"Kindeny bean shaped"
The "kidney bean", so named because......
A pair of astronomers have managed to find water in an asteroid sample mined from the rocky remnant Itokawa, a type of asteroid previously thought to be bone dry. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, paid Itokawa a visit with its Hayabusa probe in 2005. The kidney bean shaped asteroid measures 1,800 feet long and 700 to 1,000 feet …
Gas mark? Shirley that should be "Thermostats" now that you lot have gone with teh French metrics. That would be 40ish to 80ish Th. by my calculations.
Got the wood-fired pizza oven cranking ... should be up to Regulo 26ish by tea time.
No, it really isn't. Science is all about experimentation and confirmation. Stony asteroids were considered to be devoid of water, but not proven to be.
Science likes proof when it can get it, and this was the perfect opportunity to verify the hypothesis.
Now we know that stony asteroids can have water. Science is advancing.
It's worth mentioning a lesson from history. Don't ask me for a source, it's merely a vague memory.
Once upon a time, somebody found water in an unexpected scientific context, extraterrestrial meteorite or similar. All sorts of detailed theories were proposed to explain the origin of this bizarre primordial water. Later, with further analysis, they also noted traces of chlorine and just a hint of fluoride. "Oh, it's tap water. Somebody must have washed the sample in a sink."
I presume that they've taken extraordinary precautions this time.
"Oh, it's tap water. Somebody must have washed the sample in a sink."
There's a similar story about the labs where Rutherford did all his famous atom smashing - even after substantial cleanups aimed at removing any remaining radioactive nasties (where nothing was found) there were still statistically significant levels of illnesses and cancers amongst people working in the buildings. It was eventually traced to the labs' prior use for chemistry - specifically, mercury (from dropped samples and broken thermometers) had gotten into the cracks between the floorboards, soaked into the wood and oxidised over time, releasing enough vapour into the air to cause problems (and that's why you should never work in offices that happen to be converted old science classrooms)