The Huge Entity: Deep Impact Doth Lay The Smacketh Down

Deep Impact Doth Lay The Smacketh Down

Tuesday, July 05, 2005 → by Danieru

UPDATE: The internet is awash with news of this tremendous day in human exploration. New Scientist, as always, delivers all the info in an easily digestable format. And yes, even they used my all-time favourite science-news cliche:

'However, it will take detailed analysis to confirm exactly what happened 83 million miles from Earth. "How a washing-machine sized impactor could produce such a large disturbance is going to take some explanation," ' - link

There are currently around 575 "washing-machine sized" related posts circling the blogsphere, check them out here...

------------------------

"US space agency (Nasa) scientists are celebrating after seeing a probe crash into the heart of a comet.
The washing machine-sized "impactor" collided with Comet Tempel 1 at a relative speed of 37,000km/h, throwing up a huge plume of icy debris.

The probe's mothership, the Deep Impact spacecraft, watched the event from a safe distance, sending images to Earth."

Wow is about the only thing I can say...
Check out the BBC article linked below for a cool animation of the probe's incredible journey and keep watching the skies...

Categories: Science, NASA, Space, News, Deep Impact, Comet, Technology, Impact

Archived Link

posted by Danieru at 3:15 AM

Jay Oatway said...

Congrats. You keep rising to the top!

Allow me to explain. I've got this new tag cloud on my blog. It draws from a wide range of RSS sources, including the BBC, A-list blogs, Del.icio.us, Technorati and Tribes. Using a clever Yahoo! analysis provide by TagCloud, it renders "THE current hot list" of keywords.

Today the big word is: Impact. So I give it a click. I'm trying to dissern from headlines and key sentences as to wether impact was indeed made. The first four summaries give me nothing, and they were all from "a-list" sources.

The next was your story. It gave it to me straight, but still with style. So here I am, and not for the first time.

I feel like this has to be at least the third or fourth time my "Cloud of Portension" has brought me here.

As Portension Blogger-in-Chief, I hereby bestow upon you the honor of named Great Portender (no, sorry, it doesn't come with a trophy).

Keep up the good work. I'm sure I'll see more of it.

July 04, 2005 1:53 PM

Danieru said...

cheers... I was going to post some more Huge Entity style babble, but since the simplicity of my post was regarded so well, I'll post the babble here instead...

For tens of thousands of years mankind has looked up into the night sky in times of strife and read the changes in the heavens. Halley's Comet was woven into the Bayeux Tapestry because it was said to predict the downfall of King Harold II. Some people even cite Halley's Comet's arrival in 12BC to have been interpreted as the Star of Bethlehem in the Bible! Comets have fascinated us for millenia; those cosmic balls of ice and rock passing by in a matter of days, yet influencing events down on Earth that would be remembered for centuries.

So , how do comets make the news these days? For the first time in history it was the comet, not mankind, that should have been looking skywards to predict the future. 'Washing-machine-sized' is my new favourite news related cliche. Seems we've come a long way since Harold II's day...

July 04, 2005 2:05 PM

Offical NASA - Deep Impact site here

July 05, 2005 10:26 AM