Good morning, David Talbott.
Are you aware that Rosetta is at the comet? Why would I start throwing out arbitrary numbers when the fundamental factors for a reasonable quantitative prediction, now unknown, could well be published within a matter of weeks or months.
As is becoming increasingly clear to me - an interested outsider with no particular prior knowledge about comets - it seems very likely that almost all of the published electric comet material is based on secondary sources.
In particular - as tusenfem tirelessly continues to point out - no electrical theorist seems to have actually
read any of the primary sources (i.e. papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journals), much less cited them.
Is the comet discharging electrically? If so, that will PROVE the electric comet hypothesis.
I have no doubt that you will be convinced.
However, to be convincing to me (and, I would guess, almost all the other ISF members who've posted in this thread in the last month or so), it won't.
Why not?
For starters, no one - not you, not Haig, not Scott, not Thornhill - has actually defined what "
discharging electrically" means, in the context of "
the electric comet hypothesis". So far, the closest thing is the vague "looks like" in one of your posts. For me, this is a particular disappointment. After reading Haig's posts about the need to get one's plasma physics right (per Alfven) in any astrophysical hypotheses/models/theories/etc, I was expecting to read - in the details of the electric comet hypothesis - how plasma physics had been incorporated (the papers tusenfem has posted links to might be good examples, in this regard). Instead, all I have found is word salad.
Then, even if some objective, independently verifiable analyses of data from Rosetta (etc) were to conclude that "the comet is discharging electrically", that may actually be inconsistent with the electric comet hypothesis!
Why? Because while that hypothesis is rather unspecific, it seems possible that at least some forms of electrical discharge are excluded/impossible.
AND, if so, the discovery will fundamentally change the direction of comet science, solar physics, and a lot more.
Myself, I think that's a fantasy.
In the history of science, Kuhnian paradigm shifts happen when there is an alternative. Unfortunately, whatever the electric comet hypothesis is, it's certainly not an alternative. If it were, there'd already be dozens of published papers on it, full of equations, citations to other papers (including Alfven's, no doubt), etc.
So let's just say I believe the electric comet proponents will be much less surprised than those clinging to official doctrines about comets.
In the meantime I do not see anyone here offering quantitative predictions from the vantage point of the "official model." I believe that's largely due to the fact that, in the wake of the great comet surprises, no such model remains. If you can defend your double standard here, I'll pay a lot more attention than I'm inclined to give this topic while this double standard is so transparently obvious.
I don't think there's so much a double standard; rather, there's science and there's ... whatever the electric comet hypothesis is. Perhaps it's pseudoscience (it looks a bit like science, but lacks at least some of the key attributes)? Perhaps it's part of a cult?
