Why are EU proponents getting their knickers in a twist?

They always accuse the "mainstream" to ignore EU ideas, but when somebody does examine these ideas in detail, they complain even more!
Nereid's posts on the EU-comet "theory" shows the kind of examination "mainstream" scientific papers go through before and after they are published. "Mainstream" theories become such after they survived successfully such critical examinations.

Are VanderL, Luxor or ATKINS complaining because Thornhill & Talbott's paper has been treated just like any other scientific paper?

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

Tusenfem:
By aquiring the charge (electrons, negative charge) from it's sorroundings in the "deep space". He (and other EC legends) fantasise that the stream of electrons from the galactic centre exists somewhere in the "deep space" (and those electrons are actually poring into the Suns poles, but it's another story,Electric Sun Urban Legend), whatever "deep space" means.
Presumably, it's the place around comets aphelion.
Putting some electrons in the positively charged nucleus will only produce a neutral nucleus, which in turn will unable the comet to interact with the Sun on next turn.
Putting some electrons in allready neutral comet nucleus (as a product of previous "discharge") is impossible, regardless of the speed of a comet.
Speed of the electrons expeled somehow from galactic nucleus, will be far greater then any objects in Solar system, because we know that the mass of an electron is negligable in the presence of the force that is 36 order of magnitude stronger then gravity
They will simply bounce of of the neutral comet nucleus, as åpointed by Tim Thompson in a reply from jun 2006.
But, somehow that is what JT concludes because:
and now comes the famous sentence (who said nonsence?:-)) from the same article cited above:
John Talbot

Quote:

Negative ions are difficult to produce by solar heating and are quickly destroyed by solar radiation

What?
Negative ions are difficult to produce by infrared radiation? No kidding.
That's no problem for Chuck Norris.

Thanks. I think he meant the voltage due to the increasing charge imbalance, as in the passage I quoted earlier.

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

Thanks for setting the record straight.

I think this is consistent with what I have said all along - let's start with material that's published in papers in relevant, peer-reviewed journals, or arXiv preprints (lower pertinence), posters and papers presented at relevant scientific conferences, meetings, or symposia (lower pertinence), or standard textbooks used in relevant university (etc) courses. And, if the only material presented in support of an ATM idea, here in this section of BAUT, is webpages, books, and so on (i.e. not one of the four kinds of material I listed), let's all be very clear about it as early as possible.

I think I have also been clear about why ... among other things, a published paper (in a relevant peer-reviewed journal) has been through a review process, so a wide range of questions - concerning provenance, pertinence, accuracy, recognition of essential previous work, and so on - can be given much lower priority (and BAUT members can focus more quickly on questioning and challenging the content of ATM ideas being presented).

As an aside: even books are to be preferred to webpages ... book publishers are very well aware of the need to ensure all copyrights and (photo, image) credits are properly given (and, in many cases, an explicit permission must be given, by the owner of the material to be used), so it's unlikely that, for example, image credits will be missing or mis-attributed ... oh, and quotes ("NASA spokesperson, Joan Chardonnay, said "EU crackpots will, henceforth, be denied permission to use NASA sourced images", at press conference {date, location}", to give a completely made-up example) can be assumed to be accurate - which is more than can be said for what appears on webpages - though they may, of course, still be taken out of context.

Rather than wait until ATKINS re-states the case, I shall use this post to triangulate to it. Of course, this is only my interpretation.So, some questions:

* what other reasons (than "easier to observe hands-on") have "EU proponents" given for "focusing particular attention on comets" (if any)?

* how would "observed cometary behaviour can indeed be explained in terms of electric discharge phenomena [...]" prove "that we do not live in an electrically neutral universe"?

* examining a core concept of this last question, how is "an electrically neutral universe" defined?

* we could spend some time establishing how important comets are, in the scheme of things in the universe as a whole; I expect we'd agree that they are pretty darn trivial (small total mass, small total volume, within any significant part of the universe, and so on). Assuming we reached agreement on how trivial they are, why would demonstrating their non-zero net charge imply anything about the universe as a whole?

* "an electrically charged body" is not quantified; to what extent do you consider the (triangulated) assertion to be valid for bodies which have a net charge of between 1 and 100 (say) e (the charge of the electron), or between -1 and -100 e?

I must say it was quite an eye-opening experience ... given its purported provenance (a poster at an ICOPS), I was rather shocked to find a complete absence of any references, and so many missing image credits (not to say mis-representations of same).(emphasis added)

Here's one thing (among many) that surprised me (as I hope I showed, above): almost nothing in the PDF is falsifiable, even in principle!

For example, if you read the relevant parts of the PDF carefully, even the apparently absolute (but unquantified) "The Sun's radial electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary space" is modified elsewhere, so the PDF doesn't, as a whole, say anything at all about what sort of electric field is to be found in interplanetary space (note, for example, "The Sun's" - plenty of leeway to add radial, or other, fields of any planet, asteroid, comet, ....!).You've highlighted one aspect of what motivated me to write about Thornhill, in the series of posts above ... as someone who (supposedly) has a degree in physics, it's astonishing that he put his name to a document with many things that he should have been able to at least put good bounds on, with a hour (or a day, or a week) of effort. Yet he's supposed to have been researching 'the electric comet' for 30 years!

I missed the last part of ATKINS' post.

Removal of "then" makes the connection between the explanation of "observed cometary behaviour" and "we do not live in an electrically neutral universe" weaker, but, as you say, it doesn't really change the logic.

I already commented on the first "only"; it did not form part of my critique.

The second "only" greatly changes the logic of your assertion ... it breaks the connection between the "if" part and the (implied or explicit) "then" part, as the following makes clear:

if observed cometary behaviour can indeed ["only" deleted] be explained in terms of [magnetic isotopic effect] phenomena being produced by the movement of a body [predominently composed of odd-A nucleons interacting with the predominently even-A solar wind], ["then" deleted]this proves that we do not live in an electrically neutral universe.

Alternative explanation -> no logical link to the conclusion.

Of course, if there were additional premises that you did not explicitly state ...

[ETA: the use, and importance, of "only" has been discussed earlier in this thread too, back in the first few posts:

in the context of the difference between one and only one explanation and one but not necessarily the only explanation ... ]

Except that it was discussed starting with the second post of this thread. It was the OP that brought up electric comets.

Returning to this, in either with "only only then" or without, form ...

To what extent does the fact that some "observed cometary behaviour" can be explained in ways other than "being produced by the movement of an electrically charged body through the electromagnetic field of the sun" prove that we DO "live in an electrically neutral universe"? For example, the observed orbits of comets can be (predominently) explained by plain old Newtonian gravity; another example, the reflection of sunlight from a comet nucleus can be explained by {insert non-plasma physics explanation here}.

Further, assuming that you can support the conclusion ("proves that we do not live in an electrically neutral universe"), how does it follow - simply, logically - that "the implications for the whole of cosmology are literally shattering"? In answering this, please be sure to take into account the fact that the universe having a net charge of e is, logically, one that is not electrically neutral (i.e. 1 particle out of ~10⁸⁰, in the observable universe).

This is, of course, perfectly reasonable, as a logical argument (as, I think, korjik pointed out much earlier).

However, it's also extremely weak, as it stands, in terms of science.

Start with the logic: if one thinks something (some set of observations about comets, for example) is an indicator of something much broader (a theory, let's say), then you should be able to show two things:

* that the theory is internally consistent, and

* that the theory is consistent with all (potentially) observable phenomena ... including showing what classes of phenemona are beyond the scope of the theory.

Now for the science: if the theory is not quantified - or, worse, not quantifiable - then how could the second test be passed, in any meaningful way?

Further, if the theory is not public, how can any independent, objective outsider conduct either test?

Back to comets.

As I have shown, the only material which comes even close to being a description of the "indications" in terms of the underlying theory (the purported ICOPS 2006 poster, by Thornhill and Talbott) is not quantified, and, if only because of its lack of definitions and references, is also not public.

But no doubt you have a different view. If so, please share it, paying particular attention to the points about quantification and openness.

Oh, and please also restrict yourself to comets.

This is my last post on the 21-page PDF document (ElectricComet.pdf), its role as the definitive document presenting the 'EU theory'-based 'electric comet model' (ECM), and the broader context.

In previous posts, I examined nine specific, physical mechanisms in the ECM presented in that document, and found them all meaningless (as presented, even within the context of all references therein), examined the so-called six-to-15 predictions about the Deep Impact mission (and found them equally meaningless), and considered how someone with a BSc in physics and an admitted admirer of Hannes Alfvén could write a poster for an international conference in plasma physics* so contrary to the spirit of Alfvén's work, and his lecturers' teaching (not to mention having allegedly spent 30 years on that model).

This final post concerns form vs substance, or content - why take Thornhill to task for not publishing a paper in a relevant peer-reviewed journal? Why examine the "two flash" prediction in terms of quantitative parameters? And so on.

Note that this comment will glide over questions concerning just how well the assertions on the "two flash" prediction match the actual prediction (HINT: they do so only if your brain is so open it falls out).

At one level form matters a great deal: without it all kinds of hanky panky could become OK, from plagiarism, to revisionism, to an inability to independently check published assertions, and beyond. Of course, such pedantry matters not one jot if the relevant Electric Comet ideas get published in relevant peer-reviewed journals ... but no EU proponent, here in the ATM section of BAUT, has been able to tell us where we can read such papers, despite their apparent deep familiarity with 'EU theory'.

At another level, form defines substance: a necessary condition for science (and its penumbra) as dialogue to have meaning (substance) is that all participants implicitly accept (agree on) conventions (forms).

Or saying this another way: if you can't do 'form', whatever you think you're doing, it sure isn't science.

* Should it turn out that the PDF is fraudulent, in the sense that it was not an ICOPS 2006 poster (for example), then I think we enter completely new territory, in terms of questioning and challenging ATM ideas that rely - even only indirectly - on material purportedly by Thornhill, Talbott, or any of their colleagues.

could it be possible that when the canister came screaming into the atmosphere that a little more heat may have been present than in the vacume of space. that can cause a number of chemical reactions aswell as melt away any ice that may have been present.

Your "Electric Comet" reference is very interesting, until about 3/4s way down where it breaks down in their "when comets break apart". They say: But this is not the ONLY reason the comet may break up, and in effect 'explode' so some parts are flying ahead of the nucleus. I find this report inconclusive, though it is interesting as a speculation. There may be other causes, something other than electric charge, to account for comets entering the inner solar system spewing out their guts. Also, if the electric comet idea is to have any traction, it needs some numbers to show how it works. Hate to ask this, but: Where's the math?

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Credibility is simply incredible... sometimes even to me.
disclaimer

I was not joking when I asked this question.

I would like an answer from VanderL, Luxor and ATKINS.

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papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

I'm preparing a response to the main points and questions raised over the last couple of days. But currently I have a lot of ions in the fire. Please bear with me for another day or two without accusing me of not responding in a "timely" manner.

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

Actually, you just did. You said you would respond and gave an approximate time frame for that response.

Is that a pun?

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov