Comets Collide with the Sun?

[Influx]

Influx wrote:However if NASA has spectral data on the composition of the comets coma as being mostly water ice and dust, that would be pretty strong evidence against EU.

Not really, bro. It might seem to validate the 'snowball' hypothesis, but the thing about the EU hypothesis doesn't preclude that a comet could be an iceball, or a ball of sandstone, iron, or any other planetary matter!

Well, I thought that one of the points EU makes is that a comets coma is really a plasma field? That is, vaporized matter of the comet/asteroid due to intense electrical charge imbalance? The way I understand it, its like a continually shorted capacitor? But if its cold particles of water ice, what then does it say about EU?

Halley is the most active of all the periodic comets, with others, such as Comet Encke and Comet Holmes, displaying activity one or two orders of magnitude weaker.[14] Its day side is far more active than its night side. Spacecraft observations showed the gases ejected from the nucleus were 80 percent water vapour, 17 percent carbon monoxide and 3 to 4 percent carbon dioxide[42] with traces of hydrocarbons[43] (more recent sources give a value of 10 percent for carbon monoxide and also include traces of methane and ammonia).

Looks like at least one failure for EU??? I mean, if HALLEY was not electrically active that pretty much proves there is no currents in space???



Look at that crazy elliptical orbit! Halley should pick up a HUGE electrical charge! But where is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_1

See Perons link for Wikipedia article.

[jjohnson]

Just curious as to what type of signature was used to infer water as being in the vapour state. Hydroxyl ions are often used as the signature of the presence of water, although stripped of a proton. I am not sure of dark lines in emission spectra, and whether they are created by ionized atoms only, or may be evidence of neutral molecules as well. If water was identified by hydroxyl presence, it should be inferred to be in an ionized state, and potentially in a plasma state. I wouldn't count this as "one failure for EU" just yet.

I'm also not sure how its density was calculated, as the fuzzy pictures with estimated dimensions of 16x8x8 km give only the vaguest idea of what may be its actual volume. As the very dark portions of its surface (albedo 0.03) are brightly obscured by bright emissions there may be additional (or less) volume to this mass than estimated - no "margin of error" was indicated that I know of, of this estimate. The poor photographic quality of the published images are unable to show either an "icy" surface or a hard, solid pitted surface like that seen on other comets, which has been much like that of common meteors or asteroids. I'd say the jury is still out on Halley's. Insufficient information, overall. I wonder what would happen if a copper impactor were sent to collide with Halley like the Deep Impact mission to Tempel I. Same initial electrical arc discharge followed by a surprisingly strong ejection plume? Up-close pictures of the terrain indicating a rocky asteroid? Or a Snow Cone cart with a big sign saying ¡Raspados! 21 Sabores...

And for using Wikipedia as a reliable scientific reference, I'll take other chances and sources these days, thanks. Caution pays.

[nick c]

But if its cold particles of water ice, what then does it say about EU?

But it is not cold particles of water ice that were observed! I would recommend that you read Michael Goodspeed's thunderblog, where he explained the situation:

Comet "Water"
Cometary comas often exude an abundance of what scientists interpret as "water." In fact, what they measure as water is the hydroxyl radical OH, the most abundant cometary radical, which they assume is formed by the breakdown of water from solar UV radiation. It is this radical's presence that leads to their estimates of the amount of water ice sublimating from the comet nucleus.

Electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill offers a different interpretation, consistent with the surprising discoveries of recent years. He notes that space probes have detected the negatively charged oxygen atom, or negative oxygen ion, close to cometary nuclei. Additionally, spectral analysis of neutral oxygen (O) shows a 'forbidden line' indicative of the presence of an 'intense' electric field. Negative ions near a comet nucleus puzzled investigators because such ions are easily destroyed by solar radiation. Thus, investigators reviewing the findings at comet Halley noted, “an efficient production mechanism, so far unidentified, is required to account for the observed densities” of negative ions.

As stated by Thornhill, “...the intense electric field near the comet nucleus is inexplicable if it is merely an inert body plowing through the solar wind.” But the electric model resolves the mysteries: “The electric field near the comet nucleus is expected if a comet is a highly negatively charged body, relative to the solar wind. Cathode sputtering of the comet nucleus will strip atoms and molecules directly from solid rock and charge them negatively. So the presence of negative oxygen and other ions close to the comet nucleus is to be expected. Negative oxygen ions will be accelerated away from the comet in the cathode jets and combine with protons from the solar wind to form the observed OH radical at some distance from the nucleus.”

If Thornhill is correct, the OH does not require water ice on, or in, the comet. Though it would be irrational to categorically exclude the possibility of ice, our probes have revealed scorched surfaces looking more like burnt rocks than dirty snowballs. They are, in fact, barely distinguishable from ice-free asteroids.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblo ... comets.htm

It is recommended that you read the entire thunderblog, it is a good summary of the comet issue as this is probably the strongest point in the EU attack on mainstream madness.

There is no requirement in the Electric Comet theory that comets cannot be iceballs or that they should have any specific composition. In general, it is theorized that comets are the cosmic debris from catastrophes in the solar systems' recent past, as such, one would expect that most would be composed of materials electrically excavated from the planets.
No doubt there are some bodies in the solar system that are composed of large amounts of ice and some may be on cometary orbits. However, all the comets that have been visited by spaceprobes thus far are rocky bodies with surfaces indistinguishable from asteroids. So mainstream has adjusted the dirty snowball theory, locating the supposed water in the interior of the comet. The proposed mechanism that sublimating ices produce the observed features of comets is a total failure and has been falsified.

Nick

[mharratsc]

Wikipedia's 'Supreme Editors' are nothing but the paid shills of Mainstream... their front-line Though Police.

By the same spectral examination as comets, NASA buffoons stated "there is water on the Moon!" Yet they stated in the same article the 'possibility' that the water could be "created by interaction of the solar wind and surface rocks (they put that part in last to cover their collective asses when their fantasy of trapped water in lunar soil pops like a bubble). The behavior of water at extremes of temperature in a vacuum have NOT changed since last century, I'm afraid.

The real clincher was when they discovered that the same electrochemical reaction was occuring on Mercury- no one thinks that there is any 'water trapped in the soil' there, I'll wager.

And besides... if you are thinking "all it takes is ONE negative observation to disprove the EU theory of comets"... let me remind you first that we'd still have a loooooong way to go to catch up to all the negative observations of the mainstream theory! Sungrazers, x-ray emissions, filamentary comet tails, comas as large as the Sun itself, fissioning out beyond the deep freeze zone past Saturn and plasma trails glowing between the pieces of the nucleus, high-temperature particles found in the tail... they've already got quite a list built up against them already!


Mike H.

[solrey]

Evidence of electromagnetic activity on comet Halley.

Plasma conductivity in the comet Halley ionosphere

The conductivity tensor for a 3-species plasma is shown to become diagonal in the frame of reference moving with electrons. In this frame anisotropy of the conductivity (associated with the magnetic field) disappears. If electrons are moving with ions (so that the electric current is small), and the effective collision time, τ, is greater than the electron gyration time (ωτ greater-than or equivalent to 1), then the magnetic Reynolds number Rem much greater-than 1, and an approximation of ideal MHD holds. According to the Giotto data, this is the case for comet Halley.

Particle fluxes observed in the magnetic pileup regions of comets Halley and Grigg-Skjellerup

Energetic particles (EH2O ≥ 60 keV) as well as plasma ions of a few KeV in energy have been measured in the magnetic pileup region and in the cavity of comet Halley (13/14 March 1986) by the instruments EPA/EPONA, RPA and IMS. The Pileup region of comet Grigg-Skjellerup (G-S) was traversed on 10 July 1992. Similarities and diversities in the encounter conditions, particle fluxes and acceleration processes at both comets are discussed.
Article Outline

Fine structure of the diamagnetic cavity boundary in comet Halley

We calculated the electric current density in the diamagnetic cavity boundary layer (DCBL) using magnetic field data obtained during the Giotto mission to comet Halley. This current possesses both the component perpendicular to the local magnetic field and the parallel component. The perpendicular current is responsible for the screening of the diamagnetic cavity boundary from the field in the magnetic barrier. This current is supported by the electric field tangential to the boundary. The behavior of the parallel electric current component resembles the Alfvén wings which arise due to the interaction of the magnetized plasma flow with a conducting obstacle. However, the electric current connecting the two wings does not flow through the whole volume of the obstacle. On the contrary, the wings are connected by the perpendicular current in the DCBL. In the inner portion of the DCBL this current diverges producing the parallel current component whose direction is opposite to that in the outer portion of the DCBL. In order to support such a current system at the diamagnetic cavity boundary, the potential drop across DCBL should be as small as 0.5V. Such a small value of the potential drop agrees with the penetration depth of cometary ions from the cavity to the magnetic barrier: it is equal to the ion gyroradius and therefore is not affected by any significant electric field normal to the diamagnetic cavity boundary.

Observations of waves and plasma in the environment of comet Halley

The high-frequency plasma-wave analyser (APV-V) carried by the spacecraft Vega 1 and Vega 2 measured electric fields at frequencies up to 300 kHz and characteristic parameters of the ambient plasma during the encounters with comet Halley. The data collected on Vega 1 and Vega 2 are quite similar. Electric field activity at frequencies of approx100 Hz was already significant at a distance of approx2.5timesl06 km from the nucleus. The field displayed strong fluctuations; its average amplitude and bandwidth increased drastically during the approach, and for distances less than 1.2times105 km a maximum was observed at 200−400 Hz. The plasma density, measured with Langmuir probes, was approx104 cm-3 at closest approach.

And the best for last:

Electric Fields and Cold Electrons in the Vicinity of Comet Halley

The structure and dynamics of the plasma environment on the sunward side of comet Halley are investigated using measurements during the Vega inbound encounters from a double probe antenna and two Langmuir probes (the APV-V experiment), within a cometocentric distance of ∼850,000 km. Based upon the behavior of the electric fields and the cold electrons, three regions can be identified in the cometosheath (in particular during the Vega 1 approach): transition layers are passed through at ∼780,000 km (R 1) and ∼360,000 km (R 2). The outer cometosheath (near and beyond R 1) is characterized by large-scale variations in the cold electron density and the electric field, peaking at ∼1 mHz. The R 2 crossing is detected in the plasma wave data as enhanced fluctuations at ∼15 mHz. About 25,000 km downstream of R 2, the spacecraft traverses a current layer (thickness ∼10,000 km) indicated by a sharp gradient in the dc electric field and the cold electron density. The continuous, relatively rapid increase in the intensity of plasma waves begins at a cometocentric distance of ∼200,000 km. Simultaneously, the cold electron density starts growing in accordance with the r −2 law. The cometopause crossing at ∼160,000 km produces only moderate effects in the APV-V measurements. In the cometary plasma region, some interesting features are examined, such as a current layer passed by Vega 1 at 54,000 km and sudden ion density enhancements observed by Vega 2 at ∼35,000 km. On several occasions, the APV-V measurements are heavily influenced by dust particles striking the spacecraft structure. From these events we can conclude that the dust particles are strongly charged and partially coupled to cometary plasmas (or vice versa).

[Siggy_G]

There are several incoming objects these days. As mentioned before, you can go to this site:

http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin ... ie_theater

Search for your desired date range and watch the solar activity (LASCO C3 is the wider field of view, while LASCO C2 is more of a close-up). Try out from 2010-01-01 to 2010-01-10... There is much going on when viewed at LASCO C3, speeded up a bit (click faster play mode, after frames are loaded).

There has been 5 comets entering the Sun since 26th of Dec, plus an additional object passing relatively fast by above the Sun / ecliptic plane. The latter object becomes small towards the middle of the screen, then scaling up towards the sides, indicating an elliptical orbit in front of SOHO's view field - during 7 days.

comets_01_2010.gif (34.08 KiB) Viewed 9110 times

[mharratsc]

Sol- you ARE da bomb, brother!

Where the heck do you dig up those articles, anyway?? I always thought that Mainstream made the mission scientists hide those releases.

Here's how I imagine Solrey found those articles:

"But Mr <Solrey>, the <mission results> have been available in the <NASA> office for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the <mission results> were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the <mission results> didn't you?"

"Yes," said <Solrey>, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

(Borrowed from 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' with many thanks! God rest ye, Douglas Adams )


Mike H.

[solrey]

Hi Mike.

Where the heck do you dig up those articles, anyway??

Under the petunia's in the garden, wrapped in a towel and hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar, guarded by 42 banana slugs armed with poppy seeds.

Funny thing about those petunia's...

Curiously, the only thing that went through the mind of the petunias, as they fell, was, "Oh no, not again." Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly *why* the bowl of petunias had thought that, we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

hehe


...Or maybe I remembered that the Vega I & II and Giotto probes had made flyby's of Halley and collected data on the plasma environment and chose my search terms accordingly. I was fresh out of Aerospace Technology studies back then and am cursed with a photographic memory.

Here's another goodun:

Small-Scale Dust Structures in Halley's Coma: Evidence from the Vega-2 Electric Field Records

snip
Using an argument from the dusty gas dynamics, it is shown that the small-scale dust structures were not jets but have originated from the disintegration of particle aggregates. An estimate of the total mass contained within a dust structure leads to values of 1–10 kg. Besides CIEs near closest approach, a pair of exceptionally prolonged events has been recorded by APV-V at relatively large distances (not, vert, similar4×104 km). The dust data show that the mass distribution across the respective dust formations was highly variable.

Could the "disintegration of particle aggregates" be caused by EDM ripping ions and electrons out of the material and creating charged dust particles "disintegrating" from the surface? That makes sense if the "highly variable" dust mass distribution is an indication of the probe moving in and out of current filaments and sheets, in which I would expect the dust "cloud" to have higher density.

[jjohnson]

Well, Mike, I loved your piecing together of Solrey's search process. Actually, he went out-of-country for his references, which today is sort of back up the non-existent stairs to the European file room... First of all, Giotto was an ESA (European Space Agency) mission, not a NASA mission, and all Solrey's references were from European and Israeli researchers, not USA-based commentators. I have observed that a disproportionate number of papers which tend to deal more rationally with the electromagnetic aspects of observations tend to be ESA, or be Brazilian, Spanish, Mexican, Japanese and Chinese researchers. Tom Bridgeman can be more shrill on his side of the fence than some of the slightly, ahem, more rabid commenters on this forum, which bodes poorly for building bridges of understanding and mutual respect between observers and interpreters of data. (Let's face it: there are always partisans who take that role as seriously as the role of arbiters and conciliation of viewpoints. On any side. In any human endeavor. I guess it makes life more interesting and hormonal then not.)

Excellent series of references for this thread, Solrey. Excellent. And timely given today's TPOD, as well.

Jim

[mharratsc]

Using an argument from the dusty gas dynamics, it is shown that the small-scale dust structures were not jets but have originated from the disintegration of particle aggregates. An estimate of the total mass contained within a dust structure leads to values of 1–10 kg. Besides CIEs near closest approach, a pair of exceptionally prolonged events has been recorded by APV-V at relatively large distances (not, vert, similar4×104 km). The dust data show that the mass distribution across the respective dust formations was highly variable.

Could the "disintegration of particle aggregates" be caused by EDM ripping ions and electrons out of the material and creating charged dust particles "disintegrating" from the surface? That makes sense if the "highly variable" dust mass distribution is an indication of the probe moving in and out of current filaments and sheets, in which I would expect the dust "cloud" to have higher density.

I would say that if you stack the findings of this study with the ones you previously posted regarding the ion density increasing with proximity to the nucleus, and the one regarding the extent and intensity of the electric fields deep in the 'comatosphere' (did they just coin that phrase recently?)- I highly doubt you would find any scientists willing to dispute that EDM is indeed the causal factor of those small-scale dust structures they found...

'Cept maybe ScienceApologist. I wouldn't put it past him!

Hey Jim- I'm not exactly a data-miner on these subjects, but I distinctly recall seeing a whole bunch of works coming out of some big plasma institute in Russia, as well.

If the U.S.A. populace-at-large doesn't start taking an interest in what NASA is up to, we're going to end up a '3rd world country' in the space race... and we'll have spent billions and billions of dollars making sure we made it to last place while we were at it... >.<

[Influx]

WIKIPEDIA says that the soviet spacecraft Vega one and two showed that,

The images also showed the nucleus to be dark, and the infrared spectrometer readings measured a nucleus temperature of 300 K to 400 K, much warmer than expected for an ice body. The conclusion was that the comet had a thin layer on its surface covering an icy body.

400K is well above the boiling temp of water, but is that enough to cause plasma?

Also, the thin layer of the covering that causes the comet to be so hot, wounding it quickly be blow of into space?

[Influx]

Wounding, lol I meant wouldn't,

[Peron]

400K is well above the boiling temp of water, but is that enough to cause plasma?

The high speed solar wind hits the comet and ions are produced, this is why most comets have a ion tail.

Also, the thin layer of the covering that causes the comet to be so hot, wounding it quickly be blow of into space?

It does, the sun heats the comet, the water underneath the "rock layer" sublimates and breaks through the surface, this is what causes the the long beautiful cometry tail, we all adore.

[nick c]

It does, the sun heats the comet, the water underneath the "rock layer" sublimates and breaks through the surface, this is what causes the the long beautiful cometry tail, we all adore.

Comets were supposed to be made of ices, and then space probes revealed that there was no ice. So the ice was placed beneath the newly revealed rocky surfaces. But this ad hoc adjustment to the theory has serious problems, too.

But as best we can tell, until very recently there had been no public acknowledgment by NASA that none of the prior comet visits (Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2) had revealed surface water! (See below)

It is easy to understand why astronomers began to speculate about water buried beneath layers of surface material. But if an 800 pound projectile meeting a comet at 23,000 miles per hour, could not release the “subsurface water” demanded by theory, how could mere sunlight in the deep freeze of space do the job?


http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/ ... 4comet.htm

and also:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/00subjectx.htm#Comets

Nick

[keeha]

Thought this would be a good place to share some 1882 journal articles on solar events I came across. Reports on comets and flares (and a transit of Venus -the era's overhyped meme it seem) and related effects observed on earth.

Nature, Volume 27 edited by Norman Lockyer

The good reading starts with the Comet articles
pp80, pp82 "...the comet was about 1,600,000 miles from its [sun] surface...[T]he light which rendered it visible in this position must have been nearly all from the comet's own incandescene..."
pp128 "As the distance diminished "all appearance if tail was obliterated as only a round disc about 4" in diameter [in the scope?] remained visible, but this was intrinsically as brilliant as the surface of the sun, if not more so..."the morning of the following day he observed the comet rise just before the sun.."). "Ingress of Gould's Comet upon the Sun, September 17, 1882".
pp226 Comet element computation.
pp267

The Magnetic Storm and Aurora
pp82 A collection of 23 accounts; The telegraphic system of this country has, since Friday morning last, been disturbed in a way [50 milliamperes - 5 times working currents] that far exceeds anything of the kind that has ever happened before, Very powerful electric currents have been swaying backwards and forwards trough the crust of the earth...
pp 83 [Sunspot] dimensions on November 18, when it was near the central meridian, were: Length 194", breath 130", area of umbra 735, of whole spot 2470 (expressed in millionths of the sun's visible surface), and its position: Heliographic latitude 19N., longitude 121.
pp83 "An aurora was seen...At times these were varied by a white glow, and occasionaly there seemed a disposition on the part of the red patches to form into columns or beams. This however was never perfected, and no corona actually formed. .... I saw a spindle-shaped beam of glowing white light, quite unlike an auroral ray, had formed in the east. As I looked this slowly mounted from its position, rose to the zenith, and passed it, gradually crossing apparently above the moon and then sank into the west, slowly les-ening in size and brilliancy as it did so, and fading away as it reached the horizon. The pecuilar long spindle shape, slow gliding motion and glowing silver light, and the marked isolation of this cloud from the other portions of the aurora made it a most remarkable object.
"as I was looking south-east, a long patch of white light appeard about 10[degrees] above the horizon. This was common lace at first, but then it quickly developed into a long, gleaming and well defined streak. It looked very like to brilliant comments joined end to end by the tip of the tail. This took about a minute to form, and when complete it started off in the direction of its length in a curved path which gradually rose [to 30 degrees then]...keeping its symmetry and shape like a rigid body all the way, until it reached a position in the south-west, corresponding to its place when forming, and here it halted and dissolved away... The band of light was about 30[degrees] long...took three-quarters of a minute in its transit."
pp109 , pp138 "Observatory of The Roman College [Nov.17] "Several falling stars were observed through the arura. A magnetic pertubation occured yesterday and in the night and continued also to-day; and, moreover, there is on the sun a large spot, easily vi-ible on using merely a piece of smoked glass..The spot appeared on November 12..."Again, the magnetic perturbation of yesterday and last night is connected with that vast storm depression which embraced a great part of Central Europe and especially Italy."), More Comets in October (good plasma sheath diagrams of it)
pp 149 "1:10 AM ...in Red Sea... he suddenly noticed the effect of a bright light shinning from astern [south] and, on turning round saw a very bright shooting star still moving from left to right... the star speedily disappeared, but left a bright train of light behind it... watched the streak till half-past one o'clock, when it seemed sensibly fainter..."
pp 151 "November 26, not a vestige of the comet was to be seen by the naked eye, though its position was know exactly. On applying a telescope to the spot the nucleus appears as a round nebula, with four small stars near it"
pp 197 The letters to the editor section has many interesting observations of the magnetic events.
"It is curious how the recent aurorae have been followed not only by a cold wave, but by a subsequent warm one, and these respectively of such extremes..."
pp198 The height of the spindle-shaped object seen in the aurora of November 17...
pp 296, pp 315 "Until we know that gas excited by the passage of particles through it at fiften miles a second does not give the same spectrum as when incandescent by an electric discharge, the observation of certain lines cannot prove anything of the exiting cause"
pp338 "auroral cloud of November 17...passed in the zenith at Brussels...at Laon seen to the northward, as it were, gliding round the upper edge of the great main arch of the aurora...elevation as between forty and forty-five miles."
pp 365

Title: on the large Sun-spot of February 5-18, 1892 and the associated magnetic disturbance made at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 52, p.354

Here is where I found the references.