OK; Let me post something from way back, because it bears repeating:
http://www.forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?28596-Electric-Universe-Model&p=501658#post501658
VanderL "The EU model is testable and does make predictions, one of them is the way cometary jets are produced."
Tim Thompson:
My central theme is that the EU fails the test of predictions on many levels. The spots on the comets are details that are not important; as predictions, they are quite useless (especially when they are predicted only after they are seen). What is important is fundamentals. Physics is not a random collection of guesses, but a vast cohesive collection of inter-dependent theories. At the core are the well established disciplines, like classical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism & so on. Then on the frontier there are the more speculative areas; cosmology, string theory & the like. My primary concern is to always look for the fundamentals, the things that are more important, more meaningful than anything else. That's where hypotheses live & die, and that's where I apply my own doctrine of the intolerable conflict.
It is the intolerable conflict between observation & theory (or hypothesis) which invariably leads to discovery or failure. Neutrinos were discovered because of the intolerable conflict between the fundamental principle of conservation of energy on the one hand, and observations that appeared to violate that fundamental principle on the other. The successful solution was to assume that the fundamental principle was inviolate, and to look for the missing energy. Likewise, the discovery of neutrino oscillations came out of the appearance of an intolerable conflict between astrophysical models of a star, and the measured neutrino fluxes, both of which could not be simultaneously true. Eventually, observstion bolstered the astrophysical models, and pointed towards the neutrinos as the source of the problem. As a result of resolving this conflict, we made major new discoveries about the physics of neutrinos.
So, to me, the spots on the comets, in the EU vs physics debate, are meaningless distractions that are not worth the effort. They have nothing to do with fundamentals, and are in no way involved in intolerable conflict. But other parts of the EU hypothesis are, and those are what I want to talk about. So, I try to force the issue that way in order to understand what the putatuve solution to the intolerable conflicts are. After all, if the EU hypothesis fails the test of fundamentals, then the relation between it and the spots is moot.
So, there is a fundamental & intolerable conflict between the claim that the sun has a strong electric field, and the observation that the sun has a charge neutral solar wind. Either there is a huge misunderstanding in physics, as to how electric fields affect charged particles, or the hypothesis of a solar electric field is wrong. Both can't be simultaneously true, no matter how you slice it.
But how wrong can electromagnetism be? how far off can physics be, in its treatment of the relation between electric fields & charged particles? Not far, I think because this relationship has long since found its way into precise engineering applications that are very sensitive to such a large error. The reams of spacecraft data, and our knowledge of physics & engineering simply don't make enough room for the hypothesis of a solar electric field, such as required by the EU comet model, to survive. So I take the position that there is no such electric field. Discussing its affect on comets therefore seems a great waste of time. I don't see how anyone can ignore all that physics.
According to the EU hypothesis, the comet charges up where there's no charge, and then discharges where there is lots of charge. Not only is such a thing in intolerable conflict with physics, it's in intolerable conflict with plain old common sense.
The list goes on, but you get the point. If I seem to be all worked up, it's because I have been in the middle of this EU business for at least 10 years. I don't like the people who put up the webpages (I mean I really don't like them),. and they don't like me either. But we scream at each other a lot less nowadays, primarily because they have learned to ignore me slightly more effectively than I have learned to ignore them.
In any case, my own opinion of the EU business is obvious; I don't think it rises to the intellectual level required to qualify for the lofty status of "bunk". But I'll leave that at that.
Now, about those comets. There is indeed a lot that is not known about comets, especially how the jets get going. There are two real hypohteses in the works. The old standard has the jets outgassing from the dirty snowball kind of comet. But it has been known for a long time that the dirty snowball model, which comes down from the 50's, has a lot of problems. In 1985 the Giotto spacecraft snapped the first close up pictures of a comet nucleus, and revealed a darker surface than anyone expected. So maybe the comets have a harder surface, and the jets are actually more like geyers, breaking through the hard surface from pressurized volumes underneath (the "new" hypothesis). I suspect the real answer will lie in the discovery that there is more than one kind of comet, with more than one kind of jet. In any case, the Rosetta mission is on the way, and will be the first comet lander mission (we hope). But landing on a comet is a real trick, if you can do it.
VanderL: "Why are you asking for calculations when those calculations can only be done with too little data."
Too litle data? Rather say too much data. Spacecraft have been buzzing the solar system for nigh onto 50 years now, and they have lots of data on particles & fields (which are the things most measured). But it's not the data that counts anyway. Just look at the normal progession of any scientific hypothesis.
All hypotheses start out very general, packed with prose, flowery descriptions, and not much information. But that's just the start. The prose used to describe the hypothesis sets the limiting conditions for the hypothesis. So, consider the EU model. The electric field of a charged sphere is definitely lower division stuff, and the EU model claims that the nearly spherical sun has an electric field due to its electric charge. Any beginning university physics student, even some of the better high school physics students, can do that calculation. Make a sphere, give it a charge, calculate a field. It's a piece of cake. but after 10 years the stalwart champions of the EU haven't even been able to do what students do on test problems. This is a real confidence builder. Besides, the EU hypothesis claims that the electric field of the sun is able to cause various phenomena in the solar system. It's strictly back-of-the-envelope stuff to bash out some limitng numbers on charge & field required to do what needs to be done. But that too is not forthcoming. I would say they don't do any of that because they know, as well as I do, that the whole EU thing is just a big sham. Of course, I could be biased, but I would love to hear why such talented & insightful physicists have been unable to come up with a one-liner calculation of a little field yet.
VanderL: "How do you measure the field strength when the probe becomes part of the "circuit" itself?"
Ah, now that's a good question. All measuring devices interfere to some extent with whatever they are measuring. You can't measure water flow, for instance, without sticking something in the water, which of course affects the flow (pictures won't do, they only see the surface, and are hard to do inside a hot pipe). The trick is to be as small as you can be. Spacecraft measure electric & magnetic fields by measuring induced currents, an unavoidable side effect of any field. I am not that familiar with the instruments myself, but the technology is now quite mature, and measuring the fields is an almost routine engineering task (the instruments webpage for the Ulysses spacecraft might provide some insight). Since the spacecraft are quite small compared to the fields they measure, it should not be an issue.
OK, I'm done for now. It's time for the weekend.
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Well said Tim! And that was before we knew that the 'bright spots' on comets were frigging ice! As detected by Rosetta. Now, has anybody, with any sort of scientific clue, got anything else to say? No, thought not.
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