I look forward to it.

If we assume that the water is produced by the interaction of hydorgen ions with oxides in what you believe to be a fundamentally rocky structure there us the interesting question of what fraction of the surface of an active cometary nucleus consists of oxides, and would your mechanism quickly (in terms of the mean lifetime of an active comet) exhaust the surface oxide layer without then being able to attack subsurface rock?

I don't anticipate a rigorous quantitative answer anytime soon, but would at least appreciate your comments on this point.
I think that I should have stuck with coma...
The Deep Impact site claim that the quantity of surface ice is not sufficient to generate the quantity of water observed. (Note that does not say that there is not enough sub-surface ice present.) I am hoping that the electric comet proponents can show if the hypothetical discharge process is sufficient, or not, to generate the observed quantities of water.

I support David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill's contention that the whole set of observed phenomena associated with comets can be accounted for by an EU interpretation. And it's not simply after-the-event rationalization: as you well know (we already crossed swords on this over a year back), the EU theory also allowed Thornhill to make very precise predictions regarding the Deep Impact collision the day before the event. To my mind, a theory which can both account for past and present observations (including the most recent, the latest findings concerning the asteroidal nature of Comet Wild 2) and predict future events can't be that far off the mark. But it's true that "logically" other theories might exist and you are, of course, perfectly free to state that "The rest of the universe could - logically - be ruled by Van Rijn's invisible elves (who know nothing of electricity)", as you say a little later in your post. But so what?

This is just quibbling over a couple of insignificant words in an attempt to divert attention from the substance of my argument. You use a lot of words yourself here to ultimately only pick a quarrel with just two words I used, "only" (twice) and "then". I'm quite happy to withdraw them, if you prefer. It doesn't make any difference to the case I'm making. And I've already answered the point you seem to be making. (See above). Luxor recently said you were writing like a politician, I think it's more like a lawyer, at least in this passage. Could we please get back to addressing the scientific substance, including the straightforward questions we are asking regarding the asteroidal nature of comets?

As for your calling EU ideas "vague, woolly, illogical, etc", may I point out that this is itself a totally vague and meaningless value judgement which, in any case, you can only legitimately make once you have actually read about them. This sort of intellectual approach reminds me of what I remember your once writing in the defunct "More from Arp et al." thread, when you claimed never to have read any of Arp's work in general and his latest book "Seeing Red" in particular because it would "only make [you] angry".

Thanks for the "muddle-headed". As regards content, I think the point I was making should be clear to everyone. I was talking about general principles: in maistream BB cosmology the dominant force is asserted to be gravity and if electrical phenomena are now reluctantly beginning to be acknowledged in certain limited cases, they are still being claimed to have only minor significance. EU theory asserts the opposite. Consideration of the possibility that there might be minor exceptions to whichever theory is correct ("if at least one part of the universe is not neutral, even if for only an attosecond, for example") is totally irrelevant to the discussion. This is again just quibbling, presumably designed to throw up a smoke-screen around these inconvenient lumps of rock which behave so embarrassingly like comets.

I'll respond to the rest of your post a bit later.

__________________
Where is the truth? Who sees the old hag and who the young beauty?

I'm way behind, but nothing like what was predicted in the Thunderbolts model occurred! No flash of X-rays, no excess energy -What we saw was whole hell of a lot of dust, which is somewhat consistent with what might happened with some asteroids, but rather different from the electric-magic event predicted in thunderbolts.
There is a lot of published research from a number of sources.

The biggest problem is the observing probe clammed up (as planned), during the most important phase - when the plume seperated from the comet...if the plume seperated - who knows?

More later.

__________________
jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz

A quick look at the content of the Thornhill and Talbott "Electric Comet" PDF (www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf), as a possible, science-based, model; let's call it the 'Electric Comet Model', or 'ECM' for short.

Page 5 of the document presents the ECM as a set of eight bullet points. True to its name, the physical mechanisms in the ECM have to do with electric currents and fields. Leaving aside (for now) the origin of comets (covered in the first part of the first bullet), here are the key mechanisms:

+ the charging of comets

+ the formation of coma and tail

+ "electrical discharge machining" (EDM) of the surfaces of comets

+ the formation of jets and filaments

+ the maintenance of filaments

+ the maintenance of the coma

+ "electrostatic cleaning" of the surfaces of comets

+ electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on the surfaces of comets.

In addition, a ninth physical mechanism is described on page 16:

+ the emission of x-rays.

No references are given. It is as if these mechanisms appeared in the document without any help from others, apparently Thornhill and Talbott did not need to stand on the shoulders of anyone, giant or not (thank you Newton). There are hints that others contributed to building the foundation: "The collimation of such jets is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" for example (though the relationship between EDM and plasma discharge is not mentioned), a debt to "engineer Ralph Juergens" is acknowledged on page 6, and there are several mentions of un-named "electrical theorists" (and one of "electric theorists") on other pages, with the implication that they had a hand in developing at least parts of the ECM¹.

How can one evaluate these nine ECM physical mechanisms? Given the absence of any references, I can think of only two approaches: 1) examine them using only what's written in the document, and 2) make an arbitrary choice of external references.

In my next post I'll proceed with approach 1).

¹ Here I am examining only the ECM as presented in the PDF, and references to it, sans the bit about origins. So, for example, the reference to Alfvén's ideas on CMEs is beyond scope.

Three of the nine specific physical mechanisms are easily addressed (EDM and electrostatic cleaning of the surfaces of comets, electrostatic deposition of dust and debris on their surfaces) - the 21 page PDF contains no external references, and only the following internal ones (simple re-statements omitted):

- the image titled "Carving of Surface Relief" has a caption which includes "the surface on the right, produced by electric discharge machining (EDM)" (note there's nothing to say whether "electrical discharge machining" is the same as "electric discharge machining" or not)

- "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining" - this repeats the link of EDM to the action of jets ("The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus")

- "The asteroid appears to have attracted considerable surface debris electrostatically".

Note that the first time the terms "electrical discharge machining" and "electrostatic cleaning" are used, they are in quote marks, signifying that they have special, non-standard meanings (if the authors follow a common orthographic convention) ... yet no definitions are given.

So two of the three mechanisms are empty - you could rewrite the parts of the document which mention them using nonsense words (e.g. "invisible elves") and they would have just the same meaning.

EDM is linked to "jets"; next post I shall examine five(of the other six) mechanisms (the formation of coma and tail, of jets and filaments, maintenance of coma and filaments, emission of x-rays) and also look at whether there's any more meat to EDM than there is to "electrostatic cleaning" or "attracted back to the nucleus electrostatically".

Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma (and tail).

This statement, on page 16, pretty much says it all: "Most of the voltage difference between the comet and the solar plasma is taken up in a double layer of charge, called a plasma sheath, that surrounds the comet. When the electrical stress is great enough, the sheath glows and appears as the typical cometary coma and tail." Only two other statements add anything to the mechanism: "It is the electric force that holds the spherical cometary coma in place as the comet races around the Sun" (p5, where the ECM is laid out) and "The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization and by forming [...] and a visible plasma sheath, or coma." (p6).

One more statement completes the explanations of these two mechanisms: " [a comet's] well-defined filaments extending up to tens of millions of miles without dissipating in the vacuum of space [revealed in its tails] is to be expected of a plasma discharge within the ambient electric field of the Sun." (p5).

So, in a nutshell, electric field plus plasma = coma; add "a plasma discharge" and you get the filaments in tails.

However, with no external references for any of this, and nothing more than the above (in the document itself), these mechanisms are just as meaningless as those covered in my previous post ... unless the fundamental mechanism (the charging of comets) somehow breathes meaning into them. Oh, and the specific mechanism for tails - either formation or maintenance - is empty (only filaments are explained, in terms of a mechanism) ¹.

Mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of jets and filaments.

In the ECM, filaments and jets are intimately linked, but it is the mechanism for jets that is described in some detail: "The observed jets of comets are electric arc discharges to the nucleus, [...] excavated material is accelerated into space along the jets' observed filamentary arcs"; "The collimation of such jets [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge"; "The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode jets"; and "an electric field accelerates matter in the jet; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin jets many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial sublimation; and instabilities and fluctuations suddenly relocate jets in exceedingly short periods of time".

And, as mentioned in my previous post, the jets are also linked with EDM: "Intermittent and wandering arcs erode the surface and burn it black, leaving the distinctive scarring patterns of electric discharges"; and "The jets flare up and move over the nucleus irregularly, leaving scars typical of electric discharge machining".

But how much meat is there, really? Let's substitute "electric arc discharge" for "jet", per the primary definition:

"The collimation of such electric arc discharges [which] explode from cometary nuclei at supersonic speeds [...] is a well-documented attribute of plasma discharge" - so "electric arc discharges" are a subset of "plasma discharges"

"The comet's charge [...] responds to the new environment [...] by forming cathode electric arc discharges" - consistent.

"an electric field accelerates matter in the electric arc discharge; an electromagnetic "pinch effect" provides densities in the thin electric arc discharges many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial sublimation; and instabilities and fluctuations suddenly relocate electric arc discharges in exceedingly short periods of time" - consistent.

(The two jet-EDM relationship statements become a simple repetition).

So, in a nutshell, electric field plus plasma = electric arc discharges, a subset of plasma discharges; plasma discharges behave thusly {insert list}.

However, with no external references for any of this, and nothing more than the above (in the document itself), these mechanisms are just as meaningless as those covered in my previous post ... unless the fundamental mechanism (the charging of comets) somehow breathes meaning into them¹.

Emission of x-rays.

From page 16: "Diffuse electrical discharges occur in the sheath and at the nucleus, radiating a variety of frequencies, including x-rays"; and "Flickering and occasional flare-ups are also expected, because plasma discharges behave in a non-linear manner".

So we have at least one more behaviour of plasma discharges, and we also learn that electric arc discharges are indeed just one kind of plasma discharge.

Obviously, these are almost as meaningless as "electrostatic cleaning" (the latter has the added distinction of being flagged as having a special meaning, by use of quotation marks, and then not having that meaning defined) ¹.

Next, a look at the last, but most important, ECM mechanism, how comets become charged.

¹ Remember that here I am examining only the ECM as presented on page 5 (and p16), and references to it, sans the bit about origins. So, for example, the reference to Alfvén's ideas on CMEs is beyond scope.

Quick recap: for eight (of nine) of the specific, physical mechanisms in the ECM are meaningless¹. However, there is a possibility that the last mechanism - the charging of comets - somehow breathes meaning into the mechanisms for the formation and maintenance of the cometary coma, jets, and filaments.

The charging of comets.

This mechanism is succinctly described in the second bullet of the ECM, on page 5: "Comets follow their elongated paths within a weak electrical field centered on the Sun. In approaching the Sun, a charge imbalance develops between the nucleus and the higher voltage and charge density near the Sun", and elaborated on p6 "The comet spends most of its time far from the Sun, where the plasma voltage is low relative to the Sun. In remote regions, the comet moves slowly and its charge easily comes into balance with its surroundings. But as the comet falls toward the Sun, it begins to move at a furious speed through regions of increasing voltage. The comet's charge, developed in deep space, responds to the new environment by increasing internal electric polarization", p16 "The Sun's radial electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary space. In a constant radial electric field, the voltage decreases linearly with distance. A comet on an elongated orbit spends most of its time far from the Sun and acquires a charge in balance with the voltage at that distance. But when a comet speeds inward for a quick spin around the Sun, the voltage of the comet becomes increasingly out of balance with that nearer the Sun", and p 18 "The long-period comets spend a longer time in a region of lower plasma potential than the short-period comets. Consequently, their voltage difference on their approach to the Sun will be higher".

There is also an external reference for this mechanism: "In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Juergens [...] proposed that the Sun is a glow discharge, the center of an electric field extending to the heliopause. "

In a nutshell, a comet's motion through the Sun's weak, constant radial electric (or electrical, the document uses both words) field causes the charging of the comet. The external reference at least admits the possibility that this mechanism may not be as meaningless as the other eight examined so far. Further, to the extent that at least some of the other mechanisms require an electric (or electrical) field, at least one aspect of them may not be meaningless¹.

Assume, for now, that sufficient consistency between the electric (or electrical) field in the ECM and in Juergens' proposal can be demonstrated. Would there then be sufficient meaning for an unbiased, objective reader to conclude there is at least the basis for a legitimate, scientific idea presented in the 21 page PDF?

Unfortunately not.

Why? Because the mechanism is poorly quantified. On the plus side, the use of terms such as "radial" (centred on the Sun), "constant with distance", "decreases linearly with distance" nails things down to within a constant (or several constants, or zero points); in the middle is the nature of comets' orbits (though see below); on the negative side, the relationship between a comet's speed (relative to the Sun, in a radial direction?), how fast it "comes into balance with its surroundings", and the charge it acquires at any point in its orbit is not described. By implication, a comet's charge imbalance is lessened by an aspect of one or more of the other mechanisms (electric(al) arc discharge, (other) plasma discharge, electrostatic cleaning), but whether there are other mechanisms, what the relative importance of these three is, and how any vary with any other factor (speed, radial distance, comet size, comet composition, ...) is not even hinted at.

At first glance, it would seem that the nature of comets' orbits should be well-constrained; we might assume they're just Keplerian. However, that would an unwarranted assumption. Not only does the document not say anything about the orbits (except in very vague terms), but the ECM is about charged bodies moving in an electric field!

So, the only sound conclusion is that this mechanism is so poorly characterised as to be essentially meaningless ... unless, of course, Juergens' proposal nails it down².

Next: perhaps the ECM mechanisms are meaningless; what about the predictions (p10)? And can we say anything more about the ECM by virtue of the fact that it is a poster at an IEEE meeting?

¹ Remember that here I am examining only the ECM as presented on page 5 (and p16) of the PDF, and references to it, sans the bit about origins. So, for example, the reference to Alfvén's ideas on CMEs is beyond scope.

² Note that we would have to go looking for that proposal; the PDF doesn't tell us where to find it!

There are six bullets (of predictions) on page 10 of the PDF document, and 11 in the referenced webpage.

Two of the six are not mentioned on the webpage; one of the six corresponds to two separate bullets on the webpage; five bullets on the webpage are not mentioned in the PDF document (some bullets have more than one prediction).

All so-called predictions may be grouped into four classes, in a two-by-two matrix:

Quantified prediction (e.g. "the energy released in the impact will be between X and Y joules") vs qualitative ones (e.g. "the energy released in the impact will be huge").

Certain predictions (e.g. "the impactor will cease transmission x±y seconds before impact") vs uncertain ones (e.g. "the impactor may cease transmission before impact").

Note that a third possible classification can be ignored - for no prediction is the degree of certainty quantitative (e.g. there are no examples of "the impactor will cease transmission x±y seconds before impact (95% CL)").

Of the ~15 predictions (document and webpage combined), none are quantitative.

Of the ~15 predictions, ~eight are certain ("will"), though only three are absolute (the others are only "will" if another prediction in the logic chain is validated, none of the prior 'predictions' is certain, e.g. IF a discharge THEN {another prediction}).

In addition, ~five predictions are differences compared with what is "expected" from mainstream comet models, according to the authors. However, there are no references to any source where the authors' expectations can be independently checked (so you have to do your own research to find out whether the authors have accurately portrayed non-EU models, present fiction, or something in between).

Only two (maybe three) predictions are expressed in terms of direct observables; the rest could only be tested within the framework of interpretive chains of logic and theory (or so it seems to me); an example: "The impact/electrical discharge will not reveal "primordial dirty ice," but the same composition as the surface." - compositions are conclusions derived from long chains of analysis of observations. As I have already noted, the PDF document contains no discussion of observational analyses, nor any (external) references to any.

The most definite, most directly related to observables, prediction is this one, found in the PDF document, but not on the webpage: "The cameras will reveal sharply defined craters, valleys, mesas, and ridges". Given that the Electric Universe so-called predictions were made after the results of comet Halley, Wild2, and Borrelly missions had been made public, this is hardly surprising!

The other 'direct observables' prediction is equally under-whelming: "We also expect an interruption of impactor transmission before it reaches the surface" (PDF), "Electrical stress may short out the electronics on board the impactor before impact" (webpage) - no method of determining whether any "interruption of impactor transmission before it reached the surface" is due to "electrical stress [shorting] out the electronics on board" (or any other cause) is given.

The third prediction possibly relating to a direct observable ("maybe three" above) is "Copious X-rays will accompany discharges to the projectile"; this appears on the webpage but not in the document. It's a 'maybe' because it's not quantitative (and it's conditional on there being one or more 'discharges').

Clearly, pace ATKINS, none of these so-called predictions could be falsified by any of the results from the Deep Impact mission, without quite a lot of additional inputs (with the exception of the "sharply defined" prediction).

Given the prominence of the 'discharge' prediction(s), I shall examine them in more detail in my next post.

Here is the actual prediction, from the 'predictions webpage' that the PDF document provides a link to (my emphasis).
Further down the page, under a section entitled "ANOMOLOUS X-RAYS", there's also this (emphasis in original):
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:
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 bolts¹.

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 meaningless² ... 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.

Somewhere on one of the IEEE pages you will read that Wallace Thornhill has a BSc from the University of Melbourne (in Australia, not Florida), in physics and electronics.

In the PDF document you will see a reference to Hannes Alfvén. A few minutes searching ADS, starting with "Alfven, H" in the author field, will turn up lots and lots of published papers. Almost all of them are filled with equations, numbers, and quantitative stuff; they also provide references to other material, where Alfvén has stood on the shoulders of others' work.

From that IEEE reference, and some searching on EU pages, you can estimate that Wallace Thornhill graduated in 1970 (+10 -15 years).

What were physics students taught, at the University of Melbourne, a few decades ago? Could they reasonably have been given passing grades, by their physics lecturers, for models developed and presented without references or equations? I can't be sure¹, but I think it quite likely (>80%) that any of Thornhill's physics lecturers would have given him a failing grade for something like the (alleged) ICOPS poster with his name as an author.

How hard would it be to turn the ECM, as presented in that PDF document, into at least a first draft quantitative model? Read a few of Alfvén's papers, take a plasma physics graduate level course, and I think you'd agree that 1 hour to 1 day would be a good (95% CL) first estimate. Of course, Thornhill is no Alfvén, so let's be generous and say it'd likely take him 1 week to 1 month to come up with such a first draft ... OK, maybe a year.
That's from the webpage of the link on page 10 of PDF document ("Advanced Predictions of "Deep Impact"") (my emphasis).

So why, after 30 years' of work, does a person with a BSc in physics put his name to a document so devoid of anything quantitative? A document that's purportedly a poster at an international plasma physics conference? Concerning a model that is supposedly based on (plasma physics) ideas developed by Alfvén?

Here's my entirely speculative guess as to the answer: because any quantitative model, even an OOM (order of magnitude) one, would be obviously inconsistent with a large number of good, independent, observations and experimental results ... and thus consigned to the dustbin of science history.

Of course, if you don't have at least a BSc with a major in physics², you are likely to read the above and simply wonder ... where does Nereid's confidence re those assertions come from? Hard to address adequately within the limits of posts in BAUT, but open your mind to this: if comets are "asteroids on eccentric orbits", why are some objects with orbital eccentricities in the same range comets and others asteroids? Or this: if comets (or asteroids) are charged bodies on orbits within a constant, radial electric field (centred on the Sun), why can't those orbits be predicted by force laws based on electromagnetism?

¹ inputs to flesh this out greatly welcome!

² or something similar.

The OP includes links to "research results", material published in peer-reviewed, technical journals. The conventions, in such papers and publications, on attribution, references, etc for all material that is not the new work of the authors are pretty well-known and understood. So too is the role of reviewers to draw authors' attention to shortcomings in drafts, from missing references, to incorrect attributions, and to possible plagiarism. The opprobrium heaped on those who break these conventions – be they authors who grossly misrepresent their own work, or reviewers who negligently allow such misrepresentation to go into print, to give just two examples - illustrates well just how important adherence to these conventions is.

These "rules of evidence" are a key part of science; it is not an exaggeration to say that implicitly or explicitly using different rules is just as much ATM as the content of an alternative cosmology, for example.

How does the Thornhill and Talbott 21 page PDF rate, in terms of adherence to these rules of evidence?

In my earlier posts I pointed out that there are no references, and that this leads to the nine physical 'ECM' mechanisms presented being meaningless.

Are there any other examples of this document not adhering to the standard conventions for scientific publication?

Yes, rather a lot … and some are pretty disturbing.

This 21 page PDF document, called a poster by the authors, contains ~20 direct quotes (examples: ""Comets are perhaps at once the most spectacular and the least well understood members of the solar system." M. Neugebauer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory", "According to a Stardust project press release, mission scientists expected "a dirty, black, fluffy snowball" with a couple of jets that would be "dispersed into a halo."", "When a coronal mass ejection greeted Comet NEAT, space scientists called it a spectacular "coincidence.""). Not one of these is given a clear attribution! Of course, with Google, a sceptical reader with an open mind could, probably, find most of these fairly quickly.

Most (>70%) of the direct quotes seem to be from press releases, or news conferences; at least one is from a book ... but none seem to be from papers published in relevant peer-reviewed journal. Two such papers are mentioned ("The results of the Deep Impact mission were published in the journal Science" and "In a paper published in the 1960s Dr. Brian G. Marsden, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drew attention to the anomaly of comet fragmentation"), but a curious reader may not be sure to have found which ones the EU document is referring to (several could fit the descriptions given).

What of the "Electric Comet Model"? Does the document include detailed references to material on this, where a sceptical reader with an open mind can go to learn more, to check things out, etc? Surprisingly, no, as I pointed out in my earlier posts. For completeness, all that I could find is the following:

"For several decades plasma cosmologists, inspired by the work of Hannes Alfvén, have urged astronomers to consider the role of electric currents and plasma discharge in large scale cosmic events. According to these theorists, electricity may be the dominating force in galaxy and star formation.
But only a few have considered the role electricity might play in the spectacular displays of comets."

"The electric comet model does not stand alone but in partnership with another hypothesis--the electric Sun.
In the 1960s, engineer Ralph Juergens, an admirer of Hannes Alfvén, proposed that the Sun is a glow discharge, the center of an electric field extending to the heliopause. This field is the cause of solar wind acceleration. In the 1970s Juergens elaborated the theoretical concept and suggested that a comet's display is provoked by its electrical exchange with the Sun."

"Just prior to this occasion [Deep Impact mission's impact], we registered a series of predictions at Thunderbolts.info, including but not limited to the following".

The lack of adequate attribution of sources, particular those explicitly quoted, is not just an annoyance, or a reflection of sloppy work, it (deliberately?) makes it hard for any reader to check whether the evidence presented (quotes, in this case) accurately reflects the source.

An example of poorly attributed, and misleading, evidence (a quote, in this case) might be something like this (this is a made up example!):There is a paper, by Alfvén, published in the 1990s, which contains those words ... but unless you are very familiar with his papers, it's unlikely you'll find it easily (i.e. in this example, the evidence is poorly attributed).

Further, if you do manage to find the paper, you'll quickly see that this quote - while accurate - is used to make a point almost the opposite of what Alfvén went on to say! In other words, it's taken well and truly out of context.

Did Thornhill and Talbott take any of the ~20 quotes in the 21 page PDF out of context? I don't know … but they seem to have done several things far worse.

(to be continued)

¹ Note that this is considerably longer than almost all the quotes used in the Electric Comet document.

OK, none of the quotes in the PDF are properly attributed, despite it (purportedly) being a poster at an international plasma physics conference.

What about the ~20 images in the document? Are they given detailed attribution?

Four are, and another two have partial attributions; the others have none.

One of the images¹ whose sources I have been able to find has a copyright².

Several images have usage statements.

For example, the Comet Linear image, from the STScI: "it is requested that in any subsequent use of this work NASA and STScI be given appropriate acknowledgement." (http://hubblesite.org/copyright/).

And the Comet NEAT image, from SOHO: "It is requested, however, that any such use properly attributes the source of the images or data" (http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/...copyright.html).

Let's look at one example of mis-attribution in the PDF. Here is what you will read on page 7 of "The Electric Comet" PDF document (my emphasis):
The source of "the photo seen here" - no attribution or credit is given - seems to be ESO Press Photo 37/96, dated 20 September 1996, and titled "Seven Jets in Comet Hale-Bopp" (http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/p...hot-37-96.html).

The body of the caption is as follows:
The webpage concludes (my emphasis): "This is the caption to ESO PR Photo 37/96 [GIF, 76k]. It may be reproduced, if credit is given to the European Southern Observatory. "

The mis-attribution? As the source makes clear, the image is anything but a "photo".

Curiously, credit does seem to have been given on at least one of the Thunderbolts webpages which reproduces it; how strange that what purports to be a poster presented at an scientific conference omits the credit (and seriously mis-characterises it).

¹ The image of asteroid Itokawa, from JAXA, has this: "When using materials, JAXA should be credited as the source. (Unless noted otherwise, the copyrights of the materials in the Photo Archives belong to JAXA.) " (http://jda.jaxa.jp/jda/service_e.html)

² there are some images - such as the one on page 1 - that I have so far been unable to source.