Donald Brownlee
Donald Brownlee
Donald Eugene Brownleeis a professor of astronomy at the University of Washingtonand the principal investigator for NASA's Stardust mission. His primary research interests include astrobiology, comets, and cosmic dust. He was born in Las Vegas, Nevada...
billion comet far library low picked records stored sun using
We?re using this comet as a library that picked up records and stored them far from the sun at very low temperatures for 4.5 billion years.
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Virtually all of the atoms in our bodies and in the Earth were in interstellar grains - stardust grains - before the solar system formed. We're using this comet as a library that picked up records of the formation of our solar system, and has been storing them far from the sun at very low temperatures for four and a half billion years.
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The community is real jazzed about it. People all over the world, using all kinds of fantastic instruments and new techniques, are ready. We've got the best people signed up to do the analyses,
samples universe
When you have the samples in hand, it's a whole different universe.
comet expect fully older particles
We fully expect some of the comet particles to be older than the sun.
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At this point in time, we're absolutely thrilled. It's totally remarkable to have a fully successful mission. Of all the things that could go wrong either in space or even scientifically, none of the bad things happened and everything really exceeded our wildest expectations.
backward chance low
What was the chance someone would put a g-switch in backward and not be discovered, ... It has got to be a low probability event.
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We're approaching the end of a fantastic voyage. This is the farthest anything from Earth has traveled and come back. Soon we'll be able to examine the building blocks that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
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It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success. We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones.
huge
It exceeds all expectations. It's a huge success.
exceeded grandest larger million particles
It exceeded all of our grandest expectations. We should have more than 1 million particles larger than 1 micron in diameter.
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Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice. We've found samples from the coldest part of the solar system that have mineral grains formed under extremely high temperatures.
fire found remarkably
Remarkably enough, we have found fire and ice.
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Last Sunday, after seven years in space traveling nearly three billion miles, Stardust landed in the Great Salt Lake Desert with a treasure from when the solar system formed 4.6 billion years ago. We should have more than one million particles larger than one micron in diameter.