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Originally Posted by The Bad Astronomer
Pbbbt. More McCanney-style nonsense.
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Electric Universe supporters have little if anything to do with McCanney. They did once mention him on one of their pages, but only in passing.
I have met Thornhill and one or two others, and they seem like a reasonable and down-to-earth bunch. McCanney on the other hand can best be described as somewhat eccentric.
The page in questions makes the following predictions. Each of the points is dealt with in more detail on the actual page.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/20.../00current.htm
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ELECTRIC MODEL PREDICTIONS FOR DEEP IMPACT:
An abundance of water on or below the surface of the nucleus (the underlying assumption of the “dirty snowball” hypothesis) is unlikely.
Tempel 1 has a low-eccentricity orbit. Therefore its charge imbalance with respect to its environment at perihelion is low. (It is a “low-voltage” comet.) 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 impactor may form a sheath around it as it enters the coma, becoming a “comet within a comet”.
Electrical stress may short out the electronics on board the impactor before impact.
More energy will be released than expected because of the electrical contributions of the comet. (The discharge could be similar to the “megalightning” 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.
If the energy is distributed over several flashes, more than one crater on the comet nucleus could result—in addition to any impact crater.
Any arcs generated will be hotter than can be explained by mechanical impact. If temperature measurements are made with sufficient resolution, they will be much higher than expected from impact heating.
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 impact/electrical discharge will not reveal “primordial dirty ice,” but the same composition as the surface.
The impact/electrical discharge will be into rock, not loosely consolidated ice and dust. The impact crater will be smaller than expected.
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I have their permission to quote from the site. Edits: Grammar