© Science Admins

 

The following is an excerpt from a paper by Michael Goodspeed, at http://www.rense.com/general54/trueor.htm:

 

It is clear that at least by the second half of the 19th century, many scientists believed that comet tails were fundamentally electrical. For example, in 1872, Scientific American (July 27th, p. 57), informed its readers that "Professor Zollner of Leipsic" ascribes the "self-luminosity" of comets to "electrical excitement." According to the article, Zollner suggests that "the nuclei of comets, as masses, are subject to gravitation, while the vapors developed from them, which consist of very small particles, yield to the action of the free electricity of the sun...."

 

Also in the 19th century, the August 11, 1882 English Mechanic and World of Science, pp. 516-7, wrote of cometary tails: "...There seems to be a rapidly growing feeling amongst physicists that both the self-light of comets and the phenomena of their tails belong to the order of electrical phenomena."

 

Similar ideas about comet's tails appear in Nature, No. 1370, Vol. 53, Jan 30, 1896, p. 306: "It has long been imagined that the phenomenon of comet's tails are in some way due to a solar electrical repulsion, and additional light is thrown on this subject by recent physical researches."