Excerpts From The Electric Universe
Electric Comets Part 2

Chapter 4 - Electric Comets (Cont'd.)

Dirty Snowball Model

• The solar system formed billions of years ago by gravitational accretion from a primordial solar nebula, which formed a disk of interstellar dust and ices.
   
• Gentle or 'sticky' collisions agglomerated the dust and ices into larger bodies (planetesimals).
   
• In ways not understood, the planets then grew by 'runaway accretion' of planetesimals.
   
• The leftover dust and gas was dispersed by a presumed energetic phase of the early Sun.
   
• The planets found themselves in remarkably circular orbits.
   
• Comets are supposed to be composed of undifferentiated 'protoplanetary debris' - dust and ices left over from the formation of the outer planets where temperatures in the disk were low. On this model, comets are a mixture of frozen water, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia and about an equal amount of dust.
   
• Comets are injected into the inner and outer solar system from a vast unseen reservoir called the 'Oort cloud.' Those in the inner solar [p 92] system contributed to an early episode of heavy bombardment of the inner planets. Those flung outward were lost or somehow 'stored' in the Oort cloud, to be occasionally disturbed back into the inner solar system by a passing star.
   

• Comets in the Oort cloud are exposed to radiation, or space weathering, for billions of years. Only the upper surface layers are affected.
   
• As the comet swings through the inner solar system, radiant heat from the Sun sublimates ices from the nucleus. The gases and accompanying dust expand around the nucleus to generate the coma and are swept back by the solar wind to form the comet's ion and dust tails.
   
• Repeated passages around the Sun vaporize surface ice and leave a 'rind' of dust.
   
• Pockets of gas form where solar heat penetrates the surface of the blackened, shallow crust. Energetic jets form where the gas breaks through the surface.
   
• The comet coma is generated by the collision of gases from the comet with the solar wind. Comet comas are amongst the largest objects in the solar system.
   
• Strange accelerations of comets are due to ‘rocket action’ of the jets from the nucleus.
   
• Comets disintegrate because pockets of gas form inside the nucleus, solar heating increases the pressure, and the fragile nucleus fractures.
   

Plasma Discharge Model

• The plasma discharge model of comets is inseparable from the electric Sun model. This model envisions the Sun forming in a galactic electromagnetic 'Z-pinch' at some unknown time in the past. A Zpinch is the most effective long-range scavenger of interstellar dust to form stars. Laboratory experiments show that a number of 'stars' are formed simultaneously along the axis of a Z-pinch. Once the 'pinch' subsides the stars 'scatter like buckshot.'
   
• Planets are formed in several separate episodes of 'electrical parturition' of stars and gas giants. Stellar ‘accretion disks’ and planetary rings are in fact 'expulsion disks.' This model accounts for 'hot Jupiters' found closely orbiting their parent star. Stellar ejection of 'blobs' of matter is observed in deep space. The rings of our gas giants are evidence of past electrical expulsions.
   
• Subsequent electromagnetic capture and circularization of planetary orbits is accompanied by interplanetary plasma arcing.
   
• Moons, comets, asteroids, meteorites and planetary rings are debris that has been electrically expelled or torn from a planetary body. Their composition will vary depending on the parent body.
   

• Comets were electrically 'machined' in their natal event. Blackened and pitted comet surfaces reflect their origin in an intense plasma discharge. Comets can be considered 'asteroids on eccentric orbits.'
   
• Comets follow elongated paths within a weak radial electric field centered on the Sun. All solar system bodies, including comets, are negatively charged with respect to the Sun. Comets spend most of their time remote from the Sun, and while there, they adopt a voltage in keeping with that environment.
   
• As a comet accelerates toward the Sun, it encounters a steadily rising plasma density and voltage. The strength of the electric field within the comet’s plasma sheath thus steadily increases until the plasma discharge suddenly switches from dark mode to glow mode (see information panel p. 96).
   
• A glow discharge produces the visible coma around the nucleus.
   
• Eventually, increasing electrical stress on the nucleus causes the discharge to switch suddenly to 'arc' mode. Cathode arcs begin to dance over the comet nucleus, giving it a star-like appearance through a telescope.
   
• Rock is electrically 'sputtered,' particle by particle, from the surface and accelerated vertically into space in the form of wellcollimated jets, following the natural curved trajectories of particles from a 'plasma gun.'
   
• The ejected ionized material is guided electromagnetically into a coherent comet tail. The ion tails of comets reveal well-defined Birkeland current filaments extending up to tens of millions of km without dissipating in the vacuum of space—a 'violation' of gas behavior in a vacuum. (Heated gas in a vacuum will normally disperse explosively.)
   

• Puzzling comet behavior becomes a unified and predictable result of plasma discharge effects. The cathode-arc discharges to the nucleus produce the characteristic forms of electric discharge machining (EDM) of the comet surface, with sharply scalloped craters, terraces and mesas.
   
• Cathode arcs tend to jump from one spot to another, which explains the sudden switching off and on of comet jets.
   
• The wandering cathode arcs, seen as enigmatic white spots in close-up images of the comet nucleus, erode the surface and burn it black, which accounts for the surprising discovery that comet nuclei are the darkest bodies in the solar system, "blacker than copier toner."
   

• Ices are not buried beneath a dirty crust. The presence of water is inferred from the hydroxyl molecule [OH] in the comet’s coma. New evidence shows that the main source of OH is the combination of hydrogen from the solar wind with negative oxygen ions, sputtered from cometary surface minerals (see information panel on facing page). ⁹⁷
   
• Electrical heating of the surface of the comet nucleus and the lack of cooling effect from non-existent sublimating ices accounts for the higher than expected temperatures of the comet nucleus.
   

• The diameter of the visible coma will often reach several millions of kilometers. It is the electric force, not gravity, that enables the cometary nucleus to hold the coma in place as it careens around the Sun.
   
• It is the electric force that accelerates the ion tails of a comet as it sweeps around the Sun.
   
• The coma temperature (as hot as the solar corona) and the emission of X-rays are both explained as plasma discharge phenomena.
   
• Comet nuclei behave like an electret (similar to a capacitor, but able to store electric charge for a much longer time). As such the nucleus can explode when the internal electrical stresses, caused by the discharge activity at the surface, results in an internal discharge. The many examples of an exploding comet are thus analogous to an exploding capacitor, in which the insulating dielectric suffers a spark-over and fails. The current through the dielectric causes sudden internal heating, which may explosively fragment the capacitor.
   

97 L. Kristoferson, K. Fredga, "Laboratory Simulation of Cometary Erosion by Space Plasma," Astrophysics & Space Science 50 (1977) pp. 105-123. "the production of OH in space from 'dry,' water free matter is possible by means of molecular sputtering from several cosmically abundant types of materials." However, the production rate is too low without electrical sputtering.