Measurement of the inertial constants of a rigid or flexible structure of arbitrary share through a vibration test

The inertial constants of an aircraft rocket, or of any other structure, are defined without materializing any rotating axis. The necessary equipment is very similar to that used normally for ground vibration tests. An elastic suspension is used to obtain the total natural modes corresponding to the motions of the structure as a solid. From the measurements of the generalized masses of these modes it is possible to compute the inertial constants: (1) center of inertia; (2) tensor of inertia; and (3) mass. When the structure is not strictly rigid a purification process, based on the mean square method makes it possible to rigidify it at the price of some approximations and a few more measurements. Eventual additional masses, that are not parts of the structure, can be taken into account

Oxygen isotopic composition of chondritic interplanetary dust particles: A genetic link between carbonaceous chondrites and comets

Oxygen isotopes were measured in four chondritic hydrated interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) and five chondritic anhydrous IDPs including two GEMS-rich particles (Glass embedded with metal and sulfides) by a combination of high precision and high lateral resolution ion microprobe techniques. All IDPs have isotopic compositions tightly clustered around that of solar system planetary materials. Hydrated IDPs have mass-fractionated oxygen isotopic compositions similar to those of CI and CM carbonaceous chondrites, consistent with hydration of initially anhydrous protosolar dust. Anhydrous IDPs have small 16O excesses and depletions similar to those of carbonaceous chondrites, the largest 16O variations being hosted by the two GEMS-rich IDPs. Coarse-grained forsteritic olivine and enstatite in anhydrous IDPs are isotopically similar to their counterparts in comet Wild 2 and in chondrules suggesting a high temperature inner solar system origin. The small variations in the 16O content of GEMS-rich IDPs suggest that most GEMS either do not preserve a record of interstellar processes or the initial interstellar dust is not 16O-rich as expected by self-shielding models, although a larger dataset is required to verify these conclusions. Together with other chemical and mineralogical indicators, O isotopes show that the parent-bodies of carbonaceous chondrites, of chondritic IDPs, of most Antarctic micrometeorites, and comet Wild 2 belong to a single family of objects of carbonaceous chondrite chemical affinity as distinct from ordinary, enstatite, K- and R-chondrites. Comparison with astronomical observations thus suggests a chemical continuum of objects including main belt and outer solar system asteroids such as C-type, P-type and D-type asteroids, Trojans and Centaurs as well as short-period comets and other Kuiper Belt Objects

G0^0 Electronics and Data Acquisition (Forward-Angle Measurements)

The G$^0$ parity-violation experiment at Jefferson Lab (Newport News, VA) is designed to determine the contribution of strange/anti-strange quark pairs to the intrinsic properties of the proton. In the forward-angle part of the experiment, the asymmetry in the cross section was measured for $\vec{e}p$ elastic scattering by counting the recoil protons corresponding to the two beam-helicity states. Due to the high accuracy required on the asymmetry, the G$^0$ experiment was based on a custom experimental setup with its own associated electronics and data acquisition (DAQ) system. Highly specialized time-encoding electronics provided time-of-flight spectra for each detector for each helicity state. More conventional electronics was used for monitoring (mainly FastBus). The time-encoding electronics and the DAQ system have been designed to handle events at a mean rate of 2 MHz per detector with low deadtime and to minimize helicity-correlated systematic errors. In this paper, we outline the general architecture and the main features of the electronics and the DAQ system dedicated to G$^0$ forward-angle measurements.Comment: 35 pages. 17 figures. This article is to be submitted to NIM section A. It has been written with Latex using \documentclass{elsart}. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment In Press (2007

Ultracarbonaceous Antarctic micrometeorites recovered from snow at the Dome C - CONCORDIA station.

第6回極域科学シンポジウム[OA] 南極隕石11月17日（火）　国立国語研究所 2階 講

A Fluorescent Aerogel for Capture and Identification of Interplanetary and Interstellar Dust

Contemporary interstellar dust has never been analyzed in the laboratory, despite its obvious astronomical importance and its potential as a probe of stellar nucleosynthesis and galactic chemical evolution. Here we report the discovery of a novel fluorescent aerogel which is capable of capturing hypervelocity dust grains and passively recording their kinetic energies. An array of these "calorimetric" aerogel collectors in low earth orbit would lead to the capture and identification of large numbers of interstellar dust grains.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, to appear in The Astrophysical Journa

Thermal Processing of Silicate Dust in the Solar Nebula: Clues from Primitive Chondrite Matrices

The most abundant matrix minerals in chondritic meteorites, hydrated phyllosilicates and ferrous olivine crystals, formed predominantly in asteroids during fluid-assisted metamorphism. We infer that they formed from minerals present in three less altered carbonaceous chondrites that have silicate matrices composed largely of micrometer- and nanometer-sized grains of crystalline forsterite, Mg2SiO4, and enstatite MgSiO3, and amorphous, ferromagnesian silicate. Compositional and structural features of enstatite and forsterite suggest that they formed as condensates that cooled below 1300 K at \~1000 K/h. Most amorphous silicates are likely to be solar nebula condensates also, as matrix, which is approximately solar in composition, is unlikely to be a mixture of genetically unrelated materials with different compositions. Since chondrules cooled at 10-1000 K/h, and matrix and chondrules are chemically complementary, most matrix silicates probably formed close to chondrules in transient heating events. Shock heating is favored as nebular shocks capable of melting millimeter-sized aggregates vaporize dust. The crystalline and amorphous silicates in the primitive chondrite matrices share many characteristic features with silicates in chondritic interplanetary dust particles suggesting that most of the crystalline silicates and possibly some amorphous silicates in the interplanetary dust particles are also nebular condensates. Except for small amounts of refractory oxides that formed with Ca-Al-rich inclusions at the inner edge of the disk and presolar dust, most of the crystalline silicate dust that accreted into chondritic asteroids and long-period comets appears to have formed from shock heating at ~2-10 AU. Forsterite crystals around young stars may have a similar origin.Comment: 16 page

On the origin and evolution of the material in 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

International audiencePrimitive objects like comets hold important information on the material that formed our solar system. Several comets have been visited by spacecraft and many more have been observed through Earth- and space-based telescopes. Still our understanding remains limited. Molecular abundances in comets have been shown to be similar to interstellar ices and thus indicate that common processes and conditions were involved in their formation. The samples returned by the Stardust mission to comet Wild 2 showed that the bulk refractory material was processed by high temperatures in the vicinity of the early sun. The recent Rosetta mission acquired a wealth of new data on the composition of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (hereafter 67P/C-G) and complemented earlier observations of other comets. The isotopic, elemental, and molecular abundances of the volatile, semi-volatile, and refractory phases brought many new insights into the origin and processing of the incorporated material. The emerging picture after Rosetta is that at least part of the volatile material was formed before the solar system and that cometary nuclei agglomerated over a wide range of heliocentric distances, different from where they are found today. Deviations from bulk solar system abundances indicate that the material was not fully homogenized at the location of comet formation, despite the radial mixing implied by the Stardust results. Post-formation evolution of the material might play an important role, which further complicates the picture. This paper discusses these major findings of the Rosetta mission with respect to the origin of the material and puts them in the context of what we know from other comets and solar system objects

A far-ultraviolet-driven photoevaporation flow observed in a protoplanetary disk.

Most low-mass stars form in stellar clusters that also contain massive stars, which are sources of far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation. Theoretical models predict that this FUV radiation produces photodissociation regions (PDRs) on the surfaces of protoplanetary disks around low-mass stars, which affects planet formation within the disks. We report James Webb Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter Array observations of a FUV-irradiated protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula. Emission lines are detected from the PDR; modeling their kinematics and excitation allowed us to constrain the physical conditions within the gas. We quantified the mass-loss rate induced by the FUV irradiation and found that it is sufficient to remove gas from the disk in less than a million years. This is rapid enough to affect giant planet formation in the disk