CSOLOGO1 CSOLOGO2One of the CSO's discoveries was covered in "Birth of the Oceans" of National Geographic Channel.   


   National Geographic Channel, Naked Science, covered a discovery at the CSO toward
understanding where the water on the Earth comes from, in one of their episodes entitled
"Birth of the Oceans".  To obtain a hint on the origin of the Earth's oceans, Dr. Darek
Lis, a senior research associate in Physics at Caltech, led a series of observations at the CSO
using one of the heterodyne receivers.  From the observations using the CSO telescope,
researchers successfully detected a line of of heavy water (or deuterated water) and
measured the ratio of heavy water in a comet.  The result was that the comet Hyakutake
contains a very high ratio of the heavy water compared to the ratio of the heavy water on
the Earth.  This result, together with other observational results, implies that the origin of
the Earth's water is not mainly from  the water in comets which came from outer parts of
our Solar system.
  You can find the full story of "Birth of the Oceans" in the National Geographic Channel
Naked Science.  The program was aired on the 5th of March 2009. 




Figure 1.    Spectrum of the HDO (heavy water) in Comet Hyakutake (c/1996 B2) at 464.925 GHz
(Lis et al. 1996; Bockelee-Morvan, Gautier, Lis, Young, Keene, Phillips, Owen, Crovisler, Goldsmith,
Bergin, Despois, and Wootten 1998
). 
Excellent weather together with CSO's sensitive heterodyne
system and the telescope were essential to the detection of the heavy water line. 


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