The Electric Comet theory

[Haig]

With apologies

Whoa, that's a full plasma all the way
Double layer, oh my God, double layer
It's a double layer all the way... damn
It's a double layer all the way... damn
What does this mean? It's so bright, so vivid

Double layer, double layer, it's so intense (tense)
What does this mean? It's startin to even look like a triple layer
That's a whole plasma, man, ahhhh!

Double layer all the way 'cross the sky
Yeah, Yeeeeaaaaah, so intense
Double layer all the way 'cross the sky
Wow, wow, oh my God, look at that plasma

Ziggurat get a grip !

Latest from Electric Comet 67P

Rosetta Revelations

All of the revelations about the comet's surface come from just two of the seven new papers. Other intriguing discoveries are reported in the rest:

• 67P's coma, the temporary atmosphere that has emerged as the comet warms up, isn't uniform; it has a very different chemical composition in different areas, and varies significantly as the comet rotates.

• The comet has begun to form a magnetosphere, a sort of electromagnetic shield that deflects solar wind (particles streaming off the sun).

• 67P appears covered in dark, carbon-rich compounds, with very little water ice on the surface, another surprise.

• Most of the water vapor coming from ice below 67P's surface came initially from the comet's "neck."

• There's more dust in the comet's atmosphere than scientists would have expected at this point. (Related: "Rosetta Spacecraft Suggests Asteroids, Not Comets, Birthed Earth's Oceans.")

If these seem more like questions than answers, that's because they are. "The team has had sufficient time to make a list of all of these things," says Russell, "but far too little time to resolve them."

Over the next year or so, however, as Rosetta continues to orbit 67P and collect data, there should be plenty of time, and many new observations, to begin providing explanations for what the scientists are seeing.

"We've got a snapshot," says Thomas. "Now we want to see the movie. We want to watch the comet evolve as it approaches the sun, so we can test our hypotheses. That's the big difference between this and other missions."

It's ALL good for the Electric Comet hypothesis

In 2001, shortly after the announcement of Deep Impact, Thornhill wrote:

Given the erroneous standard model of comets it is an interesting exercise to imagine what surprises are in store for astronomers if the plan is successful. The electrical model suggests the likelihood of an electrical discharge between the comet nucleus and the copper projectile, particularly if the comet is actively flaring at the time. The projectile will approach too quickly for a slow electrical discharge to occur. So the energetic effects of the encounter should exceed that of a simple physical impact, in the same way that was seen with comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter.

Twenty-four hours before the impact event, in collaboration with the Thunderbolts.info group, Thornhill predicted that an electrical "flash" might precede the impact and explosion, and that the explosion would be far more energetic than NASA anticipated. And this is precisely what happened on July 4, 2005, much to the astonishment of NASA and astronomers around the world.


Other successful Thornhill predictions included:

a lack of increase in water production in the cometary coma (indicating a lack of subsurface water anticipated by astronomers);

an unexpected lack of ice on the comet nucleus, or water in the immediate ejecta from impact;

a sculpted comet surface with sharply defined craters, valleys, mesas, and ridges (the precise opposite of what one expects of a "dirty snowball");

a rearrangement of the comet's jets due to charge re-distribution.

 

[ben m]

I was merely demonstrating that ...

Gish Gallop it is!

 

[tusenfem]

I was talking about the ion AND the dust tail sweeping around the Sun. Didn't get access to that paper of his in 1957.

Ah! but it's deifying the strongest gravity source in the solar system while staying attached to one of the weakest

I am sure your buddies from thunderdolts can send you the pdf of Alfvén's 1957 paper if you ask nicely, don't forget to say please.

The next statement clearly shows again that Haig/B], our wannabe physicist/electric cometist, has absolutely no grasp of even the basic physics of comet.

For those who want to know a little more about the dust tail of the comet, please read on.

Naturally, the dust tail is not attached to the comet, as in, it is a ribbon tied behind the comet.

The dust is escaping from the nucleus, driven e.g. by the outgassing of the comet. The gravity of the comet is so low, that they need not have a lot of speed to get away.

A bit away from the comet the dust interacts with the influence of the Sun, and that would be the gravity, the solar wind and solar radiation. A quick estimate can show that the main force working on a dust particle is the radiation pressure from the Sun, which pushes the dust particles away from the Sun irrespective that gravity is still working.

The dust particles move radially outward, but also have the orbital velocity of the comet, and thus they start to lag behind, creating a tail which curves along, but outside of, the orbit of the comet.

The dust is moving away from the comet, it still has a velocity greater than the escape velocity.

So if you would step into the dust tail, and follow the comet in its orbit, you will get "sand blasted" by the dust, because it is flowing away from the nucleus, it is not a stationary fixed object like a pan handle.

So although there seems to be a big Sun in the centre of our solar system, the very small mass of the dust makes for very weak gravitational force on each particle, and the outward pressure of impacting photons from the Sun easily overcomes the gravitational attraction.

 

[rwguinn]

I am sure your buddies from thunderdolts can send you the pdf of Alfvén's 1957 paper if you ask nicely, don't forget to say please.

The next statement clearly shows again that Haig/B], our wannabe physicist/electric cometist, has absolutely no grasp of even the basic physics of comet.

For those who want to know a little more about the dust tail of the comet, please read on.

Naturally, the dust tail is not attached to the comet, as in, it is a ribbon tied behind the comet.

The dust is escaping from the nucleus, driven e.g. by the outgassing of the comet. The gravity of the comet is so low, that they need not have a lot of speed to get away.

A bit away from the comet the dust interacts with the influence of the Sun, and that would be the gravity, the solar wind and solar radiation. A quick estimate can show that the main force working on a dust particle is the radiation pressure from the Sun, which pushes the dust particles away from the Sun irrespective that gravity is still working.

The dust particles move radially outward, but also have the orbital velocity of the comet, and thus they start to lag behind, creating a tail which curves along, but outside of, the orbit of the comet.

The dust is moving away from the comet, it still has a velocity greater than the escape velocity.

So if you would step into the dust tail, and follow the comet in its orbit, you will get "sand blasted" by the dust, because it is flowing away from the nucleus, it is not a stationary fixed object like a pan handle.

So although there seems to be a big Sun in the centre of our solar system, the very small mass of the dust makes for very weak gravitational force on each particle, and the outward pressure of impacting photons from the Sun easily overcomes the gravitational attraction.

You mean it is not like the tail of a kite? Boy, mainstream science sure uses confusing terms. I mean, you'd think there was a common term for stuff trailing behind a moving object
... 8-D

 

[Ziggurat]

Lot's more than THAT dude Essential Guide to the EU – Chapter 5
Plasma Sheaths, Cells, and Current-Free Double Layers

It's not any more persuasive the 100th time you link to it, Haig.

Ah! but it's deifying the strongest gravity source in the solar system while staying attached to one of the weakest

How is orbiting the sun "defying [not deifying] the strongest gravity source in the solar system"? You just proved my point: you don't get that it's still in orbit. It only takes a gentle nudge to make that orbit different than the nucleus.

I was merely demonstrating that the behaviour of the comets tails (some can have up to nine) and the massively inflated coma are electrical phenomena around a charged rock moving in the electric field of the Sun.

Let me know when you can quantify anything about those fields and charges.

Oh, who am I kidding, you never will.

 

[Ziggurat]

but the sun can heat the well insulated subsurface ice at over 3AU????

Yes, Sol88, it can. I went through the calculation earlier in this thread. Go look it up.

 

[dasmiller]

Nope, as I understand it, the electrical stress will be at it's most intense at perihelion. The charged nucleus surrounded by it's plasma sheath at the closest point to the intensifying electric field of our variable star.

I'm assuming that you mean 'charge differential between the comet and its local environment' when you say 'electrical stress,' but isn't the ongoing EDM continuously reducing the charge differential? That's what the 'D' is.

 

[Haig]

I'm assuming that you mean 'charge differential between the comet and its local environment' when you say 'electrical stress,' but isn't the ongoing EDM continuously reducing the charge differential? That's what the 'D' is.

I try never to ass/u/me dasmiller

As I understand it, the "D" discharge is controlled by (for the 101st time Ziggurat) the Plasma Sheath that surrounds a Charged Rock in the Electric Field of our Electric Sun

Read it !

 

[dasmiller]

I try never to ass/u/me dasmiller

Well, if that's not what you meant, then TELL ME what you meant.

As I understand it, the "D" discharge is controlled by (for the 101st time Ziggurat) the Plasma Sheath that surrounds a Charged Rock in the Electric Field of our Electric Sun

Read it !

I skimmed it. Neither of linked pages included "comet," "EDM," or non-circular orbits, so I hope you'll understand if I'm dubious about whether they adequately explain why the EDM process on a comet wouldn't stop around perihelion.

So . . . why wouldn't the EDM process stop around perihelion?

 

[Haig]

Well, if that's not what you meant, then TELL ME what you meant.

I did ... in the very next line Oh dear, never mind let me have another go ... again I say this is as I understand it

This is from the source I linked to ...

"" 5.4 Charged Bodies in a Plasma

Similar sheaths will form around any charged body in a plasma where the body has a different potential from the plasma itself. The plasma effectively isolates the foreign body by forming a sheath round it. The sheath will tend to screen out the electrostatic field from the alien charge in the same way that a sheath tends to isolate a negatively charged surface. The body eventually may be neutralized by opposite charges that it absorbs.

If the charged body can artificially be given a positive or negative charge by connecting it to an external source such as a battery, ions or electrons, depending on the charge, will be attracted to the body and so a current will flow. By careful measurement of the current for a range of voltages, it is possible to measure the potential of the plasma itself. One such device is named a Langmuir Probe after Irving Langmuir, 1881–1957.

Current flow from the solar wind can be observed at planets with magnetic fields which have polar “cusps” or “holes” that guide charged particles down to and through the body, creating auroral displays in the upper atmosphere.""

So this obviously applies to an Electric Comet or Charged Rock !

I skimmed it. Neither of linked pages included "comet," "EDM," or non-circular orbits, so I hope you'll understand if I'm dubious about whether they adequately explain why the EDM process on a comet wouldn't stop around perihelion.

So . . . why wouldn't the EDM process stop around perihelion?

Gezz dasmiller let me try another way as well as the one above, you're obviously a special case My bold and Hilite
The Electric Comet

The comet spends most of its time far from the Sun, where the plasma voltage is low relative to the Sun.

In remote regions, the comet moves slowly and its charge easily comes into balance with its surroundings. But as the comet falls toward the Sun, it begins to move at a furious speed through regions of increasing voltage. The comet’s charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization and by forming cathode jets and a visible plasma sheath, or coma.

The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining. The comet may shed and grow anew several tails. Or it may explode like an over-stressed capacitor, breaking into separate fragments or simply giving up the ghost and disappearing.

If the electric theorists are correct, there is no mystery in the gravity-defying behavior of comets.

A gravitationally insignificant rock on a highly elliptical orbit can be an electrically powerful object.

So dasmiller, the electrical stress doesn't stop at perihelion ! That is just where the processes at play are at maximum and once past perihelion the electrical stress starts to reduce as the Charge Rock moves away from the source of the strongest electric field. The Plasma Sheath (for the 103rd time Ziggurat) that IS the coma and tail start to reduce the further it goes away from the Electric Sun. The EDM like effect is proportional to the electrical stress the Charged Rock experiences i.e. it's BARELY STARTED on ELECTRIC COMET 67P the faint JETS are going to get MUCH MUCH more active. Roll on the summer .. EDM like stuff here we come


moving on ...

Rosetta postcard: Could you jump from these cliffs?

The authors of the NASA page write that the wall of the cliff rises about 1 kilometer (0.6 of a mile) high.

Someone care to give a credible explanation for the stratification on these cliffs ?

Or a credible explanation for the deep neck (in shadow much more than the lobes) being the focus of activity for the JETS ?

 

[dasmiller]

I did ... in the very next line Oh dear, never mind let me have another go ... again I say this is as I understand it

We seem to be using "it" to mean different things. I'd think that any explanation of the term "electrical stress" would include a phrase like, "Electrical stress is . . . "

instead, you gave me a bunch of text that included neither the word "electrical" nor "stress."

Why do you think that's an explanation of "electrical stress?"

This is from the source I linked to

<snip>

So this obviously applies to an Electric Comet or Charged Rock !

So it applies. So does gravity, solar wind, and my aunt's sense of aesthetics. What's the connection to "electrical stress," or how does that text explain why EDM wouldn't bring the comet's charge to neutral with respect to the surrounding plasma?

Gezz dasmiller let me try another way as well as the one above, you're obviously a special case

So dasmiller, the electrical stress doesn't stop at perihelion !

How do you get that from the bolded text?

Maybe I'd misunderstood, though - do you think the discharges are actually happening within the rock, and not between the rock and the surrounding plasma?

 

[The Moog]

I can tell you two need a little more convincing.
...

Perhaps a Youtube video would do the trick?
That always helps.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

Or he could post his usual biblethumper links again, as if we haven't seen them on every page in the thread.

 

[Cygnus_X1]

And there you have the crux of the problem, Cygnus X-1.

The data comes back, doesn't agree with the model so therefore the data is incorrect so add something hidden to save the model....dark matter and dark energy!!!

Never question the model, I repeat, never question the model....but the Esa have opened the data, when released, to the public and then cut it off....why????

because it does not agree with the Whippleites dirtysnowball model!!!

And the data, we are all waiting for, does not fit with the model and your out of fudge factors...= egg on face!

No subsurface ice reservoirs, no surface ice and definitely not Reality Checks, boulders of icy dust!!

And you evade yet again.

None of this addresses the fact that EU has not presented a REAL model testable at scientific standards. EU supporters keep playing the same game as the creationists - any anomaly, either real or perceived, is automatically evidence for your model. Considering how many other cranks are using many of the same anomalies as evidence for THEIR model, how do you distinguish ECH from the different models presented by other cranks?

And when people like myself and others document the inconsistencies in the EU model, such as the amount of solar wind hydrogen needed to explain the water detection or the charge constraints to explain a difference in density and the problems that create (Electric Comets III: Mass vs. Charge), the problem created by the observed fact that positive ions are seen moving away in the comet's tail, contrary to Thornhill's claims of a negatively charged comet nucleus, you blatantly ignore these facts. Yet these inconsistencies are killers for ECH, demonstrating failure due to basic electromagnetism.

The notion that the current batch of discoveries from Rosetta radically overturn the basic Whipple 'dirty snowball' model is simplistic to the point of simple-minded.

How does the data "not agree with the model"?
- A 'dirty snowball' covers a broad range of how much dirt vs. how much snow (and whether it's CO2 or H2O).
- A short-period comet you expect to lose volatiles at a higher rate, so the older the comet, the higher the dirt/snow ratio
- Since D2O (heavy water) is heavier than H2O, less D2O will be sublimated for a in a given time frame, so the nucleus will slowly enrich D2O over time. Eventually, the D2O level in the comet will be sufficiently high that the material sublimated from the comet will be measurably higher as well.
- no ice 'reservoirs' or 'icy boulders'? How has that been disproven? Do you have spectroscopes in your eyes that you can determine the composition of something purely from looking at a picture? Such reservoirs are only one such mechanism for a source of the ice. Such reservoirs would probably only exist if there had been significant differentiation during the history of the nucleus so water could liquify, accumulate, and refreeze. If a comet is truly primordial formed from slow accretion in a cold region, ice and dust and dirt may be sufficiently mixed so any given chunk of the nucleus has water mixed in. I've addressed the question of visibly differentiated ice in Electric Comets II. Of Water & Ice. Without some time of collision or other significant pressure source, it's difficult to see how frozen water could thaw to a liquid at the pressures experienced by the comet surface. It just sublimates away unless another mechanism can retain it.

All of these are still within the context of the 'dirty snowball' model. What we observe with 67P is that basic model combined with a 4.5 billion year history of events that migrated it around the solar system.

We say Earth is round. Do the existence of continents, and sea-basins, and mountains disprove that?

No amount of screaming from you, Haig, or the other ECM/H advocates will change anything if you can't answer the basic questions that REAL scientists had to answer in order to design, build and send Rosetta to 67P. Without that, ECH is still useless.

Or do you want to claim that the researchers didn't have to have an accurate model of the interplanetary medium as well as comets to send Rosetta to 67P?

 

[Cygnus_X1]

I can tell you two need a little more convincing.

The surprises for mainstream from comet 67P keep rolling in and by the end of this year I expect the Electric Comet hypothesis to continue to be shown to be extremely accurate.

Electric Comet 67P's closest approach to the Sun in August 2015 moving through perihelion with it's ion and dust tail sweeping around in defiance of gravity, like a stiff rod, pointing away from the sun that's clearly an E/M effect. How long will that tail be then ? and how much material will it contain ?

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_3823654b771de65fcc.gif[/qimg]

It's an electromagnetic effect only in the sense that the ion/plasma tail is also driven by light pressure. It is not a 'discharge' in any sense like what occurs in discharge tubes on Earth.

The plasma tail consists of positive ions created by photo-ionization of molecular species driven from the comet nucleus. It moves away from the nucleus faster than the dust tail due to an MHD interaction with the solar wind. The understanding of this interaction can be traced back to the 1950s.

The plasma tail also is a problem for ECH since Thornhill wants to claim the nucleus is negative to attract the positive hydrogen ions (protons) to form water. Yet all these positive ions are being driven AWAY from the (negative) nucleus, and at pretty high speed.

While there are ways to estimate the tail length in the standard model, as I documented for the dust tail in an earlier post, but there are many uncertainties since it depends on the rate of sublimation and ejection of material from an irregular comet nucleus.

However, since ECH claims the nucleus is just a rock that is ablating material due to strong electric fields controlled mostly by the Sun, the details of the nucleus would have a smaller influence on the tail structure. Therefore this computation should be much more straightforward in ECH.

We await the details of this computation so you can demonstrate the 'superiority' of ECH.

 

[paladin17]

A bit away from the comet the dust interacts with the influence of the Sun, and that would be the gravity, the solar wind and solar radiation. A quick estimate can show that the main force working on a dust particle is the radiation pressure from the Sun, which pushes the dust particles away from the Sun irrespective that gravity is still working.

So what causes the tail disconnection events then? Some radical changes in solar irradiance?

 

[tusenfem]

So what causes the tail disconnection events then? Some radical changes in solar irradiance?

If you would be a little bit more knowledgeable about cometary tails then you would know that tail disconnections happen to the ion tail and not to the dutst tail. A comet hast two (2) kinds of tails.

The disconnection of an ion tail is caused by reconnection in the tail, just like in the Earth's magnetotail.

I am not a fan of posting boobtoop vids, but this time will be the exception to the rule, a video from NASA about Comet Encke losing its ion tail with observations and simulations.

 

[Reality Check]

On the nucleus structure and activity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko my bold

Comet close-up reveals a world of surprises my boldD

Other than highlighting seemingly irrelevant text, what is your point, Haig?

You seem to be advocating a form of the "god of the gaps" argument - that surprises in observations of 67P means that anything other than actual science must be correct, including the electric comet.

 

[Reality Check]

Looks like you ferd didn't read very closely this thread, the density issue has been addressed many times ...

Wrong Haig - the idea that comet density can be magically explained by an so far imaginary solar electrical field and charged comets has been mentioned many times. That is not addressing the several methods by which comet density has been measured. That is denying basic physics such as charges come in two types so that that scenario could equally make comets be lighter than they are measured !

Comparing images of a nucleus with an asteroid and knowing that they can have the same size is totally ignorant because they have different densities. We expect the images of the surface to look alike. They will have similar features such as plains, cliffs, craters. But comets also have jets, a coma and tails which are not seen on asteroids (except the main-belt comets which the electric comet idea says do not exist !)
Also 67P seems to have at least one feature that has never been seen on an asteroid - dunes possibly from a dust field slippage.

 

[Reality Check]

Since EC claims that we're seeing debris blown off the comet by EDM, and that EDM is caused by charge build-up as the comet moves through the sun's E-field, does EC predict that the comet will 'shut down' around perihelion when the comet stops moving radially?

Haig and Sol88 will ignore this sensible question as they have been for five years now, dasmiller: 19th January 2010 Do EC comets switch off at perihelion?