The Electric Comet theory

[tusenfem]

So, today I am on my way to the 6th Alfven Conference in London.
There I will present (preliminary) results of something that I think cannot happen in EC.

Vega1 and Giotto flew by Comet 1P/Halley, only 8 days apart, and almost along the same path. Comparing the magnetic field data for mirror mode waves (could not find a wiki page, but for an explanation see e.g. the paper by my student: Mirror mode structures near Venus and Comet P/Halley (Ann. Geophys., open access).

I found that there is a strong difference between the flybys, and the only thing that is significant in difference between the two flybys is that the water outgassing dropped by a factor 3 between the two.

Now, nothing really changed in the solar wind, so how does EC explain the sudden decrease in outgassing, observed from the ground and evident in the magnetic data through a decrease of mirror mode structures, as less new water ions are picked up?

 

[Reality Check]

Haig, is 3.0 different from 0.6

A theory of Electric Comets requires an Electric Universe.

No, Haig: A theory of Electric Comets requires a knowledge of basic arithmetic which the EU proponents do not have !
A theory of Electric Comets requires a knowledge of basic science which the EU proponents do not have.
Electric comets still do not exist! (26th August 2013)

A theory of Electric Comets requires a an actual theory not a fairy story that Thunderbolts then lies about:
The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions.

Seeing that the Electric Universe is woo requires basic reading comprehension and a little knowledge of science, e.g.
Thank you Haig for demonstrating just how ignorant the posters in that thread on Thunderbolts are,
Haig, if you want to see many cases of delusional thinking and ignorance from an EU "expert" often citing other EU "experts" then have a look at the Thunderbolts picture of the day blog
Siggy_G and the invalid ideas that electrons are spinning charges, the B field of electromagnetic fields is different from other B fields, etc.

Seeing that the Electric Universe proponents are ignorance about science all you need to do is look at the list of speakers at their 2014 conference - basically a collection of woo merchants such as Dr. Pierre-Marie Robitaille.
and
Haig (30th June 2014): Why do EU supporters continue to claim that astronomers ignore E fields, etc.?

 

[Reality Check]

Solar System Shift

Hey, Haig: The act of citing a crank YouTube video channel continues as if you had the idea that we are going to continue wasting our time looking at the already seen to be bad videos there !
We can see the difference between propaganda or delusions from a YouTube video maker and real science.

 

[Reality Check]

The Vacuum Catastrophe - Zero-Point Energy

Yes we can explain that video, Haig: It is a ignorant, crank YouTube video like many other ignorant, crank videos on YouTube !
But I will emphasize the insanity and irrelevance of that citation from you, Haig. This is just a rather ignorant rant about quantum fluctuations (virtual particles) that turns into a rant about dark energy
* a delusional link to the (explained!) Voyager anomaly.
* wow - the Casmir effect!
* now dark energy - the QM and GR predictions for vacuum energy are different by a really big amount!
* a derail into climate change denial myths.
* the delusion that science relies on the ability to "see all, know all, measure all".

 

[tusenfem]

Waiting for my trip to London (my flight was overbooked) just a quick calculation.
If the water on comets is obtained like the water that was found on the surface of the moon, i.e. interaction of protons with the regolith, creating water then ...

assuming 67P is 4 km² and the solar wind velocity is 350 km/s and a proton density of 4 per cc, then (assuming no bow shock, no magnetic pile up, no plasma flow around the comet etc.) a total of 8x10¹⁸ protons hit the surface of the nucleus. That means that every proton will have to create a staggering 10¹⁷ water molecules !!!

 

[tusenfem]

Two days into the #Alfven2014 meeting, still no evidence of electric comets

 

[Haig]

Two days into the #Alfven2014 meeting, still no evidence of electric comets

Is there any evidence of electric asteroids there at the meeting?

If NASA can look into the electrical environment around asteroids maybe you should ask the #Alfven2014 meeting about the electrical environment around comets?

If not why not?

 

[tusenfem]

Just found, through another pointless EC discussion elsewhere, the link to the NASA story about electric environment of astroids. Interestingly, the maximum electric field is only 3 V/m, the Earth's fair weather electric field is about 100 V/m (just to put things in perspective). There is nothing special here. Naturally, a current can flow if a astronaut is tethered to a (charged) satellite, but IMHO the current driven by the solar wind magnetic field flowing by could be much more important, depending on the lenght of the tether.

I won't bother my friends and colleagues with the nonsense in the second link of yours. Several are aware of this nonsense, nobody has ever obtained a sensible answer from an EU/ES/EC proponent.

Just like my other discussion, I just get stuff thrown at me, that I then have to read, and understand what the guy is trying to tell me with that, but a real model I do not get. Although he seems to be a little more versed in physics than Haig, but interpretes any observation in any convoluted way to fit into his twisted view of reality.

By the way: 67P has a shape now:http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/07/10/the-three-faces-of-rosettas-comet/

 

[Dancing David]

Is there any evidence of electric asteroids there at the meeting?

If NASA can look into the electrical environment around asteroids maybe you should ask the #Alfven2014 meeting about the electrical environment around comets?

If not why not?

So is 3 v/M enough to make a rock glow Haig, second time I am asking.

 

[tusenfem]

For those interested, the Zimmerman et al. (2014) paper can be downloaded for free.

 

[Haig]

I won't bother my friends and colleagues with the nonsense in the second link of yours. Several are aware of this nonsense, nobody has ever obtained a sensible answer from an EU/ES/EC proponent.

Of course you can tusenfem. Discusing comets is allowed and if electric asteroids moving through the solar wind is a valid topic then "why not electric comets" ??? After all they move through the solar wind too

See this quote ...

6th Alfven Conference

this conference will explore our understanding of plasma interactions with comets, Mars, Venus, and inner and outer solar system moons. We will explore the processes which characterise the interactions such as ion pickup and field draping, and their effects such as plasma escape. Data from current and recent space missions, modelling and theory are all encouraged, as we explore our local part of the 'plasma universe'.

In 1957 Hannes Alfvén wrote a paper "On the theory of comet tails" Maybe you can get access to it and make it available here?

It's on the very long list of papers by him HERE

Did you know he is regarded as the father of the Electric Universe / Plasma Cosmology ?

Here are a couple of central papers by Hannes Alfven, related to Plasma Cosmology:

http://plasmauniverse.info/downloads/CosmologyAlfven.pdf
http://www.plasmauniverse.info/downloads/ModelOfTPU_Alfven.pdf

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Of course you can tusenfem. Discusing comets is allowed and if electric asteroids moving through the solar wind is a valid topic then "why not electric comets" ??? After all they move through the solar wind too

See this quote ...

6th Alfven Conference

In 1957 Hannes Alfvén wrote a paper "On the theory of comet tails" Maybe you can get access to it and make it available here?

It's on the very long list of papers by him HERE

Did you know he is regarded as the father of the Electric Universe / Plasma Cosmology ?

Here are a couple of central papers by Hannes Alfven, related to Plasma Cosmology:

http://plasmauniverse.info/downloads/CosmologyAlfven.pdf
http://www.plasmauniverse.info/downloads/ModelOfTPU_Alfven.pdf

Spamming in the purest tradition of EU trolls eh Haig?

The High Priests of the EU never tire of repeating the lie that Hannes Alfvén is the father of the EU. The EU is anti-science; for all his disagreements with his contemporary scientists, Alfvén was a scientist.

It is much closer to reality to say he was the father of Plasma Cosmology (PC). And there's nothing anti-science about PC: leading proponents have published papers in relevant, peer-reviewed journals, conferences held, etc. However, the overwhelming body of hard, quantitative evidence points to PC being a very poor model of observable (and observed) reality.

But why not stop the trolling for just one post, Haig? Why not post you own, independent analyses of some relevant subset of the freely available data, using what you see as the best EU or PC models? Or, even simpler, why don't you even try to answer some of the many questions you've been asked over the years?

Why do you persist in proving you are nothing but a spam troll?

 

[tusenfem]

Of course you can tusenfem. Discusing comets is allowed and if electric asteroids moving through the solar wind is a valid topic then "why not electric comets" ??? After all they move through the solar wind too

Probably nobody is disputing that the cometary nucleus can have a charge. Indeed, that was a concern for the moon landings and even for the lander Philae onto 67P, where even small discharges could damage the delicate internal electronics, because of a charge imbalance between the probe and the nucleus.

HOWEVER, realizing that there can be a charge is still a long way away from claiming that there is EDM creating water on the comet. Indeed, you keep on failing to obtain ligitimate papers from your EU "scientific" advisors describing how they want to produce those 2 glasses of water per second.

Don't you think we deserve to see this mold-breaking model for water production at comets?

See this quote ...

6th Alfven Conference

Yes, I know that about the conference, and indeed we do a lot of physics here with the solar wind and unmagnetized bodies. And we even discuss *gasp* electric currents and electric fields!

In 1957 Hannes Alfvén wrote a paper "On the theory of comet tails" Maybe you can get access to it and make it available here?

Naturally, I have that paper, but I cannot upload it, because it is too big for JREF. However, a quick google tells you that you can download it here.

Did you know he is regarded as the father of the Electric Universe / Plasma Cosmology ?

Yes I know many people claim that, but unfortunately, the always fail to actually use the theories of Alfven (e.g. MHD) to do actual EU/PC science. It is probably just laziness of that bunch or the uninformedness of the sheeple on thunderdolts who can only echo claims that e.g. gmirkin makes. No critical thinking at all over there.

Alfven did get some strange ideas in his older years, that were no longer founded in science, but more in his "wanting it to be so". I respect him a lot, I once talked to him in Stockholm, but I do not accept everything he has claimed (e.g. the anti-matter stuff or the exploding double layers).

 

[Haig]

Probably nobody is disputing that the cometary nucleus can have a charge. Indeed, that was a concern for the moon landings and even for the lander Philae onto 67P, where even small discharges could damage the delicate internal electronics, because of a charge imbalance between the probe and the nucleus.

HOWEVER, realizing that there can be a charge is still a long way away from claiming that there is EDM creating water on the comet. Indeed, you keep on failing to obtain ligitimate papers from your EU "scientific" advisors describing how they want to produce those 2 glasses of water per second.

Don't you think we deserve to see this mold-breaking model for water production at comets?



Yes, I know that about the conference, and indeed we do a lot of physics here with the solar wind and unmagnetized bodies. And we even discuss *gasp* electric currents and electric fields!



Naturally, I have that paper, but I cannot upload it, because it is too big for JREF. However, a quick google tells you that you can download it here.



Yes I know many people claim that, but unfortunately, the always fail to actually use the theories of Alfven (e.g. MHD) to do actual EU/PC science. It is probably just laziness of that bunch or the uninformedness of the sheeple on thunderdolts who can only echo claims that e.g. gmirkin makes. No critical thinking at all over there.

Alfven did get some strange ideas in his older years, that were no longer founded in science, but more in his "wanting it to be so". I respect him a lot, I once talked to him in Stockholm, but I do not accept everything he has claimed (e.g. the anti-matter stuff or the exploding double layers).

I don't recall reading that much water is produced ON the surface of comets. Rather it's mainly produced OFF comet, in the interaction of the coma and the solar wind (in the double layer).

NASA's Swift Satellite Tallies Water Production of Mars-bound Comet

"Based on our observations, we calculate that at the time of the observations the comet was producing about 2 billion billion billion water molecules, equivalent to about 13 gallons or 49 liters, each second," said team member Tony Farnham, a senior research scientist at UMCP

.
Still think it's a pity you don't feel able to raise the prospect of a mainstream version of an "Electric Comet" at the conference in the same way as NASA have with the "Electric Asteroid".

You could base it on this paper H. ALFVÉN's "On the Theory of Comet Tails" from 1957
BTW. Sincere thanks for pointing out the location of this paper. I have tried to locate it for a while now.

Abstract ~~~snip~~~The interaction between such a beam and the head of the comet produces an amplified magnetic field which determines the shape of the tail. The high accelerations, which have been observed in the tails may be due to electromagnetic forces.

The main difficulty with the comet tails is associated with tails of type I. Such tails consist of ionized gases and exhibit usually a pattern of very narrow “streamers” and “envelopes”. A representative pattern is shown in Fig. I (FOKKER 1953). Accelerations of the order of several thousand times the solar gravitation are often observed. The attempts to understand the formation of tails of this type have usually followed the “fountain model” according to which matter is ejected from the head of the comet and moves under the influence of a repulsive force deriving from the sun.

Not too far from this ..

ELECTRIC COMET MODEL:

• Comets are debris produced during violent electrical interactions of planets and moons in an earlier phase of solar system history. Comets are similar to asteroids, and their composition varies. Most comets should be homogeneous - their interiors will have the same composition as their surfaces. They are simply “asteroids on eccentric orbits.”
• Comets follow their elongated paths within a weak electrical field centered on the Sun. In approaching the Sun, a charge imbalance develops between the nucleus and the higher voltage and charge density near the Sun. Growing electrical stresses initiate discharges and the formation of a glowing plasma sheath, appearing as the coma and tail.
• The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus, producing “electrical discharge machining” (EDM) of the surface. The excavated material is accelerated into space along the jets’ observed filamentary arcs.
• Intermittent and wandering arcs erode the surface and burn it black, leaving the distinctive scarring patterns of electric discharges.
• The jets’ explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds and retain their coherent structure for hundreds of thousands of miles. The collimation of such jets is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge.
• The tails of comets reveal well-defined filaments extending up to tens of millions of miles without dissipating in the vacuum of space. This “violation” of neutral gas behavior in a vacuum is to be expected of a plasma discharge within the ambient electric field of the Sun.
• It is the electric force that holds the spherical cometary coma in place as the comet races around the Sun. The diameter of the visible coma will often reach millions of miles. And the visible coma is surrounded by an even larger and more “improbable” spherical envelope of fluorescing hydrogen visible in ultraviolet light.
• The primary distinction between comet and asteroid surfaces is that electrical arcing and “electrostatic cleaning” of the comet nucleus will leave little or no dust or debris on the surface during the active phase, even if a shallow layer of dust may be attracted back to the nucleus electrostatically as the comet becomes dormant in its retreat to more remote regions.

 

[phunk]

I don't recall reading that much water is produced ON the surface of comets. Rather it's mainly produced OFF comet, in the interaction of the coma and the solar wind (in the double layer).

NASA's Swift Satellite Tallies Water Production of Mars-bound Comet

You seem to have that backwards. That article is talking about how they detect water being destroyed, not created, in the interaction between the coma and sunlight, not solar wind. The water they refer to as being produced is water sublimating off the surface of the comet.

 

[Dancing David]

Of course you can tusenfem. Discusing comets is allowed and if electric asteroids moving through the solar wind is a valid topic then "why not electric comets" ??? After all they move through the solar wind too

See this quote ...

6th Alfven Conference

In 1957 Hannes Alfvén wrote a paper "On the theory of comet tails" Maybe you can get access to it and make it available here?

It's on the very long list of papers by him HERE

Did you know he is regarded as the father of the Electric Universe / Plasma Cosmology ?

Here are a couple of central papers by Hannes Alfven, related to Plasma Cosmology:

http://plasmauniverse.info/downloads/CosmologyAlfven.pdf
http://www.plasmauniverse.info/downloads/ModelOfTPU_Alfven.pdf

Third time:

So is 3 V/m enough to make a rock glow?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Still think it's a pity you don't feel able to raise the prospect of a mainstream version of an "Electric Comet" at the conference in the same way as NASA have with the "Electric Asteroid".

You could base it on this paper H. ALFVÉN's "On the Theory of Comet Tails" from 1957

Why should anyone do the work for you, Haig?

If you think it's such a great idea - and obviously you do - when can we expect you to publish a paper, based on Alfvén's, presenting a mainstream version of an electric comet?

Not too far from this ..

ELECTRIC COMET MODEL:

Right ... a lemon and two nails (or two lemons and one nail?) powers an aircraft carrier; a nanogram of gold leaf is a gold mine; ... OK, not exactly the same, but not too far, right?

By the way, this terrific bridge is still for sale, and I can even sell it to you for a discount!

 

[Haig]

You seem to have that backwards. That article is talking about how they detect water being destroyed, not created, in the interaction between the coma and sunlight, not solar wind. The water they refer to as being produced is water sublimating off the surface of the comet.

Yes, I should have made that post clearer.

I was trying to show the contrast between EU/PC electric comet theory and mainstream comet theory as shown in the link.

The failure of mainstream to detect much water on the surface of comets is the point, yet the detection of water in the coma is confirmed.

Something else from David Talbott ...

The high-energy events exhibited by comets require a new understanding of what makes a comet work, and the answer to the mystery of comets will invariably affect all of the space sciences. For starters, a list of the enigmas would have to include these surprises: comet x-rays, a coma several times the size of the Sun glowing in ultraviolet light, strong electrical and turbulent magnetic fields, million degree coma "temperatures", supersonic jets, collimation of these jets over great distances, coherent and filamentary comet tails spanning up to a hundred million miles and more, explosive outbursts of dust hundreds of millions of miles from the Sun

and this

After repeated failures to find any water on comet surfaces, NASA spokesmen celebrated the "success" of the Deep Impact mission when they thought they had found, on the surface of Comet Tempel 1, a minuscule .005 of the water required by theory to explain the signals associated with water in the coma.

The Comet And The Future Of Science

 

[tusenfem]

Yes, I should have made that post clearer.

I was trying to show the contrast between EU/PC electric comet theory and mainstream comet theory as shown in the link.

The failure of mainstream to detect much water on the surface of comets is the point, yet the detection of water in the coma is confirmed.

my goodness man, the water is below the surface, the surface itself is covered mainly in dust, basically the blackest surface that exists in the solar system. The water is coming out of vents, that is how you get beams of water in the coma.

The problem with creating water in the coma, is not only the number problem (number of solar wind protons available) but also the energetics, even though the solar wind plasma has been shocked, they still move way too fast, have too high a temperature to react chemically with anything coming off the nucleus.

Something else from David Talbott ...

and this

The Comet And The Future Of Science

Talbot is an ... well never mind.
If that is still the list he shows to prove his EC than he has not kept up with latest (LABORATORY!!!) results, because the X-rays have been explained through observations of comet and experiments in the laboratory to be created by charge exchange of highly ionize oxygen from the sun and neutrals from the comet. This has been discussed thoroughly on page 8 of this thread, when solray was throwing the same kind of arguments around.

This is getting tedious, but hey, in an austrian newspaper there is an EC proponent who does not believe that the magnetic field gets hung up at the comet, eventhough that is Alfven's theory!!

 

[tusenfem]

You could base it on this paper H. ALFVÉN's "On the Theory of Comet Tails" from 1957
BTW. Sincere thanks for pointing out the location of this paper. I have tried to locate it for a while now.

Well that shows that you:
1. cannot google very well, I found it in like 2 seconds
2. you have no idea of what is happening in mainstream cometary physics, because the Alfven model is THE starting point for describing the interaction of the solar wind with the comet. I must have seen the picture of the field line draping in at least 2 talks, and I missed the first day of the conference. Heck, I use that figure in almost every popular and scientific talk I give on comets.

That is the whole idiocy of the EU/ES/EC crowd, they actually DO NOT KNOW chickenpoo about what is happening in mainstream space plasma physics. Most of them are amateurs who probably don't even have the slightes grip on electrodynamics (e.g. our friend Haig here) but they will take for gospel what Talbot or Scott or whoever is claiming, when it has been shown often (in this thread and in others) that these guys live in their own little world and don't have any idea about what is going on in the real world.

Every time another sheeple will be send in with the same-old same-old claims (e.g. the X-rays from comets) and the whole discussion will start again and again and again.

I wonder, if indeed we (i.e. mainstream physics) got everything wrong, how come that we can use Alfven's theories (MHD) to model the interaction of a comet with the solar wind and get results that agree with the observations that we have? I guess it is just dumb luck, or we are so corrupt that we twist the dials in such a way that we get out "what we need."