"That time was four-and-a-half thousand billion years ago, back when the Solar System formed; so what we hope to know from these particles is essentially what the Solar System looked like at that time, and essentially what we're all made of.
I think someone was trying to remember the difference between traditional British and American number scales, and tripped up. To BEFORE... THE BEGINNING... OF TIME!!!
Back when Professor Don Brownlee was competing to get the NASA grant (there was a competition among some 7 different projects for a cheap (~$200 million including rocket) space mission) for Stardust, I was actually in his class at UW, Astro 321, which was basically covering orbits, planets, and interplanetary and interstellar crap. Later I worked for him, grading his papers. Now he's one of the big names in Astrobiology, and has a couple books out on it. Really nice guy, too. Pretty cool to be in the vicinity when someone gets their spaceship idea green-lighted by NASA, so I've been paying particular attention to this one, and I'm glad the flight part ended well.
Take note that scanning the aerogel for the captured particles (http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/10_dust.shtml) will be taken on by BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/), Berkeley's distributed-computing project that's currently supporting SETI@HOME and several similar projects; so if you want to use your PC^H^Hpersonal computer's spare cycles to participate, then install BOINC and keep an eye out for the start of the project, which will follow the scan of the aerogel containers. With BOINC you can split your computer's time among several projects in proportions of your own choosing.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 03:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 05:34 pm (UTC)I think someone was trying to remember the difference between traditional British and American number scales, and tripped up. To BEFORE... THE BEGINNING... OF TIME!!!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-15 08:28 pm (UTC)Take note that scanning the aerogel for the captured particles (http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/01/10_dust.shtml) will be taken on by BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/), Berkeley's distributed-computing project that's currently supporting SETI@HOME and several similar projects; so if you want to use your PC^H^Hpersonal computer's spare cycles to participate, then install BOINC and keep an eye out for the start of the project, which will follow the scan of the aerogel containers. With BOINC you can split your computer's time among several projects in proportions of your own choosing.