From 100433.1541@compuserve.com Sun Jun 1 10:11:06 1997 Date: 01 Jun 97 06:49:21 EDT From: Chris Tinsley <100433.1541@compuserve.com> Reply-To: vortex-l@eskimo.com To: vortex Subject: Mini comets Resent-Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 03:50:57 -0700 Resent-From: vortex-l@eskimo.com To:Vortex [I like the bit about Nature's "representative poll"] "Ice cubes from space prove the scoffers wrong" [Robert Matthews, Sunday Telegraph June 1st 1997, P16] MANY scientists are having to eat humble pie this weekend, following the revelation that the Earth is constantly pelted by cosmic snowballs the size of houses. And not before time either, as these same scientists have spent a decade disparaging Dr Louis Frank of Iowa University for his refusal to bow to orthodoxy and deny the evidence of his own eyes. That evidence first emerged in 1982, when a student of Dr Frank's was analysing images of the Earth sent back by two Nasa satellites. To the student's frustration, many of the images were spoiled by tiny black dots. At first sight, they appeared to be faulty data, but careful study revealed that they behaved far too regularly to be dismissed as random flaws. Instead, they appeared to be tiny comet-like objects that were striking the atmosphere at the rate of one every three seconds, each dumping tons of water on to the Earth, For a few years, other researchers showed no more than polite interest in Frank's claims when they were mentioned at conferences. It was when he tried to get his research published in academic journals that Frank discovered the fate that awaits those who make radical claims in science. The leading journal Nature rejected his claims, saying that "a representative poll" had been taken of experts in the field and they had voted against publication. Frank's attempts to answer his critics with fresh evidence by using major telescopes were met with obstruction and footdragging, with astronomers insisting that the enterprise was a waste of time. When Frank did succeed in getting access to a telescope, it revealed objects streaking across the atmosphere at 20,000 mph -- as he had predieted. It made no difference: the findings were still rejected for publication. Now, after 10 years of obstruction and ridicule, it is Frank's turn to laugh. Cameras he designed aboard Nasa's Polar spacecraft have revealed the existence of the small comets beyond all doubt. Spectacular images taken by the cameras show the comets streaking into the atmosphere before dumping their water. They arrive at the rate of about one every three seconds -- just as Frank had claimed. Frank himself has always been surprisingly sanguine about the controversy, apparently taking the view that "truth will out". But there is no getting around the fact that many scientists have taken a woefully unscientific approach to the whole issue. While extraordinary claims must demand extraordinary evidence, the reluctance of many to consider Frank's evidence was matched only by their keenness to block his attempts to gather more. Frank's experiences in this quintessentially Strange but True story are far from unique. The whole issue of bombardment by cosmic debris is one that has always been dogged by mule-like intransigence dressed up as academic rigour. Until the early 19th century, anyone claiming to have seen stones falling out of the sky was regarded as having had a few beers too many; the French Academy of Sciences even declared such claims to be a scientific absurdity. When hundreds of stones were reported to have smashed on to the French village of L'Aigle in 1803, the Academy dispatched a young astronomer to debunk the story. He returned with bad news: the reports were correct. Everyone now accepts the existence of meteorites but the confirmation came too late to save hundreds of specimens from being unceremoniously thrown out of museums as "superstitious artefacts" The now widely-accepted theory that a huge meteor struck the Earth 65 million years ago, pushing the dinosaurs into extinction, also came in for at least as much abuse as the idea of microcomets when it was originally proposed. When the late Nobel Prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his team first published their evidence for the giant impact in 1980, one authority described it as "a nutty theory of pseudoscientists posing as paleontologists". Today it is the nutters who argue against it. There is one aspect of the Earth bombardment issue that remains a source of incredulity among many scientists: the idea that humanity is under serious threat from meteor impacts. The sceptics are still demanding hard evidence for this threat. We can only hope that the "hard evidence" doesn't come in the form of a billion-tonne meteor any time soon. [end]