2016 WF9 - comet or Asteriod (NASA not sure)

[neilwilkes]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6712

NASA's NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another--definitely a comet--might be seen with binoculars through next week.

How much longer before they come clean & admit that an Asteroid is a comet on a more circular orbit and that "comets" are merely great big lumps of rock on a highly elliptical orbit & therefore exhibiting electrical discharge phenomena........although they are seemingly starting to move away from the "dirty snowball" concept as this one is described thus:

"2016 WF9 could have cometary origins," said Deputy Principal Investigator James "Gerbs" Bauer at JPL. "This object illustrates that the boundary between asteroids and comets is a blurry one; perhaps over time this object has lost the majority of the volatiles that linger on or just under its surface."

(my bold type for emphasis)

[Giffyguy]

Meh ... the NASA language still assumes "volatiles" are required to produce the comet tail ...
Sounds like nothing has really changed yet ... same old spin & talking points from the mainstream.

[neilwilkes]

Whilst I can definitely understand the "meh", the thing I get from this is that NASA are finally blurring the line between comet & asteroid, so we move closer to the next stage - remembering that new ideas (or even revitalized older ideas as the electrical nature of our universe was once a much more comm,only held hypothesis than it currently is) tend to pass through the three stages of ridicule, violent opposition and finally to the "we knew it all along".
Given the number of asteroids exhibiting the so-called "rubber duck" configuration and therefore implying to me that these are nothing more than comets whose orbit and therefore electrical charge has changed & equalized how much longer can it possibly be until this whole "dirty snowball" nonsense is consigned to the dustbin of misconceptions.