ALBERT

Description: A two-step semidirect procedure is developed to accelerate the one-step procedure described in NASA TP-2529. For a set of constant coefficient model problems, the acceleration factor increases from 1 to 2 as the one-step procedure convergence rate decreases from + infinity to 0. It is also shown numerically that the two-step procedure can substantially accelerate the convergence of the numerical solution of many partial differential equations (PDE's) with variable coefficients.

Description: Comets are believed to retain some interstellar materials, stored in fairly pristine conditions since-their formation. The composition and properties of cometary dust grains should reflect those of grains in the outer part of the protosolar nebula which, at least in part, were inherited from the presolar molecular cloud. However, infrared emission features in comets differ from their interstellar counterparts. These differences imply processing of interstellar material on its way to incorporation in comets, but C and N appear to be retained. Overall dust evolution from the interstellar medium (ISM) to planetary materials is accompanied by an increase in proportion of complex organics and a decrease in pure carbon phases. The composition of cometary dust grains was measured in situ during fly-by missions to comet Halley in 1986. The mass spectra of about 5000 cometary dust grains with masses of 5 x 10(exp -17) - 5 x 10(exp -12) g provide data about the presence and relative abundances of the major elements H, C, N, O,Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, Cr, Fe, Ni. The bulk abundances of major rock-forming elements integrated over all spectra were found to be solar within a factor of 2, while the volatile elements H, C, N, O in dust are depleted in respect to their total cosmic abundances. The abundances of C and N in comet dust are much closer to interstellar than to meteoritic and are higher than those of dust in the diffuse ISM. In dense molecular clouds dust grains are covered by icy mantles, the average composition of which is estimated to be H:C:N:O = 96:14:1:34. Up to 40% of elemental C and O may be sequestered in mantles. If we use this upper limit to add H, C, N and O as icy mantle material to the abundances residing in dust in the diffuse ISM, then the resulting values for H. C, and N match cometary abundances. Thus, ice mantles undergoing chemical evolution on grains in the dense ISM appear to have been transformed into less volatile and more complex organic residues wherein the H, C and N are largely retained and ultimately accreted in cometary dust. The abundance of O is about the same for cometary dust, meteorites and interstellar dust. In all these samples, most of O in a solid phase is bonded to silicates. In dense molecular clouds, the abundance of O in dust+mantles is significantly higher then in cometary dust. This difference may reflect the greater lability of oxygenated species toward astrophysical processing. Laboratory studies show that O-bearing functional groups in organic compounds tend to be relatively easily removed by heating and/or UV and particle irradiation . In Halley's coma, O-containing organic grains, being unstable, were located closest to the nucleus. The decomposition of the organic grain component in the coma provided a significant extended source contribution to O-containing gaseous species such as CO and H2CO.

Description: The method of space-time conservation element and solution element is a nontraditional numerical method designed from a physicist's perspective, i.e., its development is based more on physics than numerics. It uses only the simplest approximation techniques and yet is capable of generating nearly perfect solutions for a 2-D shock reflection problem used by Helen Yee and others. In addition to providing an overall view of the new method, we introduce a new concept in the design of implicit schemes, and use it to construct a highly accurate solver for a convection-diffusion equation. It is shown that, in the inviscid case, this new scheme becomes explicit and its amplification factors are identical to those of the Leapfrog scheme. On the other hand, in the pure diffusion case, its principal amplification factor becomes the amplification factor of the Crank-Nicolson scheme.

Description: Organic sulfonates and phosphonates have been extracted from the Murchison meteorite for stable isotope measurements. Preliminary stable isotope measurements of individual alkyl sulfonates, R-SO3H (R=C(sub n)H(sub 2n+l)), are shown. These compounds were found in aqueous extracts of Murchison. Both groups show trends similar to other homologous series of organic compounds indigenous to Murchison. Molecular abundances decrease with increasing carbon number, and all possible isomers at each carbon number (through C-4) are present. Carbon isotope measurements of the sulfonates show a decrease in the C-13/C-12 ratio with increasing carbon number. The overall objectives of this project are to obtain dime element carbon, hydrogen, and sulfur - intramolecular isotopic analyses of individual sulfonates, and isotopic measurement of carbon and hydrogen of the phosphonates as a group. The Murchison meteorite is the best characterized carbonaceous chondrite with respect to organic chemistry. The finding of organic sulfonates and phosphonates in Murchison is of interest because they are the first well-characterized series of sulfur and phosphorus containing organic compounds found in meteorites. Also, meteorites, comets, and interplanetary dust particles may have been involved in chemical evolution on the early Earth. Because of the critical role of organic phosphorus and sulfur in all living systems, it is particularly interesting to see examples of abiotic syntheses of these classes of compounds. The study of the isotopic composition of the sulfonates and phosphonates can yield insight into their possible interstellar origin as well as their mechanisms of synthesis in the early solar system. Previous isotopic analyses of other classes of organic compounds indigenous to meteorites, e.g., amino acids, carboxylic acids, and hydrocarbons indicate the possibility that interstellar molecules were incorporated into meteorite parent bodies. In these compounds the ratios of heavy to light isotopes of hydrogen (D/H), carbon (C-13/C-12), and nitrogen (N-15/N-14), are anomalous relative to bulk terrestrial and meteoritic values. In some cases, the D/H ratios approach those observed for molecules in interstellar clouds.

Description: Photolysis experiments were performed on the H2-CD4-NH3 and He-CD4-NH3 systems. The photolysis (1849 A) involved only NH3. Mixtures of H2:CD4:NH3 included all combinations of the ratios (200,400,800):(10,20,40):4. Two He:CD4:NH3 mixtures were examined where the ratios equalled the combinations 100:(10,20):4. Abstraction of a D from CD4 by the photolytically produced hot hydrogen from ammonia was monitored by mass spectrometric determination of HD. Both experiment and semiempirical hot-atom theory show that H2 is a very poor thermalizer of hot hydrogens with excess kinetic energy of about 2 eV. Applications of the hard-sphere collision model to the H2-CD4-NH3 system resulted in predicted ratios of net HD production to NH3 decomposition that were two orders of magnitude smaller than the experimental ratios. On the other hand, helium is found to be a very efficient thermalizer; here, the classical model yields reasonable agreement with experiments. Application of a semiempirical hot-atom program gave quantitative agreement with experiment for either system.