Shuttle Plumes Hint at Comet Crash in Siberia: Discovery Channel »
Posted By Eagle_Eye 4 months ago in Science & Technology
July 31, 2009 -- Tracking plumes from space shuttle launches provided researchers with one of the strongest pieces of evidence that a comet crash was responsible for flattening a Siberian forest in 1908.
The crash, which leveled trees for hundreds of miles in Siberia, was followed by the appearance of extremely bright clouds, visible by night.
Similar clouds triggered by the flights of space shuttles through atmosphere were found over the planet's poles two days after a launch from Florida, research published in last week's Geophysical Research Letters shows.
The creation of so-called noctilucent, or night-shining clouds from water vapor in shuttle rocket plumes buttresses the theory that the clouds spotted after the 1908 impact were triggered by similar atmospheric dynamics, with the water vapor coming from a comet, lead researcher Michael Kelley told Discovery News.
"The shuttles put 300 metric tons of water vapor at the same region that a comet would," said Kelley, a professor at Cornell University.
The cause of what has been referred to as the "Great Siberian Impact Event," or the "Tunguska Event," has been debated for decades. No meteorite remains have ever been found and the appearance of the mysterious night-shining clouds led many scientists to suspect a comet was responsible.
Read Full Story at dsc.discovery.com »
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Eagle_Eye
I am a female who has lived a complex life with complex situations and have learned a lot from my experiences.
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CHAM4 months ago
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An interesting Post Eagle Eye. Somehow I was under the impression that accepting that it was a comet was a done deal some time back, but obviously not.
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I have seen almost nothing about the Meteor that struck Jupiter a week or so ago. As I understand it knocked a hole into Jupiter as large as the Pacific Ocean.
The Comet that broke into 9 pieces and hit Jupiter a few years ago knocked a hole ( the largest piece ) about the size of Earth into the planet.
Seems there was a comet that blew-up over the South west back in the dinosaur time and caused a mass extinction across what is now the United States.
It probably will happen again.
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