Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™
at Thunderbolts.info
For almost three years on this channel,
we have reported on the theory-shattering discoveries
from the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to Comet 67P.
While science media celebrated the first-ever landing of a space probe on a comet nucleus,
the actual findings of the mission ultimately falsified
the more than half century old, "Dirty Snowball Comet" hypothesis.
Increasingly fine images of the Comet's surface
provoked deeper and deeper expressions of surprise from investigators.
The most notable surprise was that the comet was, in the words of one ESA scientist,
"dry like hell" and its rubble-strewn terrain
seem to bear a greater resemblance to the American Southwest
than the slowly sublimating snowball envisioned by Fred Whipple.
But proponents of the Electric Universe theory,
as it is proposed by the chief principals of The Thunderbolts Project,
were not surprised by the geology of the comet nucleus.
The tortured and complex cometary terrain seems to fit perfectly with the radical theory
that comets were excavated by electrical discharges from planets and moons.
No geological feature on the comet was more surprising than its sand dunes,
a planetary feature that is thought to require an atmosphere
that can produce mechanical winds.
The initial response of some scientists around the world was borderline disbelief.
As planetary geologist and blogger Emily Lakdawalla wrote in October 2014,
"Other features are odd because they look familiar and yet have no right being on a comet.
I've called them 'rhythmic ridges' but to pretty much everyone who looks at them,
they look like sand dunes.
Which are just plain impossible
on a body that has neither atmosphere nor much of any gravity."
The comet's sand dunes were not the only evidence
for the seemingly impossible "winds" acting on the comet.
In fact, images revealed well over a dozen rocks or boulders
which appeared to have so-called streaks of wind trailing away from them.
ESA scientists first attempted to explain these features by proposing that
the comet's jets were somehow creating sufficient "winds" to transport dust material.
Investigators gave this ad hoc theory the name,
"Localized Gas Driven Transport."
Later, scientists proposed an even more extreme process,
similar to saltation in Earth geology.
Today, investigators are proposing yet another strange process
to explain the comet's sand dunes.
A Phys.org report describes the research published in February of this year.
It states,
"The formation of sedimentary dunes requires the presence of grains and of winds
that are strong enough to transport them along the ground.
However, comets do not have a dense, permanent atmosphere as on Earth.
Faced with this unexpected finding, the researchers show
that there is in fact a wind blowing along the comet's surface.
It is caused by the pressure difference between the sunlit side,
where the surface ice can sublimate due to the energy provided by the sunlight,
and the night side."
However, a scientific basis exists why none of the strange mechanical processes
investigators have proposed are necessary.
In the Electric Comet Theory, as proposed by the chief principals of The Thunderbolts Project,
a comet's environment is far more dynamic
than the standard "Dirty Snowball" theory ever suggested.
It has always been the Electric Universe position that electric fields,
acting on the comet nucleus, will shape surface material in dramatic ways
that cannot be explained in standard reasoning.
A powerful test of this story came
with NASA's 2005 "Deep Impact" mission to the Comet Tempel 1.
Mission scientists had believed that the comet would only lose
about one third of a meter of depth in each orbit.
But when the Stardust's next spacecraft reimaged the Tempel 1 nucleus in 2010,
it found that the wall of a prominent mesa had retreated about 35 meters.
The astonishing excavation of material
was precisely focused at the location of mysterious pixel saturations;
which, according to proponents of the Electric Universe,
was the focal point of electrical arcs.
A key point about the sand dunes on the Comet 67P
is that ESA scientists have confirmed that the dunes are active
and are seen to change over a period of 16 months.
This follows previous reports of astonishingly rapid changes on the Comet's surface.
In September of 2016, scientists reported that, over a period of six weeks,
they witnessed mysterious erosional markings appearing and expanding
at rates exponentially faster than predicted by standard comet theory.
As one mission scientist stated,
"These spectacular changes are proceeding extremely rapidly,
with the rims of the features expanding by a few tens of centimeters per hour.
This highlights the complexity of the physical processes involved."
These discoveries confirm an explicit prediction from an earlier Space News episode,
which stated that electric fields, acting on the comet,
would reconfigure surface material with unexpected rapidity.
Electrical activity could profoundly reconfigure the dust layers
in the course of the next few months.
Electric fields acting on the comet can also produce ionic winds,
similar to those produced by air purifiers.
In this series; we have repeatedly referred
to the experimental research of Billy Yelverton,
who has produced countless familiar geological features including sand dunes,
simply by applying electric fields to plates of dust and other materials.
It's especially puzzling that scientists continue to propose
strange exotic mechanisms to explain winds acting on the comet's surface.
When increasingly mainstream research confirms tenets of the electrical interpretation.
As noted in the previous Space News episode;
a recent NASA-funded study affirmed that electrostatic dust transportation
occurs on airless bodies in space,
and is responsible for many heretofore puzzling features
on planets, moons, comets and asteroids.
A Phys.org report on the study states for the findings,
"[They] bring closure to a long-standing issue of electrostatic dust transport,
explaining a variety of unusual phenomena on the surfaces of airless planetary bodies,
including observations from the Apollo era to the recent Rosetta comet mission."
The article continues,
"The movement of electrons in the tiny spaces between dust particles
can generate surprisingly strong charges and forces,
which can lift and move dust particles off the ground.
In addition to single particles, clusters of dust were lofted,
which showed that electrostatic processes may be responsible for the Rosetta detection
of fluffy dust particles released from the surface of Comet 67P.
These laboratory observations reveal that dusty surfaces
can become smooth due to dust mobilization
and could help explain the 'dust ponds'
like those seen on asteroid Eros and Comet 67P..."
Unfortunately, it seems that countless assumptions about our solar system
and the universe as a whole continue to endure
even in the face of revolutionary discoveries.
The assumption of charge neutrality in space has been refuted.
Comets discharge electrically because they experience voltage spikes,
passing through regions of changing potential.
And the assumption that comets are icy primordial leftovers
from the solar system's infancy 4.5 billion years ago is now also refuted.
Indeed, regardless of how comets form, the comet's environment is so dynamic.
How could one possibly hope to accurately document the comet's history and origins,
tracing back a billion plus years?
The Rosetta comet mission was a remarkable technological feat
and a historic human achievement.
Yet, how will history judge institutional science and its enduring beliefs
about one of nature's greatest mysteries, the comet?
For continuous updates on Space News from the Electric Universe,
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