RE: Comets - A Brief Primer
What is your end motive here? This seems like a very accusative post for essentially winding down to saying that comets have rocks instead of ice. Ice is, of course, essentially a rock.
If comets were made out of ordinary rock as in rocks found on Earth, how do you explain the extremely visible outgassing tail? Such outgassing makes perfect sense when you consider that the comet came from the far outer solar system where ices don't melt. The ice then sublimates when it approaches the sun as sunlight increases. If rocks outgassed like this, the moon would have an atmosphere. The Philae lander itself showed that the landing site contained hard water ice. If you're going to make claims that the ice tails have been observed at distances too far to sublimate, you'll need sources to back that up. If it isn't ice, what is it? Isn't ice the simplest answer?
It's "Electric Comet Theory". Comet sciences answer to the flat earth theory. From the people that DIDN'T bring you all the wonderful things science gave us, like medicine, internet, computers, cars, etc :)
The outgassing tail is due to a difference of charge picked up when having left the heliosphere(becomes -Q) and when it re-enters the heliosphere, the Q+ of the solar wind causes ionic action stripping hydrogen and oxygen atoms from the comet. Since the moon is firmly ensconced in the mostly positive charge of the solar wind it does not experience what a comet experiences.
There's a few issues I see right away.
Where is the negative charge coming from when the comet leaves the solar system? A positively charged object doesn't lose charge unless it is so charged that it can eject electrons to the vacuum.
If the moon (and the rest of the inner solar system) were all positively charged, and no charge transfer took place to neutralize them, all of the inner planets and moons would repel each other via the electrostatic force. The moon would slowly be pushed out of Earth's orbit. If the charge was able to neutralize via electrons ejecting across the vacuum, then the force would be gone but so also would the charge.
Finally, how is this is a simpler explanation than icy rocks from far from the sun where ice doesn't melt coming closer and sublimating gas out into the tail? What does it explain that the comets being made of ice doesn't? The simplest answer that explains everything about a process is usually correct.
Thanks for commenting.
The negative charge is what exists outside of the heliosphere which is itself predominantly a positive charge due to the solar wind. When comets leave the heliosphere they pick up the negative charge and when they re-enter the heliosphere, the negative charge just picked up by the comet interacts with the positive charged solar wind producing the coma.
We do not know what the charges are of all the planets. Earth is predominantly a negative charge. We do know that the solar wind is a predominantly positive charge.
It is simpler because it fits the observations such as comas on comets too far from the sun for there to be any heat to cause an alleged sublimation and the fact there was no ice or snow when they landed on a comet and even lead scientists at ESA have said recently that we need to rethink the slushy snowball hypothesis.
The simplest answer is usually correct, but that answer has to be proven and the model needs to predict observations. This isn't the case with the slushy-snowball hypothesis.
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"Here on the left is an artist’s impression of a comet surface before the first flyby of the nucleus of a comet on March 14, 1986. It shows icy vapours wafting into space. In the centre is an artist’s impression of the Philae lander on the surface of comet 67 P where you can see the surface still appears icy, the only concession to images of other comet nuclei being the crater and ridges. On the right is the real surface of comet 67 P, which is actually blacker than photocopier toner. But despite the stark reality, the story of comets remains unchanged."...Wal Thornhill
" “Pinnacles range from tens of meters to over 100 m in height, and they have varied shapes including spires with pointed tops near the resolution of the images. The pinnacles were not anticipated land forms on primitive bodies, and their origin on Wild 2 is a mystery."...ESA scientists recounting their observations of comet Wild 2 not fitting their model's predicition.
"Returning to comet Halley in 1986, water molecules are supposed to sublimate (change directly from solid to gas) off the comet nucleus in the heat of the Sun. Later, ultraviolet light from the Sun is thought to split the water molecule into OH and H. So we should expect more H2O near the nucleus than OH. However, the Vega 2 spacecraft found the reverse, which “may indicate the existence of parents of OH other than H2O.” "..W.Thornhill
The small size of the dust particles from comet Halley was a surprise. “The dust particle mass spectra do not exhibit the expected low-mass cutoff at 10-14 gm; instead they continue to rise to 10-16 gm.” “The most striking feature is the large number of low-mass particles.” “Indeed, the first particles encountered at the ‘fringes’ of the coma had the lowest masses measured, instead of the higher masses predicted by the ‘fountain’ model first introduced by Eddington and later widely developed to predict the mass distribution of cometary dust.” ** Low mass particles fit with electrical sputtering of surface atoms and molecules but not with the standard model of gas jet dispersal of interstellar dust grains trapped in dusty ice.**
most of these quotes come from a single source, if truly interested you should check it out.
http://www.holoscience.com/wp/congratulations-rosetta-shame-about-the-science/
Peace