Michael Zolensky
Michael Zolensky
cold common formed implies people several shock stuff
That's a big surprise. People thought comets would just be cold stuff that formed out ... where things are very cold. It was kind of a shock to not just find one but several of these, which implies they are pretty common in the comet.
early formed materials mixture near places remote seems sun
It seems that comets are...a mixture of materials formed at all temperatures, at places very near the early sun and at places very remote from it.
atoms basically came delivered earth minerals molecules perhaps rocks samples small water
They are very small rocks, but they are rocks nonetheless. And what do these minerals tell us about how these grains form? We think that much of the Earth's water and organics ... perhaps came from comets. So what will these samples tell us about basically where our atoms and molecules came from and then how they were delivered to Earth and in what amount?
disposal studied
I was 8 years old. We studied wastewater disposal and planets.
asteroid mystery question raises
It raises a question of why we still see zoning in the asteroid belt. It is a big mystery now. It's kind of really exciting.
exactly opened
But we opened the tray, and everything went exactly right. It's fabulous.
qualified samples wants
By this week, more than 200 samples will be circulating. Everyone who wants one, and who is qualified to do the analysis, will have one.
coming information quickly
You'll see a lot of information coming out quickly from these samples.
time
We had a long time to come up with all of the things that could go wrong.
catching days exactly job opened pleased time worried
We were really worried about that and got more and more worried as time went by. So when we opened the tray just two days ago in the lab, we were pleased to find that everything went exactly right -- just fabulous. We couldn't have done a better job catching these particles.
arrived atoms bodies formed learn materials trying water
We are trying to learn more about comets to see what the first materials were like or how water arrived on Earth. It's important because all the atoms in our bodies were formed from the stars.
collectors covered maybe open
We thought maybe the collectors wouldn't open properly, or maybe they would be covered with gunk from the spacecraft.
explode large might pass
We thought we might be able to see grains if they were large enough, but we really didn't know what would happen. They might just disintegrate and explode or pass all the way through.
few study tiny
There are so few of them and they are so tiny that we have little idea how to study them today.