What is astronomers' dust. It begins with Newton's concept of a fine dust dust that permeated all space. It arose as a consequence of an absurdity as understood by Newton. How could the gravitational force, action at a distance,  be transmitted through the empty vacuum of space? He surmised it couldn't and proposed an "atomic" solution. Space itself was filled with an extremely fine dust that filled all space between planets and stars that did not impede the flow of matter through it. There was no inertial impedance to the flow of matter particles.

Matter these days is baryonic stuff made up ultimately of the first generation or flavour of fractionally charged quarks, with charge exactly balanced by electrons to build the basic building blocks of matter we call elements or atoms.

Astronomers' dust is a generic term. Were one to take a variety of meteorites, grind them up and sort them into individual piles of grains of various mesh sizes we might expect the following abbreviated list.
Silicate grains, aluminosilicates, iron spicules and iron oxides, predominantly reduced ferrous and low ferric oxides, carbonates, elemental carbon, graphite, abiogenic organic carbon polymers, poly aromatics (PAH's), water ices with ammonia. The carbon moities are endless, literally thousands of species from methanol and hydrocarbons to amino acids to even porphyrins and panspermian bacteria and virii , while we await RNA or DNA. It's huge list and every member is made up of baryobnic fermions.

 All astronomers' dust and its temperature in the interstellar environment is based upon spectrometric analysis from  photons which are bosons that are the carrier force in interactions between these atoms or molecules. Infrared analysis aims to identify the species responsible for rotational and vibrational spectra within galaxies as gas clouds or interstellar dust components with broad poorly resolved spectra. Astronomers' dust is neither homogenous nor isotropic. We observe it countless times as dustlanes. In the vicinity of starforming regions we expect it to be hot, and in old star regions, cold. The heat is transported by bosons, the photon of the standard model. As a carrier of the interaction or force we can not contemplate a universe made up solely of photons at any temperature. At ultra high energies Weinberg considered the baryonic matter content of the early universe as a contaminant or trace, then only 4 baryons per cubic metre, whereas the photon numerosity was ca. 1 billion fold greater; a huge numerical ratio which he could never satisfactorily explain; baryonic dust was insufficient to thermalise radiation and account for this ridiculous ratio. 

Galametz et al (MNRAS 2012) Mapping the cold dust temperatures and masses of nearby Kingfish
galaxies with Herschel  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.1301v2.pdf
 note a worrying implication on page 14 I would characterise as a major problem for baryonic dust

On the contrary, the
grand-design spiral NGC 628 or bulge-less objects like NGC 3621
or NGC 7793 show cold dust temperatures that are homogenous
throughout the structure of the galaxies. The fact that the cold
dust temperature distribution does not seem to correlate with any
dust heating source (neither star forming regions, nor old stellar
populations or radius) within the galaxies is worrying and ques-
tions the use of a free beta factor in the model, at least for this type of galaxy

Although not cited in this paper Hwang et al  "Evolution of Dust Temperature of Galaxies through
Cosmic Time as seen by Herschel"   2010  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.1058v1.pdf
faced the same quandary, their figures 2-4  page 4 onwards.

Out to z=1 and for comparison galactic abundances tail off rapidly past z=2 for the four ultradeep surveys , the detailed sample coverage includes interacting ones and AGN's the astronomers' dust appears homogenous with dust temperatures within the limit 20-40 Kelvin with outliers in the AGN Goods survey to 50 Kelvin, whereas IR luminosities cover a three orders of magnitude variation. I would hazard a guess that dust types haven't changed in 6 billion years but that the absolute magnitude of dust mass has been increasing  ie. astronomers' metallicities have increased. Yet there must be astronomers' dust because we observe the dustlanes that are not homogenous and not isotropic and yes there is a great range of dust temperatures in our immediate locale. Yet such dust is not a far more fundemental neutrino dust that operates much like Newton's concept of extremely fine dust. It could conceivably represent baryonic atomic matter I mentioned three years ago in the DM thread. Such dark atoms  up 27 fold greater size than atoms carried only 1/3 charge of the atoms we know of and would have provided rotational excitations in the IR at 30 fold longer wavelengths.  Such dm candidates were abandoned in favour of neutrino dust with low rest masses.

What then is Neutrino dust? First of all the neutrino is a fundamental fermion, one could argue it is more fundamental than the charged lepton or quarks in that it lacks a charge, simpler stuff by one quantum number. Flip Tonedo posted this brilliant post over on quantum diaries-
http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/06/19/helicity-chirality-mass-and-the-higgs/  "Helicity, Chirality, Mass, and the Higgs". It is worth reading several times because it took Flip many attempts at editing to finally get it right, with a lot of help from the readership.

Remember particles are created in pairs, particles and antiparticles and are equiabundant with photons at their pair production temperatures. The only sm fermion with rest mass with an unrecognised pair production temperature are neutrinos. The antimatter particle to matter particle begin with eg. Flip's electron and positron. Forget the Higgs which is relish to the story which is not a fermion yet again has conceptually a pair production temperature associated with its production in a hot enough bath of photons. From conservation laws we expect one photon with sufficient energy per particle or two fold for the particle pair; a simple small number and not a 10⁹/1 ratio.

Chemists have known about helicity and chirality for six generations. For the particle physicist little more than a generation of erudition has passed. In the mid 1960's biochemists and chemists had always attempted to separate gooey mixes of optically active molecules into pure fractions and gooey fractions by definition aren't pure. Enzymes would be employed to selectively remove say right handed species, the result was the enzymes would self digest themselves and results were usually notoriously bad, full of lysed enzymes. With the advance of high resolution gas liquid chromatography on chiral liquid phases, chiral because we had formed them by total synthesis from optically pure amino acids, we were able to separate such LH and RH forms. Some gluey goooes thought to be pure from good melting point and derivative tests, contained three or four chemically different forms, notably triterpenoids. Much simpler were the protein amino acids. Leucine has two forms. Isoleucine had two known forms until two new forms were observed to be present in equilibrium mixes, denoted alloisoleucine as a left handed and a right handed form. By convention these other forms were called allo, meaning other without any preconceived idea what " other" meant than a chemically different form. There were four forms and not two. Of course, we knew structurally exactly what they were. The term mirror would imply it was a mirror reflection, which it was because we knew beforehand what the structure actually was.

The particle physicist hasn't got or lived with that luxury yet- which is why I stick to  chemical nomenclature or alloneutrinos. When I say neutrino I really mean the more long winded neutrino and antineutrino pair. When I write alloneutrino it refers to the ensemble that the physicist has yet to recognise. There are twice as many neutrinos that are yet known in the physics philosophy, Marni's mirror set, yet to a chemist it's necessary and old relish! Of course the chiral sm consorts with only one of thes forms; the rest one may correctly associate with dark matter, but two of these unrecognised forms are alloneutrinos. Why should I be so arrogant about it. Because if I am wrong the cmb temperature would be 5.45 Kelvin and not precisely to great accuracy 2.725Kelvin. Why is the cmb radiation at that temperature? The simple answer is a hidden assumption. It happens to be a precise temperature on a cooling curve that so happens to be what it is because our era is the here and now after 13.7 billion years of evolution. It has to have a temperature along the cooling curve but how hot was it initially; the Planck temperature perhaps just prior to one correct inflation model. Or was there a temperature limit at 10¹⁶Kelvin. Also if it went out of equilibrium so early and is relic radiation why did it retain its thermodynamic profile for so long? The Big Bang retains many ad hoc assumptions even with inflation. Had measurements reported 5, 10 , 15 Kelvin the self same story would have become ingrained.

Neutrinos now have rest mass , an ultra low rest mass, a cumulative mass of ~0.06eV from three flavours and the implications are truly enormous to cosmology, so much so that like the Phlogiston theory that was a physicist's theory can be safely binned with BB theory and the origin of the cmb radiation. The cmb radiation is not relic radiation at all; it is the result of photon  neutrino pair production; it is what space is, what the vacuum represents- a fine mist of granular, a neutino fine dust moiety of Compton grains 1.06mm diameter , more spherical cows:). Of course chemist's love allo forms of moities that are not spherical cows and neither I expect are alloneutrinos simply preonic cows either. Unlike atoms we don't see them yet.

Marni again has reported on the dilemma yesterday. http://arcadianomegafunctor.blogspot.co.nz/

In all modesty we don't care to cite our joint vixra paper from 2010, nobody else does bar a few. Nevertheless, we did predict the creation annihilation temperatures for the suite or neutrino ensemble of three flavours, 2.725 Kelvin for the cosmic cmb and at higher densities, where the second flavour ensembles are created, at homogenous and isotropic ~21 Kelvin. So why is the spread to 50 Kelvin or 0.021eV equivalent? One may bitch about the eigenflavour values that contribute to the discrete eigenstatemasses but there is now little controversy re- the bound at 0.060eV for cumulative neutrino masses of the three flavours, 1/3 of that measure.

 "Graham keeps telling us that MINOS had their chance and blew it. Probably he is right, but a poor theorist has to put some trust in the data".

Of course as scientists we have to trust data, that's the whole point of the method and there's no point reciting it any more. The Astronomical Implications thread might now as well be a dead parrot.

 I spent some time, several days with a squad of British army officers, in Andalusia, on my recent visit there. I befriended a dwarf green parrot that cared to dwell on the window eaves  adjacent to the cottage. It made a horrendous racket when I first approached but by day four, and after many tiny morsels of food Alexander became tame. All the time I whispered to it "What's your name" and " You are mortal". I had to leave before it risked my shoulder as a perch. Rather than being right too often they all agreed I was politely, they are all politically correct these days, eccentric rather than absolutely bonkers. One shouldn't bet on the likelihood of an inside straight, but when one is dealt it, there's no option but to bet the farm. The best thing Minos can do is fill in the mineshaft from the inside . I grew to love that little parrot. I know nothing about parrot gender of course but I hope it survives and finds a mate. It had a mate since all parrots come in pairs too. It's mate simply went missing just before I arrived. That's life, riding high in April shot down in May.

A man went to an auction. He saw an exotic green dwarf parrot pair. The prat wanted a male bird, nobody wanted both birds, so he bid. He kept bidding, but was always outbid. He refused to stop. He finally won. The bird was his! He paid for the parrot and said to the auctioneer,

"I  hope he talks. I'd hate to pay all this for a dumb parrot"

"Of course his mate can talk," said the auctioneer. "Who do you think bid against you?"



Just watched the Jim al -Khalili programme "Order and Disorder" on BBC 4-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ynyl7

A very basic exposition on the development of thermodynamics. The first 10 minutes was totally wasted on Leibnitz's contribution; although a great mathematician his philosophic meanderings unlike Kit Marlowe contributed zero to the development of these concepts. Likewise Newton. They spent so much time hating each others guts in Latin that they might have contributed something worthwhile. Oops- I forgot Newton's law of cooling and his fine dust. The most meaningful contribution was by that famous Physical Chemist, Peter Atkins. I still have an old dog eared and tatty copy of his book "Physical Chemistry" Oxford University Press, 1978, that has never been bettered, perhaps a slight exaggeration. It's a pity he wasn't given half an hour more air time. The last ten minutes, while the universe is grinding itself down to total disorder and diffuse heat death, there's a plug for nuclear fusion. Back in 1968 a commercial hydrogen fusion plant was a 30 year distant goal. Infact the whole history of commercial fusion was always t_o plus 30 years. However, last week it was revised to t_o plus 50 years, and that's entropy for you. When you look at that million mile boiling cauldren of fusion we call our solar orb, with its occasional violent mass ejecta of ionic storms, you can well imagine why a small office block sized Tokomak keeps shorting to the walls.

dS/dt >= 0 isn't so pessimistic for the future of the cosmos as Jim makes out. Things do happen at constant entropy all the time. Jim neglects to point out that this expanding universe is on a one way journey to a diluted cold almost nothingness that contravenes the second law of thermodynamics, that's if you believe it. Overall it's worth watching for the sole reason he never raises the anthropic disorder "if it wasn't for .... we wouldn't exist/be here".

 Carnot and Boltzman, both academic giants had hard lives with much tragedy and mental torture, in large part afflicted by their peers. That's Nature or life Jim, depressing and degrading stuff for some, that's what entropy is all about while the cosmos spins around Tiger Bay , riding high in April, cut down in May.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUnhUcy-iNo  should place it in context.

Arsenic substituting for phosphorous?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9385769/Nasa-scientists-claim-about-new-form-of-bacterial-life-disproved.html

The Christian life Monitor has the story better covered perhaps.

Now you can't blame Nasa as the funders. If it were true? re- extraterrestrial life....

Wait on. Arsenic is like sulphur in its chemical properties, a group 6 element. We all know it's toxic "Arsenic and old Lace". There are several amino acids that incorporate S and N with a broad class of compounds we called thiols, pyrroles and always a great laugh in our organic chemistry laboratory courses, arsoles. Another great riposte to the question "Name me the six sugars, Sir" was to quote five of them with the correct suffix -nose and then, then hesitate and add  "fucknose Sir", early 60's repertory. Phosphorous is group 5 and is represented by that phosphodiester linkage , the so called "high energy bond" to a sugar eg. D ribose from one of the nitrogenous bases. You can't replace P by A_s . The absolutely amazing thing going on here for phosphorous is that the element as phosphate or fluoro phosphate is the most insoluble salt of all salts. In igneous rocks it occurs as apatite. You can finely grind apatite and shake it in water for months but you can never dissolve it to get more than 1 ppm in solution. It's a miracle as to how a cell manages to absorb phosphate. The joke years ago about the Alien's molecular acid was it wouldn't have touched an apatite floor. The exobiologists have spent entire careers attempting to solvate phosphate.

What kind of galaxy is this? from Weird and wonderful, first mentioned by BeamMeUp on August 24th 2007, and 5 other posts the day following.
Well it's ngc 4424

http://cas.sdss.org/astro/en/tools/explore/obj.asp?id=587734892219203600

almost five years before a type 1a supernova blew up this month. Uitzoomen voor for the whole of the Virgo cluster
http://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2012/sn2012cg.html
reported by  onze Nederlandse vriend Jan in Zooites and cosmic pictures pp89, 2012.

Hi Guys.....I know the Moon is "king" in this part of the GZ-universe.....but..ah...can I join in.....in Monty Python style....."with something completely different"?? As It has been just wonderful weather in the land of Cloggs and tulips for the past seven days or more I (and many more astrophotographers) have been out there under stars almost every night catching photons of faraway galaxies like a mad(J)man. One of my dutch astro-friends pointed out to me a brandnew supernova within reach of the average amateur telescope that had just popped up near (in) a galaxy  in the Virgo cluster. OK...this galaxy NGC 4424 at a distance of 33 million lightyears is definitely not a very spectacular one....I even angrily and wrongly threw away the images of my first attempt because I thought it wasn't there.......with  the supernova nevertheless in plain sight....grrrrr. But..ah...never to old to learn as thet say my second attempt went well. Compared to  bleak NGC 4424 that single exploding star really outshines that whole galaxy big time....wouldn't want sit on some planet with such a havoc-creating thing going off in just round the corner, but ah...from a safe distance of 33 m. lightyears I find it quite enjoyable!! The image was made with my 8 inch Newt. with a Canon 1000 D at its prime focus (120 cm/F6).....10 two minute exposures ( and a few dark frames and flatfields of course) were stacked were combined with Deep sky stacker to compose this single image. In the field also visible a few other members of the Virgocluster being NGC 4410 and NGC 4411.

* NGC 4424 supernova kopie.jpg (366.62 kB, 900x600 - viewed 19 times.)

May 30th 2012



courtesy Lick Observatory Supernova Search from the above link.

Live webcast today 1700-1800 today, Thurs 17th May Bristol UK
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=191133

Here's a research topic that has remained dormant for 50 years. Today's APOD shows a schematic of the Earth's water content.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120515.html


Planetary chemistry is topical these days, a consequence of all of those extrasolar discoveries. Infact planets are so superabundant that some speculations infer that cold dark matter content or machos may be all that is needed to account for its universal abundance.

Berkner and Marshall in the late '50's were the first to address the origins of the Earth's atmospheres and oceans. The heydays of interest coincided with the Nasa lunar programme. Where did the Earth's water content come from and what were the parameters that controlled the Earth's oxidation/reduction state? As for the composition as a whole, how did it compare with the solar abundances of metals and meteoritic compositions? By the late 80's this multidisciplinary field withered. Some element abundances are too poorly known, geochemical abundances are in error margins of +- 25%.

The APOD sphere of water is 700,000 metre radius. Intrigued, I thought I would check it out. The sphere volume and density unity, neglecting pressure corrections, represents a mass of water of 1.44*10²⁴gram. For comparison and I'll not give the detail, the mass of our crust comes in at 2.22*10²⁵gram, known to some accuracy ~5%. I was pleasantly shocked but why? APOD must have selected those old staunch geochemists' data, Mason, Holland and Kruiskopf from the 60's.
 
It's not so easy to get reliable water data. Thus, there's the Earth's rivers and lakes, polar ice caps and mountain snow for starters. Of course the major repository is the  oceans, average water depth ca. 12,000ft. Nevertheless, there's rock water content as porosity and permeability in sedimentary rocks to consider. Finally, how much water goes down subduction zones and is this balanced by steam in volcanic emissions that forms new crust in mid ocean ridges ?

In the early 70's after much discussion with the old guard geochemists I came to the opinion that we could account for no more than 1.48*10²⁴ gram water. This included the latest French data that ca. 10% water resided in the subduction volumes and rock porosities. By comparison the mass of the Earth is very close to 6.0*10²⁷ gram. Now there's no point in naming names but the new guard, who survived on Nasa grants (90% of all scientists indiectly , devised the "dirty snowball" origin of the Earth's water content. In brief, this was a dodgy and suspicious concept then and now it is still is. However, most readers with some knowledge of the space sciences and media have been brought subsequently to accept this concept at face value. Where does the Earth's water content come from? Answer , early impacts with cometary material, dirty ice. That's not to say some water accreted this way but how much? The dirty snowball concept ignores initial conditions. For the Earth as a whole we might say its rocky composition reflects approximately meoritic and asteroid compositions, similar to solar abundances, less H and He. Of course there has been much fractionations in meteorite compositions so we select stony iron types for the bulk composition. The Earth's mass for instance has a 36%-37% pure Fe abundance by mass. For the differentiated crust Fe content is remarkably constant. For igneous, eg. granite and metamorphic crust schists Fe contents are negligible to low. New ocean crust is very uniform. 8.3% to 8.6% Fe by mass. The Earth is as a whole anhydrous, igneous crustal rocks are anhydrous at depth.

The initial conditions for water content depend upon accretion temperatures. The  Earth accrete hot or cold. We all have this picture of a glowing Earth following the precursor moon in collision, a mega astrobleme. All the primitive atmosphere is blown away. We know independtly from isotope studies that the Earth lost its primitive atmosphere. All the noble gases, that's helium, neon, ³⁶argon, krypton up to partially zenon are gone. The new guard promoted an anhydrous Earth option. Thus, initial conditions are irrelevant. The Earth could have any range of water content dependent upon just how much cometary dark ice was available. Venus and Mars had their complement but this was lost by excessive heat and/or photolysis with loss of hydrogen. By contrast the old guard favoured a cold/warm accretion to preserve water as hydrates in the early crust. Mars appeared waterless to the consternation of Nasa. Martian exploration depended upon establishing that water was still there. Infact they adopted our hydrate idea. Calcium chloride hydrate CaCI₂ . 2H₂O and Fe(OH)₃. 5H₂O or simply rust, can be vacced down to 10mm pressure and still hang on to its chelated water. Since then there is new data that reveals actual visual geological evidence for lakes, fans and rivers. Of course its provenance is as you guessed from dirty ice.

Now since the atomic mass of water or molecular mass is 18 we calculate that the APOD water abundance represents 8.0 *10²² moles. Physicists may not like the mole or Avergadro's number but for chemists and geochemists/cosmochemists it is mana from heaven or el mana del desierto as the Murcianos proclaim. In my youth, in the early 70's, I proclaimed that this was the initial condition. We knew there were 1.7 *10²²moles of Fe as FeII and FeIII in the crust, resident in basalts as the reduced form that has lost 2 electrons but which oxidises to FeIII ( for astronomers add an extra strike). I'll not get into relevant oxidation/reduction or redox potentials for elements. There are few elements that are relevant. Thus, manganes is only 1% the abundance of iron. Calcium,  as abundant as iron displays only one oxidation state as does magnesium.

Water abundance is closely related to iron abundance in the crust and to its oxidation state. The molar ratios of water to iron in the crust is 8.0/1.7 or 4.7. From the dodgy dirty ice model this value could be anything. Infact it closely approximates the composition of plain rust! I wrote at the time that even Gay Lussac or Lavoisier could have worked this out, it's simple stoichiometry. "Nonsense- you could lose head let alone your grant". The dirty snowball concept survives to this day. There could be a huge amount of water at depth in the Earth, despite what the gecochemists and petrologists claimed. The new guard were productive. Soon even carbon succumbed despite a similar and simple stoichiometry. Vast deposits of diamond were claimed below 100 km depth, all cometary precursors.

It's comforting to know that APOD somehow selected the old guard database. Maybe Nasa will correct them and expand the radius threefold.

Great life for some but at my age I deserve it. Twice as much UV radiation here as in the UK; for those thinking of installing solar panels think again muchachos. Easier to get to than Bill's Kitts Peak. Outstanding sky and of Venus setting over the monastery. My third visit here, Julia's second. We were here in 2006 but I made a pilgrimage here in 1963!. In a British 3 tonne army lorry when I was 18.7 yr of age. Things have changed drastically but not the surrounds of the square at Monistrol below the monastery. We are staying at the town's hostal; it's new but I knew their grandad who set up Hostal Guilleumes. The village is exceptionally quiet after Easter week with lots of rain. Not anymore, traditional weather like New Mexico-eat your hearts out. Temporary problem in that the place is booked up over the weekend. I was first here, before most were born infact so they are doing their best to accommodate us.

 Actually seeing Venus set over a great lump of granite is no big deal but I'll try a photo shot soonest. Superb climbs here too but my joints aren't up to it anymore. We had a good meal tonight in the village but we really came for one particular bodega that was closed-aargh!!. Fortunately the owner came down as I was trying to break in. Tomorrow it's open , 7 until midnight; the later the better. Monistrol cava flows from the taps here.

Free wifi at the hostal- hog heaven infact. Total independence for Catalonia in the village; I did my best but couldn't convince them. No supernovae tonight fortunately, just the tranquil silence of Venus.