The Electric Comet theory

[tusenfem]

tusenfem;

You did a calculation before about the rate of water production based on solar wind particle density. Which, if I recall correctly was 6 orders of magnitude lower than detected values (for the comet parameters you used). The response was that your interaction region considered was just too small. Sorry but not wanting to go back and look for it myself and figuring you would still have the numbers handy. What does that work out to for the required size of an interaction region (basically just six orders of magnitude greater than the region you used)?

Hey, just because the electrical comet proponents don't want to quantify things doesn't mean that we can't.

Hi the Man

Yes, I did that calculation in post 2250.

A few of the complaints are:

• The electrochemical process also takes place in the coma, which is much larger than the nucleus
• There is a "storage" of protons around the comet, which can be accelerated by the cometary electric field (double layer)

During the passage of 1996 the coma was at it largest 2 arcminutes in diameter at a distance of about 1 AU, which trigonometry would tell us gives an approximate size of D = r sinθ ≈ r θ ≈ 1 AU * 6 10^-4 = 90000 km, which seems okay from a gut feeling.

Naturally, the coma is not homogeneous, but is known to be basically exponentially dropping in density away from the nucleus with exponent {-ν r/ v_e} where ν is the ionization rate (10^-6) of the gas coming from the comet and v_e is the escape velocity (~1 km/s) and r is the distance. So one e-folding length would be on the order of the size actually. So you have density N at the comet and density N/e at the edge of the coma.

So 4 or 90000 km diameter makes a huge difference and in principle you would get your 10⁶ factor, BUT, we cannot use the mainstream outgassing, because mainstream thinks there is ice below the surface which sublimates, whereas EC says there is electric discharge machining of the surface, or there is proton electrochemical production of negative oxygen. No matter what, the surface of the comet must deliver the oxygen either in negative ion or in hydroxyl state. We do not know the rate for the EDM production, but the proton influx onto the comet still holds as in my calculation, as far as I can see.

Then again, we know that around the comet, in the draped magnetic field, the velocity of the shocked solar wind plasma is still rather high and down the tail. So there is no way of having a "reservoir" of protons hanging around.

Naturally, then they will invoke the "neutral hydrogen cloud" around the comet, of which through ionization protons can be formed. They would have to be accelerated towards the nucleus of the comet by the supposed cometary electric field (double layer?), with up until now has not been measured.

That is the answer I can give you at the moment. More details could be taken into account, but it is a rather pointless excersize, unless haig or David Talbott or Sol88 would like to take the challenge of improving/correcting on the quick analysis above and show us how it is done.

 

[LSSBB]

Electric Comet 67P image


As I said before tusenfem it wasn't my image it came from HERE

Mmm it still looks like a chunk of Mars

Looks are deceiving.

Can you match the material testing results to somewhere on Mars?

 

[tusenfem]

Maybe Tom could do the calculation for the energy involved in the COMET SIDING SPRING electromagnetic event with Mars and the proposed Electric Comet scenario ?

Why does mainstream always have to do the calculations for the EC bunch?
Are there no experts on thunderdolts who can actually calculate this stuff?
Apparently, the peeps there are all experts in electric universe plasma physics ...

 

[tusenfem]

Electric Comet 67P image


As I said before tusenfem it wasn't my image it came from HERE

Mmm it still looks like a chunk of Mars

Who cares where it comes from, it is NOT black and you favour it, 67P to be like Mars's surface, which is also not black. So apparently no EDM, okay we can strike that off the list of EC processes.

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning, David Talbott.

This thread has been a lot quieter this past day or so, so I've had a chance to go back over some previous pages, and I found that I had not responded to this post of yours ...

Okay I see this thread has now exploded into hopeless excess.

You may like to consider what I did, when Haig simply stopped replying to the content of my posts, and instead went on a completely off-topic, link-spamming rampage (thanks to Ziggurat for that term); namely, ignore.

But I'm curious; what do you see as "hopeless excess"?

However, my sketchy list of electric comet predictions has led to a number of comments and challenges that will be well worth integrating into the predictions themselves. Won't try to keep up with all the polemic excursions, but some of the comments on the wording of the predictions will be useful.

Do you intend to post those revisions here?

I for one would be quite interested to see which of the responses you end up addressing, and which you do not.

Is it appropriate to describe an active comet as "hot and dry? Yes, in the words of comet investigators responding to the Borrelly findings in 2001 (Deep Space 1 probe)

"The spectrum suggests that the surface is hot and dry. It is surprising that we saw no traces of water ice." Dr. Laurence Soderblom, U.S. Geological Survey

"No traces of water ice" is of course the reason why standard theorists were so surprised. And no sublimating ice is the background FACT leading to the "hot and dry" finding.

Your use of un-sourced selective quotes may satisfy you, but certainly does not come anywhere near close to being science, right?

In any case, if "hot and dry" is - as you claim - a prediction of the ech, then it must be possible for anyone - me, tusenfem, Haig, Matthew Cline, anyone - to work through from the assumptions in the ech to conclude "comets must be hot and dry". And they must be able to so do objectively. And anyone must be able to check their derivation and conclude that it is correct.

As I noted earlier, the "dry" part of this prediction is clearly consistent with the ech (in the ech, comets are homogeneous 'rock', which by definition is 'dry'); however, the "hot" part of this prediction comes from where, in the ech, exactly?

While I may change a few words in the predictions listed, my plan is to supplement each prediction with examples and a few illustrations. I expect to begin the Thunderbolts report this week, as a continuing blog. Of course, the excess of postings here of late did indeed slow me down a couple of days.

I can promise that, as the report continues, I will not ignore criticisms posted on this ISF thread.

As others have noted, you do not have a very good track record here. There are rather a lot of "criticisms" posted here, on the ech, which you have yet to address.

And then there are the many things which are not "criticisms" ... questions, comments, suggestions, ...

<SNIP>

Edited by LashL: 

Removed breach.

I do hope that you take into consideration the fact that several of your posts have been edited by moderators. For example, while you may think you posted something - and in fact did - if it's removed, it's as if it was never posted. So if any deleted part contains substantive content, you may like to consider reposting it (in a form that will not cause moderators to delete it, again).

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning, dasmiller.

Yes, I was responding to Haig, and specifically addressing the post that he linked. I don't know whether Talbott has weighed in on the apparent mass issue, so my question may be limited to Haig's (and "scowie's") concept of EC.

In a later post, by David Talbott*, he explicitly seemed to open the door to some kind of 'estimated density is too low because of {something to do with electricity}' approach.

We don't know, yet, if this has been incorporated into the official ech; perhaps in his promised update, David will make that clear (and if it is now incorporated, just what the new density assumptions/inputs/etc are).

*in fact, the one immediately following yours!

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning tusenfem.

I think Tom is well informed about "dealingwithcreationisminastronomy"

I'm sure he is.

However, there are no links in his post, and to a reader - ISF member or not - not familiar with Tom and his website, there would be no (easy) way to learn the context. I hope that my post would make it easier for any such reader to follow-up, should they wish to.

 

[David Talbott]

Seems I got under someone's skin by posing a reasonable implication of the electric comet. I wrote, "In fact, a comet ripped from Mars by planet-wide electric discharge and immersed in a cloud of rocky debris would surely look very much like the surface of 67P."

How can you apply the words "fact" and "would" and "surely" here?

Probably because the statement was entirely reasonable. I find that asking reasonable questions is the one way to get the best specialists to begin considering possibilities outside their usual field of view. Let's just see what happens when comet scientists do begin asking such questions. I think my faith in the future of science may be a lot higher than yours.

 

[David Talbott]

Of course he is. But at this point, what else could we possibly expect? I mean, he's spent how many years now claiming to be this iconoclast, speaking truth to power, fighting the conspiracy to conceal the truth with his received wisdom from the prophets? Imagine the mental anguish that would be involved with actually realizing how much nonsense it all is. Imagine how heartbreaking it would be to accept that your efforts weren't merely unsuccessful, but completely pointless, even counter-productive. And then what? He'd basically be out of a job, with no real prospects, and nobody even giving him any respect. The EU crowd would consider him a traitor to the cause, and the mainstream crowd has no use for someone who couldn't figure out the basics to begin with.

It's really too much to ask of a person, to simply throw away their life's work. The fact that he's wrong simply doesn't enter into the psychological equation here. Which is why arguing with him can never convince him that he's wrong. The admission is simply too terrible a psychic burden to bear. The only people who might benefit are lurkers.

Have you ever heard of "projection" Ziggurat? Please remember that you are a human being and THAT can't be taken away from you.

 

[Ziggurat]

Have you ever heard of "projection" Ziggurat? Please remember that you are a human being and THAT can't be taken away from you.

You know, I never would have bothered with the psychological analysis if you had ever treated the evidence against your pet theory seriously. But you didn't, and you still don't. The natural question is why. It's not because the material is too complex. My disproof of the Juergens model, for example, is trivially easy. So your willful ignorance cannot be explained on the merits of the arguments, so we must turn elsewhere for an explanation.

And of course you're going to resist the explanation for why you cling to nonsense, just like you resist the explanation for why it's nonsense.

As for projection, David, only one of us refuses to submit their ideas to immediately falsifiable tests, and here's a hint: it's not me.

 

[David Talbott]

Revisiting an important question I posed just a day or two ago. Is it appropriate to describe an active comet as "hot and dry"? Yes, in the words of comet investigators responding to the Borrelly findings in 2001 (Deep Space 1 probe)
"The spectrum suggests that the surface is hot and dry. It is surprising that we saw no traces of water ice." Dr. Laurence Soderblom, U.S. Geological Survey.

I then added that, "No traces of water ice" is of course the reason why standard theorists were so surprised. And no sublimating ice is the background FACT leading to the 'hot and dry' finding."

And here's the response from JeanTate:

Your use of un-sourced selective quotes may satisfy you, but certainly does not come anywhere near close to being science, right?

Unless Dr. Laurence Soderblom of the U.S. Geological Survey didn't actually make the statement, the quote will remain as it is. AND it's meaningful, particularly in the context of complementary facts in a general summary of comet surprises.

From the vantage point of an interdisciplinary critique of theory, it's typically the PATTERNS of surprises—often across decades—that most emphatically urge us to reconsider theoretical assumptions. Is the broader field of view, so essential to assessing the integrity of a specialized science, verboten here?

Last question. Is anybody else curious about the pervasive, or should I say perverse, double standard that continually shows its face in postings to this thread? It's not as if the Inquisitors posing their strategic ripostes are "quantifying" their answers or meeting any standard of scientific discourse at all.

Now going back to my real job, since it's 7:05 here.

 

[Ziggurat]

Last question. Is anybody else curious about the pervasive, or should I say perverse, double standard that continually shows its face in postings to this thread? It's not as if the Inquisitors posing their strategic ripostes are "quantifying" their answers or meeting any standard of scientific discourse at all.

That's simply false. You have consistently ignored the quantification I have presented, but it's been here the whole time.

So here's a few samplings of the quantification I've done, both in this thread and elsewhere, which debunk the Electric Universe nonsense. No one has refuted these calculations or presented alternatives.

Contrary to Haig's claim, there's plenty of energy to sublimate water on 67P

Juergens' electric sun would explode

Magnetism cannot explain galactic rotation curves

Electricity cannot explain galactic rotation curves

Each and every time I subject Electric Universe ideas to quantitative analysis, it comes out wrong. Not by a little bit, but by many, many orders of magnitude. The EU folks, in contrast, have never subjected their own ideas to any similar scrutiny. Never once have I seen any EU advocate to any calculation to demonstrate even the plausibility of their ideas. That is beyond curious, it's an obvious sign of crackpottery.

 

[D'rok]

Last question. Is anybody else curious about the pervasive, or should I say perverse, double standard that continually shows its face in postings to this thread? It's not as if the Inquisitors posing their strategic ripostes are "quantifying" their answers or meeting any standard of scientific discourse at all.

Once again, the intellectual dishonesty here is breathtaking. The first post on this very page is a discussion by tusenfem about a specific calculation he performed at your prompting, and which you are apparently unable to deal with. David, you are doing very poorly here.

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning, again, David Talbott.

I don't expect Haig would be able to meaningfully respond, and David may be unwilling to do so (he seems to regard any and all efforts to quantify anything to do with the ech as verboten, at least until the June conference); however, other ISF members may.

No time to chat for now, but the misstatement above is quite representative of the twisted discussion too many Inquisitors bring to the table.

Thank you for being so forthright in your opinion, and so swift in your feedback.

I do not 'get' the "Inquisitors" reference (perhaps you could explain it, please?), but I am more concerned with "the misstatement above".

Presumably what you are concerned about is "David may be unwilling to do so (he seems to regard any and all efforts to quantify anything to do with the ech as verboten, at least until the June conference)". What is it that I thought you, David, may be unwilling to respond to? Some interesting material in Tom Bridgman's recent blog post, Electric Comets III: Mass vs. Charge; in particular the fact that this blog post directly addresses the content of your recent ISF post (here).

Now "may be unwilling" is surely something you cannot possibly take exception to, right? So the heart of my misstatement (as you see it) must be the bit in brackets: "he seems to regard any and all efforts to quantify anything to do with the ech as verboten, at least until the June conference".

The first thing to note is that my statement begins with "he seems". That's a personal perception, a personal opinion. As such, it cannot possibly be a misstatement (unless you claim to have access to my mind)!

OK, so what you are unhappy about then becomes just this: "[David] regards any and all efforts to quantify anything to do with the ech as verboten" (the qualifying phrase - "at least until the June conference" - is irrelevant, for now).

And the rest of your post does, it seems, address exactly that part.

Let's see now ...

The point I've made repeatedly is that, when direct evidence challenges a longstanding assumption, you have to start with new observations and a reconsideration of old observations, ranging from space exploration to experimental data and more.

It is certainly true that you have repeatedly made a point (or points) which you certainly seem to think is similar to this.

However, it's also certainly true that this point of yours has been questioned, challenged, commented on, etc. By many different ISF members. Many times.

The points that have been repeatedly made, by others*, are that your point is vague, unqualified, wrong, inconsistent with other points you have repeatedly made, inconsistent with how science actually works, ....

And that's not even considering the specific "direct evidence" you have cited (etc).

In short, you have so far failed to communicate what this point actually is, and also failed to present a strong case for its veracity.

Turning to the actual content, and restricting its scope to the ech.

As far as I can tell, you have yet to present any "direct evidence", in the scientific sense. This may seem quite shocking, seeing as how you have published quite a lot of material over the past eight years and more; however, with one or two quite minor exceptions, none of the "direct evidence" you have presented is from primary sources.

And as those primary sources are, overwhelmingly, quantitative (and include explicit use of plasma physics, for example), any "direct evidence" MUST be quantitative.

Now the second part of your repeatedly made point - "you have to start with new observations and a reconsideration of old observations, ranging from space exploration to experimental data" - seems quite unexceptional (the "and more" is so unspecific as to be content-free); who could possibly disagree with it?

Well, almost everyone who has commented on the posts of yours* which go into detail about it.

And why do they disagree?

Because "new observations" and "old observations", whether "from space exploration" or "experimental data", are all quantitative!

This, then, is the likely fundamental disconnect; at least some of the ISF members who have commented on your posts (myself among them) are in broad agreement with the spirit of what you wrote; however, unless and until you can convince these members that a purely qualitative approach can - even in principle - yield valid results (re the ech), no meaningful discussion can take place.

Side note: I for one have started to try to understand the ech without any quantification; I have already written several posts on whether the predictions you posted are objective, and independently derivable from the published ech (I'm not 100% sure, but you have yet to respond to any of these posts).

Give to those managing billions of dollars in space exploration and plasma lab research the REASONS to think in broader terms. The institutionalized field of view, though well-funded, has been too narrow.

You have, I think, also said this (in some form or other) several times.

Yet you have also - as far as I can tell - failed to explain what those "broader terms" are, in terms which are consistent with your fundamental assumption concerning the primacy of "electricity". After all, it's not like "electricity" is a poorly understood part of physics, nor that plasma physics (which even you must admit is built on "electricity") cannot be quantified.

I hope this helps.

On this, Rosetta will likely be a spectacular prompt in its own right.

If you say so. But how?

*I cannot really say what Haig has written; I no longer read his posts. Sol88 once posted the ISF equivalent of a Facebook Like in response to one of your posts, but I think that doesn't count.

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning, tusenfem.

Dear David,

I think it is time you and yours on Thunderdolts start actually using the data that is publicly available from PDS (NASA) and PSA (ESA) and show you claimed discharges in the fields data. It should not be hard for your experts to find it.

It seems you and yours are failing your own scientific method.

A much more succinct post than any of mine!

It's hard to escape this conclusion, isn't it? Using David Talbott's own statement of what method(s) to use, it seems clear that he (and his colleagues) do not actually adhere to it. Even allowing for ambiguity and lack of precision in the statement of this version of the scientific method.

 

[JeanTate]

Good morning Matthew Cline.

The point I've made repeatedly is that, when direct evidence challenges a longstanding assumption, you have to start with new observations and a reconsideration of old observations, ranging from space exploration to experimental data and more. Give to those managing billions of dollars in space exploration and plasma lab research the REASONS to think in broader terms. The institutionalized field of view, though well-funded, has been too narrow. On this, Rosetta will likely be a spectacular prompt in its own right.

So you see no point in addressing what some see as flaws in the EC hypothesis until after mainstream astrophysicists and astronomers start thinking in "broader terms"?

I see that you have written quite a few, pithy, posts (questions) like this.

I did a quick check, and could not find any responses from David Talbott; are there, in fact, some such responses?

 

[tusenfem]

Revisiting an important question I posed just a day or two ago. Is it appropriate to describe an active comet as "hot and dry"? Yes, in the words of comet investigators responding to the Borrelly findings in 2001 (Deep Space 1 probe)
"The spectrum suggests that the surface is hot and dry. It is surprising that we saw no traces of water ice." Dr. Laurence Soderblom, U.S. Geological Survey.
...

We can read all about the science of comet Borrelly's jets in this Icarus paper by Roger Yelle, and this is a paper by Soderblom et al..

The latter states (and I copy from Yelle et al.)

The low albedo, the lack of spectral features due to H2O,
surface temperatures much higher than the free-vacuum sublimation
temperature of H2O ice, and the spatially confined
regions of enhanced activity all imply an absence of H2O ice
on the surface of Borrelly (Soderblom et al., 2002). The surface
is covered with a refractory crust.

The Yelle et al. paper (freely available through the link) then goes on to explain why there is no ice and why the surface temperature is high ~320 K or so. And then how the jets of the comet are created through deLavalle nozzles etc. Borrelly was apparently at 1.36 AU during the measurements.

Well, that just proves my colleagues usual comment.
- "What is the comet like?"
- "Unlike any comet we have seen so far."

Last question. Is anybody else curious about the pervasive, or should I say perverse, double standard that continually shows its face in postings to this thread? It's not as if the Inquisitors posing their strategic ripostes are "quantifying" their answers or meeting any standard of scientific discourse at all.

Apparently me linking to papers that I and my colleagues have published, for the whole world to see (and if you do not have access I will send you the pdf) has passed by you completely, as well as the quantifying calculations I have made on this board.

 

[Dancing David]

Seems I got under someone's skin by posing a reasonable implication of the electric comet. I wrote, "In fact, a comet ripped from Mars by planet-wide electric discharge and immersed in a cloud of rocky debris would surely look very much like the surface of 67P."

Probably because the statement was entirely reasonable. I find that asking reasonable questions is the one way to get the best specialists to begin considering possibilities outside their usual field of view. Let's just see what happens when comet scientists do begin asking such questions. I think my faith in the future of science may be a lot higher than yours.

Hi,
You do perhaps know that appearance can be deceiving?

So how about talking about how the Electrical Comet hypothesis says

-where does the coma come from?
-what conditions would be needed for that to occur?
-what current observations match or don't match those conditions?

If we stick to pictures and 'looks like' then, well it doesn't work so well.

 

[Haig]

Looks are deceiving.

Can you match the material testing results to somewhere on Mars?

Haven't got samples yet but this has got to be a contender ... Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars

Call me greedy but I think I can have my cake and eat it too It looks red and black just like ESA say 67P is

Then, an this is the clincher, Valles Marineris looks like an electrical scar if ever I saw one. Just think 67P blasted out of Mars by a cosmic thunderbolt with exploding double layers under the crust.

Why does mainstream always have to do the calculations for the EC bunch?
Are there no experts on thunderdolts who can actually calculate this stuff?
Apparently, the peeps there are all experts in electric universe plasma physics ...

Because it's ALL about EVIDENCE first - maths is a bad master

Who cares where it comes from, it is NOT black and you favour it, 67P to be like Mars's surface, which is also not black. So apparently no EDM, okay we can strike that off the list of EC processes.

Who cares where it comes from!!! Really?

Mainstream believe comets are left overs from the formation of the solar system billions of years ago and may hold the key to life on Earth supposedly bringing water

Or have I pick that up wrong? It's the claim comets have been around for billions of years I find hard to swallow

As for bringing water in the nucleus ... where is it ??? none worth talking about in all the comets we have been too !!

But in the Coma and tail ? Yes, water is produced there in electrochemical reaction along with lots of other elements. Or so I read

The Lightning Scarred Planet, Mars,

 

[ben m]

Seems I got under someone's skin by posing a reasonable implication of the electric comet. I wrote, "In fact, a comet ripped from Mars by planet-wide electric discharge and immersed in a cloud of rocky debris would surely look very much like the surface of 67P."

Probably because the statement was entirely reasonable.

I asked, specifically, what the factual basis of the statement was. What specific studies have you performed, using what methods and what assumptions, that told you "a comet ripped from Mars by planet-wide electric discharge and immersed in a cloud of rocky debris" would have the properties you say it has?

For example, when I say "A star with a 10000-Coulomb charge excess would emit a charge-imbalanced wind and quickly neutralize", the basis of the statement is Coulomb's Law and the law of charge conservation. I am not just making it up. When I say "a comet-altering electrical current would be easily detected by magnetometers", the basis of that statement is Ampere's Law, easily-stated (and conservative) assumptions about the currents, and my knowledge of the specs of the Rosetta and Giotto magnetometers. I am not just making it up. I repeat: what is the basis, if any, of your statement?