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New scientific reports are providing spectacular details
on the comet Siding Spring's close encounter with the planet Mars.
According to NASA investigators the effects of the encounter
on the martian magnetosphere were as dramatic as they were surprising.
In October of 2014 the comet passed within 87,000 miles of the Red planet
and scientists with NASA's MAVEN mission
were amazed at the effects on Mars' upper atmosphere.
MAVEN team member Jared Espley said in a recent statement,
"We think the encounter blew away part of Mars' upper atmosphere,
much like a strong solar storm would...
The main action took place during the comet's closest approach,
but the planet's magnetosphere begin to feel some effects
as soon as it entered the outer edge of the comet's coma.
A statement from the MAVEN team reads,
"A Mars comet flyby caused a merging of magnetic fields from the comet and Mars.
NASA was in the right place at the right time and was able to study
what happens to a planet when a comet comes extremely close to a planet".
Earlier NASA reports had described the cometary encounter adding a
"very strong layer of ions to the ionosphere of Mars".
The electrical model of comets predicts an electrical exchange
between comet Siding Spring and the planet Mars.
When the coma of the comet touched the magnetosphere of the planet
and the two bodies could "see each other electrically for the first time"
the magnetic disturbances in cometary ions and the martian ionosphere
are due to the electric current flowing between the two bodies.
However these events can only seem mysterious to comet scientists
since the current standard comet model still characterizes comet as dirty snowball.
We are still told that comet's most dramatic phenomena
including the production of the familiar jets in coma
are the result of ices sublimating on the comet nucleus due to solar heating.
In this model, solar heating produces a comet's coma
which interacts with the solar wind to create a cometary magnetosphere.
However, both of those recent findings on the plasma environment of comet 67P
and countless enduring mysteries of comets dating back many decades
point to a much more dynamical electrical nature of comets.
Comets can produce outbursts or in some instances even disintegrated or exploded
while on vast distances from the Sun,
much too far to explain the events by solar heating.
Conversely, numerous comets have survived
seemingly impossibly close encounters with the Sun.
This includes the Lovejoy comet C 2011 W3
whose nucleus survived intact after about 1 hour
in the extraordinary conditions of the Sun's corona.
In the Electric Universe comets acquire a
"negative charge with respect to the Sun in their time at the outer reaches of the solar system"
Cometary activity increases as the comet experiences
a rapidly rising voltage differential in its environment.
A comet will begin to electrically discharge when the electric field at the nucleus
exceeds the breakdown voltage of surface atoms.
It's gonna happen suddenly when the comet's plasma sheet or coma
hits a plasma boundary in the solar wind
or that of a planet's magnetosphere or plasmasphere.
It was this understanding that led the Thunderbolts project's chief science adviser,
Wal Thornhill, to successfully predict the advanced electrical flash
that stunned NASA investigators when an 800 pound copper projectile
collided with the comet Tempel 1 in 2005.
For a profound demonstration of a comet experiencing a dramatic voltage spike
let us look back again to the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's encounter with Jupiter in 1994.
At the time, astronomers were predicting that the encounter would be
as trivial as pebbles falling into an ocean.
However, the energetic effects of the comet fragments
were astronomically greater than anything comet scientists had anticipated.
As reported by Sky and Telescope,
"When fragment 'A' hit the giant planet, it threw up a fireball so unexpectedly bright
that it seemed to knock the world's astronomical community off its feet.
The Hubble Space Telescope detected a flare-up of fragment 'G' of Shoemaker-Levy
while the fragment was some 2.3 million miles away from Jupiter.
Then, with the impact of tiny fragment 'A',
Hubble detected unusually energized auroral activity.
Radiation belts were disrupted and unexpectedly bright x-ray emissions occurred.
Why would a minuscule impactor provoke an explosion of electron activity
on the solar system's largest gas giant?
Another mystery arose as well.
It happened at the galileo spacecraft was positioned 150 million miles away from Jupiter
at an angle that gave it a ringside seat for arrival of the first fragments of the comet.
But the impact of the first fragments would be hidden from Earth behind Jupiter's Limb.
So, it was a major surprise when our earth-based observatories
actually saw some of the "impacts" started at the same time galileo.
That means the explosion actually began
well before the first fragments physically hit Jupiter.
Just as in the advanced electrical flash prior to the impact of comet Tempel 1 in 2005.
Mission scientists said at the time,
"In effect we are 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".
In a recent five-part video compilation Dr Franklin Anariba,
a specialist in electrochemistry, offered his extensive analysis
of several papers from the Rosetta mission to comet 67P.
Among the findings doctor Anariba discussed,
was the discovery of electric fields and fast moving electrons
surprisingly close to the comet nucleus
and the evidence that electrochemical processes via electron stripping
may be responsible for the production of water molecules in the comet's coma.
While such processes are not yet part of the astronomical lexicon
we do see the beginnings of recognition in the published literature
of surprisingly dynamic electrical comet activity.
In Rosetta paper on the electron environment of the comet
the authors state that fast moving electrons
"Are accelerated by an unknown mechanism from a few eV
upward to 100 s of eV and play an important role in the electron-neutral chemistry
as well as in dust grain charging."
However, as Dr. Anariba has stated, from an electrical perspective,
electron acceleration is due to the point charge sitting in an electric field
which is an indication of the presence of a voltage differential.
Yet the concept of objects such as comets experiencing "voltage differentials"
is not well developed nor understood in astronomical circles.
In contrast, the concepts of the Electric Universe dispose of earlier concepts
such as charge neutrality in space.
The electrical phenomena associated with comets
may be critical in advancing astronomy
to a better understanding of our electric universe.
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