Alright, let's talk about space. Again. Because apparently, while we're down here stressing about our thanksgiving weather forecast snow storm and whether "ultra processed foods" are slowly killing us, NASA and ESA are busy playing cosmic peek-a-boo with a comet. And yeah, I get it, pretty pictures and all that. But honestly, sometimes I wonder if these agencies are just finding new, incredibly expensive ways to distract us from the fact that we still haven't figured out how to make a decent meal that isn't ultra-processed, let alone colonize Mars.
So, the latest shiny object in the sky is this interstellar comet, 3I/ATLAS. Big deal, right? Except it went behind the Sun, meaning our Earth-bound telescopes, even the fancy space ones, couldn't see it. Cue the dramatic music! Suddenly, it's a scramble, a "new task" for MAVEN, NASA's Mars orbiter, which usually just chills out studying the Red Planet's atmosphere. Like, "Hey MAVEN, drop what you're doing, there's a celebrity comet hiding from the paparazzi, go get us some pics!" And offcourse, our European buddies at ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter joined the party too, because why not? More cameras, more angles, more "refining trajectory" – whatever that means in plain English.
They got their shots, of course they did. MAVEN, with its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) camera, apparently snapped "incredible" high-resolution ultraviolet images. Shannon Curry, MAVEN’s principal investigator, practically gushed, "The images MAVEN captured truly are incredible... The detections we are seeing are significant, and we have only scraped the surface of our analysis." See that? "Scraped the surface." That's classic scientist-speak for "we're not entirely sure what we're looking at yet, but it's definitely important, so keep the funding coming."
They're all excited because they identified hydrogen. Hydrogen! The most abundant element in the universe. It's like finding water in the ocean, then declaring you've "scraped the surface" of understanding marine life. But wait, there's more! They also found hydroxyl (OH) gas, which is a "chemical fingerprint of water." Amazing. So, a comet has water. Shocker. I mean, what did they expect, a giant space-pickle? This isn't just about a comet. No, it's about the endless pursuit of... well, what exactly? More data? More papers? Another reason to justify billions in space exploration while some of us can't even get decent internet without selling a kidney. Maybe I'm just too jaded, but sometimes it feels like we're just collecting cosmic Pokémon.
Justin Deighan, MAVEN’s deputy principal investigator, even said, "There was a lot of adrenaline when we saw what we’d captured." Adrenaline? For hydrogen? I get more adrenaline trying to figure out if my local grocery store actually has organic kale in stock. Let's be real, this "adrenaline" is probably more about the prestige of being the first to point a space camera at a hidden rock than it is about some groundbreaking revelation that's going to change life on Earth.
They're talking about the ratio of deuterium to regular hydrogen, and how it can help scientists learn about the comet's "origin and evolution." Fine. Fascinating for the folks in lab coats, I guess. But what's the tangible takeaway for us? Are we suddenly going to get cheaper gas because we know where some distant space rock came from? Or maybe a cure for... I don't know, boredom? They even managed to distinguish the comet's hydrogen from Martian hydrogen and "interplanetary hydrogen." Good for them. That's a neat trick, like separating individual grains of sand on a beach. Impressive, sure, but what's the actual point? Is this going to help us understand why politicians like Cherfilus McCormick keep making headlines for all the wrong reasons, or finally get us those Helldivers Warbond Python Commandos? I doubt it.
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