The Electric Comet theory

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Now I've got a reason to root for a big snowfall this winter! I can try to set this up under more controlled conditions and do some side experiments! :)

It snowed here last night !

Actually, tusenfem, do you know if we have any good spectra of the jets closeup? The spectra of dust in the coma and tail are dominated by reflected sunlight with resonance flourescence and some photoionization. I don't recall finding anything on a broad-band optical spectrum of the jets themselves.

As I was not able to go to the AGU, I do not know of any spectra of the jets. It may have been presented, but I would have to look at the abstracts.
The special issue of Science should come out this month, if I am not mistaken. But I do not know what has been submitted, apart from two RPC papers: one from ICA Birth of a comet magnetosphere: a spring of water ions and one from IES.

There will be two cometary sessions at the EGU in Vienna, end of April. Abstract deadline is 7 January, so no list of titles available yet.
 
Hi, paladin17: Have a look at the JPL Small-Body Database Browser which will allow you to search the database from many kinds of objects.
One thing I pointed out many years ago was that EC predicts that 100,000's of asteroids should be comets. Of course EC has no valid predictions so I had to assume that it was the eccentricity of the orbit that made an asteroid into a comet.
What about semi-major axis? By adding the 133P/Elst–Pizarro's parameter (a>=3.16 AU) we get 19126 asteroids and 1039 comets. a>=4 AU already gives 1775 asteroids and 851 comets. a>=5 AU gives 1289 asteroids over 740 comets.
In EC framework the bigger the semi-major axis is, the more diverse are the electric properties of the regions visited by the object along its route around the Sun. I guess the other significant parameter is the orbital speed, since it influences the rate of potential change. And it obviously falls with the increase in semi-major axis. So it provides a counteraction of sorts.
 
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Yes tusenfem, it was an interesting read, well that is, what I could read in the few preview pages allowed ... but I won't be buying the book. Not only because of the price I was quoted on-line £108 / $165 / Euro 138 ... that's way too high for what is (imho) only a mainstream magnetic version of the electric comet hypothesis but without naming a plasma sheath, double layers, charge or mentioning too much about electric effects.

Well apparently you don't get what is meant by a review.
Having connections is useful, then you get the whole pdf.
I have not got the foggiest what a "magnetic version" of the "electric comet fantasy" is supposed to be.
There is lots of plasma in that paper.

Worse than that ... they appear to be trying to "reinvent the wheel", so to speak. We already know from Plasma (physics) in lab experiments and peer reviewed papers that charged bodies in a plasma produce Shocks or double layers, Electric fields and circuits as well as forming a Cellular structure.

As you have not read the paper (in full) how can you say this.
It is a review paper, it has almost everything in it, what you claim it does not.


There is no reason NOT to apply this science to real Space Plasma but , of course, only with Hannes Alfvén Second Approach.

Blah blah blah
You would not know a second approach if you were sitting on it.

ALL charged bodies in the Solar System have Plasma Sheaths around them ... from the Sun ... to the Planets ... to Comets.

As is discussed in the paper.

We should recognise the common origin of these phenomena and stop treating them separately and inventing new jargon to describe the same effects Plasma (physics) has already named in the lab.

Maybe you should just keep silent talking about a paper which you have not read, nor understood, nor ever will understand.


Well "recent" is to be taken with a truckload of salt, this is Hershkowitz's paper from 1985.
Now, I wonder who wrote his PhD thesis about double layers ...
 
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Now, I wonder who wrote his PhD thesis about double layers ...

Would one expect Double Layers on/around/near a comet, Tusenfem?

And if there were, would the RPC be able to detect them?

Any progress on the cause of the singing comet?
“This is exciting because it is completely new to us. We did not expect this and we are still working to understand the physics of what is happening,” says Karl-Heinz.
LINK
 
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Would one expect Double Layers on/around/near a comet, Tusenfem?

And if there were, would the RPC be able to detect them?

Double layers can be created by a current in a natural plasma, e.g. in the auroral acceleration region where the density of the current carriers gets too small and acceleration is necessary, or they can be created on the interface between two plasmas with different characteristics (density, composition, temperature, ...). So it could well be that e.g. at the cometopause (where the incoming pressure of the solar wind equals the outgoing pressure of the cometary gas).

I am not aware of simulations showing that they are present, but the latest ones by Koenders et al. or Rubin et al. should be able to see if they occur in their models.

The have a size of tens of Debye lengths. So, depending on the latter, they would be able to be measured by LAP (the Langmuir Probe) onboard Rosetta. However, as we do not know where they will occur, it is rather difficult to look for them in the data (unlike e.g. measurments from Viking in the Earth's magnetosphere), because you basically have to look through all of the data and search and if you see a signal then you have to determine if it is a double layer, or an Alfvénic soliton, or ... or ...

Any progress on the cause of the singing comet?

There will be two abstract to the EGU, one by Richter et al. and one by Goetz et al.
I have not seen them yet, but the deadline is in 2 days, I will probably get them tomorrow.
 
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Well apparently you don't get what is meant by a review.
Having connections is useful, then you get the whole pdf.
I have not got the foggiest what a "magnetic version" of the "electric comet fantasy" is supposed to be.
There is lots of plasma in that paper.
Yip, you're a privileged person tusenfem , did you make any corrections ?

Sure you know ! The emphasises in placed on magnetism and the electric part is down played and rarely mentioned.

When they say the magnetic field lines pile up on the comet nucleus and wrap / drape around it's a joke ! Magnetic field LINES don't exist !!! They are a conceptual visual aid NOT a reality. It's like the contour lines on a map they don't exist on the real landscape. Plasma physics already has a clear picture of what happens when a charged body moves in a plasma electric field.

As you have not read the paper (in full) how can you say this.
It is a review paper, it has almost everything in it, what you claim it does not.
Sure tusenfem, I'm just speculating from what I have read of this paper and from previous mainstream papers.

If, as you hint, "it has almost everything in it, what you claim it does not" then that is a huge departure from the Dirty Snowball comet model with ices sublimating to something akin to the Electric Comet hypothesis but with a magnetic slant.

What's that saying that comes to mind ....
Schopenhauer said:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 – 1860)



tusenfem said:
Blah blah blah
You would not know a second approach if you were sitting on it.
Here I am sitting on ALL of them :p The thing is how many are still NOT recognised by mainstream NOW ... and ... worse ..... they STILL cling to many elements of the wrong First approach !!!

CosmicaI electrodynamics Second approach

Space plasmas have often a complicated
inhomogeneous structure

u depends on current and often suddenly
becomes o, E,, often # o

Frozen-in picture often completely misleading.

It is equally important to draw the current
lines and discuss the electric circuit.

Electrostatic double layers are of decisive
importance in low density plasmas.

Currents produce filaments or flow in thin sheets.

Theories still not very well developed and partly phenomenological.

As is discussed in the paper.
So what did the paper say (in brief) about ALL the charged bodies (Sun , Planets, Comets) having Plasma Sheaths then ?


Maybe you should just keep silent talking about a paper which you have not read, nor understood, nor ever will understand.
I read enough to get the gist of it and my comment still stands "We should recognise the common origin of these phenomena and stop treating them separately and inventing new jargon to describe the same effects Plasma (physics) has already named in the lab"


Well "recent" is to be taken with a truckload of salt, this is Hershkowitz's paper from 1985.
Now, I wonder who wrote his PhD thesis about double layers ...

Gee tusenfem, the date is stated in the paper header as is the word "recent"

So you think science papers have a "sell by date" and newer papers are automatically better ? :rolleyes:

Mmm ... who could have done that PhD thesis on double layers ... some mainstream numpty ? ... No ... wait ... second try ... it was you ! well done ! Can you link to it here ? :)
 
The MIDAS findings are a SURPRISE for the mainstream but another confirmation for the ELECTRIC COMET! :cool:
 
There will be two abstract to the EGU, one by Richter et al. and one by Goetz et al.
I have not seen them yet, but the deadline is in 2 days, I will probably get them tomorrow.

Thank you, Tusenfem. :book:

Now off to brush up on Cometary Double layers! ;)
 
Welcome back, Reality Check! the pages sure got shorter while you were away!
 
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Yip, you're a privileged person tusenfem , did you make any corrections ?

No. why should I? Did you find any mistakes?
If you had asked, I could have sent you the whole paper.

Sure you know ! The emphasises in placed on magnetism and the electric part is down played and rarely mentioned.

When they say the magnetic field lines pile up on the comet nucleus and wrap / drape around it's a joke ! Magnetic field LINES don't exist !!! They are a conceptual visual aid NOT a reality. It's like the contour lines on a map they don't exist on the real landscape. Plasma physics already has a clear picture of what happens when a charged body moves in a plasma electric field.

Naturally, this is utter nonsense, which is impossible to explain to the EU gang. Both descriptions of plasma physics: the vB and the jE descriptions are equally valid, because the come from the same four Maxwell equations. It depends on what you want to do which formalism you take. Usually the vB formalism is chosen, because they are "better behaved", however, if you want to study e.g. double layers you have no choice but to use the jE description.

My student studies the Earth's magnetotail with in the vB (and derives currents from the magnetic field measurements, because currents in space are very difficult to measure). My colleague in Sweden studies the same things as my student and she concentrates on the jE, both studies fit very well together and enhance each other.

And what do you actually think my student and my colleague are doing for a job? Drink coffee eat doughnuts and then boink a new paper is ready? No, they are doing plasma physics, using real measured data from space satellites.

Field lines are a great tool for visualizing what is happening, specifically for draping, a thing that actually Alfvén published in his ground breaking paper on cometary tails in 1957. Of course they are like contours of a map, but if you see that the contours are closet together you know you are in for a steep climb. The field lines just follow the local direction of the magnetic field, and if you measure the field around e.g. a comet, then you see that there is field draping just like Alfvén envisioned it.

Sure tusenfem, I'm just speculating from what I have read of this paper and from previous mainstream papers.

No, you are claiming, based on a paper that you cannot read whole, that stuff is not discussed or mentioned, where in reality the ARE in the paper. You just show your lack of knowledge and your disdain for professional scientist based on your premise that "mainstream will most likely have it wrong and my thunder friends are always right".

If, as you hint, "it has almost everything in it, what you claim it does not" then that is a huge departure from the Dirty Snowball comet model with ices sublimating to something akin to the Electric Comet hypothesis but with a magnetic slant.

What's that saying that comes to mind ....

you can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink?

Dirty snowball from Fred Whipple from 1951, waaaayyyy before we had any spacecraft actually visiting comets.

CosmicaI electrodynamics Second approach

Space plasmas have often a complicated inhomogeneous structure

yes and ... oh I am glad that my magneto plasma is so simple I could not deal with a second approach plasma

u depends on current and often suddenly becomes o, E,, often # o

oh my oh my too bad I am working in the first approach, so my double layer paper will probably be nonsense, because I am not allowed to have E ≠ 0

Frozen-in picture often completely misleading.

If you use it wrongly indeed. So I better tell Tony Lui that he should retract this paper

It is equally important to draw the current lines and discuss the electric circuit.

Yes, if you want to have a circuit description of your process, or if you want to look at currents. It all depends on what you want to investigate. So I guess I was not allowed to write this mainstream paper, because I use like ... circuits!

Electrostatic double layers are of decisive importance in low density plasmas.

This should be CAN be of decisive importance, it depends what you are looking at. These kind of generalities are as bad as what you accuse mainstream of.

Currents produce filaments or flow in thin sheets.

Yes, so what? You think we don't know that? Tell that to my good friend Thomas Chust.

Theories still not very well developed and partly phenomenological.

Yes, in 19 frakking 70!
Do you really think there have been no developments since Alfvén gave his lecture? Well, then you might as well throw everything in the can that was "published" by your heroes Perratt, Thornhill, etc. etc.

So what did the paper say (in brief) about ALL the charged bodies (Sun , Planets, Comets) having Plasma Sheaths then ?

As it is a paper on cometary magnetospheres, is says nothing about other bodies, which is to be expected. However, the cometosheath is well discussed.

I read enough to get the gist of it and my comment still stands "We should recognise the common origin of these phenomena and stop treating them separately and inventing new jargon to describe the same effects Plasma (physics) has already named in the lab"

YOU are inventing new jargon, my dear Haig, the mangetic version of the electric comet fantasy. We are using in our papers EVERYTHING that is developed in the laboratory and in theory on PLASMA PHYSICS. Heck, I just posted pictures of the double layer experiments I made in Alfvén's laboratory in Stockholm, Sweden!

You apparently have no idea how science works, develops itself. Plasma physics is one of the most beautiful parts of all physics. We can do stuff in the lab, other things we cannot do in the lab we can do in outer space. We have theory in various degrees of "difficulty" which can completely describe what we see to a very good accuracy.

What do you have? Youtube videos and a 1970 speech.

Gee tusenfem, the date is stated in the paper header as is the word "recent"

Yes, I know, but maybe you could have put some effort in getting more "recent" results?

So you think science papers have a "sell by date" and newer papers are automatically better ?

Unlike the people on thunderdolts, where everything is a given electric, real physics is in constant motion and further development. Not saying it is better, but it stops at least 5 years before I even started working on my PhD on double layers.

Can you link to it here ?

Most of the wiki on double layers is the introduction to my thesis. All other chapters are published papers.
 
The MIDAS findings are a SURPRISE for the mainstream but another confirmation for the ELECTRIC COMET! :cool:

Oh really, please inform my colleague on the second floor.
But then, what surprise was that, actually?
Can you please at least give a link (not to a boobtube) as to what you are claiming?
 
Good morning, Haig.
Don't think it's only been tusenfem who's been on the sauce :p

The Electric Comet pdf Copyright © 2006 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott
Today, most astronomers distance themselves from the “impact” explanation of Wild 2’s surface. And rather than suggest an answer, the Deep Impact mission to Tempel 1 only deepened the mystery, revealing the very “craters, valleys, mesas, and ridges” that the electric model—and only the electric model—had predicted

A free taste of Electric Comet hypothesis 12 months previous to 2007 :D
Thanks for this.

It appears to be a conference presentation (33rd ICOPS), at a poster session, 4-8 June, 2006. As such, it seems to be a primary source, and it may be that Thornhill (2007) is a paper which reports the key aspects of what's in the "poster" (quotes because it has a format quite unlike any poster I've seen).

However, while it does not contain a derivation of the observed comet jets are an electrical discharge phenomena from the two key ech assumptions*, it does seem to sketch what such a derivation may be like. More on this later.

It took me a while to grasp why you seem to be saying that Thornhill and Talbott were "on the sauce", but I finally got it (I think).

You're very brave, Haig, to 'out' those two electrical theorists as frauds! :p

And you did so in a rather more subtle manner than I'd've expected; you simply quoted some words which appear on p2, "Copyright © 2006 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott"

So why is there fraud here?

Because, by claiming copyright - which Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott unambiguously do - the authors are stating that everything in this work is their own, unless they provide an explicit attribution otherwise. And as this is a presentation at an international scientific conference, we can expect that the authors would have bent over backwards to ensure all such attributions were given.

But there are essentially zero explicit attributions, and it takes just a minute or so to find the original work - done by others - which Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott claim as their own (Google is your friend).

For example, on p7, in a box titled "The Jets of Comet Hale-Bopp", there is an image, one with no attribution, no credit, no source. Yet the image seems to be the same as in a 20 September 1996 ESO PR, Seven Jets in Comet Hale-Bopp:

ESO said:
This image of C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) is based on a CCD frame that was obtained on August 18, 1996, by Nick Thomas (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Aeronomie, Germany) and Heike Rauer (Observatoire de Paris, France), observing with the DFOSC multi-mode instrument on the Danish 1.54-m telescope at La Silla. The frame was taken at 04:20 UT through an R filter (to show the dust around the cometary nucleus) and the integration time was 20 s. The subsequent image processing was perfomed by Hermann Boehnhardt (Universitaets-Sternwarte, Munchen, Germany). It involved bias subtraction and flat-fielding, followed by extraction of a subframe centered on the nucleus (the area corresponds to 797 x 797 pixels = 320 x 320 arcsec), logarithmic transformation and finally the application of a Laplace filter with a width of 15 pixels. This procedure suppresses the smooth structure of the coma and enhances the visibility of the complex, non-symmetrical dust jet structure. No less than seven jets can be clearly seen, emanating from the nucleus. They are caused by the reflected sunlight in dust grains which are emitted from vents on the surface, due to the pressure of outstreaming gas.

Credit: ESO


Follow that link and you read: "Unless specifically noted, the ESO images and videos, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible."

Some ISF members have been unhappy to read Reality Check's characterizations of some electrical theorists' work as "lies", perhaps you are one of them, Haig. How deliciously ironic that it is you, Haig, who points the way to a discovery of fraud by two electrical theorists.

* it does not even call it the ech; rather, it's called the "Electric Comet Model". This a misnomer, as David Talbott himself admits (upthread).
 
Hello Sol88.
(my bold)

Don't you find it rather ironic to be asking for an OSIRIS image, while the sole primary source you've been able to come up with (so far) re "the observed comet jets are an electrical discharge phenomena" (or, more accurately, "The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus, producing “electrical discharge machining” (EDM) of the surface" (source)) - Thornhill (2007) - is behind a paywall?

Perhaps you could ask Uncle Wal to provide you a free copy, which you could post here?

can't do the maths, just want to see a picture. Thought a stack of photos, over a period of time, of the "shiny stuff" would be better.

Then we can see if they are arcs or glows....or vents.
 
Good morning, Sol88.
Are you saying there is no electric field entered on the Sun, JeanTate?
No*.

But thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify: that there is a radial electric field, centered on the Sun, is one of two key assumptions in the ech. What I have been trying to do is establish how all the various published ech-based "predictions" can be derived from the ech assumptions. In a logical, objective, and independently verifiable way.

oh well time to pack the bags and move on.

maybe you can come back when you've worked out the MAJOR problems for mainstreams explanation of the thermonuclear bomb sun.
Sarcasm noted.

But what does that have to do with the ech?

Why is it so hard, apparently, for you to stay focused on the ech?

Meantime I'll hang around for the announcement that comets are rock and the jets are cold cathode electrical discharges arising from a charged body moving in the radial electrical field centred on a Sun powered externally.
Noted.

However, a) electrical theorists have been "announcing" this (or similar) for decades (but have yet to provide any objective, independently verifiable evidence for it); and b) as there's a mountain of objective, independently verifiable evidence to the contrary (e.g. the densities of comets being inconsistent with homogeneous rock), you may be in for a very long wait.

But I guess that will be some time whilst the various science teams fight each other, which in itself is quite amusing.
You've abandoned all pretence of wanting to discuss the ech?

Surly not! :p

* I assume "entered" is a typo; you meant to write "centered", right?
 
Oh really, please inform my colleague on the second floor.
But then, what surprise was that, actually?
Can you please at least give a link (not to a boobtube) as to what you are claiming?

The small size of the dust particles from comet Halley was a surprise. “The dust particle mass spectra do not exhibit the expected low-mass cutoff at 10-14 gm; instead they continue to rise to 10-16 gm.” “The most striking feature is the large number of low-mass particles.” “Indeed, the first particles encountered at the ‘fringes’ of the coma had the lowest masses measured, instead of the higher masses predicted by the ‘fountain’ model first introduced by Eddington and later widely developed to predict the mass distribution of cometary dust.” Low mass particles fit with electrical sputtering of surface atoms and molecules but not with the standard model of gas jet dispersal of interstellar dust grains trapped in dusty ice. Electrostatic clumping of sputtered atoms and molecules gives rise to the extreme fluffiness of dust particles, remarked upon by Rosetta mission scientists. But it gives a misleading impression of the composition and structure of a comet. As for Eddington’s ‘fountain’ model, “the coma is highly dynamical on all spatial and temporal scales, suggesting a complex structure of localized regions of dust emission from the nucleus,” says one report. And gas expands explosively into a vacuum rather than forming a fountain. Such a gas model cannot explain a tiny comet nucleus, “which near perihelion can produce a hydrogen corona larger than the Sun.”


i'd give the link but it's to some crackpot scientist over on Holoscience, so I 'suppose it's not worth a lot to the mainstream mob here....but :cool:

Here's the twitter feed from MIDAS
Bentley: Comet appears to have delicate large fluffy grains of dust - but tip of @RosettaMIDAS probe may be contaminated #AGU14 #Rosetta
 
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G'day JeanTate

Could you just clarify for me again, is the an electric field centred on the Sun in your opinion?
 
Thank you, Tusenfem. :book:

Now off to brush up on Cometary Double layers! ;)

Not having much joy finding info on cometary double layers, are you able to point me in the right direction, Tusenfem?
 
Did come across this though in my travels.

THE ‘PERFUME’ OF 67P/C-G

However, ROSINA has detected many more molecules. Indeed, as of our 11 September report, ROSINA’s inventory of detected gases 67P/C-G looked like this:

Water (H2O)
Carbon monoxide (CO)
Carbon dioxide (CO2)
Ammonia (NH3)
Methane (CH4)
Methanol (CH3OH)

But today we can report that the following have also been detected:

Formaldehyde (CH2O)
Hydrogen sulphide (H2S)
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)
Sulphur dioxide (SO2)
Carbon disulphide (CS2)

Could there be some form of "special" combustion going on?

Strange flames

Some of the hydrocarbon fragments form ring-shaped molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and, eventually, soot.

"Cool flames burn at the relatively low temperature of 500K to 800K," says Williams. "And their chemistry is completely different. Normal flames produce soot, CO2 and water. Cool flames produce carbon monoxide and formaldehyde."

Did we not also find polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on other comets?
 
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