Comet Siding Spring
The discovery occurred on January 3rd, 2013 -
a comet racing toward the inner Solar System, it just past the orbit of Jupiter.
at the time of the discovery the comet was 670 million miles
from the Sun - that's about 7 times the distance from the Earth to the
Sun. So, why would a comet begin discharging in such a remote deep freeze? The first to
observe the comet was Robert McNaught at the Siding Spring Observatory in
Australia - that's the name, C/2013 A1 Siding Spring. Calculations soon showed
that the comets trajectory could bring it into a collision with the planet Mars,
but whether the comet's arrival would lead to a collision with Mars, or a near
collision, cameras on the surface of Mars and in orbit around the planet could
record the event. And, that possibility provoked excitement amongst comet
investigators and planetary scientists exploring Mars and its environment.
New calculations soon gave more precise figures for the comet's trajectory.
It would not collide with Mars, but approach the planet within some 88,000 miles (well
under half the distance from Earth to the Moon). Under standard comet theory
this would be a visitor from the conjectured Oort cloud, surrounding our
Sun in a remote space. So, comet scientists expected that instruments on
the surface of mars and in telescopes orbiting mars would provide an
unprecedented look at the ingredients of an Oort Cloud comet.
"Comet Siding Spring - an Oort Clod comet that may contain material from
the formation of the Solar System some 4.6 billion years ago."
Estimates place the size of the comet in under a half mile in diameter, however
that calculation was not based on direct observation of the nucleus - it was
derived initially from assumptions about water production astronomers just
assumed that the hydroxyl molecules initially detected were created by water
molecules from sublimating ices interacting with ultraviolet light from
the Sun. That would require heating at the comet's surface up to the level
necessary for surface ices to sublimate. Icy surfaces in Jupiter's deep freeze
do not sublimate even close to the rate of water production that we observe
with an active comet at such distances. That's not a fact to be ignored, and keep
in mind that laboratory experiments decades ago had already demonstrated the
production of hydroxyl electrochemically with no contribution from water.
For electrical theorists, that's the overriding question:
would electrochemistry play a role,
possibly an indispensable role, in the encounter?
Well prior to its arrival at the Martian orbit, the comet was ejecting dust at three
times the rate projected by theory, and the velocity at the ejected dust
particles was more than double expectation.
That mystery has yet to be resolved.
Of course, the electrical theorists were most interested in any contribution of
negative charge from the comet to the upper atmosphere of Mars.
On its arrival at the Martian orbit, Siding Spring was traveling about
35 miles per second and the effects of the planet's entry into the tail of the
comet were quite spectacular and almost instantaneous explosion of electrons in
the margin upper atmosphere. Investigators speculated that this blast
of electrons was due to ionization of cometary dust. The dust particles must
have collided with air molecules from Mars stripping away free electrons but,
even at its surface, the Martian atmosphere is well under 1% of
the density of Earth's atmosphere and the uppermost region, the ionosphere, of Mars
is an extraordinarily rarefied layer. Could ionizing collisions actually explain
the remarkable changes in electron density, a sudden doubling in the
electron count? We can only pose the question here, since data is still
sparse but electron densities in the vicinity of comets have puzzled
scientists since the first encounter with a comet in the mid 80's.
That was when more than one probe reached Comet Halley to find a density of
negatively charged particles, forbidden by prevailing theory.
Earlier theoretical challenges should not be ignored when new discoveries bring
similar challenges. Could the litany of comet mysteries be due most fundamentally
to a theoretical mistake, a failure to see the electrical nature of these bodies?
It was the most ambitious undertaking in the history of comet science: the
European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to Comet 67P Churyumov/Gerasimenko.
The probe was launched on March 2, 2004 beginning a 10 year journey
to 67P arriving at the comet in the summer of 2014. Following orbital
corrections from May through July 2014, the Rosetta craft was placed in orbit
around the 67P nucleus. Then, in August and September, onboard instruments began
gathering data including the first mapping of the surface. It would orbit
the comet nucleus for well over a year and the mission would include the
anticipated touchdown of a lander named Philae, on the surface of the comet.
From the moment of Rosetta's arrival at 67P,
investigators faced a succession of surprises, all told, a challenge to every
standard assumption about a comet as a 'dirty snowball'. The unsolved mysteries
included two distinct lobes joined as one by an improbably narrow neck; no
appreciable water ice, even in the most active regions of the nucleus, for theory
would require at the very least some hint of ice at the source of the comet's jets.
The rudimentary molecular building blocks of the Solar System billions of years ago -
nowhere to be found. Though, confirming such stardust in comets was an original
purpose of the mission. A rock-like surface, partially covered by dust, but so hard
that the Philae lander bounced off the surface and was nearly lost.
Fields of rocky debris scattered across the surface, all suggesting formative processes
flatly disallowed by the standard theory about of a 'dirty snowball'.
Exposure of cliffs with well-defined terracing, but no common orientation, just a jumble
of segmented blocks (as if) carelessly thrown together. Pervasive small
nodules that should not be there but are seen embedded in the surface relief
wherever the hard surface is exposed. So-called 'sand dunes' and wind-streaks in
the regions of gathered dust with no wind available, in the extreme vacuum of
space, to create them. A bizarre alignment of the wind-streaks, north to south, but no
reason given for this consistent directionality; baffling changes in the
dust configurations during the period of observation, something never expected and
too (obviously) prohibited under standard assumptions.
Acceleration of voluminous dust away from the comet at velocities simply
unachievable by mere sublimation of surface volitiles; absence of any
openings to the imagined pressure chambers beneath the surface, the supposed
sources of the comet's jets. And, no energy profiles of the jets that would
be consistent with the theorized the explosive release of pressurized gases.
The confinement of the comet's jets in narrow filaments, in stark contrast to the
well-known explosive expansion of pressurized gases in a vacuum.
Enigmatic electromagnetic oscillations, or so-called sounds of the comet.
A cloud of high-energy electrons close to the nucleus, though the presumed
neutral body and neutral space gives no electrodynamic basis for such charge
separation. Abundances of molecular oxygen, or O2, though this molecule is far
too reactive to survive across the imagined epochs of Solar System evolution.
Concentrations of hydroxyl ions and water molecules in the coma with
virtually no water on the surface to account for them. From one comet visit to
another, it seems that the mysteries have only deepened.
But, the first requirement for progress in science is to make sense of the
surprises; if every major discovery comes as a surprise, that pattern demands a new
theoretical framework: comets are not what we thought ...
In the review that follows, we will show detail by detail that the great surprises of
comet science are, in fact, the predictions of an electric comet model.