Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Electric Comets Part 1

The following is the first of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Page 85:

Chapter 4 - Electric Comets

“Comets are perhaps at once the most spectacular and the least well understood members of the solar system.” 
–Marcia Neugebauer, JPL

At the end of the nineteenth century neither an electric Sun hypothesis nor a theory of electric comets would have been controversial. Both were discussed in scientific papers. Around the same time, Kristian Birkeland performed his electrical Terrella experiments, reproducing the behavior of sunspots and auroras.⁹¹ 

Then science took a wrong turn. Investment in a theory began to override critical attention to observation and to experimental testing of alternatives. Astronomers shunned Birkeland, whose work posed new and promising possibilities. Not until the latter half of the 20th century did innovative scientists again consider electrical explanations, concentrating their investigations in the fields of electrical engineering and plasma science, rather than astrophysics. Alfvén devoted chapters in his 1981 book Cosmic Plasma,⁹² to the electric circuits of the Sun, planets, and comets. But still, few astrophysicists were listening. 

Each time a comet is observed close up, we are told that our understanding of comets and the origin of the solar system will be revolutionized. But the revolution never happens. The established story about comets has become an article of faith.

The French artist Georges Braque suggested that it is always useful to have two ideas, one to challenge or dispose of the other. Astronomers have only a singleidea about comets, and the lack of competition encourages behavior that is more interpretive than investigative. In the absence of skepticism, intellectual curiosity gives way to conformity and conceit, as when NASA inscribed the words of Fred Whipple, the originator of the ‘dirty snowball’ comet model, on a microchip carried by the Stardust spacecraft in 2004: “Today we know that comets are black and cold, consisting of ices and dust that coalesced from an interstellar cloud as it collapsed to form the solar system.” We know no such thing. 

We have never observed an interstellar cloud collapsing to form a planetary system. And no gravitational accretion model has been able to explain the weird assortment of solar planets. Dusty rings and disks around stars have been discovered, but it is pure conjecture to call

Page 86:

them ‘gravitational accretion’ disks, since we also observe those stars ejectingmatter in defiance of gravity.

If comets are dirty, icy leftovers from the primordial formation of the planets, why are the nuclei so black? Why does comet dust show minerals expected to have formed at high temperatures near the Sun? How does a tiny comet nucleus produce a finely filamented plasma tail that stretches for tens of millions of kilometers across the solar system? If the tail is formed of matter evaporated from the comet by the Sun’s heat, why is the matter ejected in energetic jets? And why do comet nuclei present us with such sharply carved relief, when the surface was supposed to look like a softened ice cream melting in the Sun? The questions are legion, while the ‘explanations’ invariably come after the fact and as disconnected guesses. Yet seldom is the popular myth of comet origins questioned. 

By all appearances comet nuclei appear to be complex, cratered rocks a few kilometers in diameter. All that seems to distinguish them from those other space mountains—asteroids—is their eccentric orbits and accompanying displays in the heavens. Indeed, we now know that some asteroids occasionally exhibit cometary comas. One schizoid object, Chiron, is classified a ‘Centaur,’ named after a mythological figure that was half man, half horse. This, of course, refers to the ‘half and half’ (comet/asteroid) nature of Chiron. Yet rocky asteroids were thought to be much more evolved bodies than comets, and no one had imagined that the distinction between comets and asteroids would break down as it has in recent years. 

Space age attempts to determine the composition and structure of comets have, in fact, left Whipple’s dirty snowball model in disarray. Infrared spectra of several comets have shown the presence of the mineral olivine, which requires a temperature of between 1,100 and 1,600 Kelvin and the absence of water, to form crystals. Such a temperature would have driven off any ices. So an ad hoc requirement was added—that the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ components of a comet must be formed in separate regions of the primordial nebula and then later mixed together. Ironically, a similar problem of mixing high and low temperature components is found in meteorites, and in this case a few adventurous astronomers have attributed the enigmatic composition to the effects of lightningin the early solar nebula—an explanation at least pointing in the right direction.

Page 87: INFORMATION PANEL   [ Permalink ] 
 

Page 88:

Astronomers continue to attribute a comet’s star-like nucleus and gigantic glowing coma and filamentary tail to solar heating as it nears the Sun. But as far back as 1991, it was already apparent that something was wrong with such a simple solar heating model. Moving between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus—a distance fourteen times farther from the Sun than the Earth—Comet Halley inexplicably flared up. At that distance solar heat does not sublimate ices. But telescopes showed that the 15-kilometer nucleus had ejected a cloud of dust that stretched more than 300,000 kilometers. But under the inertia of official theory, such surprises are invariably minimized and quickly forgotten.

Repeatedly, astronomers have observed comets ejecting material in narrow jets of gas and very fine dust. Hale-Bopp emitted more dust than could be explained by subliming ices. Observations of comet jets by earth-based instruments and space probes since 1985 have revealed distinctive similarities to the discharge plumes from Jupiter’s moon, Io—though no astronomer is about to call Io a comet. And the surface of comet Tempel 1, viewed in one of our closest-ever looks at a comet nucleus, showed the same similarities to electric discharge machining (EDM) features that the Galileo probe revealed on the surface of Io. 

The violent jets seen exploding from Comet Halley in 1985, like those of Comet Borrelly in 2001, were far more energetic than could be explained by sublimation of ice in the heat of the Sun. And close-up views showed that it is not the full sunward faces of cometary nuclei but well-focused discharge jets, some on the dark side, that produce the spectacular tails of comets.

The Origin of Comets   [ Permalink ]

Because comets lose considerable material at each pass around the Sun, the ones we see cannot have been around for long. Of course more than one answer to this dilemma might have been proposed, but astronomers chose one theory in particular, and it has posed dilemmas ever since. They claimed that since the formation of the planets billions of years ago, comets have occupied the deep freeze beyond the solar system. There they form an invisible cloud of icy objects located about 1000 times farther from the Sun than Pluto, a good fraction of the way to the nearest star. 

The imagined cloud is named after Jan Oort, the astronomer who proposed the idea. After billions of years, somehow a comet is deflected from the Oort cloud into the inner solar system. The disturbance is surmised to be due to a passing star or the movement of the Sun above and below the galactic plane. But many astronomers have pointed to the lack of evidence for sporadic comet showers that such disturbances should unleash, and they have concluded that such

Page 89:

events, if they do occur, could only account for about one-fifth of the comets we see. 

Astronomer Tom Van Flandern has devised a scale model that demonstrates the implausibility of the Oort cloud theory.⁹³ If the Earth’s orbit were represented by the period at the end of this sentence and Pluto’s orbit by a circle of one-centimeter diameter, then the nearest star is 41 meters away. The Oort cloud of comets would orbit near a sphere 6 meters in diameter containing one comet per cubic millimeter. The comets would move at about 3 millimeters per 1000 years. Within this scheme they are effectively motionless with respect to the Sun. Passing stars on rare occasions will sail past at a meter per 1000 years and stir up the nearby comets. Less than 1 in 10,000 disturbed comets will be knocked onto a path that will target the 1-millimeter or so sphere surrounding the Sun where a comet might be seen from the Earth.

Having visualized this, Van Flandern makes the point that the true size of a sphere encompassing Pluto’s orbit is so vast that all of the 200 billion stars in our galaxy would fit with room to spare in that volume. He writes, “But the volume enclosed by the comet cloud is a billion times greater yet. It truly is unimaginably large, surviving as a plausible idea in large part because our intuitions fail so miserably to comprehend the vastness of this volume.” 

But the imagined Oort cloud is needed to save a cosmological theory. And even so, it leaves vast discrepancies between the theory and things that are observed. The model itself implies that a significant percentage of comets will be on ‘hyperbolic’ orbits and launched out of the solar system by the Sun’s gravity. But this is not observed. Conversely, the observed number of short-period comets (with periods of revolution less than 200 years) is two orders of magnitude more than the Oort cloud model would predict.

Comet Theory in Crisis   [ Permalink ]

Scientists at the end of the nineteenth century could see the many parallels between the behavior of a luminous comet and a laboratory glow discharge (see information panel p. 87). It was even acknowledged that the acceleration of the comet tail away from the Sun requires an electrified Sun. But in the following decades that vision was abandoned. What happened to allow this promising idea to founder, to be replaced with an inert mechanical model of a comet? 

The answer seems clear—an understanding of the plasma environment in space was lacking at that time. Irving Langmuir did not coin the word ‘plasma’ until 1927. So early electrical theories of

Page 90:

comets were based on unworkable electrostatic arguments. The idea of electricity in space quickly became anathema to astronomers. 

With the space age discovery of the solar ‘wind’ of charged particles, however, astrophysicists would have been wise to revisit the physics of gas discharges. Instead, they switched from the 19th century view of space as a perfectly insulating vacuum to the polar opposite, where space plasma was treated as a perfect conductor, trapping magnetic fields and preventing voltage differences between bodies in space. This turn, according to Alfvén, amounted to ‘pseudo-science’ and would lead to a crisis in astrophysics.⁹⁴ That alarm was raised more than 3 decades ago. It has been ignored to this day and the crisis is now upon us. 

Under the spell of theoretical assumptions, and lacking the training to recognize electrical discharge phenomena in space, astrophysicists explain comet behavior in terms of electrically neutral ‘magnetohydrodynamics.’ In other words, ‘winds’ and ‘supersonic shocks’ in electrically conducting, magnetized gas. They have ignored Alfvén’s warning that magnetic fields cannot be ‘frozen in’ to the diffuse plasma of the solar wind and the comet’s coma and tail. They are unaware that a source of electrical energy is required to produce and sustain cometary phenomena.

Consequently, the electric discharge model was not even on the table at the beginning of the space age, allowing astronomers to embrace Whipple’s dirty snowball model as the scientific consensus. An endless series of surprises followed, as when cometologists caught their first close-up look at Halley [above]:“a surprising result of the Giotto and Vega spacecraft encounters with Comet Halley in March 1986 was the discovery of a shell-like region of high plasma density...” But Alfvén wasn’t surprised. He had earlier written, “It is legitimate to conclude that space in general has a ‘cellular structure,’ although this is almost impossible to observe unless a spacecraft penetrates the ‘cell walls’ (current sheets).” ⁹⁵ In the approach to Halley, the spacecraft had penetrated the comet’s plasma cell wall, encountering a region whose stability and longevity could not be explained in terms of simple out-gassing from the comet. 

Now, after four close flybys by spacecraft and one impact event, comets are more of an enigma than ever for astronomers. On July 4, 2005, the world watched NASA astronomers on television gleefully celebrating the Deep Impact mission’s direct hit on comet Tempel 1. But later, when the cameras had gone, the astronomers were left scratching their heads in confusion. The Deep Impact team had hoped that the impactor would kick up a relatively small cloud of dust from

Page 91:

Tempel 1, dig a crater, and expose pristine icy material underneath. There was even some doubt amongst the Deep Impact team whether the spacecraft cameras would see any effect at all. Instead there was a puzzling initial flash followed by an incredible outburst of dust as fine as talcum powder—an effect that left every observer stunned. 

The New Scientist reported, “We have now had four close encounters with comets, and every one of them has thrown astronomers onto their back foot.” ⁹⁶The popular model of comets as dirty snowballs no longer fits space age discoveries. 

When a theory fails to anticipate discoveries and theorists are continually surprised by new data, it is essential that the theory be questioned. Astronomers believe that by discrediting a simplistic early electrical model of comets they had dismissed all electrical models. Is this stance justified in the light of what we now know about plasma discharge phenomena? The question can be answered by comparing the dirty snowball model with a new plasma discharge model of comets. 

In the accepted model, a comet is an aggregate of ice and dust evaporating in the heat of the Sun. In the electric model, a comet could be a solid rockdischarging as it plunges more deeply into the Sun's electric field. A proper comparison of the two models, however, will require attention to details, accentuating the contrast between two radically different perspectives. Systematic comparison can only highlight the contrasts in predictive ability—the test of a good theory.

91 K. R. Birkeland, The Norwegian Aurora Polaris Expedition, 1902-1903, Volume 1: On the Cause of Magnetic Storms and The Origin of Terrestrial Magnetism. Published 1908. 
92 H. Alfvén, Cosmic Plasma, Astrophysics and Space Library, Vol. 82, D. Reidel Publishing Co. 1981. 
93 T. Van Flandern, Dark Matter, Missing Planets & New Comets, pp. 180-1. 
94 H. Alfvén, "Plasma physics, space research and the origin of the solar system," Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1970, p. 308. 
95 H. Alfvén, Space Plasma, 1981, p. 40. 
96 S. Clark, "Comet tails of the unexpected," New Scientist, 9 September 2005.

Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Electric Comets Part 2

The following is one of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Chapter 4 - Electric Comets (Cont'd.)

Page 91:

Dirty Snowball Model

• The solar system formed billions of years ago by gravitational accretion from a primordial solar nebula, which formed a disk of interstellar dust and ices. 
   
• Gentle or 'sticky' collisions agglomerated the dust and ices into larger bodies (planetesimals). 
   
• In ways not understood, the planets then grew by 'runaway accretion' of planetesimals. 
   
• The leftover dust and gas was dispersed by a presumed energetic phase of the early Sun. 
   
• The planets found themselves in remarkably circular orbits. 
   
• Comets are supposed to be composed of undifferentiated 'protoplanetary debris' - dust and ices left over from the formation of the outer planets where temperatures in the disk were low. On this model, comets are a mixture of frozen water, carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia and about an equal amount of dust. 
   
• Comets are injected into the inner and outer solar system from a vast unseen reservoir called the 'Oort cloud.' Those in the inner solar [p 92]system contributed to an early episode of heavy bombardment of the inner planets. Those flung outward were lost or somehow 'stored' in the Oort cloud, to be occasionally disturbed back into the inner solar system by a passing star. 
   

Page 92:

• Comets in the Oort cloud are exposed to radiation, or space weathering, for billions of years. Only the upper surface layers are affected. 
   
• As the comet swings through the inner solar system, radiant heat from the Sun sublimates ices from the nucleus. The gases and accompanying dust expand around the nucleus to generate the coma and are swept back by the solar wind to form the comet's ion and dust tails. 
   
• Repeated passages around the Sun vaporize surface ice and leave a 'rind' of dust. 
   
• Pockets of gas form where solar heat penetrates the surface of the blackened, shallow crust. Energetic jets form where the gas breaks through the surface. 
   
• The comet coma is generated by the collision of gases from the comet with the solar wind. Comet comas are amongst the largest objects in the solar system. 
   
• Strange accelerations of comets are due to ‘rocket action’ of the jets from the nucleus. 
   
• Comets disintegrate because pockets of gas form inside the nucleus, solar heating increases the pressure, and the fragile nucleus fractures. 
   

Plasma Discharge Model

• The plasma discharge model of comets is inseparable from the electric Sun model. This model envisions the Sun forming in a galactic electromagnetic 'Z-pinch' at some unknown time in the past. A Zpinch is the most effective long-range scavenger of interstellar dust to form stars. Laboratory experiments show that a number of 'stars' are formed simultaneously along the axis of a Z-pinch. Once the 'pinch' subsides the stars 'scatter like buckshot.' 
   
• Planets are formed in several separate episodes of 'electrical parturition' of stars and gas giants. Stellar ‘accretion disks’ and planetary rings are in fact 'expulsion disks.' This model accounts for 'hot Jupiters' found closely orbiting their parent star. Stellar ejection of 'blobs' of matter is observed in deep space. The rings of our gas giants are evidence of past electrical expulsions. 
   
• Subsequent electromagnetic capture and circularization of planetary orbits is accompanied by interplanetary plasma arcing. 
   
• Moons, comets, asteroids, meteorites and planetary rings are debris that has been electrically expelled or torn from a planetary body. Their composition will vary depending on the parent body. 
   

Page 93:

• Comets were electrically 'machined' in their natal event. Blackened and pitted comet surfaces reflect their origin in an intense plasma discharge. Comets can be considered 'asteroids on eccentric orbits.' 
   
• Comets follow elongated paths within a weak radial electric field centered on the Sun. All solar system bodies, including comets, are negatively charged with respect to the Sun. Comets spend most of their time remote from the Sun, and while there, they adopt a voltage in keeping with that environment. 
   
• As a comet accelerates toward the Sun, it encounters a steadily rising plasma density and voltage. The strength of the electric field within the comet’s plasma sheath thus steadily increases until the plasma discharge suddenly switches from dark mode to glow mode (see information panel p. 96). 
   
• A glow discharge produces the visible coma around the nucleus. 
   
• Eventually, increasing electrical stress on the nucleus causes the discharge to switch suddenly to 'arc' mode. Cathode arcs begin to dance over the comet nucleus, giving it a star-like appearance through a telescope. 
   
• Rock is electrically 'sputtered,' particle by particle, from the surface and accelerated vertically into space in the form of wellcollimated jets, following the natural curved trajectories of particles from a 'plasma gun.' 
   
• The ejected ionized material is guided electromagnetically into a coherent comet tail. The ion tails of comets reveal well-defined Birkeland current filaments extending up to tens of millions of km without dissipating in the vacuum of space—a 'violation' of gas behavior in a vacuum. (Heated gas in a vacuum will normally disperse explosively.) 
   

• Puzzling comet behavior becomes a unified and predictable result of plasma discharge effects. The cathode-arc discharges to the nucleus produce the characteristic forms of electric discharge machining (EDM) of the comet surface, with sharply scalloped craters, terraces and mesas. 
   
• Cathode arcs tend to jump from one spot to another, which explains the sudden switching off and on of comet jets. 
   
• The wandering cathode arcs, seen as enigmatic white spots in close-up images of the comet nucleus, erode the surface and burn it black, which accounts for the surprising discovery that comet nuclei are the darkest bodies in the solar system, "blacker than copier toner." 
   

Page 94: INFORMATION PANEL   [ Permalink ] 
 

Page 95:

• Ices are not buried beneath a dirty crust. The presence of water is inferred from the hydroxyl molecule [OH] in the comet’s coma. New evidence shows that the main source of OH is the combination of hydrogen from the solar wind with negative oxygen ions, sputtered from cometary surface minerals (see information panel on facing page). ⁹⁷ 
   
• Electrical heating of the surface of the comet nucleus and the lack of cooling effect from non-existent sublimating ices accounts for the higher than expected temperatures of the comet nucleus. 
   

• The diameter of the visible coma will often reach several millions of kilometers. It is the electric force, not gravity, that enables the cometary nucleus to hold the coma in place as it careens around the Sun. 
   
• It is the electric force that accelerates the ion tails of a comet as it sweeps around the Sun. 
   
• The coma temperature (as hot as the solar corona) and the emission of X-rays are both explained as plasma discharge phenomena. 
   
• Comet nuclei behave like an electret (similar to a capacitor, but able to store electric charge for a much longer time). As such the nucleus can explode when the internal electrical stresses, caused by the discharge activity at the surface, results in an internal discharge. The many examples of an exploding comet are thus analogous to an exploding capacitor, in which the insulating dielectric suffers a spark-over and fails. The current through the dielectric causes sudden internal heating, which may explosively fragment the capacitor. 
   

97 L. Kristoferson, K. Fredga, "Laboratory Simulation of Cometary Erosion by Space Plasma," Astrophysics & Space Science 50 (1977) pp. 105-123. "the production of OH in space from 'dry,' water free matter is possible by means of molecular sputtering from several cosmically abundant types of materials." However, the production rate is too low without electrical sputtering.

Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Electric Comets Part 3

The following is one of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Page 95

Comets, Electricity and Gravity

Astronomers have calculated the mass and density of comet nuclei from their presumed gravitational effects on the trajectories of nearby spacecraft. By this reasoning, comet Halley had a density of only one tenth to one quarter that of water. But seen in close-up, all comet nuclei look like solid rock. What is going on? 

Science surprisingly takes no account of the electrical nature of matter when it comes to the related phenomena of inertial mass and gravity. It is a crucial factor here. Though we intend to take up the issue of the 'gravitational constant' in a forthcoming monograph, it is proposed that, if gravity is due to an extremely weak electric polarization of subatomic particles within charged bodies, gravitational[p97] determination of the masses and densities of celestial bodies are immediately suspect.⁹⁸

Page 96: INFORMATION PANEL   [ Permalink ] 
 

Page 97

We have suggested that the nucleus of a comet can be considered an electret. An electret is a permanently electrified substance. If it is separated into pieces, each piece will be electrified. Due to its small size, the effect of charge polarization within an electrified comet will be small. We might expect, therefore, that its gravitationally measured mass will be lower than expected for the same rocky mass if it were on the Earth's surface. In other words, if comets look like solid rock they probably are solid rock. If this model is correct, simple Newtonian calculations of density and composition that assume G is a universal constant will be misleading.

Evidence for electrical stress in comets comes from their propensity for energetic disintegration, often at large distances from the Sun where solar heating is minimal. Just as electrical breakdown of the dielectric material causes a capacitor to explode, electrical discharges from a comet surface can induce large electric fields within the subsurface rock, leading to breakdown and explosive fragmentation of the comet nucleus. 

In addition, most large comet nuclei do not exceed one billionth of the mass of the Earth. How can a piece of rock, no more than a few km wide, gravitationally hold a ten-million-kilometer-wide bubble against the force of the solar wind? The entrained envelope is extremely diffuse, but in gravitational terms it should not be there.

Something stronger than gravity is at work here. If a comet holds a large negative charge, it will give rise to an immense Langmuir plasma sheath. This vast envelope is formed and held electrically. A gravitationally trivial object can be very powerful electrically. 

The frequent erratic motions of comets must also be explained. To account for such motions, which are dubbed 'non-gravitational,' Whipple looked to the 'jets' seen erupting from the nucleus. As summarized by Francis Reddy in an obituary the day after Whipple's death in 2004, the astronomer believed that, “The jets supply a force that can either speed or slow a comet, depending on the way it rotates —a force unaccounted for in the astronomical calculations used in predicting comet returns.” ⁹⁹ So as comet Linear moved toward perihelion, a NASA release stated, “Powerful jets of gas vaporized by [p99] solar radiation have been pushing the comet to and fro.” ¹⁰⁰

Page 98: INFORMATION PANEL   [ Permalink ] 
 

  
Page 99

Astronomers applied the same interpretation to the energetic jets of Borrelly and Wild 2 (pronounced 'Vilt 2'). But in the case of Wild 2, the close-up photographs gave no indication of caverns shaped into 'jet venturis' that could confine the jets to a narrow stream and produce the measured high jet velocities. And even with velocities up to 1 km/ sec (well above the 0.25 km/sec corresponding to ice subliming into a vacuum) the jets are too weak to influence the orbit of a comet the size of a small mountain. However, if the value of the gravitational 'constant,' G, is dependent upon the electrical polarization inside a comet, strong electrical discharging will change that value. And changes in G between the Sun and a comet will directly affect the comet's orbit.

98 Astrophysicists as a whole have never considered that, if gravity is a dipolar electric force between distorted subatomic particles, similar to the 'London force' between electrically neutral molecules, then the universal 'constant' of gravitation, G, is actually a variable, dependent on the electrified state of the body. This disturbing idea is supported not just by the electrical behavior of comets, but by the fact that G on Earth is the most elusive physical 'constant' in physics. 

99 www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=2429 

100 science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast31jul_1m.htm

Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Part 4

The following is one of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Page 99

Unexplained Surface Features

When the roughly 5 kilometers-wide Comet Wild 2 was first seen in dramatic close-up, Donald Brownlee, Stardust Principal Investigator, said, “We thought Comet Wild 2 would be like a dirty, black, fluffy snowball. Instead, it was mind-boggling to see the diverse landscape in the first pictures from Stardust, including spires, pits and craters,” ¹⁰¹ features that are more likely for a solid rock than a melting, icy pile of rubble (see image [above] and on p. 101). Among the surface anomalies are two depressions with flat floors and nearly vertical walls that resemble giant footprints. They aren't structured like typical impact craters. 

Regardless, a number of scientists declared that the craters were the result of impacts—the catch-all explanation for craters in the space age. But in the vast emptiness of the outer solar system, impacts are exceedingly unlikely, and with the low relative velocities there, it is inconceivable that a small body would have attracted end-to-end cratering. 

Today, most astronomers distance themselves from the impact explanation of the Wild 2 surface. But that leaves the mystery of crater formation unsolved. Some astronomers suggested that the craters are sinkholes, formed when surface material fell into cavities left by the sublimation of buried volatiles. But the smooth, flat floors of the craters belie such an explanation. Nor is it reasonable to suggest that heat from the Sun would reach down through many meters of insulating material to remove subsurface volatiles in volumes sufficient to provoke surface collapse. And even if that were a plausible sequence, the miniscule gravity of comet nuclei is hardly sufficient to justify a comparison of their craters to terrestrial 'sinkholes.'

Page 100

A minority of astronomers came to suggest that some of the comet dilemmas could be resolved if comet nuclei were 'rubble piles.' But no comet, when seen close up, revealed surface features suggesting a heap of fragments. After the Deep Impact mission, NASA investigators publicly stated that the rubble pile hypothesis had turned out to be a “non-starter.”

The images of comet nuclei from passing spacecraft support a complex history. The surface features of Comet Borrelly [above] were described as “Earth-like.”Dr. Dan Britt, a meteoriticist in the University of Tennessee's Planetary Geosciences Institute, noted that the mesas on Borrelly resembled those in the American Southwest. In a characteristic understatement, NASA scientists described the findings as “somewhat surprising.” 

It is no overstatement to say that none of the defining features of comet nuclei has met the expectations of the Whipple model. In contrast their features are consistent with—and predictable—under the electric comet model.

Another pioneer of the electric universe, Earl Milton [above], noted in 1980 that he and Juergens had independently concluded that a comet nucleus would be scarred “like an electrode in an arc. Over time the cometary nucleus should become cratered and pitted…When a spacecraft finally achieves a rendezvous with one of the comets, scientists are going to be surprised to find a surface pitted like that of the Moon, Mars, or Mercury.” ¹⁰² At the time, scientists had never seen a comet surface. The first flyby of a comet took place 6 years later.

Other surface enigmas stand out as well. Images of Comet Wild 2 have revealed unexplained bright spots (below).

In the electrical model of comets, these are the 'touchdown' points of the cathode arcs—where electric currents between the comet and the Sun 'pinch down' on the more negatively charged nucleus of the comet. The result is analogous to electric discharge machining (EDM), etching the surface into the observed “spires, pits and craters.” They appear to be

Page 101

etched sharply into rock, offering nothing to support the idea of sublimating ice or snow (see above). The caption on the Astronomy Picture of the day lamely offers, “these features are hypothesized to be indicative of a very rigid surface sculpted by impacts and explosive sublimation. Initially, Wild 2 was expected by many to be held together only quite loosely.” ¹⁰³

Generating Comet Jets

NASA's Stardust spacecraft captured images of Comet Wild 2 on January 2, 2004. and issued a composite of the nucleus and a longer exposure highlighting the comet's jets (facing page). 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.” Instead they found more than two dozen jets that “remained intact—they did not disperse in the fashion of a gas in a vacuum.” The jets “...remained strong and coherent even hundreds of miles from the comet's surface. Stardust's very bumpy ride during its passage through the coma was an unmistakable sign of the power and strength of the jets.” ¹⁰⁴ 

Some of the jets emanated from the dark unheated side of the comet—an anomaly no one had expected. Chunks of the comet, including rocky particles as big as bullets, blasted the spacecraft as it crossed three jets. A principal investigator also spoke of energetic bursts “like a thunderbolt.” ¹⁰⁵ 

The extreme fineness, high speed and narrow trajectories of dust particles from comets has been a puzzle ever since the first flyby of Comet Halley by the Giotto spacecraft. But from an electric viewpoint these comet enigmas are easily explained: an arc impinging on a cathode or anode surface vaporizes and sputters matter from that surface; the electric field of the arc accelerates matter off the surface; an electromagnetic 'pinch effect' provides densities in the thin jets many orders of magnitude higher than those predicted from simple radial sublimation; and instabilities in the arc cause flickering and sudden relocation of jets in exceedingly short periods. 

The jets are not due to solar heating but are generated by wellfocused electric arcs wandering across the nucleus to progressively etch its surface, carving out the surface craters and flat floored valleys,

Page 102

and leaving spires and mesas, in the well-known process of cathode erosion. 

Comets are, in fact, doing exactly what the electric model would predict. Given that out-gassing from an icy nucleus should vary in proportion to available surface area, it is suspicious that now five comets, adjusted to the same heliocentric distance, should have such similar rates of 'loss of water' (based on the presence of OH in the coma). But if material is being machined electrically from very small arc footprints, the surface area of the comet and solar heating are irrelevant to the volume of removed material.

Forming Comet Comas

The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) was the first spacecraft ever to pass through a comet's coma boundary, which is misnamed a 'bow shock.' Before the encounter with Comet Giacobini- Zinner, astrophysicists were not sure whether a bow shock would be encountered at all: The boundary was called simply the 'transition region.' 

Without realizing it, the ICE mission confirmed the signature of electric current filaments in the plasma sheath. Electrical currents flow in the comet's plasma sheath and cause atoms there to glow. The currents announced themselves by the magnetic turbulence present. 

This was not the official interpretation, of course, but the observations conformed to Alfvén's earlier electric circuit model of comets. He had written, “As Venus, like the comets, has no appreciable intrinsic magnetic field, the solar wind interaction with her is likely to be essentially the same.” ¹⁰⁶ A report in Science confirmed Alfvén's prediction: “a similar field pattern [to the comet] has been observed at Venus.” ¹⁰⁷ Significantly, the magnetic field at the comet peaked at six times that found at Venus, revealing the degree to which a comet transacts electrically with the solar plasma. 

Deep Space 1 provided further evidence of electrical effects as it flew through the plasmasphere surrounding the nucleus of comet Borrelly. Mission specialists had expected that the solar wind would flow symmetrically around the coma, with the nucleus in the centre. They found that the solar wind was indeed flowing symmetrically, but the nucleus was off to one side, shooting out a great jet of material. “The shock wave is in the wrong place,” said Dr. Marc Rayman. Dr. David Young of the University of Michigan added, “The formation of the coma is not the simple process we once thought it was. Most of the charged particles are formed to one side, which is not what we

Page 103

expected at all.” One commentator said that it was like finding the shock wave from a supersonic jet a mile to the side of the aircraft! 

However, the analogy is false. The luminous crescent in the image [below] is not due to the nucleus mechanically plowing through the plasma ahead of it. In a cometary plasma sheath, the most energetic recombination will take place under the direction of the electric force some distance from the comet nucleus in the direction of the Sun.

Direct confirmation of the electric nature of the coma came unexpectedly from the ROSAT satellite when it observed Comet Hyakutake in March 1996 [above]. “We had no clear expectation that comets shine in X-rays,” said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The X-rays were as intense as those the satellite usually sees from bright X-ray stars. And the X-ray variability over a few hours was “remarkable.” The observation provoked scientists to say, “This important discovery shows that there must be previously unsuspected 'high-energy' processes taking place in the comet…”

On July 14, 2000, the Chandra telescope viewed the comet Linear repeatedly over a 2-hour period, detecting X-rays from oxygen and nitrogen ions (lower right). The observatory's press release reports: “The details of the X-ray emission, as recorded on Chandra's Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer, show that the X-rays are produced by collisions of ions racing away from the sun (solar wind) with gas in the comet. In the collision the solar ion captures an electron from a cometary atom into a high-energy state. The solar ion then kicks out an X-ray as the electron drops to a lower energy state.” ¹⁰⁸ 

The press release concludes that the Chandra observation “proves how comets produce X-rays.” Of course it doesn't prove anything of the sort: in a process of circular reasoning that has become embarrassingly common in science, the model provides the interpretation that is then claimed to prove the model. It is simply assumed that neutral gas from the comet supplies the electrons. However, that should produce a positively charged shell that would quickly repel further ions from the Sun. The alternative idea is not considered: that a comet is negatively charged and via the process of cathode sputtering supplies copious electrons and negative ions to the cometary electrical discharge. Negative cometary ions are a puzzle to astrophysicists because there is no way known of producing them to match the observed densities. ¹⁰⁹ It is now clear that these negative ions and electrons are jetted into the coma, where they combine with minor

Page 104

ions in the solar wind, giving rise to the observed soft Xrays. The combination of electrons from the comet with ions from the solar wind is, of course, an electric discharge— Nature's efficient means of X-ray production. 

The gas 'collision model' is also refuted by the observed Xray hot spots and rapid variability in intensity. Oscillatory and 'bursty' behavior is typical of plasma sheaths or double layers (see [below]).

101 www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/stardust-061704.html 

102 E. R. Milton, “Glimpses of an Electrical Cosmos,” from a lecture given at San Jose in August 1980. 

103 See APOD website for June 22, 2004. 

104 A. Alexander, “Pinnacles, Craters, and Multiple Jets: Early Results from Stardust Stun Researchers,” The Planetary Society, 17 June 2004. 

105 “Comet's Dust Clouds Hit NASA Spacecraft 'Like Thunderbolt,'”www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/06/040618070736.htm 

106 H. Alfvén, Cosmic Plasma, Vol. 82, 1981, p. 60. 

107 T. T. von Rosenvinge et al., “The International Cometary Explorer Mission to Comet Giacobini-Zinner,” Science, Vol. 232, 18 April 1986, p. 355. 

108 chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2000/c1999s4/ 

109 J. Crovisier & T. Encrenaz, Comet Science, “These [negative] ions occurred with densities 100 times greater than expected, and the discrepancy with theoretical accounts is still not well understood.”” p. 75.

Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Part 5

The following is one of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Comets and Coronal Mass Ejections

When a coronal mass ejection greeted Comet NEAT, space scientists called it a spectacular “coincidence.” But in an electric universe such events deserve a second look.

In 2003, as comet NEAT raced through the extended solar atmosphere, a large coronal mass ejection (CME) exploded from the Sun and appeared to strike the comet, causing a 'kink' to propagate down the comet's tail (see lower left). Of course, for solar physicists, the timing of the mass ejection could have no connection to the approach of the comet. However, SOHO has recorded several instances of comets plunging into the solar corona in 'coincidental' association with CMEs. 

But how would an electric Sun respond to the approach of a relatively small but strongly charged object? In electrical terms, the influence of the comet could be far more significant than its trivial mass in relation to the Sun. Alfvén considered CMEs to be caused by a breakdown or breach of the Sun's double layer—an event that provokes an explosive exchange between the insulating plasma cell of the Sun and that of the comet. Hence, it not unreasonable at all to ask if a collision of a comet's sheath with that of the Sun would cause a 'short-circuit' that could trigger such an explosion.

When Comets Break Apart

As Comet Linear passed its closest distance to the Sun, it was at its brightest and a prominent dust tail had appeared. Suddenly it fragmented into 'mini-comets' (see facing page [below]). Astronomers could find no good reason for its explosive demise. External heat, warming a kilometers-wide chunk of ice, will produce sublimation of the ice but will have virtually no effect a few inches beneath the surface. Many comet watchers began to consider seriously whether comets are actually loosely aggregated collections of 'mini-comets' that fly apart when disturbed. But the prior picture of Halley, reinforced by the subsequent close-ups of Borrelly, Wild 2 and Tempel 1, clearly refutes this idea.

Page 105

At the opposite extreme, Comet West never approached closer than 30 million kilometers to the Sun (half the distance of Mercury). So astronomers were shocked when, in 1976, the comet split into four fragments. Comet Wirtanen fragmented in 1957 a little inside the orbit of Saturn, and something similar occurred to Comet Biela/ Lambert. In fact, eighty percent of comets that split do so when they are far from the Sun, according to Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan in their book Comet. 

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.¹¹⁰ Discussing the 'sun-grazing' comets, he noted that two instances, 1882 II and 1965 VIII, looked as if they had split apart near aphelion (their farthest distance from the Sun), well beyond the orbit of Neptune and far above the ecliptic plane. Moreover, the relative velocity of debris separation was far greater than could be due to solar heating. “One really does require an explanation when the velocity of separation is some 20% of the velocity of the comet itself!” [Emphasis in original paper.] 

Such energetic behavior, however, may be expected of an electric comet. Discharges within a comet nucleus are equivalent to the subterranean lightning that causes earthquakes—and just as unpredictable. The resultant 'comet quake' has equivalent destructive power and causes the comet to fragment. 

According to Sagan and Druyan, “the [splitting] problem is left unsolved.” But they appear to have found a clue without recognizing its significance. “Splitting and jetting may be connected.… At the moment Comet West split, the individual fragments brightened noticeably, and propelled large quantities of dust into space in the first of some dozen bursts.”¹¹¹ The same could be said for the more recent Comet Linear breakup. 

Sudden brightening and explosions of dust are expected to accompany the electrical fragmentation of a comet nucleus as charge is exchanged more furiously with the solar wind over a greater total surface area. 

The more sudden the change in a comet's electrical environment, the more likely that flaring and fragmentation will occur. As we earlier noted, NASA scientists were astonished to observe a remarkable 300,000 km wide flare-up of comet Halley between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. (Under the assumptions of the 'snowball' theory,

Page 106

the nucleus should be frozen and inert at that distance.) But the event was no accident. It followed some of the largest solar flares ever recorded. 

At the nearest point in its orbit to the Sun, a comet nucleus suffers the maximum electrical stress. This usually results in an increase in brightness of the nucleus due to a larger number of cathode arcs operating simultaneously and more powerfully, explosively removing more solid material into space to form the dust and ion tails. Both of these conditions were noted in the case of Comet Linear, suggesting that the comet was progressing toward an internal discharge. 

So it is not surprising to find that fragmentation of comet nuclei is a common occurrence for long-period comets crossing the plane of the ecliptic—where the Sun's current density is highest in the solar wind. They break up not because they are chunks of ice 'warming' in the Sun, and not because they are aggregations of smaller bodies, but because of electrical discharges within the nucleus itself.

Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3

Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 provides a case study in electrical fragmentation. The comet was first observed in 1930 and named after its two German discoverers. It completes an orbit every 5.4 years, a path that takes it from just beyond the orbit of Jupiter to inside the orbit of Earth. It does not visit the more remote regions of the solar system where the spectacular 'Great Comets' spend long periods adjusting in that more negative environment of the Sun's domain before racing sunward. What Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 does exhibit, however, is a highly elliptical (elongated) orbit, so in electrical terms that means more rapid transit through the Sun's electric field and more intense electrical stresses inside the comet nucleus than would be the case were the comet moving on a less eccentric path. 

From its discovery until 1995, it was little more than a footnote in comet science. The first appearance of the comet that year was so bright that astronomers hailed it as a new comet. But as it turned out, the newcomer was Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, presenting itself in more glorious dress than ever before, despite the fact that conditions were not favorable. It was 240 million kilometers away but shining hundreds of times more brightly than expected. 

In early 1996, astronomers discovered that the comet had fragmented into at least three pieces, an occurrence clearly linked to the spectacular brightening, though no one could say what caused the event. It also appeared that one or more of the pieces were breaking into secondary fragments.

When the comet returned in 2000, it was again brighter than expected, with indications that the disintegration was continuing—or

Page 107

even accelerating. Then, with its most recent appearance, the best Hubble images showed dozens of fragments, suggesting the possibility of complete dissolution in a single remaining passage around the Sun. 

One astronomer offered this explanation of the comet's fragmentation: “It's like pouring hot coffee into a glass that's been in the fridge. The glass shatters from the shock.”¹¹² But that is not a realistic analogy. The comet is a solid heated from the outside, not a shell heated from the inside. Attributing fragmentation to internal heat stress must explain how heat can be transferred rapidly through hundreds of meters of insulating material, something inconceivable even if you ignore the deep freeze through which the comet is moving, with its sunward face continually changing due to rotation. 

In addition to citing possible thermal stresses, the Hubble Space Telescope website offers other possibilities as to why comets might disintegrate so explosively: “They can also fly apart from rapid rotation of the nucleus, or explosively pop apart like corks from champagne bottles due to the outburst of trapped volatile gases.”¹¹³ But the centrifugal forces acting on comet nuclei are very small. And to posit heating in the middle of a kilometers-wide dirty ice cube is, again, scientifically indefensible. 

Perhaps, then, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 “was shattered by a hit from a small interplanetary boulder,”¹¹⁴ offered one of the astronomers quoted above. “Well, make that a series of one-in-a-trillion hits,” mused a critic of today's comet science. “That way we can explain the continuing fragmentation over years.”

When Asteroids Become Comets

According to recent scientific reports, astronomers are “rethinking long-held beliefs about the distant domains of comets and asteroids, abodes they've always considered lightyears apart.” The discovery of asteroids sporting comas has forced astronomers to speculate that some asteroids are actually “dirty snowballs in disguise.” 

For many years the standard view of asteroids asserted that they are composed of dust, rock, and metal and that most occupy a belt between Mars and Jupiter. In contrast, comets were claimed to arrive from a home in deep space, most coming from the imagined 'Oort Cloud' at the outermost reaches of the solar system.

But now, “the locales of comets and asteroids may not be such a key distinction,”states Dan Vergano, reporting on the work of two

Page 108

University of Hawaii astronomers, Henry Hsieh and David Jewitt.¹¹⁵ In a survey of 300 asteroids lurking in the asteroid belt, the astronomers detected three objects that “look a lot like comets … ejecting little comet tails at times from their surfaces.”¹¹⁶ The three red circles in the illustration on the previous page describe the orbits of these 'comet-like' asteroids. One large (140 km) object, Chiron, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, is classified as both an asteroid and a comet. Chiron's orbit is highly eccentric, with perihelion just inside the orbit of Saturn and aphelion just inside the orbit of Uranus. 

In the electric view, there is no real distinction between a comet and an asteroid, apart from their orbits. Thus, both Chiron and the illustration make the point for us: the red circles show greater variations in orbital distances from the Sun.

110 B. G. Marsden, "The Sungrazing Comet Group," Astronomical Journal, Vol. 72, p.1170, 1967. 
111 C. Sagan & A. Druyan, COMET, pp. 246-7. 
112 www.smh.com.au/news/world/comets-breakup-has-scientists-ringside-for-show-ofa-lifetime/2006/04/30/1146335611925.html 
113 hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/18/image/a 
114 science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/24mar_73p.htm 
115 H. Hsieh & D. Jewitt, "A Population of Comets in the Main Asteroid Belt," 
Science, Vol 312, 28 April 2006, pp. 561-3. 
116 www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2006-03-26-comet-abode_x.htm

Excerpts From The Electric Universe 
Part 6

The following is one of a series of excerpts from The Electric Universe, copyright © 2002, 2007 Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott and published by Mikamar Publishing. Reproduced with the kind permission of the authors and publisher. 

Presented by Dave Smith

Page 108

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

The famous collisions of fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9) with Jupiter provide a spectacular confirmation that comets have a store of energy in addition to their kinetic energy. On 7 July 1992, SL-9 grazed past the giant planet Jupiter a mere 20,000 km above the cloud tops. It had penetrated deep into Jupiter's huge plasma sheath. As it switched suddenly from the Sun's electrical environment to that of Jupiter, it would have experienced extraordinary internal electrical stress. Unsurprisingly, it broke up. In fact, after the main disruption event some of the fragments split further in the rapidly changing electrical environment. It is this tendency to fragment, when gravitational and rotational forces are far too weak to explain it, that gives rise to the idea expressed by some astronomers that comets are a pile of fragments. 

The fragments of SL-9 returned to collide with Jupiter during the week of 16–22 July 1994. Some astronomers predicted that the fragments were too small to have much effect. “There's a chance we will see very little,” hedged Eugene Shoemaker, late of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and co-discoverer of the comet, shortly before the event. Since SL-9 had done nothing to distinguish itself before it broke up— it couldn't be found in images taken before the break-up—astronomer Brian Marsden surmised that it was 1 to 2 kilometers in diameter. “It's

Page 109

going to be tough to see much,” he concluded. “I don't think there's going to be a very large explosion.” But planetary physicist Jay Melosh summed up the uncertainty, “Theoreticians are often wrong, especially in predicting things.” ¹¹⁷As we know, the spectacle exceeded all expectations. But were the collisions simply impacts in a purely mechanical sense—or did the electric charge of the comet fragments contribute significantly to the event?

Initially, the dazzling display baffled astronomers because there were remarkable electrical phenomena. Renée Prange of the French Institute Astrophysique Spatiale, a member of the Hubble upper atmosphere imaging team, saw 'northern lights.' Ultraviolet images showed glowing streaks in Jupiter's northern hemisphere which appeared as almost mirror images of glows from the impact site of fragment 'G' in the southern hemisphere. According to Dr. Prange, the northern glows appeared farther south than ever before: “I think it's a major discovery.” The Jovian auroral displays appeared to be triggered by electrically charged particles released during the impacts in the south following a looping arc northward along the planet's magnetic field until they fell back into the planet's atmosphere, creating a glow in the north. According to Dr. Prange, it is still unclear whether the particles were comet dust that became electrically charged as it fell through the planet's magnetic field or gas molecules from the planet that became charged in the heat of the fragment's impact and explosion.¹¹⁸ 

Then, after a year's analysis “by hundreds of talented scientists,” Nature¹¹⁹issued a consensus report: “First seen was a faint glow that slowly increased in brightness on a time-scale of tens of seconds, believed to be due to a large number of small meteors in the coma surrounding each SL-9 fragment. The meteor shower was followed by a sharp increase in brightness as the main part of the fragment entered the Jovian atmosphere…. A few tens of seconds later, a fireball exploded up the 'chimney' created in the atmosphere by the bolide.” 

The explanation for the initial glow, coming after the fact, only served to confirm the power of ideology in comet science. In electrical terms, the charged comet fragments would be expected to exhibit a glowing coma as they approached Jupiter. The glow would increase until a sudden arc discharge would occur between Jupiter and the comet fragment. The steep increase in brightness that astronomers observed has more in common with a lightning flash than the lightcurve of a bright bolide's entry into the Earth's atmosphere. In fact, it

Page 110

was expected that the fragments would flare several times like fireballs that enter the Earth's atmosphere.¹²⁰ That didn't happen. 

As we shall see, there is no evidence that the fragments entered the atmosphere. That and the fireball exploding up a 'chimney' are simply presuppositions of the impact model. And there were many other anomalies for the impact model. 

In Jupiter's plasma environment, we can expect electrical forces to affect the trajectories of the charged comet fragments. Such forces would cause deviations from expected impact times. And in fact impact times were on average 8 minutes later than expected.¹²¹ 

One of the largest pieces, fragment G, showed spectral evidence of magnesium when it was just 10 hours from impact. Such metals only show up when comets graze around the Sun. But whatever was tearing magnesium from the fragment as it sped in through Jupiter's magnetosphere couldn't drive off enough water to be detectable. That failure to observe water gave rise to questioning whether the comet might be an asteroid. After all, only the fuzziness of SL-9 identified it as a comet, and some asteroids have been observed occasionally to show fuzziness.¹²² 

The electrical comet model explains each and every mystery of SL-9. An electric comet is as dry as an asteroid. The 'fuzziness' of a comet is due to electric currents flowing in its plasma sheath, causing the sheath to glow. When the electrical stress increases beyond a threshold, the plasma in the sheath will establish arcs at the surface, which will machine dust and atoms, such as magnesium, from the minerals there. That this should occur shortly before the collision is not surprising: Jupiter's magnetosphere is the most active electrical environment for a comet outside a close encounter with the Sun. 

Dr. Earl Milton, before the above paper was published, wrote, “When comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 meets Jupiter, spectral changes in the comet's tails might become conspicuous once the comet leaves the solar wind and enters Jupiter's electrosphere [magnetosphere or plasma sheath]. This part of the encounter precedes by hours the meeting of the nuclei with Jupiter's atmosphere.”¹²³ Here we see the contrast between an old hypothesis that should be discarded and a better one. The electric comet hypothesis has explanatory and predictive power. 

The Galileo spacecraft on its way to Jupiter, the Hubble Space Telescope, and many terrestrial observatories tracked the fragments as

Page 111

they approached Jupiter. Their data highlighted another mystery. Some collisions that were calculated to occur just beyond Jupiter's limb and that should have been invisible to all but the Galileo spacecraft were seen from the Earth. In a NASA news report,¹²⁴ Dr. Andrew Ingersoll said, “In effect we are apparently seeing something we didn't think we had any right to see.” “It seems clear that something was happening high enough to be seen beyond the curve of the planet,” said Dr. Torrence V. Johnson of JPL. The predictable electrical event prior to the fragment striking Jupiter's upper atmosphere, did indeed occur. 

Chemical analyses threw up more mysteries. Sulphur, ammonia, carbon disulphide and glowing acetylene and methane heated by the collisions were found—but no water or even an oxygen-bearing molecule. This is a problem because the current theory of Jupiter's structure requires a layer of water clouds below the top clouds of ammonia. Present theories of the formation of the Solar System require that both Jupiter and comets have water—yet no one found signs of any water at all. 

According to Dr. Lucy McFadden of the University of Maryland, “It is disturbing. This means either that our modeling is not correct, or the comet exploded before it reached Jupiter's water layers.” But SL-9 was originally classified as a comet because its fragments each appeared to have a 'coma,' assumed to be a halo of water vapor, dust and gas.¹²⁵ An explosion above the hypothetical water layers of Jupiter would still not explain why none of the comet's own water turned up. That leaves only the first half of McFadden's either-or: “our modeling is not correct.” 

What, then, were the vertical jets seen rising three thousand kilometers above Jupiter's atmosphere and known as 'plumes?' And what were the crescent-shaped dark features that resulted from the fallback of the plume onto the atmosphere? The dark material came to be known technically as the 'brown stuff,' its nature unknown ([below]).

Melosh suggested that the comet fragments would penetrate Jupiter's atmosphere so deeply before exploding that they would be swallowed up and we would see very little. Others proposed that each fragment would dig a 'tunnel of fire' in Jupiter's atmosphere before exploding and sending a plume of hot atmospheric and cometary material from the top of the tunnel into space. This was the 'plume' model that was explored to try to explain the strange dark fallout pattern.

Page 112

However, the plume model could not explain the clear zone between the dark core and the crescent. Nor could it explain the radial lines dissecting the crescent. 

Ironically, the answers to the puzzles come from Jupiter's closest moon, Io. In November 1979, the noted astrophysicist Thomas Gold proposed that the gigantic plumes on Io are not volcanic but evidence of electrical discharging.¹²⁶Years later, a paper by Peratt and Alex Dessler followed up Gold's suggestion, showing that the discharges took the form of a 'plasma gun effect,' which produces a parabolic plume profile, filamentation of the matter within the plume, and the termination of the plume onto a thin annular ring.¹²⁷ These are precisely the effects seen in the encounter of SL-9 with Jupiter.

All of the unexplained oddities begin to make sense, if a plasma discharge occurred between the highly charged comet fragments and Jupiter's ionosphere. The electromagnetic pinch of the plasma gun effect preferentially heats ions to temperatures far hotter than the Sun and produces the bright, lightning-like flash and subsequent glow. That is why the light from fragments that were expected to impact beyond the limb was unexpectedly visible. The light from a discharge at 3,000 km above Jupiter's cloud tops would have been visible from Earth. The electrical nature of the event will also explain why comet fragments of differentsizes created fireballs of the same height.¹²⁸ The discharges occurred as different fragments penetrated the same 'double layer' of Jupiter's plasma sheath. 

A plasma discharge would also explain why the expected compounds, such as water, from deeper cloud layers were not seen in the plumes. The comet fragment is vaporized and ionized by the energy of the discharge. Constrained by powerful electromagnetic forces, the silicate particles and other ionized compounds from the rocky comet form the warm plume and crescent-shaped fallout pattern of 'brown stuff.' 

What was the 'brown stuff?' The Hubble Space Telescope found “most surprising were the strong signatures from sulfur-bearing compounds like diatomic sulfur (S2)...”¹²⁹ However, S2 is a molecule with a very short lifetime and its origin is unknown. “The origin of sulfur in ..comets remains enigmatic.”¹³⁰ If we return to Io, we find that the 'plasma gun' effect there has covered the moon with colorful

Page 113

sulfur molecules, including red and brown variants. A large quantity of oxygen was observed in the SL-9 events at Jupiter. So it seems likely that the sulfur was formed by fusing two oxygen atoms together in the powerful plasma discharges to form one sulfur atom. Originally, Io was probably an icy moon like its Galilean siblings. 

There was no water from the comet, and Jupiter's deeper cloud layers, if they did contain water, were not pulled into the plume. Jupiter's magnetic field is probably responsible for most of the rotation, asymmetry, and offset of the plasma gun discharge pattern. 

It may be that children listening on their school's radio telescope provided the most significant observation of all: they said that the SL-9 collisions were accompanied by bursts of radio emissions “just like those from sunspot activity on the sun.”¹³¹ 

The New Scientist called this “Jupiter's surprise radio broadcast.”¹³²Astronomers had expected radio emissions at high frequencies to diminish and to hear the comet crash clearly at low frequencies. Instead, nothing happened at low frequencies while emissions around 2–3 gigahertz rose by 20 to 30%. “Never in 23 years of Jupiter observations have we seen such a rapid and intense increase in radio emission,” said Michael Klein of JPL. The radio emission peaked on 23 July, just after the last comet fragment hit, and it declined thereafter. Klein had expected dust from the comet to absorb electrons, which otherwise might contribute to radio emissions. “Instead, extra electrons were supplied by a source which, as yet, is a mystery.” But it is no mystery. Like all comets, SL-9 was negatively charged, its fragments supplying copious electrons for the radio emissions. 

The fate of SL-9 thus provides a consistent picture of the electric comet. The picture includes the original break-up and and subsequent further fragmentation of the comet, plus the surprising events that occurred in the 1994 impact with Jupiter: the bright plumes above the Jovian atmosphere; the sightings of 'impossibly' energetic events from Earth; the associated Jovian auroral displays; the absence of water in the vaporized debris; and the lack of the expected constituents from Jupiter's atmosphere, all pointing to the termination of each fragment's flight in spectacular flashes before it entered Jupiter's atmosphere.

117 R. A. Kerr, Science, Vol. 265, 1 July 1994, pp. 31-2. 
118 The Baltimore Sun, 21 July 1994, p. 12A. 
119 P. J. T. Leonard, “Impact consensus emerges,” Nature, Vol. 375, 1 June 1995, p. 358. 
120 Z. Sekanina, “Disintegration Phenomena Expected During Collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter,” Science Vol. 262, 15 October 1993, pp. 382-3. 
121 H. B. Hammel et al, “HST Imaging of Atmospheric Phenomena Created by the Impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9,” Science, Vol. 267, 3 March 1995, p. 1288. 
122 Science, Vol. 265, 19 August 1994, p. 1030. 
123 E. R. Milton, private correspondence, 24 July 1994. 
124 www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/94/release_1994_9465.html 
125 Baltimore Evening Sun, 20 July 1994, p. 9A. 
126 T. Gold, “Electrical Origin of the Outbursts on Io,” Science, Vol. 206, 30 November 1979, pp. 1071-3. 
127 A. L. Peratt, A. J. Dessler, “Filamentation of Volcanic Plumes on the Jovian Satellite Io,”Astrophysics and Space Science 144 (1988) pp. 451-61. 
128 Sky & Telescope News, “Astronomers discuss Comet Crash,” November 4, 1994. 
129 NASA News Release 94-161, “Hubble Observations Shed New Light on Jupiter Collision,” p. 3.2.
130 J. Crovisier & T. Encrenaz, Comet Science, p. 49. 
131 BBC Radio 4 Science Now, 19 July 1994. 
132 New Scientist, 20th August 1994, p. 17.

Email this article to a friend 

Public comment may be made on this article on the 
Thunderbolts Forum/Thunderblogs (free membership required). 

To read more from Wal Thornhill please visit: holoscience.com