By: David Morrison

Following are 3 articles on Fred Whipple, who has just died at the age of 97; also Clark Chapman on the Erice meeting on Planetary Emergencies, and Leon Jaroff on Tunguska silliness.

FRED L. WHIPPLE (1907-2004)

Boston Globe 31 August 2004

Fred Lawrence Whipple, considered the world's foremost authority on comets, died yesterday in Cambridge. He was 97.

For more than seven decades, Dr. Whipple worked at Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, which he helped move to Cambridge from Washington, D.C. From his observations, his research, his inventions, and his enthusiasm for determining how things work, the picture of the heavens became much clearer to astronomers and lay folks alike.

"He's the grand old man of comets," Carolyn Shoemaker told The Boston Globe in 1996. Shoemaker, with her husband, Eugene, discovered more than 30 comets. "He's my hero," her husband added. "Our relationship is that of hero and acolyte."

Before Dr. Whipple's work, astronomers thought of comets as loose collections of dust and vapor packed into a missile through gravity. In 1950, he argued otherwise. "The older theory was nonsense," he told the Globe decades later. A comet, he said, consists of "a dirty snowball" of ice, ammonia, methane, and carbon dioxide as its core, with a gossamer tail of particles that broke off from the core.

His conceptual leap, said Brian G. Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, "was one of the most important contributions to solar system studies" in the 20th century.

Dr. Whipple's research also helped detail the behavior and motion of a comet. As a comet approaches the sun, he said, the star's heat would turn part of the comet's icy core into jets of explosive vapors, which would propel the comet along its trajectory. The explanation made it easier to track comets and predict their paths. Photographs later showed that the tails were actually the explosive gases detailed by Dr. Whipple.

Dr. Whipple's contributions extended beyond his theories on comets. He has been credited, for example, with determining that the source of meteors is our solar system, not far-flung stars. He also was a leading proponent of the theory that life on Earth came from comets -- embedded with the building blocks of life -- that crashed onto a barren landscape. "If there weren't comets, we wouldn't exist," he said.

Yet many of his contributions went beyond theory and had direct practical benefits: During World War II, the Harvard research group he oversaw took a simple solution to a deadly problem: how German radar stations tracked and targeted Allied bombers. His solution was to cut large sheets of aluminum foil into tiny slices, which the bombers would drop as they approached the radar stations. The result, of what we know today as "chaff," was confusion and misreadings by the radar.

He [helped to create] one of the world's premier observatories, the Multiple Mirror Telescope in Arizona, [based on] of a new type of telescope that used six large mirrors to focus the light into a single camera, magnifying the telescope's capabilities. [This instrument was subsequently designated the Fred L. Whipple Observatory.]

He was credited with creating the first space telescope, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, which was launched in 1968. Beset by a mechanical malfunction, the telescope nonetheless led the way for the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. "Fred had the vision very early about a telescope in space," Eugene Shoemaker said. "He was talking about this before there was a NASA."

A decade before the first launch of a satellite, he invented a device that shields spacecraft from meteors and other interplanetary projectiles. Dubbed "the Whipple shield," these bumpers are thin layers of metal that are placed a few inches out from the spacecraft's hull and they absorb most of an impact of the striking junk. The shield, which he created in 1946, [recently played a critical role in the successful close flyby of Comet Wild 2 by the Stardust spacecraft.]

"I'm an engineer at heart," Dr. Whipple said. "I've been able to judge what instruments will work and what can be built. That's been the secret to my success."

The man fellow rocket scientists dubbed "Doctor Comet" grew up on a farm in Iowa. As a teenager, he moved to California with his family, working as a clerk in his father's grocery store. He majored in mathematics and received his degree in that field from the University of California at Los Angeles before declaring that math was too boring. Astronomy, for him, held more than one world of possibilities.

His background in math and logarithms, however, served as the foundation for his work finding, tracking, and predicting the path of comets. In 1931, after earning a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, he came to Cambridge, becoming the program director for the Harvard College Observatory. He began teaching at Harvard University the following year.

In 1955, he became director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, a position he held until 1973, when it was merged with the Harvard College Observatory to create the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In large part due to his vigor and talent, the center is today considered one of the world's top centers for astronomical research.

Although he formally retired from Harvard in 1977, he continued his research at the astrophysics center. Until a few years ago, he would daily ride his bike the 3 miles from his home in Belmont to the center's offices. Dr. Whipple leaves his wife, Babette; a son, Earle; and two daughters, Sandra and Laura. ©Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

ITHACA, N.Y. -- At 92 years of age, Fred Whipple, the noted Harvard astronomer who fathered the phrase "dirty snowball" to describe comets, has been named to serve on a NASA space mission team. He is joining the agency's Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour), scheduled for launch in 2002. [This mission later failed upon launch.]

Whipple is the oldest researcher ever to accept an active role in a NASA space science mission. Previously, the oldest researcher known to actively work on a NASA mission was James Van Allen, the physicist who discovered the Van Allen belts, who worked on the Galileo Mission to Jupiter at the age of 83.

"Fred is the most venerable cometary scientist in the world," says Joseph F. Veverka, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal scientific investigator on the comet mission. "He will add a reservoir of wisdom and experience to the Contour team. There isn't a scientist working this field who is unaware of Whipple's work in the study of comets."

As a student at Occidental College in California, Whipple worked as a store clerk who accompanied customers as they made buying decisions and added up their purchases in his head. Armed with this mathematical talent, Whipple became a math major and then later earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was awarded his doctoral degree in astronomy by the University of California at Berkeley.

Whipple then headed east to Harvard, where his first job was to inspect sky survey photographic plates, making sure the telescopic camera was accurate. To alleviate the tedium, Whipple looked for comets in the photographic negatives. He found six. In March 1950, in a seminal paper on comet nuclei published in the Astrophysical Journal, Whipple theorized that the gases comets pour out as they travel around the sun come from the icy shroud of the cometary nucleus. Solar rays heat the water ice, releasing the water as gas. This so-called gas gives comet watchers on Earth views of beautiful, sweeping comet tails. Because of the water ice and other cosmic debris packed into a comet, Whipple coined the term "dirty snowball."

In 1955, Whipple became the director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), in a small headquarters behind the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C., and helped move the SAO to its present location in Cambridge, Mass. Today, the SAO is part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the center's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Amado, Ariz., bears his name.

Whipple has crossed career paths with many astronomical giants. He was the first man to hire a young Carl Sagan for the faculty at Harvard, before Sagan joined the Cornell faculty. And Veverka, the chair of Cornell's astronomy department, was Whipple's last graduate student at Harvard.

Raised on an Iowa farm, Fred Whipple graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and then helped compute the first orbit of newly-discovered Pluto while a graduate student under Armin O. Leuschner at the University of California at Berkeley. Whipple worked at Harvard University from 1931 to 1977, and directed the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1955 to 1973. He was one of the leaders in the 1973 merger of the SAO with Harvard College Observatory to form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

In the 1930s, using a new, two-station method of photography, he determined meteor trajectories and found that nearly all visible meteors are made up of fragile material from comets, and that none can be shown to come from beyond the solar system. The project also yielded valuable information about the upper atmosphere, and the cameras were later used to track artificial satellites. In 1950 Whipple proposed the dirty snowball model for comet nuclei. He suggested that comets have icy cores inside thin insulating layers of dirt, and that jets of material ejected as a result of solar heating were the cause of orbital changes. This model was confirmed in 1986 when spacecraft flew past comet Halley. Whipples work on tracking artificial satellites led to improved knowledge of the shape of the earth and greatly improved positions on earth. Whipple has also studied comet rotation and published several books on the solar system.

Major Awards

Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Bruce Medal, 1986. American Astronomical Society, H.N. Russell Lectureship, 1987. National Academy of Sciences, J. Lawrence Smith Medal, 1949. Meteoritical Society, Frederick C. Leonard Memorial Medal,1970. Royal Astronomical Society, Gold medal, 1983. Named after him: Minor planet 1940 Whipple.

For addtional information on Whipple see http://www.astrobio.net/news/article1166.html

Clark R. Chapman
SWRI, Boulder, CO

The most recent asteroid defense meeting was held in the "Science City" of Erice, a medieval town perched 2,400 feet above the Mediterranean in western Sicily. The meeting, the 32nd annual International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, also dealt the work of a newly resuscitated "Permanent Monitoring Panel on Cosmic Objects," as well as with equivalent monitoring panels concerned with other threats facing modern society.

Erice is today only faintly reminiscent of my first trip (11 years ago) to the cobblestone streets that wend their way among the refurbished churches and cloisters that comprise the Ettore Majorana Centre of the World Federation of Scientists. Then, in spring of 1993, a rather large group of scientists -- including the indomitable Edward Teller -- debated issues concerning the impact hazard -- the first international meeting on this subject. I remember the nearly empty streets then and the absence of physicist Antonino Zichichi, who had created this science center in the 1960s to ponder the perils of nuclear war. An express purpose of Zichichi's had always been to bring international scientists to the remote town in order to keep it economically alive. The revitalization of the town has apparently been a dramatic success: the streets teemed with tourists, many of whom now choose Erice as the hub for their day-trips to the sights of western Sicily. For the first time in the history of the Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, it was arranged that all the participants dine together every evening at a single, pre-determined restaurant (which changed from evening to evening). Evidently, during the last few years it had become increasingly difficult for the participants to find tables at restaurants overcrowded with tourists. Among the dignitaries attending our meetings were Prof. Zichichi, the Italian Minister of Finance, and the Mayor of Erice.

The hundred-or-so conferees from over thirty countries discussed various planetary emergencies in three days of plenary seminars, including issues of migration, global warming, water, bioterrorism, brain diseases (e.g. "mad-cow" disease)...and cosmic objects. It was an uncommonly impressive group of international speakers and discussants, including Nobel prize-winners, ambassadors, and scholars. Zichichi dominated the proceedings, enforcing time limits on speakers but allowing discussions to go on literally for hours past the deadlines. He spoke enthusiastically about his plans for Institutes for Climatology and for Cosmic Objects.

The Cosmic Objects PMP met in ancient, vaulted rooms under the leadership of Walter Huebner. Rather than proceeding with the recommendations of the 2001 group to develop a master database on everything connected with NEOs, the group shifted focus and accepted the charge from Zichichi to write, within 24 hours, a proposal to him (and the Finance Minister) for a NEO Center at Erice. By the time that task was completed, we had only one day left for presentations, which included talks by Al Harris (DLR) on the ESA selection of Don Quixote as the next prospective small-body mission, by Ray Goldstein on seismic studies of NEOs, by Ali Safaeinili on the tomography experiment of the proposed Deep Interior NEO mission, by Mario DiMartino on transient phenomena, by Rusty Schweickart on B612 issues, and by myself on matters arising from the February AIAA meeting on Planetary Defense.

One of the more surreal aspects of the meeting was the Cosmic Objects "press conference", held on the upstairs veranda of the Blackett Institute (San Domenico Monastery), which magnificently overlooks the mountains and sea below. I was the first to be questioned, and immediately the issue of "telephoning President Bush" arose from the misleading press reports of last January. I made very declarative statements discounting the story, but to no avail: the next day's "La Repubblica" (one of Italy's major national newspapers) carried a full "interview" with me, including my picture, strongly implying that I had nearly phoned Bush. Apparently a "good story" assumes a life of its own, independent of the truth.

The conferees debated the relative importance of bioterrorism threats vs. HIV-AIDS and of energy/water/global warming in comparative isolation. One wonders, with some skepticism, what insights achieved in Erice might be carried forth into the practical world by the conferees? Perhaps Erice will continue to be a venue for discussing the dangers of NEA's. While the impact hazard surely presents a much lower probability threat than some of the other topics discussed in Erice (e.g. AIDS, or inadequate fresh water), our topic had a very respectful hearing among influential scholars and policy makers from many nations.

Leon Jaroff
TIME, 26 August 2004

Amazingly, some people still believe the devastating Siberian event [Tunguska 1908] was caused by space aliens. If any people are more gullible about Unidentified Flying Objects than Americans, it's the Russians. And if any group of professionals is more gullible than Russians about UFOs, it's the journalists. This truism was confirmed again this month when, around the world, wire services and other press outlets straight-facedly reported a new claim that a UFO had been involved in the great Tunguska catastrophe.

Tunguska? That's the then-uninhabited region in Siberia where in 1908 a mammoth explosion leveled and charred trees and killed wildlife over an area of 800 square miles. That night in northern Europe and western Russia, the skies glowed with an eerie light and in London, for example, it was light enough outside to read a newspaper. The lone human being in the area, a trapper living near the periphery of the blast, was blown off the porch of his shack, but survived. Had the explosion occurred over London, say, or New York, the casualties would have been counted in the hundreds of thousands.

Most scientists today believe that the Tunguska event was caused by an asteroid or a comet that heated so rapidly upon plunging into the atmosphere that it blew up some five miles above the surface with an explosive force of 10 to 15 megatons. But that conclusion is far too rational for Russians like scientist Yuri Lavbin, who heads the Tunguska Space Phenomenon public state fund. It was Lavbin who in July announced that he would lead an expedition to Siberia and stated, "We intend to find proof that not a meteorite but an extraterrestrial spaceship crashed with the Earth."

Some might suggest that Lavbin was predisposed to making a remarkable discovery. And that is precisely what happened. A Russian scientific team headed by Lavbin scoured the Tunguska site early in August and breathlessly announced that it had found the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, in the form of a large metallic block. After sending a 50 kilogram chunk of the block to a laboratory for testing, Lavbin chose not to await the results. "I can make an official announcement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization," he proclaimed. "They exploded this enormous meteorite headed toward us with tremendous speed. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last."

His announcement was greeted by loud raspberries from reputable scientists. Interviewed by Space.com, British researcher Benny Peiser, who runs the CCNet website, a scholarly forum devoted largely to asteroid impacts and other potential natural threats, called the Russian report "a rather stupid hoax." He was equally critical of the press: "It's a rather sad comment on the current state of anything-goes attitudes among some science correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported."

All this came as no surprise to science writer James Oberg. In his 1982 book, "UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries," he had traced the origins of the Russian Tunguska UFO obsession to a science fiction writer named Kazantsev, who wrote a story attributing the mighty blast to an exploding nuclear power plant of a spaceship from Mars. Other Russians took the bait. Astronomy lecturer Feliks Zigel, who was also a flying saucer enthusiast, became a spokesman for the "spaceship" theory of Tunguska, and a scientist named Aleksey Zolotov began claiming, almost annually but without proof, that he had found radioactivity at the blast site.

Oberg predicted that the Tunguska spacecraft story, in various forms, would endure and that gullible members of the press would continue to be hoodwinked by Russian UFOlogists. More than two decades later, his prediction stands unchallenged.