I still don't understand: are you not glad that somebody took her time for a detailed and in-depth examination of an EU paper, and exposing its short-comings both in form and content?
Isn't this the kind of attention EU proponents ask from mainstream scientists?



So, do you think that in this case eventual false accusations made by Nereid would not have been dealt with adequately by "mainstreamers" and moderators, to the point that you felt the need to step in?



Then feel free to explain which ones are wrong and how you determined it.



So your only problem with Nereid's review of that paper, is that you don't agree with all of its conclusions.

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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 want to applaud Neried for her excellent analysis of the EU papers. I have been trying for years to make sense out of EU claims; and the problem that I keep running into is that they keep insisting phenomenon are caused by gross charge differentials even though there are good collisional, thermal, gravitational or nuclear models for many of the phenomenon.

It was clear to me before the Deep Impact event, that EU threorists expected a massive discharge before the impact event, and within the resolution of the many cameras focusing upon the collionsion, the high energy event coinceded with the moment of impact, and not even a millisecond beforehand.

As far as what the Mainstream was expecting, A'Hearn stated in a lecture that one of the reasons that the 'copper washer' mission was approved, is that he walked into the funding board with five different predictions of what would happen; and he also said, none of the expectations agreed with the results; and certainly not the most straightforward interpretations of the EU predictions. (For what it is worth, neither did mine.)

That said, I am of the opinion that Tesla is right: If we completely understood the nature of matter and energy, all phenomenon are electromagnetic.

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jwj

It's ok not to know.

No.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, I expect such a paper will be published in the future.

Would you please try to limit your posts to only a few questions at a time (and not several posts in a row), that way we could actually have a useful exchange. This piling up of questions is something I don't have enough time for (another reason why I said "wow" earlier). This means I only want to get back to something I promised Fortis, and I won't respond to anything specific from your earlier posts.

I'll just try to address the question on how the Rosetta mission can give us answers:

1. The spacecraft will orbit the comet nucleus and be able to produce close-up images of the comet's surface. This will show us the surface characteristics and pinpoint the origins of the jets. This will either be small holes venting, or bright arcs (both point sources and interconnected "curtains" similar to Io's volcanoes) hovering close to the surface, preferentially on the highest elevations.
2. The lander will provide even better detail, but chances are the environment will prove too electrically active. If the lander survives it can show the surface composition, either subsurface ices, or minerals as deep as it can get (30 cm).
3. The plasma instruments will show either will show that nothing much is happening, neutral material that is only ionised by solar UV, away from the surface, or a very active plasma environment, getting stronger towards perihelion. Ionic species will either have higher concentrations away from the surface, or close to the jet source/surface (ionisation first, recobination to neautrals later).
4. The surface will either be changing because of the jets, or stay relatively intact (assuming subsurface chamber of ices volatiles are not disintegrating)

I'll think of more details if you want, but I think you get the idea; qualitative descriptions of events that can discriminate between the two models.

Cheers.

But we have already flown through a comet with lots of instruments, and I even gave the link to the abstract by Harri Laakso and offered to send the pdf.

1. if there are to be bright arc, then why have they, up until now, not been seen by other spacecraft?
Secondly, the vocanoes of Io are NOT electrically driven, but tidally. You will probably refer to the XXX & Dessler paper (forgot the other author at the moment) where they saw that the plumes of the volcanoes were filamented when the were getting to the ionosphere if I am correctly remembering. This would be what one would like to see, as the ionosphere is the closure region of the currents flowing in Io's Alfven wings (what used to be called the unipolar inductor).
2. Well there has not been a lander, only an impactor, which did not create any EC signature.
3. Why not read up on Harri Laakso's paper, you will get more detail about the plasma environment of Comet Halley than you will like. But I guess that is typical EC behaviour, claiming stuff without even trying to find out if something already has been found.
4. In any case the surface will be changing, either it gets machined (and I think you need a loooooooot of power to get to the emissions you need, but hey, no EC proponent is willing to do the calculations) or through the venting of gasses.

So, how about coming up with a model? How much machining needs to be done? How do you get the charge of the comet? How do you get the necessary discharges? Do you believe that solar wind protons and cometary O or OH combine to make water in the tail, if yes, what is the reaction rate at the energies of the solar wind protons? etc. etc. etc.

Well, read Harri's paper and come back to us.

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Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
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Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Thanks for the offer, I'll PM you for the actual paper.

They probably have been seen (bright spots on all close-up images of Tempel 1 and Wild 2), we only lack dynamic, spectroscopic and plasma data from these sructures themselves.

They might turn out to be electric phenomena after all, maybe both models are partly correct. The tidal mechanism rests on a number of assumptions that cannot be proven (like for example the internal composition of Io), so nothing is certain. Btw, you mean one of the most outspoken advocates of a Plasma Universe, Anthony Peratt.

I beg to differ, there certainly was a double flash, I'll look up the peer-reviewed published details today and see how this matches the predictions.

You guess wrong (I know for a fact that some EU proponents do try to find relevant papers), and of course some thing have not been found yet.

You're right that the surface changes will be harder to interpret, but I think EDM as a mechanism would favor the higher elevations, while outgassing probably wouldn't.

To answer these questions you need to get measurements, either from experiments designed to mimic the processes, or in situ. I am convinced that all theoretical models must bow to the experimental data.

Will do.

Cheers.

As promised:

This from one of the Deep Impact papers published in Icarus:

Evolution of the Deep Impact flash: Implications for the nucleus surface
based on laboratory experiments Carolyn M. Ernst, Peter H. Schultz

And this is what they have to say about the flash evolution:


I think the most important conclusion is that the first flash happened upstream from the impactor's trajectory, fully consistent with the EU prediction of an early discharge flash. What is also important is that the
light source "moved"; they imaged 4 frames in which the first frame showed the "first light", the second frame was dimmer and closer to the projected impact site, the third frame is closer to the impact site but still upstream, the fourth and all subsequent frames were all downstream. Their interpretation is that the impact must have kicked up an "upstream plume" first, then the impactor burrowed deeper in very loose material and a second flash ocurred followed by a downstream plume.

An additional point is that the plume front apparently accelerated, which is
claimed as evidence that the plume material must contain volatiles that were released after impact. I wonder if any other acceleration mechanism exists.

Cheers.

However, according to what you copied of Ernst & Schultz it is also fully consistent with the laboratory experiments they did.

Then about the message before about Io (oh we have gone through this before numerous times)

No, they are NOT electric phenomena, because the electric currents in the Alfven wing of Io does not reach the solid surface of the moon, but is closed through the highly conductive ionosphere of Io. I did the calculation somewhere, there was many orders of magnitude difference between the conductivity of the moon proper and of its ionosphere. Any basic electric circuit theory will show you that the current, in parallel resistors, will mainly flow through the one with the least resistivity, i.e. in this case the ionosphere. And yes, the ionosphere has been measured again and again and again in the Galileo era.

The internal composition of Io can well be determined from the flybys of Galileo and the various gravitational moments and our knowledge of solid bodies in the solar system. Do not make it sound like we mainstreamers know nothing and just assume whatever we like to make the data fit our presumptions.

Ah so true, it was Peratt who wrote that paper with Alex. I hope we do not have to go through that paper again, explaining about the plumes of the volcanoes of Io. Definitely not in this thread.

__________________
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Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Thank for the clarification.(emphasis added)(source)

Would you please clarify?

Have you stated, in this post that I am quoting, that you will not respond to direct, pertinent questions on, and challenges to, ATM ideas, as presented, in this thread (by you)?
Thanks for the answer.

However, it does not - it seems to me - to answer the questions asked.

In a later post I shall clarify the questions, show that the above does not answer them, and request that you answer the direct, pertinent questions, on the ATM ideas, as presented.

That could well be correct, but if, and only if, there is a substantial, highly porous surface layer. I guess the Rosetta Lander, Philae will hopefully answer that question. Although any rocky surface will likely be interpreted as atypical and be presented as mere (bad) luck.

No, we don't have to revisit that discussion, but the possibility of mainstreamers fitting data to presumptions (we see water molecules, therefore ice) has been the subject of this thread as well .

Cheers.

As long as you can cram the questions into something digestible, I will answer any questions (also the direct, pertinent ones), but sometimes when I answer one, I get 10 new ones in return. What I mostly do then is trying to answer what I think is the most important question.

Cheers.

I think that we all do, but I had asked
If the mainstream didn't try to address this answer then we would just rebut the electric comet by saying that there is surface ice and hence this can produce the water that we observe. It is only when you attempt to determine if the production rate from surface ice (or plasma processing) is sufficient, that you begin to refine your understanding. Currently I see no evidence that the hypothesised plasma process can even get within an order of magnitude of the correct amount because no-one seems willing to estimate the production rate.

So do I, but based on the record I fear we will see neither from the Electric Universe proponents.

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Well, at least the conclusion about water coming from ice on or inside of the comet's nucleus makes more sense that having machined molecules fly away and react with solar wind protons. If not only for the dynamics and cross sections of such processes.

Assuming that indeed machining takes place, what comes out? OH⁺ I would assume as creating negative ions by electrical discharges is, IMHO, rather unlikely (but if you have a reference, you may prove me wrong here). Then we will need the following reaction:

OH⁺ + H⁺ + e → H₂O⁺

I cannot find so quickly the reference to the EDM on comets (apart from thunderbolts, and we already know he does not do math). So, in all, at the moment it looks rather unlikely to me that EDM and solar-wind-driven chemistry will produce the water that we see in the halo and coma of the comet. But like always, I would love to see some detailed calculations of these processes, from any of the EC proponents.

__________________
************************************************** *************************
Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
************************************************** *************************
Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )