67P, why erosion from the neck?

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Metryq
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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by Metryq » Fri Dec 05, 2014 3:54 am

viscount aero wrote:Or the less eroded comets may indicate that they could be older but have only been recently encountering the Sun
We'll call this reservoir of dirty rocks the Viscount Aero Cloud. :D

Hmmm, if electrical forces can circularize orbits very rapidly, could there be a similar electrical disturbance that flings asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter into "cometary" orbits? Could those asteroids that have been showing comet-like behavior be a foreshadowing of a body about to be pinged around the Solar system? Thus, could the source of comets have been right under our noses all the time?

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by willendure » Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:13 am

viscount aero wrote: To add, tonight I began formulating the basis for a paper that cites corrosion as the mechanism for cometary erosion. The comet is clearly being eaten away. The peanut/duck shape is a common erosional state. I assume from this that younger comets will not yet show this feature (such as Tempel 1/Deep Impact).
I had a thought or two on this:

If the comet started out as an approximate sphere, and eroded preferentially at its poles, it ought to end up as a doughnut (torus) shape, perhaps not with the hole going right through, but I think you get what I am talking about?

If the comet started out as a lozenge shape, that is a rock longer than it is wide, the same pattern of erosion could end up with the peanut shape. That is, the peanut shape looks like a slice through the doughnut shape I am describing above; in in CAD parlance the peanut shape is approximately the union of a lozenge shape and the doughnut shape.

Sorry for the lack of a sketch to illustrate this, but hopefully I managed to get the idea across?

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by willendure » Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:15 am

viscount aero wrote:
willendure wrote:
viscount aero wrote:If the animation of 67P's rotation is correct then the axis goes through the neck of 67P--directly at the poles. Assuming the space rock began as a chunk with no erosion, the erosion began at the poles and remained eating away at the poles until the comet began to assume a 2-lobed shape. Plasma/electricity tends to be a "polar"-centric phenomenon.
This is a testable hypothesis; the other comets we have seen with a 2-lobed structure, do they also have their poles oriented perpendicular to the neck?
Thank you and good question. That would require going through all the available treatises/write-ups detailing prior cometary missions as far back as Giotto/Haley. Next would be to mimic, in the lab, an axially-revolving cometary body made of Olivine (Silicon-based igneous rock) and pyroxene--the major constituents of the Stardust samples--and then subject it to an electrolytic/electrical environment of a virtual anode and cathode (the anode being the electrode that accepts current) whereby a magnetic north pole is created on the laboratory stand-in comet.
Does the comet have a magnetic north pole?

I thought Earth has one because it has a liquid core. Mars has a much weaker one, because its core solidified. Could the comet have one, and is it needed for this polar erosion hypothesis to work?

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:09 am

willendure wrote:
viscount aero wrote: To add, tonight I began formulating the basis for a paper that cites corrosion as the mechanism for cometary erosion. The comet is clearly being eaten away. The peanut/duck shape is a common erosional state. I assume from this that younger comets will not yet show this feature (such as Tempel 1/Deep Impact).
I had a thought or two on this:

If the comet started out as an approximate sphere, and eroded preferentially at its poles, it ought to end up as a doughnut (torus) shape, perhaps not with the hole going right through, but I think you get what I am talking about?

Sorry for the lack of a sketch to illustrate this, but hopefully I managed to get the idea across?
Yes I thought about that, too. Good eye you have :idea: To add, it wouldn't matter, in my opinion, how spherical or oblong it was if a donut hole were to emerge. Per that idea, with a static polar arrangement, the hole would be bored straight through the comet at the poles, as if the comet were placed on a drill press vice.

But what see is a 360º corrosive scar that has created a narrow neck structure between two lobes. This may indicate that the magnetic north pole continuously and often flip-flops as is seen happening on planets with much slower occurrence. In other words, if the magnetic poles were dynamically and fluidly moving perpendicular to the comet body's axial spin then any etching away that originates at the poles, as "nodes of entry," would do so in 360º fashion. How or why it does this I have yet to understand.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:18 am

willendure wrote:
viscount aero wrote:
willendure wrote:
viscount aero wrote:If the animation of 67P's rotation is correct then the axis goes through the neck of 67P--directly at the poles. Assuming the space rock began as a chunk with no erosion, the erosion began at the poles and remained eating away at the poles until the comet began to assume a 2-lobed shape. Plasma/electricity tends to be a "polar"-centric phenomenon.
This is a testable hypothesis; the other comets we have seen with a 2-lobed structure, do they also have their poles oriented perpendicular to the neck?
Thank you and good question. That would require going through all the available treatises/write-ups detailing prior cometary missions as far back as Giotto/Haley. Next would be to mimic, in the lab, an axially-revolving cometary body made of Olivine (Silicon-based igneous rock) and pyroxene--the major constituents of the Stardust samples--and then subject it to an electrolytic/electrical environment of a virtual anode and cathode (the anode being the electrode that accepts current) whereby a magnetic north pole is created on the laboratory stand-in comet.
Does the comet have a magnetic north pole?

I thought Earth has one because it has a liquid core. Mars has a much weaker one, because its core solidified. Could the comet have one, and is it needed for this polar erosion hypothesis to work?
All good questions. These help me to develop the theory :ugeek:

Recall that Rosetta detected "eerie sounds" [in the subsonic range] emanating from comet 67P. They determined this to be caused by a magnetic field oscillation. That is quite a relevant piece of evidence. Not only would that imply polar arrangements to exist but that these poles may be fluidly changing. Even though no mention is made of it in the article, to my knowledge, unless I'm entirely remiss, a mag field implies and requires poles:

excerpt from:
http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music ... 7p-philae/

"The mission has already contributed greatly to our understanding of comets – and one discovery is of great interest to music lovers: scientists have revealed that the comet has been singing for four billion years. John Cage's 640-year-long Organ²/ASLSP doesn't come close.

So, how does a comet vocalise? Oscillations in the magnetic field of Comet 67P are creating a sound at a wavelength of around 40-50 millihertz, far below the range of human hearing. ESA scientists have increased the frequency by a factor of 10,000 in order to hear the song.

Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, says they are still trying to work out what is happening, but adds: "This is exciting because it is completely new to us."

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:40 am

Metryq wrote:
viscount aero wrote:Or the less eroded comets may indicate that they could be older but have only been recently encountering the Sun
We'll call this reservoir of dirty rocks the Viscount Aero Cloud. :D
Thank you :ugeek: hahaha
Metryq wrote:Hmmm, if electrical forces can circularize orbits very rapidly, could there be a similar electrical disturbance that flings asteroids from the belt between Mars and Jupiter into "cometary" orbits? Could those asteroids that have been showing comet-like behavior be a foreshadowing of a body about to be pinged around the Solar system? Thus, could the source of comets have been right under our noses all the time?
Good questions. I would say yes to the possibility that the trans-Mars/Jupiter belt may be the alleged "Oort Cloud" all along. Collisions in this area, which is much denser, could possibly happen enough to dislodge asteroids and hurl them far out into highly eccentric orbits. The belt may not be as static and stable as grade-school diagrams depict. No exploration of the asteroid belt has ever happened and it is largely an unknown structure. Imagine what happens there--no one knows actually.

That or comets may be remnants of a population of debris that never aligned and "got with the program" in the asteroid belt. And some yet may simply be rogue debris that enters the solar system from interstellar space. Photons are not the only things that can enter the solar system.

Contemporary astronomers cannot think this way because they are nailed and bound to their limiting theory about how the solar system must have been created from the highly unbelievable "nebular collapse theory". Moreover, if water ice has been confirmed to exist on Mercury then why do comets need to go to some light year distant "cloud"?

excerpt from:
http://www.space.com/18687-water-ice-me ... overy.html

"It's time to add Mercury to the list of worlds where you can go ice-skating. Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun.

Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat, NASA's Messenger spacecraft found a mix of frozen water and possible organic materials."

It sounds like they're talking about a comet. Even if comets have very little to zero actual ice on or within them, finding ice on Mercury and the Moon makes a theoretical Oort Cloud unnecessary.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by Solar » Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:12 pm

viscount aero wrote:[
Moreover, if water ice has been confirmed to exist on Mercury then why do comets need to go to some light year distant "cloud"?

excerpt from:
http://www.space.com/18687-water-ice-me ... overy.html

"It's time to add Mercury to the list of worlds where you can go ice-skating. Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun.

Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat, NASA's Messenger spacecraft found a mix of frozen water and possible organic materials."

It sounds like they're talking about a comet. Even if comets have very little to zero actual ice on or within them, finding ice on Mercury and the Moon makes a theoretical Oort Cloud unnecessary.
I've been putting together some notes on this over the last couple of days and landed on Mercury also:

Mercury has a Sodium Tail. Along with other processes the following paper notes that "(photosputtering, particle sputtering, and meteoroid impact) are not sufficient to allow the atoms to escape from the planet" - It has been assessed that solar radiation is "adding enough energy to whatever source energy they initially possessed to allow them to escape into the tail." Observations of Mercury’s Sodium Tail: Andrew Potter (NSO) & Rosemary Killen (University of Maryland)

In light of VIRTIS characterizing Comet 67P as being "dehydrated" note that this observation is constrained to the "outer surface" leaving subsurface hopes alive:
The team have also been poring over the spectra to search for hints about the chemical makeup of the surface of comet 67P/C-G. Among the preliminary results reported today was no evidence of water ice on a global scale, confirming that the outer surface is generally dehydrated. - VIRTIS
… the following contrast is interesting :
The innermost planet Mercury has been photographed spouting a faint comet-like tail. Unlike a comet, which is a sublimating ball of dusty ices, Mercury is bone dry. This tail is created by a gusher of solar radiation accelerating sodium atoms off Mercury’s surface. They absorb enough energy to escape the planet’s gravitational pull and zoom off into space. - Discovery
Further again, to underscore a point being made by member Viscount Aero there is this:
But there’s a catch. For water ice to remain stable inside these craters, an insulating layer of regolith — the thin, pulverized rock dust that forms on planetary bodies after eons of meteorite impacts — needs to blanket the surface, keeping the ice in a frozen state (preventing it from sublimating into space). For the ice to be preserved, around 20-30 centimeters (8-12 inches) of overlaying regolith needs to be present. - Mercury Not Too Hot For Polar Water Ice?
As of late they think the ice is residing in shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole. Makes me wonder why Philae didn't snap a photo of ice in the shadowed crevasse where it has landed unable to get sunlight to its solar panels. Is that little factoid to be ignored? Anyways...

In light of electric field induced "Leaping Lunar Dust" (possibly electrostatically cleaning the Mars Rover) which, on the one hand says that dust doesn't leave the surface but that at the termination (the transition between day side and night side) the charged dust is electrostatically 'bouncing'/leviated due to being attracted and repelled between the two differently charged regions. For a smaller body such as asteroid or Comet 67P rotating with a remarkably uneven surface this picture of the termination region isn't going to be so neat and spherically tidy as to present a backlit haze of electrostically levitated dust over comet horizon.

In the following reference it is to be noted that "theory show that electric field strengths increase rapidly towards the surface":
Renno et al. [8] show theoretical and observational evidence that martian dusty phenomena are electrically active. This has important implications for dust lifting and atmospheric chemistry [9, 10, 11]. 

The large electric fields produced by dusty phenomena can substantially reduce the critical wind speed necessary to produce saltation, and even directly lift dust particles from the surface [9]. Saltation is the process by which sand particles are forced to move by the wind and bounce on the surface, ejecting the smaller, harder to lift, dust particles into the air [12]. Electric fields might facilitate saltation and dust lifting on Earth, Mars and elsewhere. Both field measurements [2] and theory [13], [14] show that electric field strengths increase rapidly towards the surface [9] - A miniature sensor for electrical field measurements in dusty planetary atmospheres N O Renno1, 2, J F Kok3, H Kirkham4, and S Rogacki1
What might this imply about the lowest surface areas of a comet such as the neck of 67P? It would imply that the lowest surface areas might be where the electric field strength is strongest as opposed to an electric field having an even distribution over an idealized spherical surface. Very interesting.

However, there is a problem with the "radiation pressure" idea as well. When comets have mysterious "flare ups" at remarkable distances from the Sun the "radiation pressure" idea fails to account for the increased activity. It seems crazy but having a copy of photoshop myself and fiddling with the contrast and brightness of recent 67P images from ESA it appears that the bright spots from adjusting just these two settings to bring out more detail in black and white images of darkened comets may have contributed to the ice interpretation. Especially with images of comets from quite some distance.
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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:55 pm

Solar wrote:
viscount aero wrote:[
Moreover, if water ice has been confirmed to exist on Mercury then why do comets need to go to some light year distant "cloud"?

excerpt from:
http://www.space.com/18687-water-ice-me ... overy.html

"It's time to add Mercury to the list of worlds where you can go ice-skating. Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun.

Temperatures on Mercury can reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius), but around the north pole, in areas permanently shielded from the sun's heat, NASA's Messenger spacecraft found a mix of frozen water and possible organic materials."

It sounds like they're talking about a comet. Even if comets have very little to zero actual ice on or within them, finding ice on Mercury and the Moon makes a theoretical Oort Cloud unnecessary.
I've been putting together some notes on this over the last couple of days and landed on Mercury also:

Mercury has a Sodium Tail. Along with other processes the following paper notes that "(photosputtering, particle sputtering, and meteoroid impact) are not sufficient to allow the atoms to escape from the planet" - It has been assessed that solar radiation is "adding enough energy to whatever source energy they initially possessed to allow them to escape into the tail." Observations of Mercury’s Sodium Tail: Andrew Potter (NSO) & Rosemary Killen (University of Maryland)

In light of VIRTIS characterizing Comet 67P as being "dehydrated" note that this observation is constrained to the "outer surface" leaving subsurface hopes alive:
The team have also been poring over the spectra to search for hints about the chemical makeup of the surface of comet 67P/C-G. Among the preliminary results reported today was no evidence of water ice on a global scale, confirming that the outer surface is generally dehydrated. - VIRTIS
… the following contrast is interesting :
The innermost planet Mercury has been photographed spouting a faint comet-like tail. Unlike a comet, which is a sublimating ball of dusty ices, Mercury is bone dry. This tail is created by a gusher of solar radiation accelerating sodium atoms off Mercury’s surface. They absorb enough energy to escape the planet’s gravitational pull and zoom off into space. - Discovery
Further again, to underscore a point being made by member Viscount Aero there is this:
But there’s a catch. For water ice to remain stable inside these craters, an insulating layer of regolith — the thin, pulverized rock dust that forms on planetary bodies after eons of meteorite impacts — needs to blanket the surface, keeping the ice in a frozen state (preventing it from sublimating into space). For the ice to be preserved, around 20-30 centimeters (8-12 inches) of overlaying regolith needs to be present. - Mercury Not Too Hot For Polar Water Ice?
As of late they think the ice is residing in shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole. Makes me wonder why Philae didn't snap a photo of ice in the shadowed crevasse where it has landed unable to get sunlight to its solar panels. Is that little factoid to be ignored? Anyways...
Great work, Solar :ugeek: We're clearly connecting the same dots. I will address the 2nd half of your post later.

Suffice it to say, the litany of conundrums with established comet theory (and others directly related) is self-evident. Yet the establishment seems to ignore them and promote absolutely contradictory ideas as being probable. The issue of UV shielding by regolith cannot be ignored. In an earlier post or in another thread I cited that very thing with links, one of which was from ESA!

Here it is again. Watch the video "3D-PRINTING A LUNAR BASE":
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos ... lunar_base

ESA's entire Moon Base idea rests on regolithic shielding. So how can they promote UV shielding using dirt but then reverse their belief system with comets? How can they not see this as they remain forthright and virtually absolutist in that cometary ice MUST be there--subsurface no less--and sublimating!

Regolithic shielding of UV categorically falsifies any notion of sublimation. It cannot happen. Sublimating subsurface ice theory must be abandoned immediately.

To add: Because Mercury has a sodium tail then this puts that body into the classification of comets, a specie of comet. Yet this is overlooked and unexamined. One would think that true science would be all over that. But there is only silence.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 3:28 pm

I want to get Charles Chandler in here. I just PM'd him. Hopefully he'll show up.

I had a thought about the erosion of the neck radially, perpendicular to the poles. It may have something to do with the "right hand rule", ie, Lorentz Force. Charles is well versed in that and knows far more about it than I.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by seasmith » Fri Dec 05, 2014 5:00 pm

Image

Image

Image

;)

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:12 pm

viscount aero wrote:I want to get Charles Chandler in here.
I just skimmed the thread. Surely I missed some good points, but a number of the comments by Solar, Dotini, and Viscount Aero made sense.

To clarify, are we sure that it's erosion from the neck, and not erosion from the lobes, with sedimentation in the neck? It kinda looks like the latter. Given two bodies that happened to get lumped together, there could be an electric potential between them. This could be because of chemical differences, or just because of the shapes. (Pointy objects concentrate ambient electric fields, and thereby develop different resting potentials.) So, if there is an E-field between the lobes, it will polarize any particles that might be floating around, and then these particles are candidates for polymerization. While the etching continues on the lobes, particles in-between the lobes can accumulate. So the trend would be from any irregular shape, toward a sphere, with erosion on the pointy surfaces, and sedimentation in the valleys.

Then again, the lobes don't really look like they're being etched either. I tend to think that comets are surrounded by plasma sheaths that shield them from the solar wind, and they aren't necessarily eroding at all -- they might be growing. So I'm not sure what to make of this.

Viscount, can you summarize briefly what you're saying (or link to the post)?
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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:50 pm

CharlesChandler wrote:
viscount aero wrote:I want to get Charles Chandler in here.
I just skimmed the thread. Surely I missed some good points, but a number of the comments by Solar, Dotini, and Viscount Aero made sense.

To clarify, are we sure that it's erosion from the neck, and not erosion from the lobes, with sedimentation in the neck? It kinda looks like the latter. Given two bodies that happened to get lumped together, there could be an electric potential between them. This could be because of chemical differences, or just because of the shapes. (Pointy objects concentrate ambient electric fields, and thereby develop different resting potentials.) So, if there is an E-field between the lobes, it will polarize any particles that might be floating around, and then these particles are candidates for polymerization. While the etching continues on the lobes, particles in-between the lobes can accumulate. So the trend would be from any irregular shape, toward a sphere, with erosion on the pointy surfaces, and sedimentation in the valleys.

Then again, the lobes don't really look like they're being etched either. I tend to think that comets are surrounded by plasma sheaths that shield them from the solar wind, and they aren't necessarily eroding at all -- they might be growing. So I'm not sure what to make of this.

Viscount, can you summarize briefly what you're saying (or link to the post)?
Charles, read these particularly:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 43#p102255
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 43#p102262

I find your initial thoughts puzzling and in direct conflict with mine, but that is ok. I do not agree whatsoever that the lobes are "2 objects merged." The comet is eroded away as is seen on Comet Haley and others with similar morphologies. These comets did not all merge together. Merging of bodies in this context is similar to core accretion and is not physically possible or plausible.

I posit that the peanut shape is a stage of erosion in the lifetime of a comet before it fragments and pulls apart.

Scrutinizing the photos of 67P, you can see etch marks, ridges, in the neck area.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Fri Dec 05, 2014 9:30 pm

viscount aero wrote:Scrutinizing the photos of 67P, you can see etch marks, ridges, in the neck area.
Yes. ;) The "sediments" that I was seeing were just an artifact of the modeling software they used -- the photos don't show much of anything for sediments. :oops:

OK, a little slow on the update... ;)

Back to your hypothesis, if the rotation of the comet is generating a magnetic field (i.e., a dynamo effect), then there would be more electrical activity at the poles, basically for the same reason as the Earth's interaction with the solar wind is primarily at the poles. Incoming (or outgoing) charged particles headed for (or away from) the equator would have to pass through the magnetic field perpendicular to it, which generates a Lorentz force that deflects the particles into paths that follow the magnetic lines of force. This is what Birkeland figured out in the process of studying the aurora, and hence Birkeland currents were named after him.

BTW, the "etching" might be less like EDM and more like a plasma cutter. EDM removes material by generating heat sufficient to melt or even vaporize it, while a plasma cutter does that and it liberates atoms by stripping the electrons. After all, electrons are responsible for solid matter. So if you bombard a solid object with +ions, it will remove electrons from the solid, and thereby vaporize matter from the surface of the solid. Since it's a flow of charged particles, you "might" call it an electric current, but it wouldn't obey the rules of EDM -- it wouldn't be a spark, but rather, a plasma stream.
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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Fri Dec 05, 2014 11:58 pm

CharlesChandler wrote:
viscount aero wrote:Scrutinizing the photos of 67P, you can see etch marks, ridges, in the neck area.
Yes. ;) The "sediments" that I was seeing were just an artifact of the modeling software they used -- the photos don't show much of anything for sediments. :oops:

OK, a little slow on the update... ;)

Back to your hypothesis, if the rotation of the comet is generating a magnetic field (i.e., a dynamo effect), then there would be more electrical activity at the poles, basically for the same reason as the Earth's interaction with the solar wind is primarily at the poles. Incoming (or outgoing) charged particles headed for (or away from) the equator would have to pass through the magnetic field perpendicular to it, which generates a Lorentz force that deflects the particles into paths that follow the magnetic lines of force. This is what Birkeland figured out in the process of studying the aurora, and hence Birkeland currents were named after him.

BTW, the "etching" might be less like EDM and more like a plasma cutter. EDM removes material by generating heat sufficient to melt or even vaporize it, while a plasma cutter does that and it liberates atoms by stripping the electrons. After all, electrons are responsible for solid matter. So if you bombard a solid object with +ions, it will remove electrons from the solid, and thereby vaporize matter from the surface of the solid. Since it's a flow of charged particles, you "might" call it an electric current, but it wouldn't obey the rules of EDM -- it wouldn't be a spark, but rather, a plasma stream.
Thank you, Charles. To that bolded point, would you possibly call it corrosion? I have a premise that the comet is actually corroded versus eroded. Corrosion, typically occurring on metals, is also property of slag which is a ferro-magnesium type of rock. I am of the belief that the comet is this.

In short, corrosion is defined as the deterioration of a metal by a chemical or electrochemical reaction with its environment. If 67P is typical, then Wild 2/Stardust return samples shed clues on cometary composition: What was found was an abundance of olivine (a mineral group)--a magnesium-iron-silicate, and and pyroxene, a high-heat originating silicate. To wit, a comet is a metallic silicate. And it happens that Mg and Fe are highly vulnerable to corrosion.

Weathering of olivine and pyroxene have been observed on Mars since the rover missions began in 2004. What may be occurring on the cometary corrosion is a chain-reaction, a series of reactions on the comet that leads to its surface being eaten away via the water vapor/hyrdroxyl-rich coma acting as an electrolytic medium. In this hypothesis, in the presence of the solar wind or high radiation environment (such as Jupiter), the comet "eats itself" away as its chemistry destroys itself.

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Re: 67P, why erosion from the neck?

Unread post by viscount aero » Sat Dec 06, 2014 1:11 am

More on electrolysis from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolys ... electrodes

"H+ ions (hydrogen ions) also take part in the reaction, and are provided by an acid in the solution, or by the solvent itself (water, methanol etc.). Electrolysis reactions involving H+ ions are fairly common in acidic solutions. In aqueous alkaline solutions, reactions involving OH- (hydroxide ions) are common.

Sometimes the solvents themselves (usually water) are oxidized or reduced at the electrodes. It is even possible to have electrolysis involving gases. (Such as when using a Gas diffusion electrode)"
---------
The comet itself may also be a Gas diffusion electrode:

from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_diffusion_electrode

"Gas diffusion electrodes (GDE) are electrodes with a conjunction of a solid, liquid and gaseous interface, and an electrical conducting catalyst supporting an electrochemical reaction between the liquid and the gaseous phase."

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