The Electric Comet theory

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Haig said:
The Thunderbolts can explain it very well as electric comets
...
http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2009/arch09/090505filaments.htm
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Thunderbolts is a crank web site set up primarily to sell crank books. Citing it is evidence of your gullibility or ignorance of science.

I suggest that you try learning some science rather than continyuing to parrot this crank web site without any thought of your own.

To address your quotes: They show that the author is abysmally ignorant of physics: Cometary material subliminates (not melts).
The rest is just the fantasies of a crank.
 
The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions

This is a summary of the lies, failures and confirmations of the prediction of the Thunderbolts web sit about the Deep Impact mission.
The sloppiness of the author is obvious when you look at what they call results. They are all dated a few days or weeks after the impact and so must be based on press releases and news reports. There is no citation at all to any scientific literature.

The lies
The failures
Confirmed but also confirming the mainstream
 
Reality Check said:
Both attachment and separation are explained by ordinary physics. I suggest that you try to learn it.
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Can't you explain why a comet with a tiny nucleus can have a coma the diameter of the Sun and a tail longer than 1AU? Then explain, why a passing CME removes the coma and tail only for the coma and tail to reappear shortly after?

Really RC, what is the explanation of ordinary physics, please state it.

why do they stay attached and not dissipate?
http://www.solarviews.com/thumb/comet/comet.gif

Why can CME do this?
This event was observed by the STEREO space probe
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Encke_tail_rip_off.ogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet

Neither can be explined by a physically impossible, debunked idea: The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
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So you keep saying but straw men don't count as a debunk.
Reality Check said:
Thunderbolts is a crank web site set up primarily to sell crank books. Citing it is evidence of your gullibility or ignorance of science.
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Haig said:
I suggest that you try learning some Thunderbolts rather than continyuing to parrot this crank science without any thought of your own.
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You might learn something RC :D
Reality Check said:
To address your quotes: They show that the author is abysmally ignorant of physics: Cometary material subliminates (not melts).
The rest is just the fantasies of a crank.
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It's not so long since mainstream science denied the aurora could be powered by the Sun now it's fact.

Birkeland currents in the Earth's magnetosphere
The presence of Birkeland currents has been absolutely confirmed with satellite-borne particle and magnetic field experiments conducted over the past two decades. These satellite observations have determined the large-scale patterns, flow directions, and intensities of Birkeland currents in the auroral and polar regions, and their relationship to the orientation and magnitude of the interplanetary magnetic field. The Birkeland currents are directly associated with visible and UV auroral forms observed with satellites.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h5771446ux3xh584/
Dancing David said:
Haig,

Why only five asteroids showing comas? Why not the rest?
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Well DD, as I understand it, the five have sufficiently eccentric orbits, the rest don't.

Here, this explains it better and in more detail:
an 'asteroid' on a sufficiently elliptical orbit will do precisely what a comet does—it will discharge electrically. What distinguishes the cometary 'asteroids', observed by the University of Hawaii astronomers, are the paths they follow, moving them through the radial electric field of the Sun to a greater extent than is typical of other bodies in the 'asteroid belt' (See chart above). Cometary effects may also be expected from an asteroid if it passes through the huge electric comet tail [called the magnetosphere] of a giant planet.
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Haig said:
Really RC, what is the explanation of ordinary physics, please state it.
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No. Do your own research. I am not going to do that work of someone who is being so folled by a crank web site. It is now obvious that nothing I say can change your delustion that ~0.6 g/cc is ~3.0 g/cc.

Haig said:
...snipped off topic stuff...
Well DD, as I understand it, the five have sufficiently eccentric orbits, the rest don't.
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Wrong yet again Haig. Learn to read The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked! or other posts in this thread. I will emphasis the numbers for you.

There are 5 observed main-belt comets with a minimum eccentricity of 0.1644 (133P/Elst-Pizarro). So the EC minimim must be this (or lower!).

There are at least 173,583 asteroids (rocky bodies) that have an orbit with an eccentricity above that EC minimum value that are not comets. This includes asteroids that have been observed for decades.
There are 459,893 asteroids with eccentricities greater than the minimum observed eccentricity of comets (0.0279).
Also see EC predicts that 100,000's of asteroids should be comets

Good examples of the asteriods that should be comets according to the EC idea are many of the named asteroids:
  • Juno (e=0.2553, observed over a span of 67,610 days).
  • Pallas (e=0.2309, observed over a span of 64,291 days)
  • Astraea (e=0.1917, observed over a span of 59,759 days)
  • ...More than 46 other named asteroids observed 1000's of times over decades.
  • Vera (e=0.1939, observed over a span of 45,191 days)
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~
 
Can "dirty snowball" comets do this? Perhaps this is evidence for electric comets?

Comet McNaught, also known as the Great Comet of 2007
SWICS found that even at 160 million miles from the comet's nucleus, the tail had slowed the solar wind to half its normal speed. The solar wind should usually be about 435 miles (700 km) per second at that distance from the Sun, but inside the comet's ion tail, it was less than 250 miles (400 km) per second.
"This was very surprising to me. Way past the orbit of Mars, the solar wind felt the disturbance of this little comet. It will be a serious challenge for us theoreticians and computer modellers to figure out the physics,"
—space science professor, Michael Combi


The Explosive Demise of Comet Linear
A comet nucleus can be compared to the insulating material in a capacitor. As charge is exchanged from the comet’s surface to the solar wind, electrical energy is stored in the nucleus in the form of charge polarization. This can easily build up intense mechanical stress in the comet nucleus, which may be released catastrophically, as in a capacitor when its insulation suffers rapid breakdown. The comet will explode!
 
Haig said:
Can "dirty snowball" comets do this? Perhaps this is evidence for electric comets?

Comet McNaught, also known as the Great Comet of 2007
SWICS found that even at 160 million miles from the comet's nucleus, the tail had slowed the solar wind to half its normal speed. The solar wind should usually be about 435 miles (700 km) per second at that distance from the Sun, but inside the comet's ion tail, it was less than 250 miles (400 km) per second.
"This was very surprising to me. Way past the orbit of Mars, the solar wind felt the disturbance of this little comet. It will be a serious challenge for us theoreticians and computer modellers to figure out the physics,"
—space science professor, Michael Combi


The Explosive Demise of Comet Linear
A comet nucleus can be compared to the insulating material in a capacitor. As charge is exchanged from the comet’s surface to the solar wind, electrical energy is stored in the nucleus in the form of charge polarization. This can easily build up intense mechanical stress in the comet nucleus, which may be released catastrophically, as in a capacitor when its insulation suffers rapid breakdown. The comet will explode!
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No.
 
Haig said:
Can "dirty snowball" comets do this? Perhaps this is evidence for electric comets?

Comet McNaught, also known as the Great Comet of 2007
SWICS found that even at 160 million miles from the comet's nucleus, the tail had slowed the solar wind to half its normal speed. The solar wind should usually be about 435 miles (700 km) per second at that distance from the Sun, but inside the comet's ion tail, it was less than 250 miles (400 km) per second.
"This was very surprising to me. Way past the orbit of Mars, the solar wind felt the disturbance of this little comet. It will be a serious challenge for us theoreticians and computer modellers to figure out the physics,"
—space science professor, Michael Combi


The Explosive Demise of Comet Linear
A comet nucleus can be compared to the insulating material in a capacitor. As charge is exchanged from the comet’s surface to the solar wind, electrical energy is stored in the nucleus in the form of charge polarization. This can easily build up intense mechanical stress in the comet nucleus, which may be released catastrophically, as in a capacitor when its insulation suffers rapid breakdown. The comet will explode!
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Yes: "dirty snowballs" or even "icy dustballs" can do that.
No: It is not evidence for electric comets since they do not exist: The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
 
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Reality Check said:
No. Do your own research. I am not going to do that work of someone who is being so folled by a crank web site.
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Disappointing RC. I thought you could do better than that.
It is now obvious that nothing I say can change your delustion that ~0.6 g/cc is ~3.0 g/cc.
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If you calculate the density, without taking into account the effects of a charged body moving through an electric field, your results are prone to error.

The charge of a body is NOT dependant on its density, is it?
Wrong yet again Haig. Learn to read
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Wrong yet again RC. Learn to read
Thunderbolts said:
So an 'asteroid' on a sufficiently elliptical orbit will do precisely what a comet does—it will discharge electrically
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and
Thunderbots said:
Cometary effects may also be expected from an asteroid if it passes through the huge electric comet tail [called the magnetosphere] of a giant planet.
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http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060407cometasteroid.htm
 
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Tubbythin said:
No.
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Thanks
Reality Check said:
Yes: "dirty snowballs" or even "icy dustballs" can do that.
No: It is not evidence for electric comets since they do not exist: The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
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Yes: "dirty snowballs" or even "icy dustballs" can do that, really RC? Could you tell me how?

What's in a Comet's Tail?
Thunderbolts said:
When comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart, astronomers reasoned that the fractured nucleus would expose fresh ices that would sublimate furiously. So several ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope trained their spectroscopes on the tails of the fragments of SL-9, looking for traces of volatile gases. None of the gases were found.
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Haig said:
Disappointing RC. I thought you could do better than that.
If you calculate the density without taking into account the effects of a charged body moving through and electric field your results are prone to error.
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Does the density of a proton change when it moves through an electric field?
 
Tubbythin said:
Does the density of a proton change when it moves through an electric field?
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Mmm,Tubbythin maybe you could give answers to these questions that RC refused to?

Can't you explain why a comet with a tiny nucleus can have a coma the diameter of the Sun and a tail longer than 1AU? Then explain, why a passing CME removes the coma and tail only for the coma and tail to reappear shortly after?

Really RC, what is the explanation of ordinary physics, please state it.

why do they stay attached and not dissipate?
http://www.solarviews.com/thumb/comet/comet.gif

Why can CME do this?
This event was observed by the STEREO space probe
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Encke_tail_rip_off.ogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet
 
Found this awesome picture that seems to involve some sort of electric engine and a comet behind it. Could be relevant.

comet112.jpg


Note how some of its yellow. The color yellow means complete confirmation of surface electricity and the whole "electric universe" theory.

....

Is there a link to the most complete "electric comet" theory? I know a few publications in IEEE journals that I cant access but they are by Thornhill, and his work tends to be (although sometimes intriguing) lacking specifics and maths, so im dubious of them. Preferably one with some basic EM and maths in would be great.
 
Haig said:
Disappointing RC. I thought you could do better than that.
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Disappointing Haig. I thought that you had the ability to do your own thinking rather than being totally fooled by a crank web site.

Haig said:
If you calculate the density, without taking into account the effects of a charged body moving through an electric field, your results are prone to error.
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Show me the calculation of the effect of the solar electric field on the mass of an comet. The volume is calculated from looking at the comets. Dividing the two gives the density.

Also show why asteroiids in similar orbits as comets have different densities:
There are at least 173,583 asteroids (rocky bodies) that have an orbit with an eccentricity above that EC minimum value that are not comets. This includes asteroids that have been observed for decades.
There are 459,893 asteroids with eccentricities greater than the minimum observed eccentricity of comets (0.0279).
Also see EC predicts that 100,000's of asteroids should be comets
​
Haig said:
The charge of a body is NOT dependant on its density, is it?
Wrong yet again RC. Learn to read
and
http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060407cometasteroid.htm
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And another link to the crackpot Thunderbolts web site that lies to its readers: The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions

Wrong yet again Haig. Learn to read that crank web site and understand that it is just spouting fantasies and lying to its readers.
 
Haig said:
Really RC, what is the explanation of ordinary physics, please state it.
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Since you are too lazy to even use Google: Comet tail.

Haig said:
why do they stay attached and not dissipate?
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Because they are refreshed from the coma which is refreshed from outgassing from the nucleus.
Comet tail.
In the outer solar system, comets remain frozen and are extremely difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size. Statistical detections of inactive comet nuclei in the Kuiper belt have been reported from the Hubble Space Telescope observations,[5][6] but these detections have been questioned,[7][8] and have not yet been independently confirmed. As a comet approaches the inner solar system, solar radiation causes the volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus, carrying dust away with them. The streams of dust and gas thus released form a huge, extremely tenuous atmosphere around the comet called the coma, and the force exerted on the coma by the Sun's radiation pressure and solar wind cause an enormous tail to form, which points away from the sun.
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Haig said:
Why can CME do this?
This event was observed by the STEREO space probe
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Encke_tail_rip_off.ogg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet
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Comet tail.
If the ion tail loading is sufficient, then the magnetic field lines are squeezed together to the point where, at some distance along the ion tail, magnetic reconnection occurs. This leads to a "tail disconnection event".[4] This has been observed on a number of occasions, notable among which was on the 20th. April 2007 when the ion tail of comet Encke was completely severed as the comet passed through a coronal mass ejection. This event was observed by the STEREO spacecraft.[9]
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Zeuzzz said:
Found this awesome picture that seems to involve some sort of electric engine and a comet behind it. Could be relevant.

[qimg]http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/comet112.jpg[/qimg]

Note how some of its yellow. The color yellow means complete confirmation of surface electricity and the whole "electric universe" theory.
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Now we're getting somewhere ;)
Is there a link to the most complete "electric comet" theory? I know a few publications in IEEE journals that I cant access but they are by Thornhill, and his work tends to be (although sometimes intriguing) lacking specifics and maths, so im dubious of them. Preferably one with some basic EM and maths in would be great.
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If your really looking ... ask your questions on the Thunderbolt forum . you'll find those at your level and above.
Reality Check said:
Disappointing Haig. I thought that you had the ability to do your own thinking rather than being totally fooled by a crank web site.
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I'm just a numpty :D
Show me the calculation of the effect of the solar electric field on the mass of an comet. The volume is calculated from looking at the comets. Dividing the two gives the density.....snip the usual rant .....
EC predicts that 100,000's of asteroids should be comets
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Do your own math and research.:cool:
Wrong yet again Haig. Learn to read that crank web site and understand that it is just spouting fantasies and lying to its readers.
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:D
Reality Check said:
Yes (not that your obsession with this crackpot web site will allow you to understand): Comet tail.
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Yes, read that .... surely your not taken it by this:-
If the ion tail loading is sufficient, then the magnetic field lines are squeezed together to the point where, at some distance along the ion tail, magnetic reconnection occurs. This leads to a "tail disconnection event".[4] This has been observed on a number of occasions,
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understand that it is just spouting fantasies and lying to its readers.

Exocomets
Astronomers observed what appears to be a gas giant planet with a cometary tail around a distant star.

According to Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado, "We found gas escaping at high velocities, with a large amount of this gas flowing toward us at 22,000 miles per hour. This large gas flow is likely gas swept up by the stellar wind to form the comet-like tail trailing the planet."
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In an Electric Universe, comet tails are produced when electric discharges reach a critical point and the plasma sheath surrounding the nucleus starts to glow. Irrespective of composition, comets obey the fundamental behavior of charged objects interacting with one another.

A comet's tail is created when its electrically charged substance is struck by solar discharge plasma, conventionally called the "solar wind," similar to what has been observed around a star 153 light-years from Earth. The faster a comet's electrical environment changes, the more likely that flaring will occur.

Exoplanet HD 209458b is orbiting so close to its star that it completes one revolution in a mere 3.5 days. It seems probable that it is traveling through conductive strands of plasma that are energizing it enough for its Langmuir sheath to enter a discharge state. Its "atmospheric steamers" are significant evidence for that contention.
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Haig said:
Yes, read that .... surely your not taken it by this:-
understand that it is just spouting fantasies and lying to its readers.
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That is silly Haig: slagging something off just because you seem to be unable understand it.
I can understand the basics of magnetic reconnection and how it would separate a comet tail from the nucleus.
I can understand the Thinderbolts crank web site and see that it is lying to its readers: The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions
A pity that you can do neither.

Haig said:
Exocomets
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It is a comet-like tail, i.e. gases blown off the gas giant by the heat of its star and then (probably) formed by the stellar wind into a tail.
Superhot Planet Likely Possesses Comet-like Tail
HD 209458b weighs slightly less than Jupiter, but it orbits 100 times closer to its star than Jupiter does. The roasted planet zips around in a mere 3.5 days. (In contrast, our solar system's speedster, Mercury, orbits the Sun in a leisurely 88 days.) The planet is one of the most intensely scrutinized extrasolar planets because it is one of the few known alien worlds that can be seen passing in front of, or transiting, its star. The transit causes the starlight to dim slightly. In fact, the gas giant is the first alien world discovered to transit its parent star. It orbits the star HD 209458, located 153 light-years from Earth.
...
The COS data also showed that the material leaving the planet was not all traveling at the same velocity. "We found gas escaping at high velocities, with a large amount of this gas flowing toward us at 22,000 miles per hour," Linsky explains. "This large gas flow is likely gas swept up by the stellar wind to form the comet-like tail trailing the planet."
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And the speculation in that crank web page is obviously wrong: Why are not all gas giants with an orbit shaped like this gas giant, comets?
HD 209458 b -- eccentricity = 0.014.
Jupiter -------- eccentricity = 0.048775. Not a comet :eye-poppi !
Saturn -------- eccentricity = 0.055 723 219. Not a comet :eye-poppi !
Uranus -------- eccentricity = 0.044 405 586. Not a comet :eye-poppi !
Neptune ------- eccentricity = 0.011214269. Also not a comet but would not be a comet according to The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
 
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Zeuzzz said:
Found this awesome picture that seems to involve some sort of electric engine and a comet behind it. Could be relevant.

[qimg]http://www.thegreencarwebsite.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/comet112.jpg[/qimg]

Note how some of its yellow. The color yellow means complete confirmation of surface electricity and the whole "electric universe" theory.

....

Is there a link to the most complete "electric comet" theory? I know a few publications in IEEE journals that I cant access but they are by Thornhill, and his work tends to be (although sometimes intriguing) lacking specifics and maths, so im dubious of them. Preferably one with some basic EM and maths in would be great.
Click to expand...

Great Scott an Electric Comet!
 
Haig said:
Thanks
Yes: "dirty snowballs" or even "icy dustballs" can do that, really RC? Could you tell me how?

What's in a Comet's Tail?
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And why not quote the original source Haig, what is Thuderbolts source? Hmmm

Thunderbolts gives NO SOURCE for that statement!

Why is that Haig, why does Thunderbolts not say who measured the alleged data and found it wanting?

:dl:
 
Dancing David said:
And why not quote the original source Haig, what is Thuderbolts source? Hmmm

Thunderbolts gives NO SOURCE for that statement!

Why is that Haig, why does Thunderbolts not say who measured the alleged data and found it wanting?

:dl:
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The orginal post was by Haig and so I did not research the topic much given that he has been totally taken in by the crank Thunderbolts web site.
It is another example of the abysmal level of scholarship of the web site.
But I did notice that the papers I found on composition of Shoemaker Levy 9 did emphasis its dust content. For example, Dust and Gas in D/Shoemaker-Levy 9 which mentions an apparent absence of the usual volatiles.

Of course this is yet another problem for The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked! - where is the water from the action of the physically impossible electrical discharges on the equally physically impossible rocky body?
 
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Haig said:
Can't you explain why a comet with a tiny nucleus can have a coma the diameter of the Sun and a tail longer than 1AU? Then explain, why a passing CME removes the coma and tail only for the coma and tail to reappear shortly after?
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The coma of a comet is produced by the emitted molecules and atoms of the nucleus. As the gravity of the nucleus is very small, any of these particles can fly off to rather far distances, where they overcome gravitational pull and interact with the solar wind. The density of the coma is very well described by a r-2 distribution, what one would expect from gravity. That it can become rather large should not be a surprise as there is little to impede the particles.

The tail is the stuff that is left behind by the comet, which is losing mass all the time. It is not pulling it along with it. There are two tails, the dust and the ion tail. The former trails behind in the orbit and indeed the stuff from comets have been found in the orbit (when the comet was not around) by e.g. Galileo on its way to Jupiter (I cannot find the reference at the moment, I think it was Chris Russell who wrote the paper).

The ion tail is, naturally, connected to the magnetic field of the solar wind. The solar wind magnetic field drapes around the nucleus of the comet, just like it does around Venus (also an unmagnetized body), and creates a magnetotail (with a topology just like at all planets) and points away from the sun.

Now, consider a CME passing by a comet. A CME consists of magnetic fields, different from the average Parker spiral in the solar wind, as it is a closed structure. This magnetic field can interact with the magnetic field that is draped around the nucleus of the comet and magnetic reconnection can take place and thus cut off part of the ion tail. Which was nicely observed a while ago.

This cut off part is easily re-created again, because the solar wind magnetic field does not disappear and just keeps on draping over the nucleus. All very very simple.

I would advise you to really by the book by K. S. Krishna Swamy (the physics of comets, 3rd ed.), which is an excellent introductory book.

Haig said:
It's not so long since mainstream science denied the aurora could be powered by the Sun now it's fact.

Birkeland currents in the Earth's magnetosphere
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Birkeland currents have nothing to do with comets, although.... I could envision some kind of field aligned currents when the tail is cut off and reconnection takes place. I got to study that when Rosetta gets to Churyomov-Gerasimenko, call me back in 2014 or so.

And "so long" is more than 60 years in this case, which is about eternity, in the way space physics has progressed.

Haig said:
Here, this explains it better and in more detail:
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I note that the thunderdolt link is once more devoid of any real physics. It is so wonderful how the proponents of the EU/EC/ES claim that Alfvén and Birkeland and Peratt have all the explanations, but when asked for something quantifiable we get words and words and words, although the triumvirate published books with very exact math and models, but nowhere do we get explained:

  1. what electric field in the solar wind
  2. how does the comet charge up
  3. how will a comet discharge (EDM) from one place on the surface to the other when the surface only has one charge
  4. etc etc etc

Maybe Haig will take it up himself to actually do some math and modeling and give something substantial than the general "
an 'asteroid' on a sufficiently elliptical orbit will do precisely what a comet does—it will discharge electrically" blurb that we get from thunderdolts, after Sol88 and Zeuzzz and Michael Mozina have utterly failed at that request.
 
For several months after “Deep Impact”, we awaited NASA’s publication of official results, confident that the investigators would place a priority to the issue of available water on the comet. And in a sense, they did.

On February 2, 2006, the official Deep Impact site, posted the headline, “Deep Impact Finds Water Ice on Comet”, with the following lead-in to the story:
“ Scientists on NASA's Deep Impact mission report the direct detection of solid water ice deposits on the surface of comet Tempel 1. This is the first time ice has been detected on the nucleus, or solid body, of a comet”.
News outlets around the world dutifully ran the story, and unless readers were prepared to dig deeper, they would be left with the impression that everything is fine with comet theory these days.

But all is not well with comet theory. The interpretation that led to the identification of surface water on Tempel 1 may be entirely reasonable, but if you grant the interpretation you are left with a horrendous shortage of available surface water. As reported in the journal New Scientist, the water ice “is present in surprisingly small amounts”.

By all accounts, the surface of Tempel 1 presented no better than 0.5 percent of the icy surface needed to account for the supposed watery output of Tempel. (The exceedingly small and thin “icy” areas were about 94 percent dirt).

Jessica Sunshine of Science Applications International Corporation, the lead author of a recent article in the journal Science, announced the investigator’s finding: "These results show that there is ice on the surface, but not very much and definitely not enough to account for the water we see in the out-gassed material that is in the coma”.

Objectively, the NASA team’s findings confirm the failure of a theory. But somehow that critical failure did not make the headlines, due to the confidence of the theorists that the required water must be there, but hidden under the surface. So instead of questioning the theory, the investigators are now asking themselves how ice could stay hidden while feeding Comet Tempel’s “watery” output, which they calculated to be about 555 pounds per second!

It is the wrong question and it can only extend a dead end path a while longer.

To see this dead end path for what it is, we must ask the question that has not been asked:

What is the source of the “water” in the comas of comets?
 
Comets, Gravity, and Electricity
Astronomers have calculated the mass and density of comets from the effects they have on the trajectories of various spacecraft. By this reasoning comet Halley’s nucleus had a density of only 0.1 to 0.25 that of water. But such conclusions are immediately invalidated if comets are electrically charged bodies moving through an electric field of the Sun. Where charged bodies interact across a plasma medium, all common assumptions about gravity become suspect.
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By now it should be obvious that something more than gravity is at work in the behavior of comets. Since a comet holds a highly negative charge, it attracts the positively charged particles of the solar wind, giving rise to an immense envelope of ionized hydrogen, up to millions of miles across. But the comet watchers do not realize that this vast envelope is gathered and held electrically. And so the question continues to haunt them: How could a tiny piece of rock, no more than a few miles wide, gravitationally entrain and hold in place a ten million mile wide bubble of hydrogen against the force of the solar wind? Yes, the entrained envelope is extremely diffuse, but in gravitational terms it should not be there!
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NASA's Swift Spies Comet Lulin
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On Jan. 28, Swift trained its Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) and X-Ray Telescope (XRT) on Comet Lulin. "The comet is quite active," said team member Dennis Bodewits, a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The UVOT data show that Lulin was shedding nearly 800 gallons of water each second." That's enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than 15 minutes.

Swift can't see water directly. But ultraviolet light from the sun quickly breaks apart water molecules into hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl (OH) molecules. Swift's UVOT detects the hydroxyl molecules, and its images of Lulin reveal a hydroxyl cloud spanning nearly 250,000 miles, or slightly greater than the distance between Earth and the moon.
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Strange how so little water has been detected on the nucleus of the comets so far. Maybe the "water" is not coming from the comet but the processes around it?
The Missing Water of Comet Tempel 1
It was hoped that Deep Impact would show that sufficient water existed beneath the surface. By excavating material from the comet's interior, they could rescue the theory. But it didn’t happen. “SWAS operators were puzzled by the lack of increased water vapor from Tempel 1”. In fact there was no change in measured water after the impact. Another observation from the Odin telescope in Sweden found that the total amount of water appeared to decrease after the impact, probably because of the injection of quantities of dry dust.
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It needs to be understood, however, that in the electric model changes in coma composition are certain to occur in the wake of substantial ejections. This is guaranteed by the electrical transaction between the coma and the solar wind. And here too the data released so far strongly support the electric model.
 
tusenfem said:
The ion tail is, naturally, connected to the magnetic field of the solar wind. The solar wind magnetic field drapes around the nucleus of the comet, just like it does around Venus (also an unmagnetized body), and creates a magnetotail (with a topology just like at all planets) and points away from the sun.

Now, consider a CME passing by a comet. A CME consists of magnetic fields, different from the average Parker spiral in the solar wind, as it is a closed structure. This magnetic field can interact with the magnetic field that is draped around the nucleus of the comet and magnetic reconnection can take place and thus cut off part of the ion tail. Which was nicely observed a while ago.

This cut off part is easily re-created again, because the solar wind magnetic field does not disappear and just keeps on draping over the nucleus. All very very simple.

I would advise you to really by the book by K. S. Krishna Swamy (the physics of comets, 3rd ed.), which is an excellent introductory book.
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Thanks for this mainstream explanation, it's what I expected from RC but he just ranted.
Maybe Haig will take it up himself to actually do some math and modeling and give something substantial than the general "
an 'asteroid' on a sufficiently elliptical orbit will do precisely what a comet does—it will discharge electrically"
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:eek: Maybe not:D
 
Haig said:
...
What is the source of the “water” in the comas of comets?
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Another display of ignorance and basically a lie from a Thunderbolts author.
The source of the water is obvious -
From The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions :
The idiocy of the electric comet "prediction" from Wallace Thornhill is obvious: Just how much is an "abundance"?
The lie is him not mentioning that plently (an "abundance") of water eas found.
The failure of the electric comet "prediction" from Wallace Thornhill is obvious:
What was measured was an abundance of water.
"Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water[35] and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact."WP
Thus the water content of the ejected material from Comet Tempel 1 is 20% to 50%.
​
Thank you Haig for giving lurkers yet another reason to know that The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
 
Wallace Thornhill basically lies about the water detected on Tempel 1

Haig said:
Strange how so little water has been detected on the nucleus of the comets so far. Maybe the "water" is not coming from the comet but the processes around it?
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Really ignorant of you, Haig: Plenty of water has been detected coming from comet nucleii, e.g. Tempel 1.
Images of jets of voiltile material being ejected by comet nucleii have been taken in at least 3 missions.
Even your cltaion has lots of water:
"The UVOT data show that Lulin was shedding nearly 800 gallons of water each second." That's enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in less than 15 minutes
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It cannot be any of the physically impossible processed in [URL="http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=6527983#post6527983"]The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!

Haig said:
The Missing Water of Comet Tempel 1
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Repeating ignorance and lies from thunderbolts just reflects on your gulibility, Haig.
I will repeat the facts so that you obsession about a crnak web site can be made obvious.
The idiocy of the electric comet "prediction" from Wallace Thornhill is obvious: Just how much is an "abundance"?
The lie is him not mentioning that plently (an "abundance") of water eas found.
The failure of the electric comet "prediction" from Wallace Thornhill is obvious:
What was measured was an abundance of water.
"Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water[35] and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact."WP
Thus the water content of the ejected material from Comet Tempel 1 is 20% to 50%.
​
Haig said:
It needs to be understood, however, that in the electric model changes in coma composition are certain to occur in the wake of substantial ejections.
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It needs to be understood that The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked!
 
Haig said:
Comets, Gravity, and Electricity
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Now you are just posting links to demonstrate permanently for the entire worrld, the abysmal ignorance of the Thunderbolts authors :eye-poppi.
They have ovbiusly no ability to understand the physics that scientists use to explain why comets have coma and tails that are really big.

I will not go into this because this is a thread about The totally stupid electric comet idea that has been debunked! not a course on the physically real theory of comets.
 
The totally stupid electric comet idea debunked

Thank Sol88 and Haig for continuing to point just how idiotic the EC idea is :D!
Condensed by adding a link the to lies, etc. listed in the Thunderbolts web site about the Deep Impact mission.

EC universe: Sol88 and Haig are just regurgitating the crackpot fantasies of the Thunderbolts web site. The authors of the site (and the books it is set up to sell to the gullible) are David Talbot and Wallace Thornhill. How good is their EC idea?
They have a list of EC "predictions" for Tempel 1 and Deep Impact.
Real universe:
The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions.
Wallace Thornhill is obviously ignorant of the actual results of the mission and in a couple of cases actually lies about the results.

EC universe: Comets are rocky bodies, comparable to asteriods and probably created in the same event as asteriods (according to Thunderbolts).
Real universe:
  1. Comets have meaured densities that are much less than that of rocks (asteroids).
  2. Comets may not have the composition of asteriods
  3. Deep Impact confirmed that comet nuclei are made of dust and ice not rock. There were a couple of surprises in that the dust was talcum powder rather than sand and the amount of ice was smaller than expected.
    "Analysis of data from the Swift X-ray telescope showed that the comet continued outgassing from the impact for 13 days, with a peak five days after impact. A total of 5 million kilograms (11 million pounds) of water[35] and between 10 and 25 million kilograms (22 and 55 million pounds) of dust were lost from the impact."WPThus the water content of Comet Tempel 1 is 20% to 50%.
  4. Cometary dust as collected by the Stardust mission contain forms of carbon that are not in meteorites.
    Thus comets are not meteorites.
    Meteorites are rocky bodies (meteoroids and sometimes asteroids) that have reached the Earth's surface.
    Therefore comets are not meteoroids or asteriods.
    (or How Sol88 cannot stop shooting himself in the foot)
EC universe: Comet jets, coma and tails are created from material that that is created from rock by electrical discharge machining.(but according to solrey EDM does not mean EDM in the EC universe!).
Real universe:
Start with Tim Thompson's posts about this
Then look at
EC universe: Rocky bodies that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value will be comets.N.B. Solar activity may cut tails in two but there have been no observations of comets turning off during low solar activity.(Sol88: I may be wrong - if so please provide the citations to these marvelous events.)

However this assertion has the fatal flaw of EC predictions - no mathematics or numbers.
But we can do their work for them can't we Sol88 and Haig?

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

Real universe: There are at least 173,583 asteroids (rocky bodies) that have an orbit with an eccentricity above a minimum value that are not comets. This includes asteroids that have been observed for decades.
There are 459,893 asteroids with eccentricities greater than the minimum observed eccentricity of comets (0.0279).
EC predicts that 100,000's of asteroids should be comets

EC universe: solrey pointed out in this post that EC idea expects that the voltage potential a comet experiences would be orders of magnitude higher than that of the cloud to ground voltage potential in a thunderstorm (109 volts).
"Several" is more than a couple so the EC idea expects a voltage drop around a comet of at least 1012 volts.

Real universe: tusenfem pointed out that "Electric Fields and Cold Electrons in the Vicinity of Comet Halley" by Harri Laakso gave the measured potential drop between electrical layers around Comet Halley as 50 kV in this post. This is 10,000 times less than the thunderstorm potential and 10,000,000 times less that requires by the EC idea.

Water, water everywhere (except in the EC idea)
EC universe: Comets are rocky bodies, comparable to asteroids and probably created in the same event as asteroids (according to Thunderbolts). Comet jets, coma and tails are created from material (e.g. water) that that is created from rock by electrical discharge machining. Like everything in the EC idea there are no numbers and so no prediction of the composition of the nucleus. We could say that means that the EC idea predicts no water (0%) but there should be some blowback from the physically impossible (on comets) EDM process.
Asteroids in general have very low amounts of water. So let's just throw in 1% water as an extremely generous guess - IMHO it should be something like 0.01%. Sol88 or solrey should provide a better number if they have it.

Real universe: Comets are bodies with a mixture of rock and ices of various compounds, e.g. CO and water. They are have been described as "dirty snowballs". The volatile material (ices) is heated by the Sun and sublimates to form jets, the coma and the tail.This is supported by actual physical evidence, i.e. the results of the Deep Impact mission where the impact ejected material from the nucleus that was composed of 20-50% water and 80-50% dust.

EC universe: Only give qualitative predictions.
See The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions.


Real universe: Scientific theories model the data mathematically and produce both qualitative and quantitative predictions. Someone could start with the papers of Whipple
  1. Whipple, Fred L. (1950). "A Comet Model. I. The acceleration of Comet Encke". Astrophys. J. 111: 375–394.
  2. Whipple, Fred L. (1951). "A Comet Model. II. Physical Relations for Comets and Meteors". Astrophys. J. 113: 464.
  3. Whipple, Fred L. (1955). "A Comet Model. III. The Zodiacal Light". Astrophys. J. 121: 750.
and then go ointo the 1000's of scientific papers and many textbooks about comets. Tim Thompson recommended Introduction to Comets by Brandt & Chapman (Cambridge University Press, 2004, 2nd edition).

EC comets switch off at perihelion
EC universe: An EC prediction is that comets will switch off (or to be charitable to the EC idea they will be less bright) at perihelion.
Real universe: We observe that comets are brightest at perihelion .

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

EC Universe: Turn yourself into a crackpot by quoting press releases and news articles. This has the added advantage of revealing your ignorance of the scientific literature. For examples, see The lies, failures and successes of Thunderbolts Deep Impact predictions.
Real Universe: Real scientists cite published scientific papers and textbooks.
 
Wow, Haig: You realy should not post links to David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill crank web site. You just make me read it and realize just how deluded or ignorant they are:
Comets, Gravity, and Electricity
But a small rock will not attract impactors, and in view of the emptiness of space, even in the hypothetical “planet-forming nebula” stage, it is inconceivable that such a small body could have been subjected to enough projectiles to cover it, end to end, with craters.
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  1. Comets are not rocks (their measured density is less than that of water).
  2. No scientist would think that it is the gravity of comets that causes impacts.
  3. Anyone knows the impact craters are not formed in any nebula stage. They are formed over billions of years and so bodies of any size can have many impacts, e.g. the asteriods that have been imaged also have many impact craters.
 
Haig said:
Comets, Gravity, and Electricity
 Where charged bodies interact across a plasma medium, all common assumptions about gravity become suspect.
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Thats nice Haig, pray tell what amazing discovery about the Unified Field Theory is Thunderbolts making up now?

Since a comet holds a highly negative charge, it attracts the positively charged particles of the solar wind, giving rise to an immense envelope of ionized hydrogen, up to millions of miles across.
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Thats nice too Haig, did you know something about the solar wind Haig?

It is comprised of positive, negative and neutral ions.

So now you have just shown further that Thunderbolts is making stuff up.
 
NASA Satellite Sees Solar Hurricane Tear Comet Tail Off
Comets typically have two tails, one made of dust and a fainter one made of electrically conducting gas, called plasma.

CMEs are large clouds of magnetized gas ejected into space by the sun. They are violent eruptions with masses upwards of a few billion tons travelling anywhere from 100 to 3,000 kilometres per second (62 to 1,864 miles/second).
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A preliminary analysis suggests that the tail was ripped away when magnetic fields bumped together in an explosive process called "magnetic reconnection." Oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet "bumped into each" by the magnetic fields in the CME. Suddenly, these fields linked together--they "reconnected"--releasing a burst of energy that rent the comet's tail. A similar process takes place in Earth's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms fueling, among other things, the Northern Lights
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Lead author and Researcher with the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC. "We think it experienced a magnetic reconnection event very similar to what Earth experiences when CMEs impact our own protective magnetosphere."
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The Myth of Magnetic Reconnection
The problem turned out to be exploding double layers, like those found in "magnetic reconnection" on the Sun. The explosions expended more energy than was contained by the plasma in the rectifier because the energy from the whole length of the circuit flowed back into the break. In Sweden, this was over 600 miles of electric wires. On the Sun -- well, we don't know yet how long those circuits are.
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Real Properties of Electromagnetic Fields and Plasma in the Cosmos
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 35, NO. 4, AUGUST 2007
http://members.cox.net/dascott3/IEEE-TransPlasmaSci-Scott-Aug2007.pdf
Many astrophysicists still claim that magnetic fields are “frozen
into” electric plasma. The “magnetic merging” (reconnection)
mechanism is also falsified by both theoretical and experimental
investigations.
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V. ROLE OF ELECTRIC CURRENTS IN THE COSMOS
No real magnetic field can exist anywhere without an associated
moving charge (electric current). Conversely, any electric
current will create a magnetic field. The applicable Maxwell
equation describes this inherent interrelationship.
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VII. CONCLUSION
Maxwell showed that magnetic fields are the inseparable
handmaidens of electric currents and vice versa. This is as
true in the cosmos as it is here on Earth. Those investigators
who, for whatever reason, have not been exposed to the now
well-known properties of real plasmas and electromagnetic
field theory must refrain from inventing “new” mechanisms in
efforts to support current-free cosmic models. “New science”
should not be invoked until all of what is now known about
electromagnetic fields and electric currents in space plasma
has been considered. Pronouncements that are in contradiction
to Maxwell’s equations ought to be openly challenged by
responsible scientists and engineers.
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Magnetic Questions
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2010/arch10/101020questions.htm
 
Been there, done that, haig. The material in them that is correct (tends to be the peer reviewed literature) will be ignored here, and the mistakes and ambiguities instead jumped on like a flash.
 
Haig said:
If your really looking ... ask your questions on the Thunderbolt forum . you'll find those at your level and above.
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The noise to signal ratio there is unbearable I found, unfortunately. Despite the odd person who knows what they are talking about, and some extremely open minded people worthy of picking their brains, it seems to be over-run with people who think they know that "mainstream" cosmology and physics is always wrong, and the "electric universe" is always right - BUT - And this is what grates with me, they seem to do this without having the slightest comprehension of any of the "mainstream" theories they argue against, which I find a bit infuriating after a while. I end up looking like the evil debunking mainstreamer when I usually just try to point out some physics, that disproves something said, and that it is really beyond repute (non extrapolated and extensively experimentally verifiable)

I at least (try to) put as much time into learning the mainstream theories *cough/baloney* as the other material or its just ... well ... delusional.

I'm just a numpty :D
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Everyone is ignorant.

Only on different subjects. ;)
 
Haig said:
:eek: Maybe not:D
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And that is the whole problem with these EU/ES/EC proponents. They are like nice science fiction writers, lots of interesting sounding words (put the dilithium back in to the warp drive please) but when asked to actually do something, they run away scared.

So, Haig, you keep on bitching about the fact that "mainstream does not work" but any real evidence, e.g. how the water is produced by EDM or something then your reply is :eek: ?????? No, you rather give a link to a blog with more words and nice science fiction stories about how the water is created electrically etc etc etc.

I have yet to hear/read a quantitative electric comet story, it does not exist.

And yes, on the surface of the nucleus there is not much water ice, and in my opinion that makes sense, because for older comets all the surface stuff would be sublimated already because of the passes by the sun. However, the fact that we see jets coming out of the nucleus shows you immediately that the ice is in pockets inside the nucleus, otherwise ne would not get any jets, that shoot out of holes in the surface.
 
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