Sol88
Philosopher
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2009
- Messages
- 8,437
27 July 2017 Sol88: The delusion that comets are rocks is not supported by the delusion that a paper is about comets being rocks.
The question asked in the paper is whether an assumption of cohesionless dust in previous models of near-surface ice driving dust activity is correct. Specifically they model an ice layer covered by a dust layer with cohesion between the grains and find that the model does not produce lifting of dust.
Any knowledgeable or rational person will know that a rock layer cannot drive any lifting of dust maybe even with the addition of idiocy such as an undetected electric field!
Is near-surface ice the driver of dust activity on 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Skorov, Rezac, Hartogh and Keller.
That gas-driven dust activity in comets is not solved fully yet seems to be a well known issue. There is at least one paper that resolves the issue for larger grains on 67P:
What drives the dust activity of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko? by B. Gundlach, J. Blum, H. U. Keller, Y. V. Skorov (June 2015)
The model here is that the surface of comets initially consist of a mixture of ices and dust. Sublimation when comets get close to the Sun form a layer of weakly cohesive dust on the nucleus surface.
As imaged by ROLIS and CIVA? Righto