Minnesota State University, Mankato Physics & Astronomy faculty member Russell Palma had a crucial role in the discovery of a new mineral that was found in the upper reaches of the atmosphere and apparently came from a comet.
Palma is a member of a team of NASA researchers from the United States, Germany and Japan who found the new mineral, a manganese silicide named Brownleeite. NASA announced the discovery last week.
“This is the kind of information that will show up in textbooks in the coming years,” Palma said. It is the first new mineral that is traceable to a comet, he added.
Brownleeite was found in an interplanetary dust particle that appears to have originated from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. The comet was discovered in 1902 and reappears every five years.
For many years Palma has collaborated with Johnson Space Center scientists in Houston, Texas, studying interplanetary dust particles.
Several years ago Johnson space scientist Scott Messenger predicted that dust grains from 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup could be captured in Earth’s stratosphere when the comet passed near the Earth at low speed. In April 2003 NASA used an ER-2 high-altitude aircraft to collect particles from the comet’s stream.
In 2004 Palma examined some of the miniscule particles with highly sensitive instruments, and was surprised to find that they contained helium and neon gas. He forwarded his findings to other members of the team, who examined the particles with a powerful new transmission electron microscope that revealed the new mineral.
“Scott was excited that my results supported his prediction,” Palma said.
The 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup particles are only the second set known to be from a specific comet (the other set, collected by NASA’s Stardust Mission, are from comet Wild 2).
“Samples from comets are crucial to modern theories of solar system formation, since they are relics from that time,” Palma said. “Information on the composition of the materials from which the solar system formed allows us to better understand the subsequent evolution of various solar system bodies.”
The Brownleeite discovery team is headed by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, another Johnson space scientist and wife of Scott Messenger. Other members include Palma; John Jones, a Johnson scientist; Simon Clemett and Michael Zolensky of Johnson’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate; Robert Pepin, University of Minnesota; Wolfgang Klöck, Röntgenanalytik Messtechnik GmbH, Germany; and Hirokazu Tatsuoka, Shizuoka University, Japan.
Palma also is a member of NASA’s Stardust Mission Team, investigating the interplanetary dust particles collected from comet Wild 2 in 2004.
Palma came to Minnesota State Mankato in 2004 after 24 years as a physics faculty member at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. For eight of those years he chaired the Sam Houston State Department of Physics. He also is an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Minnesota, and has served as a senior research associate at Texas A&M University in College Station, a research physicist at the University of California-San Diego (La Jolla), an associate professor at Butler University in Indianapolis, Ind., and a research associate at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
Palma earned his Bachelor of Science degree in astrophysics, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Indiana University in Bloomington, and his master’s and doctorate in space physics and astronomy from Rice University.
More information about the new discovery can be found on the NASA Web site at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/jun/HQ_08143_comet_dust.html
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