According to the "Professor" ( :P ), the existence of Sedna disproves NASA's idea that comets are "dirty snowballs", proves that all his theories are correct, and will shake the very foundations of astronomy.

"How?" you ask. I have no idea. I can't make heads or tails of his rant. See if you can interpret it.

That web site is extremely difficult to read. His use of centered text, colored print over a patterned background, makes it hard to wade through the stuff. I got dizzy trying to read it all.

He also claims that Sedna is a comet nucleus. I don't recall seeing any reference to that in the announcement, though. Did anyone else?

Francis

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Et itur ad astra.

Oh lord, not another plasma-accounts-for-everything nutter. Does anyone who's braved the entire text know if he claims plasma discharges are responsible for craters, too? :roll:

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GhiaPet Home Page

I'm sorry but I find it hard to take anyone seriously who designed a website like that. ops:

Maybe he should go here and learn a few things.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

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What happens if a big asteroid hits the Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory (insert least favorite test animal, person), we can assume it will be pretty bad.
{changed as per Frogesque's request :D}

NightHawks sig:

ROFL!

Regarding lousey websites, if you highlight the text they usually become readable unless the font is poor or too small. If it's important I copy/paste it into word and re-style it but the content has to be worth the effort. From what's been said I don't think I'll even bother to go look.

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By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

OK so I did go peek at the website. It's not a rant, it's a sales pitch for a load of CD's, books (you need the set!) pamphlets and probably T shirts as well.

As to the content on his homepage what can I say, I thought that meteors were comets stripped of their icy layers by passage round the sun so where's the cover-up and disinformation? Young comet = white, middle aged comet = black (probably altered crosslinked hydrocarbons, tar like residue) and meteroites the metallic/stoney/composite core remains of what's left after all the volatiles have evaporated on passage through Earth's atmosphere. Maybe a simplistic view but good enough for lay folk to understand.

The only cover-up conspiracy I can find is the hype that leads to the shopping cart on that site and others like it.

As an aside, I remember watching a fantastic meteor shower a few years back. Some incandesence was distinctly green with luminous red trails lasting a minute or more. Surely it is possible to deduce meteor compostion by spectral ananlysis? (Though you would have to be quick!)

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By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

That can work wonders for websites that have chosen a foreground color too close to the background color, or where the text bleeds over into areas which aren't the prevalent background color. But this is rather the opposite, too garishly contrasting. Bright yellow on a powder blue patterned background (might be darker than powder blue, I don't know the exact term). In a few places, very light blue against the same background, but still readable. It's more a matter of tackiness and poor layout than the insufficient contrast that that would solve. Oh, and the font is rather oversized, too.

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GhiaPet Home Page

I design websites and his being a site that I would think he wants taken seriously should be designed with the visitor in mind. If I was trying to get a point across I would make it as easy to read as possible.

One of my pet peeves is having an extremely large amount of information on one page. :x

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What happens if a big asteroid hits the Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory (insert least favorite test animal, person), we can assume it will be pretty bad.
{changed as per Frogesque's request :D}

Oh yeah, there it is the bottom line...money. They are all selling books, CD's and other "useful" items. They also make the rounds at "conferences" regarding fringe topics like martian ruins, the end of the world, mystery planets, moon landing hoax etc...It's the old "a sucker is born every minute" routine.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

Right now I think McCanney is more dangerous than Nancy as far as fearmongering goes. Nancy has never recovered from her May fiasco last year and is fading. McCanney is more subtle but influences a lot of woowoos. I started a thread about him a while ago but didn't get a bite. People that surf GLP or OSA might recognize some of his hokum.

I read through quite a bit of his "news" ...my god the man is disturbed. And also related to the C2C appearently..the name keeps popping up. He is worse than Hoagland! It's incredible.

"August 08,2003 post

GOV TERROR ALERT RED inside information feelers indicate that the US gov is going to try to pull some "terrorist activities" with possible FEMA takeover of the Federal Government in August while everyone is moving and on summer vacation and while your part time pres (KING) is vacationing on daddy's ranch in Texas ... during such a takeover George W would no longer be President - Congress would relinquish all power (as if they had any in the first place) and Ashcroft would become your new leader ... remember that these moves are always related to celestial or numerical events "

Say what??

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Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Oh yes, McCanney has been a frequent guest on C2C. There was one time recently (3-4 months ago) where he took a shot at the BA 8) by saying, "I was writing papers while the BA 8) was in grade school". That is not saying much since he has achieved only a Masters Degree, and the BA 8) has a Ph.D. I don't say that to belittle a Masters Degree, not at all, but a Ph.D. requires far more dedication and study to earn. His theory on comets is going to be taken to task as soon as that mission (I forget the name) returns to Earth with comet material that it is collecting/going to collect, and the samples are analyzed. Mc canney thinks Px is coming around 2008 or so (last time he said anything about it), once again we will see. From all of the other science I have read since getting involved in this board, I get the impression that he is somewhat mistaken. I do tend to understate things from time to time. :wink:

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Those who repeat History are doomed to learn it.

I only could struggle through the beginning of the site.
The underpinnning of all modern astronomical theory! I am not a professional astronomer, but I can't see how comets being water is proof of stellar evolution or the Big Bang.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

McCanney is not just "... another plasma-accounts-for-everything nutter". He is the plasma-accounts-for-everything nutter! :roll:

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

That would be Stardust.

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

ok, just leaving on one side the general, well, complete lack of actual data or facts to support his assertions, this one has to be a candidate for the Wizard of Oz Award for Most Ridiculous Strawman. In which parallel universe is a theory about the composition of comets "the underpinning of all traditional space science"?

The web page looks to me like a bunch of over-the-top claims with zero supporting facts, interspersed with exhortations to buy his books.

Oh, wait, I think I see how this works...

Krill

By the way, just in case anyone needs a little background on McCanney, try here:

http://www.planet-x.150m.com/mccanney.html

I think that McCanney made off with a lot of people that used to believe in Nancy (case in point: Hazlewood). His rants on the "evil" of NASA and other authoritative scientists appeal emotionally to that crowd. And when you follow McCanney, you don't need to suspend disbelief regarding voices in someone's head, because his teachings are all his own "theories".

MY EYES!!!! zzzip 8) ahhhh, better.
Geeeez, but that was rough.

One thing that got me at the start was---
After that, I just scrolled down and scanned over a few things. What I saw didn't bear closer examination. I think that's one of the deepest pages I've ever seen.
I dropped a rock from the top and I'm still waiting for it to hit bottom.

Rc

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WAG - 1000 and counting
Rc2000's Godzilla Tribute

I did a bit more research on James
McCanney. He was in the math department at Cornell for a short while.
He published two papers in mainstream journals,
"Saturn's Sweeper Moons Predicted" in Moon and the Planets Vol. 24,
pp. 349-353; 1981 and
"Continuing Galactic Formation ...", Astrophysics and Space Science
Vol. 74, pp. 57-64; 1981

The first of these has been referenced in other journals twice, once
in a listing of all artices published in 1981 in M&tP and one in a
review article about planetary rings (which does not actually mention
the McCanney paper). The second paper has never been referenced in
any other journal. The impact of a scientists research on the field
is indicated by references in other's publications.

Several quotes from these papers may be of interest:
Footnote in "Saturn's Sweeper ..." This also supports my contention that the solar interior is not one of collapsed hydrogen, but has a large planetary type core ..."

This paper references a paper by T. J. J. See ... I do not know if it is from the era when See was sane or after he went around the bend.

In "Galactic Formation" ... I have proposed a complete theory for comet behavior ... these papers were not accepted for publication as they did not fit into the accepted theoretical scheme of solar system evolution."

I tuned in to Woo2Woo on the way home last night, and without recognizing the guest's voice, inside of 15 seconds pinned it from subject matter only...

Prof McCrackPottery is all up in arms about the approach of the two comets this May-ish, and the 'facts' that their plasma discharges may put the proper charge on one of the planets, and turn it into a comet. I'd like to see that happen to Jupiter...

By the way...if these comets charge the Earth, which polarity of DC electricity won't work any more? :-k

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"If a tree is cut down in the rainforest, and is used to make paper to print a book, and the book is really bad, and there's nobody that will read it, do you still hear a sucking sound?"
Charlie in Dayton, A.AsC.