Here is the actual prediction, from the 'predictions webpage' that the PDF document provides a link to (my emphasis).
Quote:
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Electrical interactions with Deep Impact may be slight, but they should be measurable if NASA will look for them. They would likely be similar to those of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 prior to striking Jupiter's atmosphere: The most obvious would be a flash (lightning-like discharge) shortly before impact. [...] (The discharge could be similar to the "megalightning" [link omitted] bolt that, evidence suggests, struck the shuttle Columbia) [...] Copious X-rays will accompany discharges to the projectile, exceeding any reasonable model for X-ray production through the mechanics of impact. The intensity curve will be that of a lightning bolt (sudden onset, exponential decline) and may well include more than one peak.
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Further down the page, under a section entitled "
ANOMOLOUS X-RAYS", there's also this (emphasis in original):
Quote:
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So, before physical impact occurs, we may expect a sudden discharge between the comet nucleus and the copper projectile. It will have the characteristic light-curve of lightning, with rapid onset and exponential decay.
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There's a great deal more, by way of qualitative detail, but little of that is repeated in any subsequent TB commentary on the flashes (perhaps because, even at the qualitative level, consistency would be not so easy to establish?). There's also nothing on electrical interactions "
of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 prior to striking Jupiter's atmosphere".
Here's how this so-called prediction is described, on a TPOD webpage dated Jul 07, 2005:
Quote:
Electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill predicted two blasts. [...] And here is what happened in the words of NASA investigator Peter Schultz, describing the event recorded from the spacecraft:
"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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Note that the uncertain nature of both the existence of any pre-impact "
flashes" and their number, in the predictions, is absent from the subsequent write-up.
Note that you have to do your own research if you want to find out when and where, and in what context, Peter Schultz said those words (or if he said them at all, or if he is a NASA investigator, or ...).
Note the assumption, by whoever wrote the 7 July webpage that "
a small flash" is pre-impact (and that, for example, "
a big flash" is impact).
Note the lack of commentary about the intensity curve, the failure to mention x-ray emissions (or lack of them), and any reference to megalightning bolts
1.
As far as I know, there is no EU material - even a webpage, much less a paper - that presents a quantitative analysis of the impactor "
flashes", using publicly available quantitative data (if any reader knows of any such, please provide the appropriate references).
Quick wrap-up. Recall that wrt the Electric Comet Model (ECM) presented in the PDF, the specific, physical mechanisms are meaningless
2 ... and the most charitable thing one could say is that the so-called predictions are so qualitative as to be all but impossible to find incorrect. Less charitably, one could say that
the ECM cannot be falsified, even in principle, by any observational results.
Next: what can be said concerning "
electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill" and physics?
1 FWIW (for what it's worth), the CAIB did not find any evidence of any such bolts having struck Columbia.
2 recall that the analysis is being done on only the PDF document itself and any material it references, and that the origin of comets (in the ECM) is not being examined.