Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™
at Thunderbolts.info
The unchanging reality of our universe
presents a growing crisis for space scientists.
In over 250 episodes of this series,
we have reported on discoveries that in effect falsify countless tenets
of standard cosmology at every scale throughout the cosmos.
In our own celestial neighborhood, the consensus story of our solar system's genesis,
based on the more than two-and-a-half centuries old "Nebular Hypothesis",
has been falsified.
Astronomers investigating baffling exoplanetary systems freely admit
that the standard story of planet formation has
"led to no success in predicting what is out there."
Yet, the official story remains that our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago
from a gravitationally collapsing cloud of gas and dust.
This conjecture includes the story of comet origins.
We have been told for well over half a century that comets are blobs of ice and dust,
formed in the "Siberia of the solar system"
from the leftover building blocks of planets.
We are told that comets that enter our region of the solar system
come from two major areas;
the Kuiper Belt, a "circumstellar disk extending from Neptune's orbit
to about 4.5 billion miles from the Sun,
and the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical shell of icy bodies
at the remotest reaches of our solar system.
Of course, the Oort Cloud has never been imaged and remains conjecture.
Yet scientific literature routinely presents its existence as settled science.
Recent scientific reports describe observations of comets that are believed to have been,
"gravitationally kicked out of the hypothetical Oort Cloud."
The first; Comet 2017 K2
is the most distant comet ever seen from Earth to become active
at an extraordinary 1.5 billion miles from the Sun, or 16 astronomical units (AU).
Since comet water-ice ceases to sublimate at just 3 AU,
scientists can only propose that the comet must be covered with pristine hyper volatiles
which might sublimate at temperatures of minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, more recently, another comet called C/2012 K1
is again falsifying scientists' predictions for so-called Oort Cloud comets.
A phys.org report describes the conundrum as follows,
"Comets originating from the Oort Cloud, like comet C/2012 K1,
remain unaffected by the thermal heating and radiation processing of the Sun.
The pristine nature of these comets can preserve surface materials
making them ideal targets for observing gas and dust particle composition."
However, what scientists have actually detected disconfirms the belief
that the comet is an icy, "time capsule" of the early solar system's composition.
The phys.org report states,
"Unexpectedly, these observations revealed weak silicate emission features from the comet.
By analyzing the silicate emissions and comparing them to thermal models,
the researchers determined that the coma's dust grains are large
and comprised predominantly of carbon rather than crystalline silicate.
This composition challenges existing theoretical models of how Oort cloud comets form."
The real puzzle is how such a discovery today
could actually be surprising to comet scientists.
Every comet mission to date has refuted the standard story of comets and comet origins.
Yet, history has shown again and again that rather than exploring any real alternatives,
comet scientists look to tweak the existing models
in order to preserve the discredited theory.
A perfect demonstration of this could be seen in scientists' response
to the findings of NASA's Stardust mission to the comet Wild 2 --
nothing scientists learned from the comet fragments that were returned to Earth
affirmed the notion that the comet accreted in a freezing cold region of space.
Rather, numerous minerals were found
that only form under astonishingly high temperatures.
These included anorthite; which is made up of calcium, sodium aluminum and silicate;
and diopside, made of calcium, magnesium and silicate.
Formations of such minerals require temperatures in the range of thousands of degrees.
NASA curator Michael Zolensky said,
"That's a big surprise. People thought comets would just be cold stuff
that formed out... where things are very cold ...
It was kind of a shock to not just find one but several of these,
which implies they are pretty common in the comet."
Researchers were forced to conclude that the enigmatic particle material
formed at a superheated region either close to our Sun or close to an alien star.
Stardust principal investigator Donald Brownlee stated,
"In the coldest part of the solar system we've found samples
that formed at extremely high temperatures.
When these minerals formed, they were either red hot or white hot grains,
and yet they were collected in a comet, the Siberia of the Solar System."
Some scientists speculated that perhaps something occurred in,
or very near the Sun in its formative phase
flinging immense quantities of material out to the periphery of the Sun's domain,
even far far beyond the orbit of Pluto, all the way to the Oort cloud.
Then the researchers reminded themselves that this would produce a mixing
and contradict the zoning that is evident in the asteroid belt.
As Michael Zolensky stated,
"If this mixing is occurring, as suggested by these results,
then how do you preserve any kind of zoning in the solar system."
Nevertheless, a 2007 report states quite unequivocally
that parts of Wild 2 formed in an area close to the Sun.
The Spacedaily.com website writes,
"The X-ray and isotopic analyses point to gas acquisition in a hot,
high-ion flux nebular environment close to the young sun."
Such ad hoc theories from comet scientists
have only increased in the face of endless surprises.
Of course, many more such surprises greeted scientists
as the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft approached the comet 67P.
What comet scientists expected to find was based on the standard belief
that comets are icy leftovers of the early solar system
that condensed billions of years ago.
One of the earliest surprises for investigators
was the comets' puzzling double-lobed form,
a form it shares with many asteroids as well as
some of the few comet nuclei that have been photographed to date.
In fact, in 2015, NASA scientists acknowledged the problem
that the surprisingly common asteroidal form poses.
Lance Benner of NASA's JPL stated,
"Radar imaging has shown that about 15% of near-Earth asteroids
larger than 600 feet...have this sort of lobed, peanut shape...
There must be a process that forms the double-lobe naturally."
After some debate, ESA scientists settled on the incredible notion
that comet 67P's form resulted from a,
"low-speed collision in the early solar system."
It's ironic that the almost incalculable improbability of such a collision
is highlighted on an official ESA web page entitled "Where Do Comets Come From?"
Discussing the incredible vastness of both the Kuiper Belt
and the hypothetical Oort Cloud, the webpage states,
"Each of these regions contains billions of comets,
but they have so much room in these vast rooms of space
that they get no closer to each other than we on Earth due to the Sun."
In addition to the extraordinary unlikeliness of collision,
how slow would such a collision have to be to avoid disintegration?
And why would the objects stick together,
somehow forming a neck region in the process.
For a sense of the growing layers of contradiction in comet theory,
let us again look back to the Stardust mission in 2004.
A major surprise for comet scientists was the discovery of what appeared to be,
"impact craters" on the nucleus of Wild 2.
As NewScientist.com reported at the time,
"That is completely unexpected because comets are believed to be
loose aggregations of ice and dust that would shatter on impact."
Yet more than a decade later, the Rosetta team would have us believe
that in the vastness of the farthest reaches of the solar system,
two comets not only collided but failed to disintegrate for some reason.
Of course, as we've discussed in dozens of previous episodes,
67P's nucleus confounds everything comet scientists
thought they knew about the nature of comets.
From a stunning absence of the expected abundant surface water ice
to countless planetary features including sand dunes,
wind streaked rocks,
fields of boulders,
mesas
and a surface covered with stratified rock and complex geological bedding,
indistinguishable from stratification seen in sedimentary and igneous rocks on Earth.
As seen in this pre-mission artistic rendition of 67P,
scientists had expected an icy snowy comet nucleus.
But in response to the completely unexpected findings,
the Rosetta team proposed that the Comet's surface ice
has all been baked off by the Sun.
But even if the sublimation of surface volatiles
could somehow explain the desiccated comet nucleus,
how could it possibly account for the unmistakable planetary geology?
A comet only has a temporary, very tenuous atmosphere,
so features that planetary scientists believe result from erosion,
such as mesas and complex geological layering,
should be unthinkable on a sublimating snowball.
In fact, before NASA's Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1,
The Thunderbolts Project predicted these
distinctly planetary features on the comet nucleus.
Wal Thornhill and David Talbott wrote on July 3rd, 2005,
24 hours before a copper projectile impacted the nucleus of Temple 1,
"The (electric comet) model predicts a sculpted surface,
distinguished by sharply defined craters, valleys, mesas, and ridges
- the opposite of the softened relief expected of a sublimating dirty snowball.
(A chunk of ice melting in the Sun loses its sharp relief,
just like a scoop of melting ice cream.)"
The late astronomer Tom Van Flandern proposed a catastrophic event,
an exploding planet past the orbit of Mars,
in the region known today as the asteroid belt,
as the source of comets and asteroids.
Among the predictions of Van Flandern's hypothesis
was a discovery of stable asteroid satellites
which was confirmed to the great surprise of astronomers.
In contrast, the Electric Universe theory has proposed for decades,
that powerful electrical discharges ripped comets, asteroids and meteoroids
from planetary surfaces in the relatively recent past.
As illustrated many times in these Space News,
the double lobe shapes of comets and asteroids do not require
spectacularly improbable collisions of miniscule bodies.
In experiments to replicate the so-called Martian blueberries,
Dr. CJ Ransom performed electrical discharges to hematite,
producing tiny spherules in the laboratory
including the fused spherules seen on your screen.
A striking analogue to 67P's double-lobed form.
As we have also shown in countless episodes,
electrical discharge experiments have provided a basis for an entirely new geology.
Complex geological layering, mesas, sharply defined ridges,
sand dunes and even mountain building, all find promising electrical explanations.
If comets were indeed electrically excavated from planets and moons,
then every comet nucleus image to date appears exactly as one expects.
In fact, if it were possible today
to image the nucleus of a so-called pristine Oortcloud comet,
we could easily predict that we would not see a body covered with snow and ice
but rather a desiccated rocky surface as we have repeatedly seen on comet nuclei.
With the falsification of the Nebular Hypothesis
by countless baffling exoplanetary systems
and with the endless fatal discoveries
for the standard theory of comets and comet origins,
it has never been more urgent for scientists to consider
a radically new history of our solar system.
A history which does not rely on discredited myths
such as the Oort Cloud origins of comets.
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