{"id":911,"date":"2004-06-22T03:09:12","date_gmt":"2004-06-22T03:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=911"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:32:59","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:32:59","slug":"astronomy-a-close-encounter-with-a-wild-comet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=911","title":{"rendered":"astronomy: a close encounter with a wild comet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">NASA&#8217;s <em>Stardust<\/em> spacecraft has revealed comet Wild  2 to be unlike any other comet known. Researchers describe the strange  astronomical object in a series of papers in the June 18 issue of <em> Science.<\/em> The spacecraft came within less than 150 miles of Wild 2 in  January 2004, collecting samples of the particles swirling around its  nucleus and taking the most detailed, high-resolution images of a comet  ever. Researchers thought the comet would look like &#8220;a dirty, black,  fluffy snowball,&#8221; but instead they saw a body with steep cliffs and deep  craters, indicating that Wild-2 has a relatively solid core, able to  withstand impacts from other objects in space. Other surprises included  finding 20 jets of gas and dust being violently ejected from the comet&#8217;s  surface, as well as discovering that the dust cloud surrounding the  nucleus was made up of distinct, small, dense particle swarms. Wild 2  &#8220;may turn out to be typical of other comets, but it is unlike any other  type of solar system body,&#8221; Donald Brownlee of the University of  Washington at Seattle and lead author of one of the Science papers,  stated in a press release. The spacecraft is scheduled to return to  Earth in 2006, carrying thousands of captured interstellar particles,  which researchers hope will help explain how the solar system formed. <\/span><\/p>\n<h6><em>This news brief appeared in the Discoveries column of the <\/em>Boston Globe&#8217;s<em> Health\/Science section on 6\/22\/2004.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA&#8217;s Stardust spacecraft has revealed comet Wild 2 to be unlike any other comet known. Researchers describe the strange astronomical object in a series of papers in the June 18 issue of Science. The spacecraft came within less than 150 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=911\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1046,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/1046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}