mind EVER expected to see jetting outward from deep inside a "frozen ball of ice!?"

Materials SO alien to all these professional NASA expectations, so impossible now to coninue "spinning" in support of the "dirty snowball" model ... that they're simply trying desperately to find some way -- any way! -- to avoid the simple statement ... with all its implications ....

"We were wrong!"

Stay tuned ....

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