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On July 4, NASA’s “Deep Impact” probe will perform an intriguing experiment with Comet Tempel 1: It will hurl a 820-pound weight into the surface of the comet, then stand back and observe what weird stuff comes flying off the surface. Cool enough, but what I particularly like is that NASA is following its recent trend of creating incredibly cool animations for its space missions. It’s put a little movie online illustrating what the Deep Impact smashfest would look like if you were out there in space watching it. As they note:
The resulting collision between comet and impactor will likely punch a crater, anywhere from the size of a Sport Utility Vehicle to a football stadium, into the comet’s nucleus. Before, during and after impact, the flyby spacecraft wil be observing events from a safe distance, imaging the crater formation and resulting ejecta.
The video has a gorgeously eerie beauty: The backlighting on the comet and the ejecta creates a creepy sense of isolation and distance — you really feel like you’re floating millions of miles out in space, with the sun only a distance influence.
It makes me wish that NASA would produce some video games using this aesthetic. Imagine a little game where you could fly the mission in different ways: Increasing or decreasing the mass of the impact-weight, speeding up the pace at which it hits the comet, or tweaking its angle. Then you could record whatever cool stuff happens as a little video to post online. It’d be like The Sims, except with astrophysics!
(Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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