The Electric Comet theory

[Ziggurat]

Can you make gravity in the lab, Tusenfem?

Yes. Rather easily, in fact. We've been doing it for over two hundred years.

Plasma is exceptionaly easy to make, got some right here next to me!!!

You've got some gravity right next to you too.

 

[Dancing David]

How cold was the comet again?

What an absolute howler!

Even me 'ol mate Reality Check can tell you hard ice is

but the MUPUS team didn't?

And you have yet to show any evidence of the hardness of materials at low temperatures.

 

[Reality Check]

So you, REALITY CHECK, do not agree with the mainstream view of jet production???

Wrong, Sol88: I , REALITY CHECK, do not agree with Sol88's non-cited fairy story since you have displayed 5 years of ignorance about comets, e.g. their densities.
This is sublimation of ices under the surface of a ball of ices and dust - there should be no chambers. This is not like your fairy story, I have evidence - "comet sublimation chamber" jet" returns 4 abstracts on ADS!
The reason is obvious - the ices and dust above the sublimating region will fill in an space left by the sublimation. Thus:

Maybe because Sol88 cannot understand some logic !
We have a scientific mechanism for creating jets which is not your fantasy, Sol88. That mechanism is ices sublimating below the surface of the comet - no "subsurface chambers". The gases rise up through the ices and dust above them to escape. The ice and dust above the sublimating ices are blown away from the comet. That forms a funnel or orifice that creates jets out of the gas.
The observation that jets exist is evidence for the mechanism working.

No images of active jets coming out of a funnel or orifice yet is a lack of data, not failure.
Failure is basically everything about the electric comet idea: Electric comets still do not exist !

ETA :That is the mainstream view, Sol88 about comet jets.
But there is a little fact about science that you may be ignorant about - scientists like to think outside of the box. So there are a few papers about some jets being generated from subsurface cavities:
Formation of jets in Comet 19P/Borrelly by subsurface geysers

Observations of the inner coma of Comet 19P/Borrelly with the camera on the Deep Space 1 spacecraft revealed several highly collimated dust jets emanating from the nucleus. The observed jets can be produced by acceleration of evolved gas from a subsurface cavity through a narrow orifice to the surface. As long as the cavity is larger than the orifice, the pressure in the cavity will be greater than the ambient pressure in the coma and the flow from the geyser will be supersonic. The gas flow becomes collimated as the sound speed is approached and dust entrainment in the gas flow creates the observed jets. Outside the cavity, the expanding gas loses its collimated character, but the density drops rapidly decoupling the dust and gas, allowing the dust to continue in a collimated beam. The hypothesis proposed here can explain the jets seen in the inner coma of Comet 1P/Halley as well, and may be a primary mechanism for cometary activity.

Sub-Surface Cavities as Sources of Cometary Jets

The spacecraft flybys of Comets 1P/Halley, 19P/Borrelly, 81P/Wild 2 and 9P/Tempel 1 revealed the existence of numerous collimated jets in the near-nucleus coma, apparently being the building-blocks of the larger jets or coma asymmetries frequently seen in ground-based observations. Proposed jet formation mechanisms include isolated active areas, influence of nucleus topography on coma outflow, or venting from sub-surface cavities connected to the surface by holes or cracks.
The present paper investigates the latter mechanism focusing on the thermophysical aspects of the sub-surface cavity problem. A novel time-dependent and spatially two-dimensional code has been developed to study the flow of heat through a porous dust mantle, and the sublimation of the icy walls of a sub-surface cavity, being connected to the exterior by a channel through the dust mantle. The outgassing characteristics of the cavity are investigated for a range of conditions (e.g. different heliocentric distance, rotational period, heat conductivity, and geometrical dimensions of the cavity). The results are used both to investigate the likelihood of sub-surface cavities being the source of jet structures, as well as to provide observable tell-tale signs of existence of such cavities for the ESA Rosetta mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

 

[Reality Check]

Haig: Please cite the scientific evidence for "an encounter with Mars and Earth"

Not that calculation ... the ONE between an encounter with Mars and Earth !!!

19 December 2014 Haig: Please cite the scientific evidence for "an encounter with Mars and Earth"

This sounds like you are stating that the answer to
18 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: Please list the planets and moons that were interacting to create comets.
is the delusion that Mars waltzed over to Earth and they did stuff together.

 

[Reality Check]

Some crap about the EM force being 39 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, plus it is both long range attractive and short range repulsive.

Yes, Sol88 - that certainly looks like Thunderbolts or EU/PC crap:!
It does not matter that the EM force is 39 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity because it is in the real world a short range force because it can be shielded .
The solar wind has no EM forces acting on scales over "some tens of a Debye length" (Hannes about double layers). That is a few hundred meters for double layers, a few tens of meters for other EM activity.

Thunderbolts and EU/PC are in denial of the most basic fact about plasma - plasma is quasi-neutral.

 

[Reality Check]

The Universe Holger Sierks lives in! it's a quote from a press conferance held not long after the Philea probe crashed into 67P!

Wrong, Sol88: Your sentence looks like gibberish. I interpreted as the usual delusion that comets are made of rock.
The phrase you think is from Holger Sierks looks like a Thunderbolts lie where they quote mine him.
17 November 2014 Sol88: Please cite the announcement of the discovery of hard rock on comet 67P

Sol88: Please cite the announcement of the discovery of hard rock (not "rock stuff" but the solid rock your theory demands) on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

ETA: This will be a scientific announcement, not a comment by an astronomer quoted in a news article Rosetta mission: Esa weighs options for moving Philae lander – as it happened
...
Some unknown colleague talks about snow + no "rock" but "rock stuff" + shiny stuff.

ETA: Does this look like that colleague Sol88?
Comet Lander Working, But Not Optimal

The rebound of the lander is an indication of a higher strength material that was a surprise to us. So with this picture of dust falling back to the surface in high porosity layers, I would think we failed to explain the rebounds. But we have seen the variety of surfaces there—this snowfield of soft stuff—and we have seen this rocky-like (but no rock) stuff, which is perhaps higher-strength material. We also see stuff shining through the dust layer, where the dust is wiped away, following the gravity field, and exposing the higher strength material, and this is something that we could consider be the reason for the rebound - See more at: http://crev.info/2014/11/comet-lander-working-but-not-optimal/#sthash.HOra1VwW.dpuf

This is a creationist web site but Christians are supposed to be honest so the quote may be more exact !

 

[Reality Check]

Indeed Belz...why are they holding the pretty pictures??

Sol88, read what is posted:

No, they are not "just pictures" they are actually scientific data for which a large team worked for over 20 years (planning and flying there) to obtain these data.

Although it cannot be expected of you to understand that one can do actual science with these images (taken in different wavelenghts, with different resolution, etc.), this is a big thing for the OSIRIS team. It is their instrument, they have the right to work on the data first, albeit only 6 months. It has happened before, that images were released early and some other team grabbed them and made a first publication. That is not fair towards the Priciple Investigator (PI) team.

So just hold your horses and wait a bit, there will probably another press release and the most papers for the special Science issue have already been accepted for publication.

Talking about publications, though, I still have not seen anything quantitative from the EC bunch presented. Are the scared or something?

 

[Reality Check]

Explain to me again, slowly...

Explain to me slowly, what about citing correctly what you quote do not understand, Sol88 ? You wrote post #167
Explain to me slowly, why you do not understand the meaning of the word "guess" in that quote, Sol88?
But then you did not understand it in 2009, so why should we expect you to have learned anything in the last 5 years !

As I said:

But I can certainly make a guess for the source of jets that go in straightish lines. Look at the images of the surface of comets. Notice the craters and pits? A jet issuing from a crater or pit will be "collimated" by the walls of the crater or pit.

A guess is just that. The answer obvious - the walls of the crater or pit would (I guess) guide the jet.

Another guess would be that the interaction with the coma collimates the jet.

And the actual post is #155

Please cite your source for "observed highly collimated jets".

But I can certainly make a guess for the source of jets that go in straightish lines. Look at the images of the surface of comets. Notice the craters and pits? A jet issuing from a crater or pit will be "collimated" by the walls of the crater or pit.

There is no moving of the goal posts. This is a thread about the electric comet idea. You should know this since you started it. We already know that the electric comet idea is invalid since 2 basic predictions have failed (density and X-rays bursts from electrical discharges). You have ignored this and are just asking questions about the standard comet model.

You have not yet been able to give any citation to papers that calculate any properties for these electrical discharges, e.g. the spectrum of the discharges or even the rate of discharges.
However I do have another thought - can you give a citation to the paper that calculates the emission of the electrical dicharges in visible light?
If these electrical discharges emit any light in the visible range then they would have been seen during the impact phase of the Deep Impact mission, especially by the camera on the impactor. As far as I can determine there are no discharges seen in the images before the impact (you may be able to correct me).

 

[Sol88]

Sol88, read what is posted:

 

[Reality Check]

...

which was an explanation that scientists who work for 20 years on a project have first dibs on the data

And no we are not dueling, Sol88 - you lost the duel 5 years ago when the Thunderbolts delusion that comets are rock made you deny basic science ever since then !

 

[Sol88]

which was an explanation that scientists who work for 20 years on a project have first dibs on the data

And no we are not dueling, Sol88 - you lost the duel 5 years ago when the Thunderbolts delusion that comets are rock made you deny basic science ever since then !

Au contraire, me 'ol mate, Au contraire

 

[Cygnus_X1]

Thanks but isn't there anything a little more current on-line

Mainstream really have gone off the tracks since those days ... anyone for a Dirty Snowball or Snowy Dirtball comet

I've found nothing more recent where anyone has actually SOLVED the problems of Electric Comet models. The problems I outline in post #2941 still exist and you certainly have not responded to them. I'll repeat them here:

How much of a voltage difference is needed to accelerate a proton or electron from zero to 1,000,000 miles per hour? This is a question that a competent high-school physics student can answer, yet I've not received an answer from any EU 'theorist'. 1e6 miles/hour is about 4e5 meters/second, so:

0.5 *m*v^2 = qV
0.5* (1.67e-27 kg)* (400e3 m/s)^2 = (1.6e-19 coulombs)* volts

comes out to about 840 volts for protons - about the magnitude found in the mainstream models. It's even lower for electrons. But it doesn't even need to be that large as collisional dynamics are important closer to the photosphere to give an initial push.

Rather inconsistent with EU claims, isn't it.

Even worse for EU is if the solar wind were driven by an external electric field, the flow would be much more uniform as acceleration by the field would dominate the flow. In the measured solar wind, the speed is roughly constant after the initial acceleration closer to the Sun, what you'd expect from a hydrodynamic flow as the density and pressure drops due to expansion, like from a popped balloon.

1) Where is the EU method of computing the electric and magnetic fields and particle fluxes in any of these galactic birkeland currents?

2) Where are the numbers that we can compare to actual spacecraft measurement?

3) What is the amount of microwave emission we would detect for such currents? Both the one driving the Sun and those driving other stars? How does this compare to current instrument sensitivity in the detection bands of instruments like PLANCK or even ground-based radio telescopes?

The standard models do pretty good at this, and at best they have voltage differences across the heliosphere of 1000 volts or so, but much of this voltage difference is induced by the plasma flow. These results are consistent with spacecraft measurements, not the millions/billions of volts claimed by EU.

Mainstream space weather models like Enlil are running all the time, such as those presented at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, so we know when to take precautions to protect astronauts and satellites. Gee, they even show irregularities in the flow.

Most of these models were developed and initially tested on desktop class computers readily available today. So where is the EU equivalent? What's their excuse? Or are they still waiting for others to do their work for them and they'll just hang around to claim credit for any mentions of electric fields?

4) What's the electric charge on the comet and the Sun?

5) How does the presence of the electrostatic force between the comet and Sun affect the comet's motion?

6) Want to complain that this doesn't include effects of the Sun's magnetic field? Then compute them, otherwise you're just making excuses.

Yet without including any of these 'electric sun' features, the Rosetta team managed to navigate their spacecraft for 10 years to a precision rendezvous.

7) If the mainstream model is so wrong, how did they manage that when they didn't include all the charges and electric fields in this environment advocated by EU?

So far, we've had no demonstration from Electric Universe supporters are even competent enough to compute the trajectory based on their model, much less build the spacecraft.

I've got a code that can be used for computing model runs like described in questions 4-6 above. I could run some of the EU-type models with it, placing charges and magnetic fields consistent with what EU 'theorists' describe, but when the results don't match their claims, EU supporters will cry 'strawman'! and hope that no one will call them on it.

Care to provide some sample data values that I can run on my code for solar current or charge on the comet?

 

[Reality Check]

Au contraire, me 'ol mate, Au contraire

I see the fantasies continue, Sol88 .
Thinking that comets are rocks for 5 years despite known the evidence that they are not is actually delusional - Electric comets still do not exist !

Thinking that the electric comet idea is anything but a delusion is ignorant given the ignorance, delusions and les written by its authors, Sol88: The ignorance, delusions and lies in the Thunderbolts web site and videos

Thinking that the electric comet idea is anything but a delusion is ignorant give the large number of questions they you know it cannot answer, Sol88: Sol88: List of outstanding questions

 

[Reality Check]

Sol88: List of outstanding questions

1. 5th August 2009 Sol88: Now where in the many published papers on the electric comet idea is the prediction that the electrical discharges are of duration 10-15 ms (your claim)?
2. 5th August 2009 Sol88, How does the electric comet idea explain main-belt comets?
3. 17 November 2014 Sol88: Please cite the announcement of the discovery of hard rock (not "rock stuff" but the solid rock your theory demands) on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
4. 17 November 2014 Sol88: Present the electric comet calculation of the density of comets
5. 18 November 2014 Sol88: Present the electric comet calculation of the amount of surface ice on 67P (no detected surface ice).
6. 18 November 2014 Sol88: Present the electric comet calculation of the amount of surface ice on Tempel 1 where surface ice was found
7. 18 November 2014 Sol88: Please present the electric comet calculation for the electric charge differential around comets and show that it matches the measurements.
8. 20 November 2014 Sol88: Can you understand that the Thunderbolts authors even lie about predictions
9. 20 November 2014 Sol88: Can you understand the significant delusions on that Thunderbolts web page on 67P "predictions"?
10. 24 November 2014 Sol88: Please cite the electric comet predictions for the albedo of comet nuclei (actual numbers not fantasies!)
11. 1 December 2014: A rather pathetic attempt to answer the above questions (mostly repeats of ignorance and fantasies).
12. 2 December 2014: Sol88 does not notice that Wal Thornhill narrates an ignorant and deluded video about 67P!
13. 3 December 2014 Sol88: What about the jets is specifically predicted by the electric comet fantasy to be confirmed by the OSIRIS instrument?
14. 3 December 2014 Sol88: What does the electric comet fantasy predict about jet locations, especially on 67P?
15. 4 December 2014 Sol88: how much water/water ice on/in 67P to account for the observed OH, does the electric comet fantasy come up with?
16. 5 December 2014 Sol88: Is "ice at the jet source" how we know comets produce jets and OH-?
17. 17 December 2014 Sol88: Please point out in the OSIRIS images or other Rosetta images where the electrical discharges from high points predicted in the electric comet idea are.
18. 17 December 2014 Sol88: How are you going to determine that you see an electrical discharge in any of the Rosetta images (other then fantasizing about it)?
19. 18 December 2014 Sol88: Please cite the scientific evidence that Deep Impact hit a rock !

Or how about the electric comet origin questions:
9 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: Why are the orbits of comets not traced back to planets or moons?
Note that "wishful thinking about electricity" is not an answer!

9 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: Why is the total mass of comets greater to or comparable to that of the rocky planets and moons (which still exist!)?

9 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: What is the physical evidence of appreciable parts of the surfaces of planets and moons being removed in recent (say Neolithic or Early Bronze Age) times?

10 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: What happened in "early human times" that stopped the creation of comets?

18 December 2014 David Talbott, Sol88 or Haig: Please list the planets and moons that were interacting to create comets.

 

[Darwin123]

And you have yet to show any evidence of the hardness of materials at low temperatures.

Hardness is ‘hard’ to characterize in any material. The different quantities that go into hardness vary not only with temperature and pressure. They also vary with the history and macroscopic structure of the material. Materials have some hysteresis in their resistance to stress. A hard material can be also ‘brittle’, so it is difficult to determine how the materials will respond to impact. However, general trends can be demonstrated.

However, the general trends in hardness are available. It is seen that

Water ice comes in various forms, such as crystalline and amorphous. These forms get harder as they cool down. The ice on the comet right now should be something like 30 K. So the large crystals should be very hard. I am not sure how this relates to the electric comet ‘theory’.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021134128038#page-2
The mechanical properties of ice and snow are reviewed. The tensile strength of ice varies from 0.7 to 3.1 MPa and the compressive strength of ice varies from 5-25 MPA over the temperature range -10C to -20 C.’

The following shows that the hardness of an ice crystal increases dramatically as the temperature decreases. A comparison isn’t made with other materials. However, it is clear that the colder water ice gets, the harder it is.

http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM43/AM43_48.pdf
'Frc. 1. Brinell hardness of sirlgle ice crystals vs. temperatule. Twelve second application of load. (Above) Normal to c-axis. (Below) Parallel to c-axis.'

The graphs show that any piece of ice will get much harder as it cools down. I don't know what Brinell hardness really is. However, I note that compressive and tensile strength increases in ice as the temperature goes down.

Like most materials, water ice has hysteresis. One of the things that scientists hope to find out through Rossetta is what form different materials, including water ice, take. So hardness is an unknown.

Apparently scientists underestimated the hardness of the surface when they designed those harpoons. However, I don't really know what difference it makes to the comet. The ice will start to sublimate as it gets warmer.

 

[Matthew Cline]

Well yeah, if I add enough mass together, I influence gravity in the laboratory (e.g. using lead balls and a torsion spring, to determine G, it is a freshman's experiment in physics, at least at Utrecht University, but I don't know what is taught down-under)

I think he means that there's no gravitational equivalent to an electromagnet or radio/microwave transmitter. That is, we can only generate gravity "passively", and have no "active" way to make it.

Well, I guess gravitational waves would count, but I doubt any gravitational waves generated in a lab could be strong enough to be detected.

 

[Loss Leader]

I do not have the time or the energy now to purge the last three pages of all of the incivility and snark that has been thrown around. All posters are advised to review Rules 0 and 12 and to post in a manner befitting the forum. At least 1 infraction has been given as representative of general rudeness of most of that person's posts. Further warnings may not be given and the Moderating Team may more straight to more aggressive moderation. Thank you.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Loss Leader

 

[tusenfem]

Hardness is ‘hard’ to characterize in any material. The different quantities that go into hardness vary not only with temperature and pressure. They also vary with the history and macroscopic structure of the material. Materials have some hysteresis in their resistance to stress. A hard material can be also ‘brittle’, so it is difficult to determine how the materials will respond to impact. However, general trends can be demonstrated.

However, the general trends in hardness are available. It is seen that

Water ice comes in various forms, such as crystalline and amorphous. These forms get harder as they cool down. The ice on the comet right now should be something like 30 K. So the large crystals should be very hard. I am not sure how this relates to the electric comet ‘theory’.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021134128038#page-2
The mechanical properties of ice and snow are reviewed. The tensile strength of ice varies from 0.7 to 3.1 MPa and the compressive strength of ice varies from 5-25 MPA over the temperature range -10C to -20 C.’

The following shows that the hardness of an ice crystal increases dramatically as the temperature decreases. A comparison isn’t made with other materials. However, it is clear that the colder water ice gets, the harder it is.

http://www.minsocam.org/ammin/AM43/AM43_48.pdf
'Frc. 1. Brinell hardness of sirlgle ice crystals vs. temperatule. Twelve second application of load. (Above) Normal to c-axis. (Below) Parallel to c-axis.'

The graphs show that any piece of ice will get much harder as it cools down. I don't know what Brinell hardness really is. However, I note that compressive and tensile strength increases in ice as the temperature goes down.

Like most materials, water ice has hysteresis. One of the things that scientists hope to find out through Rossetta is what form different materials, including water ice, take. So hardness is an unknown.

Apparently scientists underestimated the hardness of the surface when they designed those harpoons. However, I don't really know what difference it makes to the comet. The ice will start to sublimate as it gets warmer.

It should also not be forgotten that the top ice layer may well be a mixture of the surface dust and ice, which together can be "cooked" into a much harder substance.

The harpoons we not wrongly designed, and if I am not mistaken (but I would have to ask the guy upstairs who is in the harpoon team) the force with which they should have been shot into the comet is extremely strong. I do not think that there would have been a problem there (except for the non-deployment that is).

 

[tusenfem]

So, at the AGU fall meeting site some of the Rosetta presentations are online.
You can see the Rosetta Plasma Consortium overview talk in this link
I am not sure how it works for people without an AGU account, in order to view the presentation.
Go here for the main "virtualoptions" page of the AGU
It is not the most clear of pages, if you want to find Rosetta presentations, just type in "rosetta" in the search box on the top right of the page.

 

[paladin17]

So, at the AGU fall meeting site some of the Rosetta presentations are online.
You can see the Rosetta Plasma Consortium overview talk in this link
I am not sure how it works for people without an AGU account, in order to view the presentation.
Go here for the main "virtualoptions" page of the AGU
It is not the most clear of pages, if you want to find Rosetta presentations, just type in "rosetta" in the search box on the top right of the page.

Wow, that's a lot of material. Thank you.
And yes, the first link doesn't work (it asks to login first).
UPD: Well, that was a bit hasty of me. It seems none of the links work for the people without an account.