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by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott
2006
from
Thunderbolts Website
 Introduction
“Comets are perhaps
at once the most spectacular and the least well understood
members of the solar
system.”
M. Neugebauer
Jet Propulsion
Laboratory
For several decades
plasma cosmologists, inspired by the work of Hannes Alfvén, have
urged astronomers to consider the role of electric currents and
plasma discharge in large scale cosmic events.
According to these
theorists, electricity may be the dominating force in galaxy and
star formation. But only a few have considered the role electricity
might play in the spectacular
 displays
of comets.
Recent findings about
comets call for a new perspective on these bodies. The more we have
learned about comets, the more the discoveries support an electrical
interpretation. Highly energetic and focused jets explode from
comets’ nuclei.
The jets exhibit narrowly confined filamentary
structures over great distances, defying the expected behavior of
neutral gases in a vacuum.
And the surfaces reveal
sharply carved relief - exactly the opposite of what astronomers had
predicted of these “dirty snowballs,” but a telling clue as to the
true nature of cometary displays. Comets have unexpectedly high
apparent coma temperatures and are sufficiently energetic to emit
extreme ultraviolet light and even x-rays.
Water and other volatiles
are in short supply or are completely absent on comet nuclei.
Observed electrical
transactions with the solar wind now fascinate cometologists, but
their “explanations” remain obscure and contradictory. And a
perplexing number of comets mysteriously explode as they dart around
the sun. None of the newly discovered attributes of comets were
expected by the standard model.
But the recent findings
are not “surprises” to the electrical theorists. They are the
predictable behavior of an electric comet.
CONTRASTING MODELS OF THE COMET
The popular metaphor for comets as “dirty snowballs” no longer fits
with space age findings about these bodies.
When a theory fails to anticipate discoveries, or the theorists
themselves are continually surprised by new findings, it is only
reasonable to question the original suppositions.
DIRTY SNOWBALL MODEL:
• Comets are
composed of undifferentiated “protoplanetary debris” - dust and
ices left over from the formation of the solar system billions
of years ago.
• Radiant heat from the Sun sublimates the ices. The vapor
expands around the nucleus to form the coma and is swept back by
the solar wind to form the tail.
• Over repeated passages around the Sun, solar heat vaporizes
surface ice and leaves a “rind” of dust.
• Where heat penetrates the surface of a blackened, shallow
crust, pockets of gas form. Where the pressure breaks through
the surface, energetic jets form.
ELECTRIC COMET MODEL:
• Comets are debris
produced during violent electrical interactions of planets and
moons in an earlier phase of solar system history. Comets are
similar to asteroids, and their composition varies. Most comets
should be homogeneous - their interiors will have the same
composition as their surfaces. They are simply “asteroids on
eccentric orbits.”
• Comets follow their elongated paths within a weak electrical
field centered on the Sun. In approaching the Sun, a charge
imbalance develops between the nucleus and the higher voltage
and charge density near the Sun. Growing electrical stresses
initiate discharges and the formation of a glowing plasma
sheath, appearing as the coma and tail.
• The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the
nucleus, producing “electrical discharge machining” (EDM) of the
surface. The excavated material is accelerated into space along
the jets’ observed filamentary arcs.
• Intermittent and wandering arcs erode the surface and burn it
black, leaving the distinctive scarring patterns of electric
discharges.
• The jets’ explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds
and retain their coherent structure for hundreds of thousands of
miles. The collimation of such jets is a well-documented
attribute of plasma discharge.
• The tails of comets reveal well-defined filaments extending up
to tens of millions of miles without dissipating in the vacuum
of space. This “violation” of neutral gas behavior in a vacuum
is to be expected of a plasma discharge within the ambient
electric field of the Sun.
• It is the electric force that holds the spherical cometary
coma in place as the comet races around the Sun. The diameter of
the visible coma will often reach millions of miles. And the
visible coma is surrounded by an even larger and more
“improbable” spherical envelope of fluorescing hydrogen visible
in ultraviolet light.
• The primary distinction between comet and asteroid surfaces is
that electrical arcing and “electrostatic cleaning” of the comet
nucleus will leave little or no dust or debris on the surface
during the active phase, even if a shallow layer of dust may be
attracted back to the nucleus electrostatically as the comet
becomes dormant in its retreat to more remote regions.
Electric Comet,
Electric Sun
The electric comet model
does not stand alone but in partnership with another hypothesis - the
electric Sun.
In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Juergens, an admirer of Hannes Alfvén,
proposed that the Sun is a glow discharge, the center of an electric
field extending to the heliopause.
This field is the cause of solar
wind acceleration. In the 1970s Juergens elaborated the theoretical
concept and suggested that a comet’s display is provoked by its
electrical exchange with the Sun.
The comet spends most of its time far from the Sun, where the plasma
voltage is low relative to the Sun.
In remote regions, the comet
moves slowly and its charge easily comes into balance with its
surroundings. But as the comet falls toward the Sun, it begins to
move at a furious speed through regions of increasing voltage. The
comet’s charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new
environment by increasing internal electric polarization and by
forming cathode jets and a visible plasma sheath, or coma.
The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving
scars typical of electric discharge machining. The comet may shed
and grow anew several tails. Or it may explode like an over-stressed
capacitor, breaking into separate fragments or simply giving up the
ghost and disappearing.
If the electric theorists are correct, there is no mystery in the
gravity-defying behavior of comets.
A gravitationally insignificant
rock on a highly elliptical orbit can be an electrically powerful
object.
The Jets of
Comet Hale-Bopp
One comet after another violates the “dirty snowball” criterion.
Hale-Bopp in particular ignored the rules. In the photo seen here,
it is still too far from the sun for a “snowball” to melt, but it
 already
displays seven jets.
One of the observations leading to the dirty snowball theory of
comets was that most of the periodic comets begin to grow tails at
about the same distance from the Sun, between Jupiter and Mars.
The
determining factor was thought to be the distance at which the comet
became hot enough for water and other volatile substances to
evaporate into space, creating the coma, or “head,” and tail of the
comet.
But this general pattern
did not hold up. In fact, four years after the comet Hale-Bopp left
the inner solar system, it was still active. It displayed a coma, a
fan-shaped dust tail, and an ion tail - even though it was farther
from the Sun than Jupiter, Saturn or even Uranus.
The comet’s tail was
shrinking, but it was still about five times longer than the
distance between the Earth and the Moon. At this distance, the Sun’s
heat will not melt ice. If it could, the icy moons of Saturn and
Jupiter would be as dry as our own scorched Moon.
Enigmas abound. The frequent erratic motions of comets - in apparent
violation of gravitational laws - have long been attributed to the
jets erupting from the nucleus. But in the electric model, the jets
are not released under pressure. The imagined “jet chambers” do not
exist.
The jets are created by electric arcs to the surface,
accelerating particles into space. It is these arcs that carve out
the well-defined surface features.
The Jets of
Comet Wild 2
NASA’s Stardust spacecraft captured the below images of Comet Wild 2
(pronounced VILT 2) on January 2, 2004.
On the left is a Stardust
image of the comet nucleus and on the right a composite of the
nucleus and a longer exposure highlighting the comet’s jets.
According to a Stardust project press release, mission scientists
expected “a dirty, black, fluffy snowball” with a couple of jets
that would be “dispersed into a halo.” Instead they found more than
two dozen jets that “remained intact" - they did not disperse in the
fashion of a gas in a vacuum.
Some of the jets
emanated from the dark unheated side of the comet - an anomaly no one
had expected. Chunks of the comet, including rocky particles as big
as bullets, blasted the spacecraft as it crossed three jets.
A
principal investigator also spoke of energetic bursts “like a
thunderbolt.”
The electrical model
explains the observations: an electric field accelerates matter in
the jet; an electromagnetic “pinch effect” provides densities in the
thin jets many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from
simple radial sublimation; and instabilities and fluctuations
suddenly relocate jets in exceedingly short periods of time.
Recent images of comet Wild 2 have also revealed unexplained “bright
spots” or “hot spots.”
From an Electric Universe point of view,
these are the sparks where electric currents from the Sun impinge on
the more negatively charged nucleus of the comet, as electricity
etches the surface to create the observed “spires, pits and
craters.”
Such features, described as “mind boggling,” could only be
carved on rock, not on sublimating ice or snow.
“Stardust”
Shatters Comet Theory
The first results from NASA’s Stardust mission are in, leaving
mission scientists in a state of shock and awe. The tiny fragments
of comet dust brought back to Earth did not accrete in the cold of
space, but were formed under “astonishingly” high temperatures.
On January 2, 2004, the
Stardust craft entered the dusty clouds around comet Wild 2,
gathering samples of the minute particles as they struck the
“aerogel” in a 100-pound capsule. The capsule returned to Earth and
parachuted to touchdown on a Utah desert on January 15, 2006.
A surprise - the particles revealed abundances of minerals that can
only be formed at high temperatures. Mineral inclusions ranged from
an orthite, which is made up of calcium, sodium, aluminum and
silicate, to diopside, made of calcium magnesium and silicate.
Formation of such minerals requires
temperatures of thousands of
degrees.
“How did materials
formed by fire end up on the outermost reaches of the solar
system, where temperatures are the coldest?” asked Associated
Press writer Pam Easton.
“That’s a big
surprise. People thought comets would just be cold stuff that
formed out ... where things are very cold,” said NASA curator
Michael Zolensky. “It was kind of a shock to not just find one
but several of these, which implies they are pretty common in
the comet.”
This theory-busting
discovery must be set alongside a cascade of surprises in comet
exploration, all contradicting the hypothesis of “dirty snowballs”
originating in an imagined “Oort Cloud” at the solar system’s outer
limits.
Advanced
Predictions on “DeepImpact”
On July 4, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft fired an 820 pound copper
projectile at Comet Tempel 1.
Just prior to this occasion, we
registered a series of predictions at Thunderbolts.info, including
but not limited to the following*:
• Considerably
greater energies will be released than expected because of the
electrical contributions of the comet.
• An electric discharge in advance of impact is likely. We also
expect an interruption of impactor transmission before it
reaches the surface.
• Scientists will
find considerably less water ice and other volatiles than
expected, both on the surface and beneath the surface of Tempel
1. A completely “dry” nucleus should not be surprising.
• The discharge and/or impact may initiate a new jet on the
nucleus (which will be collimated - filamentary - not sprayed out)
and could even abruptly change the positions and intensities of
other jets due to the sudden change in charge distribution on
the comet nucleus.
• The cameras will reveal sharply defined craters, valleys,
mesas, and ridges - the opposite of the softened relief expected
of a sublimating “dirty snowball”. (A chunk of ice melting in
the Sun loses its sharp relief, just like a scoop of melting ice
cream.)
• Electrostatic cleaning will have cleared the surface of dust
and debris.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050704predictions.htm
“Deep Impact”
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The Smoking Guns
These close-up images of Comet Tempel 1, taken by the camera on the impactor that struck the comet nucleus, reveal
white patches that
have continued to puzzle NASA scientists.
Electrical theorists
suggest that these are the predicted whiteouts from electric arcs at
the surface.
The following is a
partial summary of correct predictions for “Deep Impact” based on
the electric comet model:
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ENERGY OF EXPLOSION
It is now well documented that every scientist associated with
the project was stunned by the scale of the energetic outburst.
These scientists understood the kinetics of impact, and they all
agreed that the explosion would be equivalent to 4.8 tons of
TNT. That’s a good-sized bomb, but not even close to what
occurred.
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ADVANCED FLASH
Electrical theorist
Wallace Thornhill predicted at least one
flash from electric discharge prior to impact. From the standard
viewpoint, that is an absurd prediction when considering an
impactor being hit by a body at 23,000 miles per hour in “empty”
space. But here is NASA investigator Peter Schultz’s description
of the event:
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“What you see is something really surprising.
First, there is a small flash, then there’s a delay, then
there’s a big flash and the whole thing breaks loose.”
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MISSING WATER
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SHARP SURFACE RELIEF
We not only predicted the sharply defined relief, but the
specific features.
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“The model predicts a sculpted surface,
distinguished by sharply defined craters, valleys, mesas, and
ridges.”
All of the expected features are present, and
astronomers cannot agree on the cause, though all agree that Tempel 1 does not look like a melting “snowball.”
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SURFACE ARCING
The highest resolution photographs of Tempel 1, taken by the
impactor, show numerous featureless patches of whiteout, most
located where the electrical hypothesis would put them - on the
rims of craters and on the wall of cliffs rising above flat
valley floors. Electrical etching continually expands valley
floors by eating away at the sharp edges of surrounding cliffs.
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NEW JETS
Electrical theorist
Wallace Thornhill was the only one to have
anticipated a shift in the arrangement, number, and the
intensities of the jets away from the impact site. The 2.5 meter
NOT telescope of the El Roque de los Muchachos observatory at La
Palma, Spain, released images just before impact and 15 hours
after impact. The observatory report states, “New jets appeared
after the impact.” No explanation has ever been given.
-
 ELECTRICAL
DISRUPTION
In the final seconds before impact, the video transmissions from
the impactor showed considerable interference, then stopped
moments before it struck the nucleus of Tempel 1. The
interference pattern appeared to be electrical.
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ELECTROSTATIC
CLEANING
The surface of Tempel 1 contrasts with the surface of the
asteroid Itokawa (right). The asteroid appears to have attracted
considerable surface debris electrostatically. We suggested an
active comet will do the reverse.
Deep Impact - Where’s
the Water?
By the time of “Deep Impact” (July 4, 2005), comet theory had
fragmented into contradictory hypotheses, due in part to the absence
of detectible water on cometary surfaces - a prerequisite of standard
theory.
In 1986, visits to Halley’s comet by the European Giotto and
Russian Vega probes failed to locate surface water and raised the
distinct possibility that the nucleus might not be ejecting water
into space.
Through much of the space age comet
investigators have been hoping to confirm the presence of water on
comet nuclei.
But it seems that the comets
themselves have been unwilling to cooperate.
In January 2004, the
Stardust spacecraft passed by Comet Wild 2, identifying a dozen jets
of material exploding from the nucleus.
The craft plowed through
surprisingly dense pockets of dust swirling around the comet, but
investigators were astonished that, despite the energetic activity,
they could not find even a trace of water on the surface.
According to a NASA report, the flyby of Comet Borrelly by the Deep
Space 1 craft in 2001 “detected no frozen water on its surface.”.
When comet
Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke apart, astronomers reasoned that
the fractured nucleus would expose fresh ices that would sublimate
furiously. Several ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space
Telescope trained their spectroscopes on the tails of the fragments
of SL-9, looking for traces of volatile gases. None of the gases
were found.
When Comet Linear disintegrated in front of their eyes, astronomers
were not just shocked by the event (a comet exploding many millions
of miles from the Sun), they were astonished to find virtually no
water in the immediate debris.
The absences of detectible water on
comet nuclei had produced a crisis in comet theory well before Deep
Impact.
And the mission did nothing to rescue the theory. The
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics summarized the early
findings with the headline, “Deep Impact Was a Dust-up, Not a
Gusher.”
Smithsonian astronomers reported the detection of,
“only weak
emission from water vapor and a host of other gases that were
expected to erupt from the impact site. The most conspicuous feature
of the blast was brightening due to sunlight scattered by the
ejected dust.”
The results of the Deep Impact mission were published in the journal
Science.
Team members reported that they found only a smattering of
water ice on the surface of Tempel 1. In fact, to account for the
water supposedly emitted into the coma of Tempel 1, the
investigators needed 200 times more exposed water-ice than they
could find.
But a much different vantage point on the water question is
possible. When astronomers view the comas of comets
spectroscopically, what they actually see is the hydroxyl radical
(OH), which they assume to be a residue of water (H2O) broken down
by the ultraviolet light of the Sun (photolysis). This assumption is
not only unwarranted, it requires a speed of “processing” by solar
radiation beyond anything that can be demonstrated experimentally.
The mysteries find direct answers electrically - in the transaction
between a negatively charged comet nucleus and the Sun. In the
electric model, negative oxygen ions are accelerated away from the
comet in energetic jets, then combine preferentially with protons
from the solar wind to form the observed OH radical and the neutral
hydrogen gathered around the coma in vast concentric bubbles.
These
abundances simply confirm the energetic charge exchange between the
nucleus and the Sun.
The electric model thus resolves two problems for the standard
theory:
1) Cometologists have never verified that the assumed photolysis is
feasible on the super-efficient scale their “explanation”
requires
2) Neutral
hydrogen is far too plentiful in the coma to be the “leftover”
of the hypothesized conversion of water into OH
But if the negatively
charged nucleus provides the electrons in a charge exchange with the
solar wind, the dilemma is resolved and the vast hydrogen envelope
is a predictable effect.
Carving of
Surface Relief
This image of Comet Wild 2 can be
compared with the surface on the right,
produced by electric discharge
machining (EDM).
The single most dramatic
prediction of the electric comet model is this: on close inspection
a comet nucleus will reveal the well-defined effects of the
electrical arcs that progressively etch away the surface and
accelerate material into space.
From the electrical vantage point,
comets Wild 2 and Tempel 1 are “low voltage comets,” but even in
these cases the etching process has been more than sufficient to
make our case.
On viewing the close-ups of Wild 2, several scientists initially
declared that the craters were the result of impacts. But a small
rock will not attract impactors, and it is inconceivable that such a
small body could have been subjected to enough projectiles to cover
it, end to end, with craters. And even if the inconceivable actually
occurred, all surface relief would be quickly degraded by
sublimation of the ices that are assumed to be responsible for the
cometary display.
The nucleus of Wild 2 was, in the words of team members, “covered
with spires, pits and craters,” features that are more likely for a
solid rock than a melting chunk of ice. Today, most astronomers
distance themselves from the “impact” explanation of Wild 2’s
surface.
And rather than suggest an answer, the Deep Impact mission
to Tempel 1 only deepened the mystery, revealing the very “craters,
valleys, mesas, and ridges” that the electric model - and only the
electric model - had predicted.
Cometary
X-rays
A comet is claimed to be an icy body slowly wasting away in the heat
of the Sun. But this ROSAT image from March 27, 1996 reveals a comet
radiating x-rays as intense as those from the x-ray stars that are ROSAT’s usual target.
The Sun’s radial
electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary
space. In a constant radial electric field, the voltage decreases
linearly with distance.
A comet on an elongated orbit spends most of
its time far from the Sun and acquires a charge in balance with the
voltage at that distance. But when a comet speeds inward for a quick
spin around the Sun, the voltage of the comet becomes increasingly
out of balance with that nearer the Sun - a situation leading to
high-energy discharge.
Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the
solar
plasma is taken up in a double layer of charge, called a plasma
sheath, that surrounds the comet. When the electrical stress is
great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical cometary coma and tail. Diffuse electrical discharges occur in the sheath and
at the nucleus, radiating a variety of frequencies, including
x-rays.
The highest voltage differences occur at the comet nucleus
and across the plasma sheath. So where the sheath is most
compressed, in the sunward direction, the electric field is strong
enough to accelerate charged
particles to x-ray energies. That may explain recent crescent-shaped
x-ray images in relation to the comet nucleus and the Sun.
Flickering and occasional flare-ups are also expected, because
plasma discharges behave in a non-linear manner.
When Comets
Break Apart
The unexpected breakup of comets, some at considerable distances
from the Sun, has long baffled comet researchers. But there is no
mystery if comets are solid bodies discharging electrically as they
move into regions of different voltage in the Sun’s radial electric
field.
In 1976, Comet West
never approached closer than 30 million kilometers to the Sun. So
when a disruption occurred and the comet split into four fragments
(subsequent to the display pictured right), astronomers were
shocked.
In fact, according to
Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan, authors of the
book Comet, eighty percent of comets that split do so when they are
far from the Sun.
Comet Wirtanen fragmented in 1957 a little inside
the orbit of Saturn, and something similar occurred to Comet Biela/Bambert.
In a paper published in the 1960s Dr. Brian G. Marsden, an
astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, drew attention to the anomaly of comet
fragmentation.
Discussing the “sun-grazing” comets, he noted that
two instances - 1882 II and 1965 VIII - look as if they had split apart
near aphelion (their farthest distance from the Sun) well beyond the
orbit of Neptune and far above the ecliptic plane.
Moreover, the
relative velocity of their separation was far greater than could be
due to solar heating. “Unexpected” fragmentation and “anomalous”
velocities of separation are predictable behavior of an electric
comet.
According to Sagan and Druyan,
“the problem is left unsolved.”
But
they appear to have found a clue without recognizing its
significance.
“Splittingand jetting may be connected… At the moment Comet West split, the individual fragments brightened noticeably,
and propelled large quantities of dust into space in the first of
some dozen bursts.”
The same could be said for the more
recent Comet Linear breakup.
Why would intense, high-velocity jets and explosions of dust,
traveling at supersonic speeds, precede the fragmentation of a
 comet
nucleus? In the electrical model of comets, the nucleus behaves like
a capacitor.
And as electrical
engineers are well aware, if a discharge occurs within a capacitor
it can explode violently.
That is what causes comet
Comet Linear
breaking up in the nuclei to fragment and it is why the event is
summer of 2000 commonly preceded by outbursts far more energetic
than could be explained by sublimating ices.
The energy is provided
by the stored electrical energy within the nucleus.
All that is required to trigger the comet fragmentation is an
electrical breakdown within the comet. And that breakdown in the
comet may happen with any sudden change in the solar plasma
environment. The more sudden the change in the comet’s electrical
environment, the more likely that flaring and fragmentation will
occur.
NASA scientists were
astonished to observe a remarkable 300,000 km wide flare-up of comet
Halley between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. (Under the
assumptions of the “snowball” theory the nucleus should be frozen
and inert at that distance.) But in the electrical model the event
was no accident. It followed some of the largest solar flares ever
recorded.
The electrical model also explains why we should expect long-period
comets to put on a brighter display than short-period comets. The
long-period comets spend a longer time in a region of lower plasma
potential than the short-period comets.
Consequently, their voltage
difference on their approach to the Sun will be higher, leading to a
brighter and more energetic discharge.
Comets and
Coronal Mass Ejections
When a coronal mass ejection greeted
Comet NEAT, space scientists
called it a spectacular “coincidence.” But in an electric universe
such events deserve a second look.
In the electric comet
model, the electrified plasma environment of the Sun allows for
two-way transactions that are inconceivable if interplanetary space
is truly a neutral plasma medium, rather than a quasi-neutral
medium.
In 2003, as comet NEAT raced through the extended solar
atmosphere, a large coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded from the
Sun and appeared to strike the comet, causing a “kink” to propagate
down the comet’s tail. Of course, for solar physicists the timing of
the mass ejection could have no connection to the approach of the
comet.
SOHO has, in fact, recorded several instances of comets plunging
into the solar corona in “coincidental” association with CMEs. But
the scientific mainstream allows for no electric force external to
the Sun to have any influence on the Sun’s atmospheric behavior.
But how would an electric Sun respond to the approach of a
relatively small but strongly charged object? In electrical terms,
the influence of the comet could be far more significant than its
trivial mass in relation to the Sun.
What will occur electrically if the charged plasma or “atmosphere”
of the comet interferes with the isolating double layer of the Sun’s
plasma sheath?
Perhaps the observation of Nobel Laureate
Hannes
Alfvén, the father of plasma cosmology, can put the issue in
context. It was his opinion that coronal mass ejections are caused
by a breakdown or breach of the Sun’s double layer - an event that
provokes an explosive exchange between the insulated plasma cell of
the Sun and the plasma of surrounding space.
When Asteroids Become
Comets
The surprising discovery of asteroids with cometary tails
supports the long standing claim of the electrical theorists - that
the essential difference between asteroids and comets is the shape
of their orbits.
According to recent scientific reports, astronomers are “rethinking
long-held beliefs about the distant domains of comets and asteroids,
abodes they’ve always considered light-years apart.” The discovery
has forced astronomers to speculate that
 some
asteroids are actually “dirty snowballs in disguise.”
*
*
Quote is from USA Today
For many years the
standard view of asteroids asserted that they are composed of dust,
rock, and metal and that most occupy a belt between Mars and
Jupiter.
In contrast, comets were claimed to arrive from a home in
deep space, most coming from an imagined “Oort Cloud” at the
outermost reaches of the solar system.
But now,
“the locales of
comets and asteroids may not be such a key distinction,” states Dan Vergano, reporting on the work of two University of Hawaii
astronomers, Henry Hsieh and David Jewitt.
In a survey of 300
asteroids lurking in the asteroid belt, the astronomers detected
three objects that,
“look alot like comets … ejecting little comet
tails at times from their surfaces.”
The three red circles in the
illustration above describe the orbits of these “cometlike”
asteroids.
In the electric view, there is no real distinction between a comet
and an asteroid, apart from their orbits. Thus, the illustration
makes the point for us: the red circles show greater variations in
orbital distances from the Sun.
CONCLUSION
Spacecraft have now visited four comets.
What they found contradicts
all expectations and falsifies accepted comet theory. But that
theory is interwoven with every other astronomical theory into a
cosmology that claims to define the universe as we know it.
Verification of the “electric comet,” therefore, will have
far-reaching effects on all theoretical sciences touching on the
nature of the universe:
• An electric field
sufficient to cause electrical discharging on a comet beyond the
orbit of Saturn has the potential to power the Sun.
• We can no longer ignore the cosmic electricians’ claims: they
tell us that the Sun is not a nuclear furnace but an electric
glow discharge; its nuclear reactions are occurring not in the
interior but in the atmosphere of the Sun, where the intensity
of the discharge is highest.
• The nebular hypothesis of planetary origins, with its
gravity-only causation, rests on too many unwarranted
assumptions. Astronomers must now ask: what was the role of
electricity in solar system evolution?
• The fabled residue of the primordial nebula, the “Oort cloud,”
called upon to send comets into the inner solar system, has lost
its rationale.
• The electric field implied by comet behavior suggests that
planets may not have always moved on their present orbits. The
history of the solar system may bear little resemblance to
present textbook descriptions.
• Electric currents and electric events in our solar system
appear to have countless analogs in deep space.
Above all else,
astronomers and cosmologists must educate themselves on the
behavior of electric currents in plasma.
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