The Electric Comet theory

[Cygnus_X1]

Where do we see the highest concentration of -OH??? not on the nucleus but further down the coma and tail.

Ummm....what i've maintained all along is comets are an electrical discharge phenomenon...not sublimating ice as we have been told.

You write -OH, perhaps because this negative ion is seen a lot in chemical solutions.

But the OH ion seen in comets is OH+. Actually, the dominant ions we see in the comet tail are positive. Doppler shift indicates they are moving AWAY from the head.
CH+, CO+, CO2+, N2+, OH+, H2O+, Ca+
Neutrals are largely detected in the head.

So this creates problems for Thornhill's claim that the nucleus is negative and repelling negative oxygen ions to combine with H+ in the solar wind to form OH-. These ions should be attracted towards a negative nucleus of an 'electric' comet.

F. L. Whipple and W. F. Huebner. Physical processes in comets. Annual Reviews of Astronomy & Astrophysics, 14:143–172, 1976. doi: 10.1146/annurev.aa.14.090176.001043.

 

[Sol88]

Deleted double post

 

[Sol88]

Cygnus X1, please tell me more and how this bodes in relation to dusty plasmas?

Seems to me it's just a chaotic mix of all sorts of "stuff on a comet in its coma and down the tail some, 99.5% Tholins is always a good start.

So unless the mainstream are holding something back from us, this is the first time they have tried to model dusty plasmas on/around a comet. they may have written some papers on it and I see there now being dragged out to try and explain the new and SURPRISINGLY UNEXPECTED observations.

So I'll reserve my decision until ESA decides to release more data or papers are written, checked and accepted by their peers that incorporate the new finding from the mission to comet 67P

until then ESA better tell journalist that thier language is leading to a misunderstanding of what comets are

It is believed the walls of rock on Comet 67P, also known as Churyumov-Gerasimenko, are more than 800m high, but its low surface gravity means that a human could survive a tumble from its peak
Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/technology/...ifyingly-rugged-landscape#YxfAvothHTJqIWak.99

LINK looks like rock and it's rocky like but it's not rock

and some of the coments on ESA's blog are very telling as well.

Tom Jones says: 15/11/2014 at 02:36
Actually we don't know. The physics of dusty plasmas indicates that the mass of the dust particular will determine whether any electric fields are able to affect smaller particles.
As the comet gets closers to the sun, the solar wind density will increase, and may increase the charging of the comet, and produce dust fountains and even jets.

We are still finding out...but the talk is now more of electrical/plasma charged matter, electric fields and the the old chestnut magnatisim

 

[Reality Check]

Cygnus X1, please tell me more and how this bodes in relation to dusty plasmas? ...

I can answer that, Sol88: Nothing.
Cygnus X1 was pointing out an error in your post about a different subject - the presence of disassociated water in comet coma. You wrongly used the chemical reaction of H₂O to -OH and +H. The actual OH ion in comets is +OH.

He then went on to Thornhill's claim that the nucleus is negative and repelling negative oxygen ions to combine with H+ in the solar wind to form OH-. The problems being that
* -OH is not seen
* +OH would be attracted to that negative nucleus but the observed +OH is heading away from the nucleus .

As I have pointed out before:

This is me pointing out that this is standard physics that has been applied to comets since before 1988. Dusty plasmas were "probed" in the flybys of Halley's comet in 1988. This is before the Rosetta mission, Sol88 !

A journalist ignorantly using the phrase "walls of rock" does not mean anything except at least one journalist does not know about comets not being rock, Sol88.
A single comment from some unknown person on a blog entry is not good scholarship Sol88. 40 metres above a comet has a pretty picture though.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Given that the Electric Whatever theories explicitly reject the importance of gravity in the universe would it be reasonable to describe them variously as antigravitationalism?

Reposting this because it was buried in Gish gallop. Question still stands.

 

[The Man]

Given that the Electric Whatever theories explicitly reject the importance of gravity in the universe would it be reasonable to describe them variously as antigravitationalism?

Reposting this because it was buried in Gish gallop. Question still stands.

No, I would say that agravitationalism would be a more appropriate nomenclature. In that gravity is not considered the dominant cosmological force.

To give an illustrative example, a few years back, as I was coming on shift, I asked the guy, going off shift, if he was going to the company party (I think it was Christmas time then) that night. He said 'No, I'm antisocial'. He was a reserved and quite guy. I said 'I think what mean is asocial, antisocial is the guy that goes to the party and tries to beat the crap out of everyone there'.

So it seems more agravitationalism than antigravitationalism. Though antimainstreamalism, I'll certainly grant you.

 

[Sol88]

No, I would say that agravitationalism would be a more appropriate nomenclature. In that gravity is not considered the dominant cosmological force.

To give an illustrative example, a few years back, as I was coming on shift, I asked the guy, going off shift, if he was going to the company party (I think it was Christmas time then) that night. He said 'No, I'm antisocial'. He was a reserved and quite guy. I said 'I think what mean is asocial, antisocial is the guy that goes to the party and tries to beat the crap out of everyone there'.

So it seems more agravitationalism than antigravitationalism. Though antimainstreamalism, I'll certainly grant you.

Not anti mainstream per se(as they are the one that have the moola ($$) just the lack of ...dunno, broad'n thier horizons, so in a sense, this is the mission that will define science for the next xx years.

and that in any ones book should be

 

[paladin17]

http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/...ter particle will be weightless, for example.

 

[The Man]

Not anti mainstream per se(as they are the one that have the moola ($$) just the lack of ...dunno, broad'n thier horizons, so in a sense, this is the mission that will define science for the next xx years.

and that in any ones book should be

Yes, anti-mainstream per se, and demonstrably so. Just not anti-money per se (which no one did say "se").

 

[The Man]

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying that such a monoenergetic flux is most probably created by an acceleration of electrons by an electric field (if it was some sort of thermal process, for example, there would be an energy distribution, not a single value of the energy). And since the charge of electron is equal to 1 e, then the energy of 400 eV would mean the field of 400 V. It's that simple.


Solar wind protons accelerated to the additional 400 eV by this sort of field would surely make the ionization of the cometary surface faster.
Typical ionization energies are only around 10 eV, and if my calculations are correct, it would take years to kick out a single electron from a 100x100 micrometres dust particle with the solar photons only (given the distance of 3.5 a.u.). But the protons can change the game, I suppose.

However, it would probably make only the lightest stuff to levitate. My calculation gives that for a particle 100x100x100 micrometers the gravity will be around 10^-13 N (given the distance to the comet's center of mass of 2 km) and the electrostatic force (given the single electron sitting there and the homogeneous field of 0.04 V/m) will be around 10^-21 N. So only the dust particle with the size of 0.1x0.1x1 micrometers with a single electron on it will really be weightless.
This field, of course, could be stronger, since I'm assuming a linearly falling potential from the probe to the nucleus (over a 10 km distance), - but the potential change might be present only in a, say, layer of 1 km thickness, - then the strength of the electric field will be 10 times bigger. Also the dust particle might have not only one electron (which is sort of ridiculously small in itself), but, say, 100 electrons, - then even 1x1x1 micrometer particle will be weightless, for example.

Go back to the ACE data...

How do you get that from that set of graphs? From my quick look 47-65 keV protons seem to be running about the same as 38-53 keV electrons?

where 38-53 keV electrons from the solar wind are charted.


ETA: keV means 1 thousand electron volts of energy, not voltage, so the electrons, if from the solar wind, have actually lost energy.


ETA2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt

 

[The Man]

Lets do some math. A major league baseball pitcher can throw over 90 mph. That's about 40 meters per second. A standard major league ball has a mass of 0.149 kilograms. Giving the kinetic energy imparted, by 1/2mV², to the ball by that pitch as 119 Joules or 7.44 X 10¹⁷ keV. What is the voltage between the pitcher and batter (hint, it is a trick question)?

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

In other words, the question about eV falls into the Not Even Wrong basket. Seems to keep happening in this thread. I guess a Doctorate in Bluster from Googleversity isn't worth the price of the pixels it's printed on.

 

[paladin17]

Lets do some math. A major league baseball pitcher can throw over 90 mph. That's about 40 meters per second. A standard major league ball has a mass of 0.149 kilograms. Giving the kinetic energy imparted, by 1/2mV², to the ball by that pitch as 119 Joules or 7.44 X 10¹⁷ keV. What is the voltage between the pitcher and batter (hint, it is a trick question)?

If only there were lots of balls at one time, the balls themselves were charged and in the end had the same energy (velocity), then your analogy would be correct. Oh yeah, the dirty snowball-pitcher model is surely something to contemplate on.

 

[Haig]

Yep, always rely on cherry-picked quotes from press releases for the very latest in scientific understanding.

Evidence is always worth pointing to

EARLY FINDINGS FROM TETHERED SATELLITE MISSION
POINT TO REVAMPING OF SPACE PHYSICS THEORIES

"Perhaps the most significant finding," Stone said, "is
that tether currents proved to be up to three times greater
than existing theoretical models predicted prior to the
mission. With the amount of power generated being directly
proportional to the current, this bodes well for
technological applications."

Also, for the first time ever, the high voltage plasma
sheath and wake of a high-voltage satellite moving rapidly in
the ionosphere was measured. "This is virtually impossible to
study in a laboratory and is difficult to model
mathematically," Stone said.

Hannes Alfvén did warn that REAL space plasma was tricky stuff and is difficult to model mathematically and it was best to use his Second Approach for REAL space plasma.

You need to take account (he said) of things like electric currents and double layers which clearly still isn't being followed


PARADIGM TRANSITION IN COSMIC PLASMA PHYSICS PDF (large)

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I'm not saying they are. I'm saying that such a monoenergetic flux is most probably created by an acceleration of electrons by an electric field (if it was some sort of thermal process, for example, there would be an energy distribution, not a single value of the energy). And since the charge of electron is equal to 1 e, then the energy of 400 eV would mean the field of 400 V. It's that simple.

As has been explained, it's not that simple:

Go back to the ACE data...

where 38-53 keV electrons from the solar wind are charted.

ETA: keV means 1 thousand electron volts of energy, not voltage, so the electrons, if from the solar wind, have actually lost energy.

This field, of course, could be stronger, since I'm assuming a linearly falling potential from the probe to the nucleus (over a 10 km distance), - but the potential change might be present only in a, say, layer of 1 km thickness, - then the strength of the electric field will be 10 times bigger. Also the dust particle might have not only one electron (which is sort of ridiculously small in itself), but, say, 100 electrons, - then even 1x1x1 micrometer particle will be weightless, for example.

For perspective: On earth, the electrostatic field is about 100 V/m, so the 400 V you've been assuming is present (on average) over a vertical distance of 4 meters.

If the electrostatic phenomena you're discussing aren't terribly important in the far stronger electrostatic field you walk around in, then how could the far weaker field you've been assuming be any more important on comet 67P?

 

[tusenfem]

enjoying non-electric holidays

 

[Haig]

enjoying non-electric holidays

non-electric ?

hope you have gas then or at least candles

Happy Holidays

 

[paladin17]

As has been explained, it's not that simple:

I think that the author is missing the point in those objections.
For example, the electrons in the solar wind and the electrons from the comet relate to different types of phenomena and should be considered separately (also the ACE is more than 3 times closer to the Sun than Rosetta, but that's another case). At least in the matter concerning the electric field around the comet.

For perspective: On earth, the electrostatic field is about 100 V/m, so the 400 V you've been assuming is present (on average) over a vertical distance of 4 meters.

If the electrostatic phenomena you're discussing aren't terribly important in the far stronger electrostatic field you walk around in, then how could the far weaker field you've been assuming be any more important on comet 67P?

The gravity on 67P is much lower.
The temperature on 67P is much lower.
There is no atmosphere.
There is no magnetosphere.

Due to the aforementioned points (and perhaps a couple of others) it's very likely that the behaviour of charged particles on 67P will be different. At least until nobody has proven that it should stay the same.

 

[The Man]

If only there were lots of balls at one time, the balls themselves were charged and in the end had the same energy (velocity), then your analogy would be correct. Oh yeah, the dirty snowball-pitcher model is surely something to contemplate on.

First, the energy values given are per electron and/or per baseball. So you are free to consider or calculate as many or few electrons and/or baseballs that suit your fancy.

Second, what makes you think a baseball can't carry a charge? It is covered in leather and leather was used to transfer charges in early electrostatic generators.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_generator

In the Triboelectric series leather falls between glass and rabbit's fur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect


Third, when a baseball hits something like the catcher's glove, the bat, the batter, the back stop or even a comet, it will change velocity. You want 400 eV for a baseball? That just works out to the ball traveling 0.11 millimeters per hour.


Finally and to the actual point, noting energy in units of electron volts no more infers nor implies a voltage than noting the same energy in kilotons or megatons of TNT infers or implies an explosion or explosive (2.8E-11 and 2.8E-14 for the 90 MPH baseball respectively). So contemplate to your heart's content.

 

[paladin17]

Finally and to the actual point, noting energy in units of electron volts no more infers nor implies a voltage than noting the same energy in kilotons or megatons of TNT infers or implies an explosion or explosive (2.8E-11 and 2.8E-14 for the 90 MPH baseball respectively). So contemplate to your heart's content.

This is a terrific observation and I am very pleased that you keep pointing it in every message as if it was something completely new. And relevant.
But please give me a good example of another source of energy that can create a monoenergetic beam of electrons. You can choose 1 pitcher as your unit of energy if you like.