The Electric Comet theory

[Reality Check]

More real science: MIRO bathes in water vapour (15/09/2014)

During the Rosetta Special Session at the EPSC meeting, the MIRO team reported measurements made during the past three months that show that the amount of water vapour coming from the comet appears to vary as the nucleus rotates. They have measured a maximum rate of about 5 litres per second being lost by the comet, with an average rate of roughly 1 litre per second. This is markedly more than the comparatively modest rate of 300 millilitres per second measured in June.
Theoretical models predict that most of the water in the comet’s coma should exist over the sunlit side of the nucleus. Rosetta has mostly been flying over the sunlit side to date, and MIRO’s measurements are consistent with these predictions. But when Rosetta makes a flight over the night side of the comet later this month, MIRO will have the chance to directly measure the water production rate there.

67P was probably further away than 250 million kilometers but Ziggurat's calculation of enough energy from the Sun available to vaporize about 190 kg of water every second should be still roughly applicable.

 

[Belz...]

Maths, maths, maths

You've got the cart before the horse my friend.

No, math is the cart AND the horse. If you can't show how the theory works with math, then all you have is rhetoric, which is find if you want to seel your ideas to laypeople who are swayed by sermons and mantras, but won't have much of an effect on the people you need to convince for said theory to have wings: scientists.

So why the aversion to math, unless, perchance, you don't know how to do them ? Does any EU proponent know ?

Your beloved MATHS has lead you up the garden path, all you need is just good 'ol common sense

Yes, who needs to do hard work and abstract thinking into extremely complex issues when all you need to do is feel your way through it, right ?

 

[Belz...]

I can see why the mainstream are confused.

It's typical of people who are ignorant of science to believe that all of the learned scientists are the actual idiots, choosing to believe super-simplified and maths-free ideas instead of the complex and degree-requiring theories if mainsteam. It makes it easier, I suppose. The source is probably something akin to Dunning-Kruger, in that the laypeople think they know more than they really do.

 

[Reality Check]

And in case Sol88 or Haig display ignorance about water not being found around 67P: VIRTIS detects water and carbon dioxide in comet’s coma (07/11/2014)

In early October 2014, activity in the region above the ‘neck’ of the comet became high enough for water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) to be detected by the instrument’s high spectral resolution channel, VIRTIS-H. (The surface mapping is done with an imaging spectrometer, called VIRTIS-M.)

Some EU cranks in the comments. One argument is the rather dumb one from incredibility - ohhh look comets produce lots of water from ice, I do not like these big numbers so the big numbers actually come from rock .

 

[Haig]

Only in the sense that they have prettier pictures now. They've actually gone backwards in terms of making their ideas quantitative.



Nope. Your link again refers to Juergens, but never actually provides an updated model. In fact, you may note (but will probably ignore) that your link contains no model at all. There are no numbers, no equations, just hand-waving.



I'm keen on math because that's how you actually do physics. That's how you test your ideas to see if they're crap or not.



Really, Haig? This is the best you can do?

OK, I'll play your game. Total solar irradiance at the Earth is about 1.36 kW/m². At 250 million miles from the sun, 67P is about 2.7 times farther away than earth, which would make the total solar irradiance about 7.3 times less, or about 186 Watts/m². The cross-sectional surface area of the comet depends upon its orientation, but it probably doesn't get less than 3 km², or 3x10⁶ m², no matter which direction it's facing. So that gives us a total solar irradiance of over 550 megawatts. Some of that will get reflected, but not much: its albedo is only about 5%. But let's be generous, and assume that reflection plus re-radiation gives us a 10% loss. So we've got about 495 megawatts to work with. The latent heat of fusion plus vaporization for water is about 2.6 megajoules/kg, which means that we have enough energy to vaporize about 190 kg of water every second.

Utter nonsense indeed.

You know, none of this was particularly difficult. You can't actually contradict it. You claim I make unspecified assumptions, but you can't provide any alternative. You merely wish it away. But it won't work. Every time anyone actually does a calculation, they prove you wrong.



I expect that the location of the jets is probably complex, due to variations in composition, the topology of cracks within the comet, etc. But here's the kicker: if it was due to electrical activity, the jets should certainly be from the lobes, because electrical discharges focus at the outward extremities of objects, where electric fields concentrate. Lightning strikes the tall tree on top of the hill, not the bottom of a hole in a valley.

Thanks for that reply ziggurat.

The problem with that calculation is, if it were correct, we would have NO ice on the any of the mountains or poles on Earth and of course we do. Also the temperature on 67P is just a bit colder than those locations a temp of 205-230K (surface) on 67P. So no your wrong.

Why miss out the calculation for ELECTRIC COMET SIDING SPRING ? Is that calculation too difficult for you? Maybe tusenfem could answer it?

 

[Haig]

More real science: MIRO bathes in water vapour (15/09/2014)

67P was probably further away than 250 million kilometers but Ziggurat's calculation of enough energy from the Sun available to vaporize about 190 kg of water every second should be still roughly applicable.

The distance quoted was NOT 250 million kilometers

it was 250 million miles.

If 67P was actually further than that it would that much more absurd for ices to sublimate.

Also, if that were true we would have a new cheap fuel for the propulsion of spacecraft.

 

[rwguinn]

Thanks for that reply ziggurat.

The problem with that calculation is, if it were correct, we would have NO ice on the any of the mountains or poles on Earth and of course we do. Also the temperature on 67P is just a bit colder than those locations a temp of 205-230K (surface) on 67P. So no your wrong.

Why miss out the calculation for ELECTRIC COMET SIDING SPRING ? Is that calculation too difficult for you? Maybe tusenfem could answer it?

Which demonstrates that you know less than a 5th grader about chemistry, physics, electricity, astronomy, thermodynamics, and heat transfer...

 

[Belz...]

The problem with that calculation is, if it were correct, we would have NO ice on the any of the mountains or poles on Earth and of course we do.

Explain.

 

[Ziggurat]

Thanks for that reply ziggurat.

The problem with that calculation is, if it were correct, we would have NO ice on the any of the mountains or poles on Earth and of course we do. Also the temperature on 67P is just a bit colder than those locations a temp of 205-230K (surface) on 67P. So no your wrong.

BZZZT! Wrong answer!

Conditions on earth are considerably different from conditions on 67P. In addition to the fact that the albedo of snow is considerably higher than 67P (meaning that much more light is reflected), the even more critical difference is that the partial pressure of water vapor on earth is considerably higher than in vacuum. This will slow down sublimation considerably. Frequently, the partial pressure of water vapor actually exceeds the vapor pressure, and so we not only don't get sublimation, we actually get precipitation (ie, snow). In space, around 67P, the partial pressure is very close to zero, and never gets high enough to form precipitation.

Elementary physics, of course, and yet you miss it. Why am I not surprised?

As for the Mars flyby, it might be complicated, I haven't looked at it yet. Point me to some calculations done by the EU folks, though, and I'll be impressed. Then I'll show you where they screwed up, because I guarantee you they will. They always do.

 

[Ziggurat]

The distance quoted was NOT 250 million kilometers

it was 250 million miles.

If 67P was actually further than that it would that much more absurd for ices to sublimate.

I did my calculation at 250 million miles, not 250 million kilometers. RC made a mistake, but his mistake makes no difference to my calculations.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't understand why EU proponents latch on to that theory. What's so appealing about it ? We know that gravity exists, so why the need for everything to be electric ?

I suspect that the real need isn't so much for everything to be electric, but for everything mainstream to be wrong. And they aren't creative or knowledgeable enough to think up anything else besides electricity.

 

[Reality Check]

If 67P was actually further than that it would that much more absurd for ices to sublimate.

Wrong, Haig - Ziggurat's calculation of enough energy from the Sun available to vaporize about 190 kg of water every second shows it would be absurd for ices to not to sublimate on 67P when the observed rate of water reproduction from 67P was an average of 1 kg of water every second !

This sounds like another example of you denying mathematics and science - now you cannot recognize that 190 is 190 times greater than 1

• Haig (30th June 2014): Why do EU supporters continue to claim that astronomers ignore E fields, etc.?
• Haig (3 November 2014) supplied another example of this ignorance by a EU supporter posting on the Thunderbolts forum.
• Haig (7th July 2014), is 3.0 different from 0.6?
• Haig (7th July 2014), 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!
• Haig (14th July 2014), How can you believe in the competence of the EU proponents when the speakers at their 2014 conference was a collection of cranks, actual deluded people and some electrical engineers? (the deluded people were the Velikovsky belivers: David Talbott, Daniel Jencka, Dwardu Cardona)?
• Haig (3 November 2014): What is the density of comet 67P; What is the density of rock? Are they the same?
• Plus any scientific answers to the science stated in Electric comets still do not exist!
• Haig (3rd November 2014): Have you noted the 19 items of ignorance and delusion in the first 11 minutes (out of 90!) of a Thunderbolt video that you cited?
• Haig (4th November 2014): Have you understood that Hyperion is an icy moon, not a rock (so why is it not a comet )?
• Haig (20th November 2014): Can you understand the ignorance and delusions in that Thunderbolts video about Mars?
• 24 November 2014 Haig: Please cite the electric comet predictions for the albedo of comet nuclei (actual numbers not fantasies!)
• 24 November 2014 Haig: Can you understand that this ES "paper" is ignorant about and lies about astronomy?
• 25 November 2014 Haig: Please cite the electric comet calculations for density of comets, e.g. 67P.
  Start by showing that the electric field of the Sun does not make the real density of comets less than the gravitationally calculated values
• 25 November 2014 Haig: Please cite the electric comet calculations for the production of a coma and jets from 67P at some 250 million miles from the Sun and at a temp of 205-230K (surface) and 30-160k (subsurface).
• 25 November 2014 Haig: Please cite the electric comet calculations for the production of organic compounds from 67P at some 250 million miles from the Sun and at a temp of 205-230K (surface) and 30-160k (subsurface).

 

[Reality Check]

I don't understand why EU proponents latch on to that theory. What's so appealing about it ? We know that gravity exists, so why the need for everything to be electric ?

I believe it all started with a crank called Immanuel Velikovsky who thought that his cherry picked myths that looked like they are about astronomical events meant that planets bounced around the Solar System against the laws of gravitation. Thus he evoked electromagnetism as magic to move planets around as he wanted.

A founder of EU is David Talbott who is a "long-time promoter of neo-Velikovskian ideas".

Why other people who should be able to see through the woo of David Talbott associate themselves with it is a whole other matter. Donald E. Scott is a retired electrical engineer. Wallace Thornhill is an Australian physicist. They should have at least basic knowledge of science !
There is another thread exploring this topic: Why is there so much crackpot physics?

ETA: Wallace Thornhill also turns out to be a Velikovskian!

 

[Reality Check]

W.T. "Tom" Bridgman is an astronomer who has also written on the electric comet idea:
Electric Comets: Failures of the Electric Comet Model on November 24, 2013.
Electric Comets II. Of Water & Ice in November 23, 2014.

His blog is called "Dealing with Creationism in Astronomy" and there are similarities between creationists and electric comet proponents, e.g. the reliance on myths and the denial of science.

 

[Sol88]

No, math is the cart AND the horse. If you can't show how the theory works with math, then all you have is rhetoric, which is find if you want to seel your ideas to laypeople who are swayed by sermons and mantras, but won't have much of an effect on the people you need to convince for said theory to have wings: scientists.

So why the aversion to math, unless, perchance, you don't know how to do them ? Does any EU proponent know ?



Yes, who needs to do hard work and abstract thinking into extremely complex issues when all you need to do is feel your way through it, right ?

Mainstream or indeed yourself Belz have maths coming out of your wazoo and your theories are still incorrect! yay maths

your maths told you comets are dirtysnowballs, the data says otherwise, but , your maths is 100% correct i.e. 1+1=2

What maths would you be after to sway you the EC way?

 

[Sol88]

It's typical of people who are ignorant of science to believe that all of the learned scientists are the actual idiots, choosing to believe super-simplified and maths-free ideas instead of the complex and degree-requiring theories if mainsteam. It makes it easier, I suppose. The source is probably something akin to Dunning-Kruger, in that the laypeople think they know more than they really do.

Mainstream text book science that i read as a kid and young adult said comets were made of dust and ice formed from the leftovers from the formation of the solar system!!



but if we dumb non scientist don't ask questions your maths can tell us whatever cab get you that next grant!

You can neither confirm or deny ICE on/under the surface of 67P or any comet, whilst I understand you detect OH and H but you have NOT found the source!

and too boot, you are quite happy to sit back and accept statements like retreating "icy cliffs" but then in the same breath say surface ice cannot exist

Should We Expect to See Patches of Ice on a Comet Nucleus?
Some people, including some astronomers, have commented that they were surprised that they did not find patches of ice in close-up views of the comet nucleus. But one needs to ask, would you expect to see surface ice in the standard comet model?

Consider the measured surface temperature for 67P using the VIRTIS instrument (ESA: VIRTIS maps comet 'hot spots') was 205K (-68 C = -91 F) in mid-July 2014 when the comet was about 3.75 AU from the Sun, definitely still a bit of a deep freeze. A simple radiation balance calculation (Wikipedia: Effective Temperature) for the temperature of an object at this distance from the Sun gives (using 0.00468Astronomical Units for the solar radius):

5780K * sqrt( 0.00468AU / 3.75AU ) = 204K

which is pretty good agreement for an object of low albedo (about 4%) and high emissivity. For perihelion for 67P, at 1.24AU, we might expect the temperature to reach 355K (82 C = 180F), assuming emissivity and albedo remain about the same (which we can be pretty certain will not hold true).

To make ice patches on the comet would require temperatures and pressures high enough for liquid water to form from the ice, collect into patches, and then re-freeze. At temperatures below 0 C and pressures below 0.006 atmospheres, water cannot exist in liquid form as we note from the phase diagram (Wikipedia: Phase Diagram).

Phase Diagram for Water (Credit: Wikipedia)

In these ranges of temperature and pressure along the bottom of the graph, common in the space environment, water goes directly from a solid to a gas. Near perihelion, the temperature will be high enough to form liquid at higher atmospheric pressures, but against the vacuum of space, water would sublimate to a gas before liquifying. So even when the temperature got above 0 C, the pressure in space, even close to the Sun, will not get high enough to form liquid water that could refreeze into an obvious patch of ice.

In the low-gravity environment of the comet nucleus, another question is how would the water collect into a puddle to make an ice-patch? Water molecules do have attractive forces between them which are the basis of surface tension, the reason why water makes a meniscus (wikipedia) in containers and collects into spheres on the International Space Station (YouTube: Space Station Astronauts Grow a Water Bubble in Space).

The water and other volatiles out-gassing are so mixed in the with the other material of the nucleus that they may not appear to emit from a distinct patch of the comet.

But next we could ask: Is there a way the pressure and temperature on the comet could increase sufficiently for liquid water to form and subsequently re-freeze to ice?

I can imagine possible impact scenarios where temperatures and pressures during a collision might be sufficient to convert water into liquid form that could refreeze, however, I've not yet done a detailed calculation for that scenario.

Some astronomers have made this claim and it has been picked up by a number of pseudo-sciences. But it is fair to ask if the idea is based on an actual examination of the physics of the conditions, or a seat-of-the-pants guess or speculation, most likely based on our everyday experience with water and ice in our Earth-temperatures and atmospheric pressure?

so whats going on Belz...???

P.S Also begs the question, how do the jets stay Colminated??? How does GAS do that in the vacuum of space??

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

BZZZT! Wrong answer!

Conditions on earth are considerably different from conditions on 67P. In addition to the fact that the albedo of snow is considerably higher than 67P (meaning that much more light is reflected), the even more critical difference is that the partial pressure of water vapor on earth is considerably higher than in vacuum. This will slow down sublimation considerably. Frequently, the partial pressure of water vapor actually exceeds the vapor pressure, and so we not only don't get sublimation, we actually get precipitation (ie, snow). In space, around 67P, the partial pressure is very close to zero, and never gets high enough to form precipitation.

Elementary physics, of course, and yet you miss it. Why am I not surprised?

As for the Mars flyby, it might be complicated, I haven't looked at it yet. Point me to some calculations done by the EU folks, though, and I'll be impressed. Then I'll show you where they screwed up, because I guarantee you they will. They always do.

Not only that, but the gravity of earth is a tad higher than that of a comet, so when sublimation occurs it is harder for the molecules to reach escape velocity even if no atmosphere were present.
Which begs me to ask the same question of Haig that others here have asked.
If you are THAT ignorant of basic physics, why do you think that your ideas are better founded than those that have actual experience and training in the field?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Mainstream or indeed yourself Belz have maths coming out of your wazoo and your theories are still incorrect! yay maths

your maths told you comets are dirtysnowballs, the data says otherwise, but , your maths is 100% correct i.e. 1+1=2

What maths would you be after to sway you the EC way?

Your constant whanging along about "dirtysnowball" seems to reveal a lack of imagination. Are you actually incapable of understanding that comets are unique objects, variable in composition and variable at what point in their life cycle we see them?

 

[Sol88]

Seems the experiment that would have been definitive on ice on the surface failed, along with the hammer, harpoons, thrusters etc etc

 

[Sol88]

Your constant whanging along about "dirtysnowball" seems to reveal a lack of imagination. Are you actually incapable of understanding that comets are unique objects, variable in composition and variable at what point in their life cycle we see them?

Like the rocky surface of a planet???

So we all agree then...The DIRTYSNOWBALL is dead???

because until you, ApolloGnomon , come up with something better that's what mainstream say they are, Dirtysnowballs!

EC said there more or less asteroids...rock!