Recap

Deep Impact Special

A variety of guests shared their insights on the momentous Deep Impact mission and the results of the probe's collision with Comet Tempel 1 which occurred the night before.

First off, Dr. Sky (aka Steve Kates) offered some background into comets and asteroids and noted that Tempel 1 was 81 million miles from Earth, residing between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. The success of targeting this comet may lead to methods to keep near-Earth asteroids from hitting us, he added.

Physicist James McCanney joined the show next, commenting that a lot of the data isn't in yet. Still from what we've seen so far, there is no visible ice, water or snow on the comet nucleus, he said, suggesting that the "dirty snowball" model is wrong, as he has previously argued.

The next hour paired Richard C. Hoagland of Enterprise Mission with astronomer Tom Van Flandern. Hoagland suggested that early data from the Deep Impact mission is tilting towards Van Flandern's theory of exploded planets. Rather than "dirty snowballs," comets are made of the same materials as asteroids, which form during the explosion of planets, said Van Flandern, who believes that all planets of a certain mass eventually explode, just as stars do.

In the last hour, Hoagland and McCanney took phone calls, and Richard discussed his new blog, which recently premiered on his website. The format will allow him to informally expound on topics that are often ignored, he explained.

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Deep Impact Movie

Clicking on the image plays a movie showing the flash that occurred when Deep Impact's probe collided into comet Tempel 1. Go here for more videos and animations of the mission.