The Electric Comet theory

Status
Not open for further replies.
Reality Check said:
First asked 6 August 2009
You are still ignoring:

other than your derail into solar activity cutting comet tails in two.
Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets tuunring off during low solar activity.
Sol88: I may be wrong - if so please provide the citations to these marvelous events.
Obviously the EC idea is just that (an idea) since you cannot provide any "standard EC" source.

Can we agree between ourselves that MBC provide a minimum eccentricity for EC comets?

This is a really obvious consequence of the EC idea.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not with out knowing the charged particle flux at that location, so no, MBC will not give you a minimum eccentricity for a rock to electrically discharge.
 
Sol88 said:
Unfortunately not with out knowing the charged particle flux at that location, so no, MBC will not give you a minimum eccentricity for a rock to electrically discharge.
Click to expand...
MBC will give you amd me a minimum eccentricity for a rock to electrically discharge because the "charged particle flux at that location" has nothing to do with EC.

ETA
This assumes that what you by "charged particle flux at that location" you mean a local charged particle flux from something.

If you mean the solar wind then it is fairly constant in the time scales that we are concerned with.
But if you want then give a number for the minimum solar wind "charged particle flux" to make a rocky body into a comet (remember that the solar wind is actually neutral)
 
Last edited:
Reality Check said:
MBC will give you amd me a minimum eccentricity for a rock to electrically discharge because the "charged particle flux at that location" has nothing to do with EC.

ETA
This assumes that what you by "charged particle flux at that location" you mean a local charged particle flux from something.

If you mean the solar wind then it is fairly constant in the time scales that we are concerned with.
But if you want then give a number for the minimum solar wind "charged particle flux" to make a rocky body into a comet (remember that the solar wind is actually neutral)
Click to expand...

Do you conceade, Reality Check, that a rocky body can "charge/discharge" in the solar wind?

As found on our Moon(and others)?

Do you conceade that, even if comets are dirtyiceballs, this same process would happen on thier insulating "dusty rind"?

Do you conceade this would have to do with the space weather condition at its locale?

Would it also no be wrong to say it would depend on the comet/asteroids electrical conductivity. e.g. how fast charges would try and equilize, from the surface to the core, as well as how big it is?

:confused:

Then why does it happen on our moon, which is more or less rock as say, any asteroid orbiting in the sloar electric field?
 
Sol88 said:
Yeah? Where? Ohhh I forgot it's under your "rind" of insulating "dust" and hidden from view!!! :rolleyes:

I've got an idea, how about we smash a copper projectile into a comet nucleus and that will PROVE the water (ice and other "volatiles") is under the rind of dust!!

Or how about we send a dust sample collection to a comet and return the pristine unaltered dust from the formation of the solar system to Earth to prove that they are primordial leftovers!

That will prove beyond all doubt that comets are iceydirtballs left over from the formation of the solar system!

Yeah lets do that, 'cos that will show how correct our theory is and how pathetic those electric/plasma crackpots are!
Click to expand...


I have not been rude to you, so please continue to shame yourself.

You can't answer your own question, so be sure to freak out.

Make a show.
 
Sol88 said:
Do you conceade, Reality Check, that a rocky body can "charge/discharge" in the solar wind?

As found on our Moon(and others)?
Click to expand...
The Moon can gain change voltage from the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere as is well known. Your links explain this clearly (Strange Things Happen at Full Moon and New Research into Mysterious Moon Storms).

Sol88 said:
Do you conceade that, even if comets are dirtyiceballs, this same process would happen on thier insulating "dusty rind"?

Do you conceade this would have to do with the space weather condition at its locale?
Click to expand...
No I do not conceded this. I suspect that it may happen but there is no evidence for it.

Sol88 said:
Would it also no be wrong to say it would depend on the comet/asteroids electrical conductivity. e.g. how fast charges would try and equilize, from the surface to the core, as well as how big it is?
Then why does it happen on our moon, which is more or less rock as say, any asteroid orbiting in the sloar electric field?
Click to expand...
It probably happens on dusty asteroids.
 
I will start collecting the evidence against the electric comet idea in one post. This will be updated as we discuss the many problems with the EC idea.

EC universe: Ignore the physical evidence such as the measured density of comets.
Real universe: Use the physical evidence such as the measured density of comets to construct theories.

EC universe: Comets are rocks.
Real universe:
  1. Comets have meaured densities that are much less than that of rocks (asteroids).
  2. Comets may not have the composition of asteriods
  3. Deep Impact confirmed that comet nuclei are made of dust and ice not rock. There were a couple of surprises in that the dust was talcum powder rather than sand and the amount of ice was smaller than expected.
    "Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water[35] and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact."WP
EC universe: Comet coma and tails are created from material that that is created from rock by electrical discharge machining.
Real universe:
Start with Tim Thompson's posts about this
EC universe: Rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value will be comets.
N.B. Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets turning off during low solar activity.
(Sol88: I may be wrong - if so please provide the citations to these marvelous events.)
However this assertion has the fatal flaw of EC predictions - no mathematics or numbers.
But we can do their work for them can't we Sol88?

There are 4 observed main-belt comets with a minimum eccentricity of 0.1644 (133P/Elst-Pizarro). So the EC minimim must be this (or lower!).

Real universe: There are rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value that are not comets.
In fact there are asteroids in orbits that are get close to cometary orbits, e.g. 2005 VX3 with an eccentricity of 0.9955142)

The JPL Small-Body Database Browser has a search engine. This shows that there are 173,583 cataloged asteroids with an eccentricity > 0.17.

EC universe: Only give qualitative predictions.
Real universe: Scientific theories model the data mathematically and produce both qualitative and quantitative predictions.

Sol88 posted a list of EC "predictions" for Tempel 1 and Deep Impact. The closes it gets to an actual quantitative predictions is "The most obvious would be a flash (lightning-like discharge) shortly before impact." (emphasis added).

What actually happened was a flash on or after impact followed by a bigger one from deeper in the nucleus.
 
Reality Check said:
You are welcome for this opinion from me :D.

It is a pity that it has absolutely nothing to do with the EC idea.
Click to expand...

How so?

It's very EC my fuddeling friend!

Whats he difference between our moon an asteroid and a comets wrt your agreement on "moon charging"?
 
Reality Check said:
EC universe: Only give qualitative predictions.
Real universe: Scientific theories model the data mathematically and produce both qualitative and quantitative predictions.

Sol88 posted a list of EC "predictions" for Tempel 1 and Deep Impact. The closes it gets to an actual quantitative predictions is "The most obvious would be a flash (lightning-like discharge) shortly before impact." (emphasis added).

What actually happened was a flash on or after impact followed by a bigger one from deeper in the nucleus.
Click to expand...

Reality check plays no fair, I call uncle!

please show me mainstreams qualitative and quantitative predictions wrt dirtyiceballs?

and please do not ignore this question if your faith in the snowball model is so unshakeable! Must pages full of numbers and maths somewhere that proves comets are just dirtballs with some ice.
 
Originally Posted by Sol88 View Post
Do you conceade that, even if comets are dirtyiceballs, this same process would happen on thier insulating "dusty rind"?

Do you conceade this would have to do with the space weather condition at its locale?
Click to expand...
No I do not conceded this. I suspect that it may happen but there is no evidence for it.
Click to expand...


Suspect it may happen? what? Ummmm......der!
 
Sol88 said:
Reality check plays no fair, I call uncle!
Click to expand...
Have you finally realized that a measured density of ~0.6 g/cc (comet) is much less that of asteriods (~3g/cc) :D ?
Or is this still too tough a concept for you to grasp :rolleyes: ?

Sol88 said:
please show me mainstreams qualitative and quantitative predictions wrt dirtyiceballs?

and please do not ignore this question if your faith in the snowball model is so unshakeable! Must pages full of numbers and maths somewhere that proves comets are just dirtballs with some ice.
Click to expand...
And now we are back with your silly delustion that debunking theory A is evidence for theory B. That is what we tend to see from crackpots who have no confidence in thir own ideas.


Start with the papers of Whimple:
  1. Whipple, Fred L. (1950). "A Comet Model. I. The acceleration of Comet Encke". Astrophys. J. 111: 375–394. doi:10.1086/145272. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0111//0000375.000.html.
  2. Whipple, Fred L. (1951). "A Comet Model. II. Physical Relations for Comets and Meteors". Astrophys. J. 113: 464. doi:10.1086/145416. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0113//0000464.000.html.
  3. Whipple, Fred L. (1955). "A Comet Model. III. The Zodiacal Light". Astrophys. J. 121: 750. doi:10.1086/146040. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0121//0000750.000.html.
 
Last edited:
Sol88 said:
How so?

It's very EC my fuddeling friend!

Whats he difference between our moon an asteroid and a comets wrt your agreement on "moon charging"?
Click to expand...
This is not electric discarge machining.
The Moon/solar wind/Earth's magnetosphere interaction leads to electrostatic discharges not EDM.
 
I will start collecting the evidence against the electric comet idea in one post. This will be updated as we discuss the many problems with the EC idea.

EC universe: Ignore the physical evidence such as the measured density of comets.
Real universe: Use the physical evidence such as the measured density of comets to construct theories.

EC universe: Comets are rocks.


Real universe:
  1. Comets have meaured densities that are much less than that of rocks (asteroids).
  2. Comets may not have the composition of asteriods
  3. Deep Impact confirmed that comet nuclei are made of dust and ice not rock. There were a couple of surprises in that the dust was talcum powder rather than sand and the amount of ice was smaller than expected.
    "Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water[35] and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact."WP
EC universe: Comet coma and tails are created from material that that is created from rock by electrical discharge machining.
Real universe:


Start with Tim Thompson's posts about this
EC universe: Rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value will be comets.
N.B. Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets turning off during low solar activity.
(Sol88: I may be wrong - if so please provide the citations to these marvelous events.)
However this assertion has the fatal flaw of EC predictions - no mathematics or numbers.
But we can do their work for them can't we Sol88?

There are 4 observed main-belt comets with a minimum eccentricity of 0.1644 (133P/Elst-Pizarro). So the EC minimim must be this (or lower!).

Real universe: There are rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value that are not comets.
In fact there are asteroids in orbits that are get close to cometary orbits, e.g. 2005 VX3 with an eccentricity of 0.9955142)

The JPL Small-Body Database Browser has a search engine. This shows that there are 173,583 cataloged asteroids with an eccentricity > 0.17.

EC universe: Only give qualitative predictions.
Sol88 posted a list of EC "predictions" for Tempel 1 and Deep Impact. The closes it gets to an actual quantitative predictions is "The most obvious would be a flash (lightning-like discharge) shortly before impact." (emphasis added).

What actually happened was a flash on or after impact followed by a bigger one from deeper in the nucleus.

Real universe: Scientific theories model the data mathematically and produce both qualitative and quantitative predictions.

Someone could start with the papers of Whipple
  1. Whipple, Fred L. (1950). "A Comet Model. I. The acceleration of Comet Encke". Astrophys. J. 111: 375–394. doi:10.1086/145272. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0111//0000375.000.html.
  2. Whipple, Fred L. (1951). "A Comet Model. II. Physical Relations for Comets and Meteors". Astrophys. J. 113: 464. doi:10.1086/145416. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0113//0000464.000.html.
  3. Whipple, Fred L. (1955). "A Comet Model. III. The Zodiacal Light". Astrophys. J. 121: 750. doi:10.1086/146040. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/ApJ../0121//0000750.000.html.
and then go ointo the 1000's of scientific papers and many textbooks about comets. Tim Thompson recommened Introduction to Comets by Brandt & Chapman (Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2nd edition).

EC universe: Turn yourself into a crackpot idea by not publishing papers in peer reviewed journals.
Real universe: Take the risk being wrong and become part of the scientific process by publishing papers in peer reviewed journals, e.g. Fred L. Whipple.
 
Sol88 said:
How so?

It's very EC my fuddeling friend!

Whats he difference between our moon an asteroid and a comets wrt your agreement on "moon charging"?
Click to expand...

Just because a charge can occur does not mean that the mechanism you suggest causes cometary tails and coma.

Mainstream astronomy does have all the things you say it doesn't, plasma, electricity and magnetism.
 
Why EC comets are not asteriods

Sol88's recent posts about "charged particle flux at that location" (I think that this is the solar wind) indicates that he did not read the highlighted portion of my summary post:
Reality Check said:
EC universe: Rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value will be comets.

N.B. Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets turning off during low solar activity.
(Sol88: I may be wrong - if so please provide the citations to these marvelous events.)
However this assertion has the fatal flaw of EC predictions - no mathematics or numbers.
But we can do their work for them can't we Sol88?

There are 4 observed main-belt comets with a minimum eccentricity of 0.1644 (133P/Elst-Pizarro). So the EC minimim must be this (or lower!).

Real universe: There are rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value that are not comets.
In fact there are asteroids in orbits that are get close to cometary orbits, e.g. 2005 VX3 with an eccentricity of 0.9955142)

The JPL Small-Body Database Browser has a search engine. This shows that there are 173,583 cataloged asteroids with an eccentricity > 0.17.
Click to expand...

So I will rewrite this to make it simpler:
EC universe: Rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value will be comets.

N.B. Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets turning off during low solar activity.
However this assertion has the fatal flaw of EC predictions - no mathematics or numbers.
But we can do their work for them can't we Sol88?

There are 4 observed main-belt comets with a minimum eccentricity of 0.1644 (133P/Elst-Pizarro). So the EC minimim must be this (or lower!).

Real universe: There are rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value that are not comets.
In fact there are asteroids in orbits that are get close to cometary orbits, e.g. 2005 VX3 with an eccentricity of 0.9955142)

The JPL Small-Body Database Browser has a search engine. This shows that there are 173,583 cataloged asteroids with an eccentricity > 0.17.

The EC excuse (according to Sol88) is that low solar activity is the reason that these 173,583 cataloged asteroids are not comets. What Sol88 has not realized is that each asteroid is observed a number of times over a period of days to years. These 173,583 cataloged asteroids were not clse to the the Sun at the same instant of time. These asteroids were observed during a range of solar activity. That range included times that comets were visible.

So how many of these should be comets?

EC has no actual physical model and so never gives numbers so we do not expect help there. Sol88 has not been able to cite any observations of comets turining off during low solar activity (or low "charged particle flux at that location"). Also just where is the citation to the EC analysis of the correlation of comet brightness with solar activity at set distances from the Sun?

Conclusion: EC predicts that 100% of the 173,583 asteroids should be comets.
We could be generous and assume that average solar activity is needed and so there are 86,791 asteroids that should be comets according to the EC idea. But that can wait until Sol88 comes up with actual observations related to EC :eye-poppi !

Good examples of the asteriods that should be comets according to the EC idea are many of the named asteroids:
  • Juno (e=0.2553, observed over a span of 67,610 days).
  • Pallas (e=0.2309, observed over a span of 64,291 days)
  • Astraea (e=0.1917, observed over a span of 59,759 days)
  • ...More than 46 other named asteroids observed 1000's of times over decades.
  • Vera (e=0.1939, observed over a span of 45,191 days)
 
Reality Check said:
This is not electric discarge machining.
The Moon/solar wind/Earth's magnetosphere interaction leads to electrostatic discharges not EDM.
Click to expand...


Which is what the EU/EC is all about my friend!

lets have a look at ESD's shall we;

Types of ESD

The most spectacular form of ESD is the spark, which occurs when a strong electric field creates an ionized conductive channel in air. This can cause minor discomfort to people, severe damage to electronic equipment, and fires and explosions if the air contains combustible gases or particles.

However, many ESD events occur without a visible or audible spark. A person carrying a relatively small electric charge may not feel a discharge that is sufficient to damage sensitive electronic components. Some devices may be damaged by discharges as small as 12 volts. These invisible forms of ESD can cause device outright failures, or less obvious forms of degradation that may affect the long term reliability and performance of electronic devices. The degradation in some devices may not become evident until well into their service life.
Click to expand...

Spark? arc? spark machining?

hell if you give it enough juice you can even seperate oxygen from rock;
The new device, a reactor developed by Derek Fray and his colleagues, was created from a modified electrochemical process the team invented in 2000 to get metals and alloys from metal oxides. The process uses the oxides — also found in Moon rocks — as a cathode, together with an anode made of carbon. To get the current flowing through the system, the electrodes sit in an electrolyte solution of molten calcium chloride (CaCl2), a common salt with a melting point of almost 800 °C.

The current strips the metal oxide pellets of oxygen atoms, which are ionized and dissolve in the molten salt. The negatively charged oxygen ions move through the molten salt to the anode where they give up their extra electrons and react with the carbon to produce carbon dioxide — a process that erodes the anode. Meanwhile, pure metal is formed over at the cathode.
Click to expand...
LINK

and this is typical mainstream "in a rut" thinking
To heat the reactor on the Moon would need just a small amount of power, Fray said, and the reactor itself can be thermally insulated to lock heat in. The three reactors would need about 4.5 kilowatts of power, which could be supplied by solar panels or even a small nuclear reactor placed on the Moon.
Click to expand...
Solar panels or a nuke generator??? WTF!!! we really are cavemen :(

How many volts can the moons surface charge to? THE MOON IS THE GENERATOR or CHARGE SEPERATOR!!!!

So how strong with numbers and maths, do you relaity check, think these ESD's are on the moon? And asteroid? a comet (dusty "rind") covered dirtball?

those asteroids you listed would be a good place to start!
 
Last edited:
And a spacecraft like Geotail could most probibly act like a comet on it's way thru our magntotail (Earths) if this passage coninsides with a space weather storm the effect should be inhanced, just like the MBC's!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom