- Early in the morning of July 4, 2005,
cosmic fireworks occurred millions of miles from Earth. NASA had planned
the event to clear up some longstanding mysteries about comets. But what
actually happened defied every expectation of the comet experts.
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- About 24 hours earlier, the Deep Impact
spacecraft had fired an 800-pound copper projectile at the nucleus of Comet
Tempel 1. The impact was expected to eject large volumes of subsurface
material into space, and we were assured that the material would be dominated
by water. The presence of abundant volatiles, preeminently water ice sublimating
in the heat of the Sun, is an essential requirement of standard comet theory.
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- Without cometary ices, it is the "dirty
snowball" THEORY that would evaporate. How could comets produce their
often-spectacular tails in the absence of sublimating volatiles?
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- Cameras on the projectile recorded its
approach toward the nucleus, and instruments on the spacecraft observed
the event across a broad spectrum. Dozens of telescopes on Earth and in
orbit around the Earth were trained on the comet.
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- According to NASA scientists, the released
material would provide a sample of the primordial water, gas, and dust
from which the Sun, planets, moons, and other bodies in the solar system
formed. Statements advancing this claim were the general rule, as if the
modern theory of comets was no longer a theory, but a fact.
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- So proponents of the Electric Universe
predicted a "shock to the system". (See Deep Impact For Comet
Theory, http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=hcabb8zj) They believe
that a comet carries a negative electric charge as it moves through the
extensive and constant radial electric field of the positively charged
Sun. The nucleus acquires this negative charge during its long sojourn
in the outer solar system. Then, as it speeds into the inner solar system,
the increasing voltage and charge density of the ambient plasma (solar
"wind") causes the nucleus to discharge electrically, producing
the bright coma and tail. The electric model does not exclude the possibility
of water on a comet nucleus, but water is not required, and the electrical
theorists say we will inevitably find more than one comet discharging energetically
but with no water present at all. This lack of need for volatiles is supported
by the occasional outbursts from comets in "deep freeze" beyond
Saturn.
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- Following pointers from Wallace Thornhill,
the leading proponent of the electric comet model, the Thunderbolts crew
registered a series of predictions for Deep Impact on July 3, the most
specific and detailed scientific predictions offered by any group in anticipation
of the event. (See Thunderbolts Predictions on Deep Impact, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050704predictions.htm)
On the matter of water, we stated:
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- "An abundance of water on or below
the surface of the nucleus (the underlying assumption of the "dirty
snowball" hypothesis) is unlikely". Though this was never a deal
killer for the electric model, the absence of sufficient water in a comet
is a deal killer for the dirty snowball model. We wrote: "In fact
none of the electrical theorists will be surprised if the impactor exposes
a subsurface with little or no ices".
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- Almost immediately after Deep Impact
it was clear that the event had not produced the watery outburst NASA had
expected. In a July 8 press release, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics summarized the early findings with the headline, "Deep
Impact Was a Dust-up, Not a Gusher".
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- Smithsonian astronomers had monitored
the impact using the ground-based Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii and
NASA's orbiting Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS). Early reports
showed "only weak emission from water vapor and a host of other gases
that were expected to erupt from the impact site. The most conspicuous
feature of the blast was brightening due to sunlight scattered by the ejected
DUST" [emphasis ours]. This was not what they had expected by any
means.
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- "It's pretty clear that this event
did not produce a gusher," said SWAS principal investigator Gary Melnick
of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "The more
optimistic predictions for water output from the impact haven't materialized,
at least not yet."
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- The Deep Impact team had hoped that,
by excavating material from the comet's interior, they could find the one
thing the standard model required. "SWAS operators were puzzled by
the lack of increased water vapor from Tempel 1". In fact, an observation
from the Odin telescope in Sweden found that the relative abundance of
water DECREASED after the impact, due to the injection of quantities of
DRY DUST, not water.
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- Astronomer Charlie Qi (CfA) also expressed
surprise at these results. "Theories about the volatile layers below
the surface of short-period comets are going to have to be revised,"
Qi said. So the crisis for standard comet theory deepened. Advocates of
the dirty snowball model had already been forced into an untenable position
by prior discoveries of dry comet surfaces. But as best we can tell, until
very recently there had been no public acknowledgment by NASA that none
of the prior comet visits (Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2) had revealed surface
water! (See below)
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- It is easy to understand why astronomers
began to speculate about water buried beneath layers of surface material.
But if an 800 pound projectile meeting a comet at 23,000 miles per hour
could not release the "subsurface water" demanded by theory,
how could mere sunlight in the deep freeze of space do the job?
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- Qi speculated that the comet might become
more active over the following days and weeks. "We're still hoping
for a big outgassing from the new active area created by Deep Impact",
he said. The electrical theorists predicted it would not happen, and it
didn't. In fact comets have a history of dashing comet investigators' hopes
for finding water. Periodic and unpredictable outbursts from comet nuclei
are common, but emissions suggesting hidden water or other volatiles beneath
the surface have not occurred. The general rule is: when cometary outbursts
occur, as happened more than once with Comet Tempel 1 prior to "Deep
Impact, the immediate effect is that relative levels of water in the coma
GO DOWN.
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- One other possibility for saving the
snowball theory of comets was to observe the fragments of comets that have
disintegrated. When comet Shoemaker-Levy-9 broke apart, astronomers reasoned
that the fractured nucleus would expose fresh ices that would sublimate
furiously. So several ground-based telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope
trained their spectroscopes on the tails of the fragments of SL-9, looking
for traces of volatile gases. None of the gases were found. When Comet
Linear disintegrated in front of their eyes, astronomers were not just
shocked by the event (a comet exploding many millions of miles from the
Sun), they were astonished to find virtually no water in the immediate
debris. (See The Explosive Demise of Comet Linear, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050520linear.htm)
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- For several months after "Deep Impact",
we awaited NASA's publication of official results, confident that the investigators
would place a priority to the issue of available water on the comet. And
in a sense, they did. On February 2, 2006, the official Deep Impact site
posted the headline, "Deep Impact Finds Water Ice on Comet",
with the following lead-in to the story --
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- "Scientists on NASA's Deep Impact
mission report the direct detection of solid water ice deposits on the
surface of comet Tempel 1. This is the first time ice has been detected
on the nucleus, or solid body, of a comet".
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- News outlets around the world dutifully
ran the story, and unless readers were prepared to dig deeper, they would
be left with the impression that everything is fine with comet theory these
days.
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- But all is not well with comet theory.
The interpretation that led to the identification of surface water on Tempel
1 may be entirely reasonable, but if you grant the interpretation you are
left with a horrendous shortage of available surface water. As reported
in the journal New Scientist, the water ice "is present in surprisingly
small amounts". By all accounts, the surface of Tempel 1 presented
no better than .5 PERCENT of the icy surface needed to account for the
supposed watery output of Tempel. And these exceedingly small and thin
"icy" areas were about 94 percent dirt.
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- Jessica Sunshine of Science Applications
International Corporation, the lead author of a recent article in the journal
Science, announced the investigator's finding: "These results show
that there is ice on the surface, but not very much and definitely not
enough to account for the water we see in the out-gassed material that
is in the coma".
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- Objectively, the NASA team's findings
confirm the failure of a theory. But somehow that critical failure did
not make the headlines, due to the confidence of the theorists that the
required water must be there, but hidden under the surface. So instead
of questioning the theory, the investigators are now asking themselves
how ice could stay hidden while feeding Comet Tempel's "watery"
output, which they calculated to be about 555 pounds per second!
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- It is the wrong question and it can only
extend a dead end path a while longer. To see this dead end path for what
it is, we must ask the question that has not been asked: What is the source
of the "water" in the comas of comets?
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- COMING FEBRUARY 16:
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- "Deep Impact -- Where's the Water?"
(2)
- The Comet as a "Water" Factory
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- To Be Continued...
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- Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
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- Comment
- Ted Twietmeyer
- 12-14-6
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- NASA's comet theory is riddled with gaping holes.
They desperately cling to unproven past hypothesis about what comets really
are. To state that comets act like vacuum cleaners while traveling in long
orbital paths through the solar system, then dump it all when coming near
the sun is ridiculous at best. It flies (pun intended) in the face of common
sense! If this was even remotely true, we would see clusters of material
all over the surface. But instead, we see a relatively smooth surface.
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- From earth, we see an unmistakable glow
at the comet's head and from the tail. BUT WHERE IS THAT BLINDING GLOW
IN NASA'S PHOTO? No one at the agency talks about this. To be visible millions
of miles from earth, requires literally BILLIONS of watts of power. But
in NASA's images no all encompassing, blinding glow is visible. In fact,
it should be so bright that we would not even be able to see the rock it's composed
of when up close.
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- What I believe we see in the image, is
not comet Tempel at all but simply an asteroid. For years, I've believed
that comets are simply asteroids traveling at high velocity through space.
The glow is the result of their constant collision with dark matter and
interplanetary gases.
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- The agency can't understand why millions
believe we never went to the moon. And ficitonal images like theirs only
add fuel to those fires.
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- Ted Twietmeyer
- www.data4science.net
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