Over the years I've seen a number of NASA videos where the sun appears to react to comets, once reaching out and snapping off the tail of a distant comet! Naturally I've never whispered this to a soul, because coincidence seemed a more likely explanation. Now, I'm not so sure since NASA itself is openly musing about this.
http://spaceweather.com/ <-- archive Oct 3, 2011 COMET AND CME: A comet discovered by amateur astronomers on Friday, Sept. 30th, disintegrated in spectacular fashion the very next day when it plunged into the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the comet's last hours. The end was punctuated by an unexpected explosion; click on the image to set the scene in motion:
Watch the movie again. The timing of the CME so soon after the comet dove into the sun suggests a link. But what? There is no known mechanism for comets to trigger solar explosions. Before 2011 most solar physicists would have discounted the events of Oct. 1st as pure coincidence--and pure coincidence is still the most likely explanation. Earlier this year, however, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched another sungrazer disintegrate in the sun's atmosphere. On July 5, 2011, the unnamed comet appeared to interact with plasma and magnetic fields in its surroundings as it fell apart. Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a impressive CME? The question is not so crazy as it once seemed to be.
Respectfully submitted, Steve
Dotini
Re: Electric Comets
Here is a nifty NASA explanation of how the sun snipped off Encke's tail. It has to do with opposite magnetic fields, since the CME has as little mechanical force as a baby's breath. How does a short period comet acquire a magnetic field opposite to the CME?
spaceweather.com writes of connection with comets and CME
From http://www.spaceweather.com "Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a impressive CME? The question is not so crazy as it once seemed to be." CME is coronal mass ejection. spaceweather.com for Oct 3, 2011
Lloyd
Re: spaceweather.com writes of connection with comets and CME
"Earlier this year, however, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched another sungrazer disintegrate in the sun's atmosphere. On July 5, 2011, the unnamed comet appeared to interact with plasma and magnetic fields in its surroundings as it fell apart. Could a puny comet cause a magnetic instability that might propagate and blossom into a[n] impressive CME? The question is not so crazy as it once seemed to be."
Nitai
Re: spaceweather.com writes of connection with comets and CME
Is there a compliation of Sun Diver Comets and CME's? Or a forum post? I'd like to have that as a resource..
jjohnson
Re: spaceweather.com writes of connection with comets and CME
Also see the similar thread on this subject under Electric Universe, NASA wiped imagery of comet hitting sun.
StefanR
Re: spaceweather.com writes of connection with comets and CME
Nitai wrote: Is there a compliation of Sun Diver Comets and CME's? Or a forum post? I'd like to have that as a resource..
Via UT some new hotair-balloons are let up concerning comets:
Of course no true observations but the more some nice modeling
For years comets have mystified scientists with their compositions that appear to have formed in both warm and cold environments, rather than in one location of a uniform temperature. But new research shows that the reason some comets feature patches of differing surface composition is not because they are made from material that formed in different parts of the Solar System, but because some parts of their surface absorb heat at varying rates. This leads to localized heat sinks and cold traps, according to a new model constructed by David Jewitt and Aurelie Guilbert-Lepoutre from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Their model shows that the chemical composition of a comet can evolve in the ten million year period during which a comet is classed as a Centaur, migrating from the Kuiper Belt to the inner Solar System.
As I read Dr. Velikovsky's Worlds in collision I also followed the numerous criticisms that these ideas gained over the years. Some are based on completely ignoring the electric impact on stellar bodies. So I'm surprised to find this article about comet flyby on October, 8th 2011 which happens every 6 years and was first observed in the late 19th century. I find the amount of stones released by the comet amazing. It illustrates the ancient catastrophes Velikovsky claimed to have happend, just on a smaller scale. Please have a look at the article: spacedaily.com: Draconid Meteor Outburst It is quite telling that space agencies don't have the capacity to investigate further into this. Instead the instrumentation needs to be lifted by a middle school project (for which I'm very thankful).
jjohnson
Re: Electric Comets
I quite agree with you, Stefan.
In the arXiv paper, 1. Introduction, the authors make, or attribute to others, several unsupported or conjectural statements.
Solar system comets are currently stored in two main reservoirs, namely the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt, having different dynamical histories and physical properties.
There is no observational evidence that comets lie about in either of these storage areas, nor that the Coud and the Belt actually exist as hypothesized. Yes, some larger bodies have been detected outside the orbit of Pluto. (Pluto may be one of those, as it has been demoted).
The Scattered Disk component of the Kuiper Belt is widely believed to be the source of Jupiter Family comets...
Reliance on widely held beliefs is the opposite of the way science is supposed to work.
Comets are believed to contain some of the best-preserved material from the formation of our planetary system. Cometary composition should reflect the location at which the material — ices and dust — formed in the protoplanetary disk. A gradient in composition might reasonably be expected, distinguishing comets formed at high temperatures close to the proto-Sun, from those formed in an environment dominated by interstellar chemistry at large heliocentric distances...
I could go on with the continuing "could's " and "should's" and "beliefs" but the point is that there are a lot of assumptions and unsupported speculation (mostly a list of alleged commonly-held thoughts and beliefs about comets) that start their premise off. That's not a good start, at first glance.
Of course, the paper is designed to show that all this presumed "mixing up" of the materials composing comets may not be the only way that a non-uniform internal compositional structure can come about. So, the introductory summation may simply be stated that way, in a somewhat dismissive fashion, in order to contrast and underline their point that a fairly simple thermodynamic model could have facilitated the chemical differences inside comets. Their modeling is a plausible scenario if any comets undergo the evolution and orbital journeys that they postulate, but their thinking is just as hypothetical as that of the believers they refer to above; i.e.:
No one has yet chopped into a cometary body and examined the interior to see what it is made of and how it is distributed throughout the body. Without evidence of that sort to use as a baseline, this paper is at best just another trial balloon.
StefanR
Re: Electric Comets
Quite, like they say in the quote below from the same paper it is a toy-model that they are wishing to make. But the broad initial assumptions seem quite large.
[..]Ours is a "toy-model" in which the parameters of the nucleus are idealized in order to make the problem tractable, and no attempt is made to model any particular real nucleus. { 5 { The body is assumed to be initially a sphere made of a porous mixture of ice and dust uniformly distributed within the icy matrix. Jewitt (2009) and Meech et al. (2009) report observational, albeit indirect, evidence consistent with the presence of amorphous water ice in comets. We therefore assume the ice is initially amorphous. The model we use evaluates the temperature distribution inside the body by taking into account three dimensional heat uxes, and includes energy release from the crystallization of amorphous ice. [..]
From the Jewitt (2009) though some interesting things can be taken pertaining to thoughts and desperate attempts to produce explanations for the seeming distribution of amorphous and crystalline ice on comets. I do like the start of that as it shows the insecurity of explaining and locating the origen of various small bodies in the solar system (p.3). Also the same insecurity as to what exactly separates those small bodies, in terms of activity/non-activity is quite interesting (p.4) http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/papers/2008/J08b.pdf. Furthermore some musings about density and porosity (p.12) and colours (p.13). Which takes to the information about crystallization of ice from an amorphous phase and what contributes to that in relation to the first article, makes me more and more critical about the validity of the arguments used and the undying persistence in this general direction.
Ice can form at low temperatures in the amorphous state, meaning that the geometric arrangement of the water molecules lacks periodicity. The amorphous state is distinct from the various crystalline forms in which water ice at higher temperatures is stable (e.g. the snow that falls from the sky and the ice that grows in the refrigerator is crystalline, with the molecules arranged in staggered layers having a hexagonal pattern). Amorphous ice is intrinsically unstable, and spontaneously transforms to crystalline ice [..] First, the transition is exothermic, with a specific energy release &E = 9×104 J kg−1. This &E can heat surrounding ice, influencing the thermal regime in icy bodies and perhaps even driving a runaway in which crystallization at one location in a body triggers crystallization over a large, thermally connected volume. Crystallization is also associated with a small change in the bulk density. Many elaborate and spectacular thermal models of comets are predicated on the assumption that the nuclei enter the middle and inner Solar system as amorphous ice bodies ([69]). Second, amorphous ice possesses many nooks and crannies, giving a large surface area per unit mass (of order 102 m2 kg−1 [2]) on which other molecules can be trapped. [..] The trapped molecules are released as the temperature is raised above the accretion temperature, culminating with wholescale expulsion as the water molecules rearrange themselves into cubic or hexagonal lattices upon crystallization. The presence of amorphous ice can thus lead to pulses of outgassing that could be relevant to understanding the mass loss from comets.The temperature of an isothermal blackbody in thermal equilibrium with sunlight falls to 77 K at R = 13 AU, or slightly beyond the orbit of Saturn. Therefore, all else being equal, we should expect to find crystalline ice at (and inside) the orbit of Saturn, and to find amorphous ice beyond. Water ice in the inner regions is indeed crystalline, but it is also crystalline in the satellites of Uranus and Neptune and in the Kuiper belt. There is surprisingly no direct evidence for amorphous ice in the outer regions (see Figure 9). [..] However, the optically observable surfaces of bodies are bombarded by energetic particles from the Solar wind and from cosmic rays, and also by energetic photons from the Sun. These energetic particles disrupt the bonds between water molecules in ice, thereby breaking up the crystal structure and "amorphizing" the material. (It is interesting to note that silicate grains in the interstellar medium are largely amorphous for the same reason [44]). The timescale for amorphization is short, probably 106 yr to 107 yr [36]. In the sense, the presence of crystalline ice in the outer Solar system is even more surprising and the reason for its persistence has not yet been firmly explained. One possibility is that resurfacing provides fresh material on a timescale that is short compared to the amorphization time. Resurfacing could result, for example, from impact gardening, which dredges up buried material (ice deeper than !1 meter is effectively shielded from even quite energetic cosmic rays). A more dramatic possibility is that outgassing or cryovolcanism emplaces fresh, crystalline ice on the surface. [..] While the persistence of crystalline ice is apparently now understood, what heated the ice to make it crystalline in the first place remains unknown. Several possibilities exist. [..] Whatever the cause, the available evidence shows that ice on the surfaces of the large Kuiper belt objects is crystalline, which means that it has been warmed at least to twice the current surface temperatures of 40 K or 50 K. Small bodies, like the nuclei of comets, were probably not substantially heated by the above processes. Do they contain amorphous ice? Only limited direct evidence exists in the form of spectra of the dust in two long-period comets, both distinguished by showing no evidence for the 1.65 μm crystalline ice band. Other evidence comes from the distribution of the orbits of the Centaurs. [..] About 20% of the known Centaurs are also active comets. The distribution of the orbital elements of the active Centaurs is different from the Centaurs as a whole. In particular, the average perihelion distance of the active Centaurs is small compared to the average perihelion of the Centaurs as a whole. This difference cannot be ascribed to the simple sublimation of crystalline water ice, since the latter is involatile throughout the Centaur region. Instead, activity in the Centaurs is consistent with production through the crystallization of amorphous ice, which begins at temperatures comparable to those found on the active Centaurs when at perihelion [32]. This is not iron-clad evidence for the existence of amorphous ice in the Centaurs, by any means. But it is perhaps the best evidence we possess at the moment.
It seems all such a fragile building of arguments....
Something interesting in potenty
[..] On the Moon, charge gradients in the vicinity of the terminator are known to levitate and launch dust particles from the surface [48]. The same process could eject dust from small, low escape-velocity asteroids and comets. Two problems with this mechanism for the MBCs are 1) that dust velocities inferred from 133P and P/Read are higher than typical on the Moon and, more seriously, 2) if electrostatic ejection were important, we would have to ask why comet-like emission is not a general property of all small asteroids. There is also an issue with supply. Unlike the Lunar case, a large fraction of the small dust grains on asteroids are simply lost into space, not levitated repeatedly as the terminator sweeps by. New dust particles will be created by micrometeorite impact into the asteroid surface, but the rate of production is orders of magnitude too low to account for the escape losses to space.[..]
Well it goes on a bit, but it just shows the continuation of the hunt for water and comets with blindfolds on.
phyllotaxis
Was the âfirst photographed UFOâ a comet?
I came across this article today, and wonder what you make of it.
On August 12th, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla was preparing to study the Sun at the recently opened Zacatecas Observatory. However, the Sun's surface was marred by numerous objects quickly travelling across its disk. Over the course of the day and the next, Bonilla exposed several wet plates to take images of the 447 objects he would observe. They weren't released publicly until January 1st, 1886 when they were published in the magazine L'Astronomie. Since then, UFOlogists have crowed these photographs as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. The chief editor of L'Astronomie passed the observations off as migrating animals, but a new study proposes the observation was due to the breakup of a comet that nearly hit us.
The only piece of evidence the authors, led by Hector Manterola at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, use to suggest that this was a comet in the process of breaking up, was the descriptions of the objects as being "fuzzy" in nature and leaving dark trails behind them. Assuming this were the case, the authors consider how close the object would have been. Since astronomers at observatories in Mexico City, or Puebla had not reported the objects, this would imply that they did not cross the disc of the Sun from these locations due to parallax. As such, the maximum distance the object could have been is roughly 80,000 km, roughly 1/5th the distance to the moon.
But the team suggests the fragments may have passed even closer. By the time comets reach the inner solar system, they have a significant velocity of some tens of kilometers per second. In such a case, to transverse the disc of the Sun in the time reported by Bonilla (a third to a full second), the object would have been, at most, at a distance of ~8,000km.
At such distances, the overall size of the fragments would be in rough agreement of sizes of other fragmented comets such as 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, which gave off several fragments in 2006. Based on the number of fragments, estimated sizes, and density of an average comet, the authors estimate that the mass may be anywhere between 2 x 1012 and 8 x 1015 kg. While this is a very large range (three orders of magnitude), it roughly brackets the range of known comets, again making it plausible. The upper range of this mass estimate is on par with Mars' moon Deimos, which is generally held to be similar in mass to the progenitor of the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
One oddity is that one would likely expect such a close breakup to result in a meteor storm. The timing of these events is just before the annual Perseid meteor shower, but reports for that year, such as this one, do not depict it as being exceptional, or having a different radiant than should be expected. Instead, it notes that 157 of the 186 meteors observed on the 11th were definitively Perseids, and that the "year's display cannot be reckoned as a fine one by any means." Meanwhile, the Leonid meteor shower (peaking in November), was exceptional that year, generating an estimated 1,000 meteors an hour, but again, no records seem to indicate an unusual origin.
In total, I find the characterization of Bonilla's observation as a comet plausible, but generally unconvincing. However, if it were a fragmented comet, we're very lucky it wasn't any closer.
webolife
Re: Was the âfirst photographed UFOâ a comet?
Yeah, that being the peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and the Perseids being the result of a cometary break-up, I think the UFO-ers will have to wait for something better.
Ion01
Harpooning Comets... A bad idea?
NASA doesn't want to land on comets to collect samples so they are developing a way to harpoon them. http://www.space.com/13948-nasa-comet-harpoon.html I don't imagine this would be a good idea considering the electrical nature of comets. I believe we are all aware of the deep impact mission and the many surprise to those unfamiliar with EU and the accuracy of Thornhill's predictions. Considering the energetic reaction observed due to the electrical differential in a high speed approach to a comet but if one also considers that a tether would be present (lets also recall the tether experiment with the space shuttle and its electrical reaction) linking two bodies in different electrical environments (the main craft being further from the comet yet suddenly connected to it) would we not expect arching and possibly destruction of this harpooning craft? Should NASA attempt such a thing this could be just another of many pedictions for EU to prove them wrong. What do you all think?
Sparky
Re: Harpooning Comets... A bad idea?
I say go for it!...Just video the whole thing from a distant platform...
I don't know how they would do it, but if they could equalize potentials, like they do with high voltage lines, then nothing would spark...
