From Science@ NASA
NASA has just issued a travel advisory for spacecraft: Watch out for Comet Hartley 2, it is experiencing a significant winter snowstorm.
Deep Impact photographed the unexpected tempest when it flew past the comet’s nucleus on Nov. 4th at a distance of only 700 km (435 miles). At first, researchers only noticed the comet’s hyperactive jets. The icy nucleus is studded with them, flamboyantly spewing carbon dioxide from dozens of sites. A closer look revealed an even greater marvel, however. The space around the comet’s core is glistening with chunks of ice and snow, some of them possibly as large as a basketball.
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” says University of Maryland professor Mike A’Hearn, principal investigator of Deep Impact’s EPOXI mission. “It really took us by surprise.”
Before the flyby of Hartley 2, international spacecraft visited four other comet cores—Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2, and Tempel 1. None was surrounded by “comet snow.” Tempel 1 is particularly telling because Deep Impact itself performed the flyby. The very same high resolution, high dynamic range cameras that recorded snow-chunks swirling around Hartley 2 did not detect anything similar around Tempel 1.
“This is a genuinely new phenomenon,” says science team member Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland. “Comet Hartley 2 is not like the other comets we’ve visited.”
The ‘snowstorm’ occupies a roughly-spherical volume centered on Hartley 2’s spinning nucleus. The dumbbell-shaped nucleus, measuring only 2 km from end to end, is tiny compared to the surrounding swarm. “The ice cloud is a few tens of kilometers wide–and possibly much larger than that,” says A’Hearn. “We still don’t know for sure how big it is.”
Data collected by Deep Impact’s onboard infrared spectrometer show without a doubt that the particles are made of frozen H2O, i.e., ice. Chunks consist of micron-sized ice grains loosely stuck together in clumps a few centimeters to a few tens of centimeters wide.
“If you held one in your hand you could easily crush it,” says Sunshine. “These comet snowballs are very fragile, similar in density and fluffiness to high-mountain snow on Earth.”
Even a fluffy snowball can cause problems, however, if it hits you at 12 km/s (27,000 mph). That’s how fast the Deep Impact probe was screaming past the comet’s nucleus. An impact with one of Hartley 2’s icy chunks could have damaged the spacecraft and sent it tumbling, unable to point antennas toward Earth to transmit data or ask for help. Mission controllers might never have known what went wrong.
“Fortunately, we were out of harm’s way,” notes A’Hearn. “The snow cloud does not appear to extend out to our encounter distance of 700 km. Sunlight sublimates the icy chunks before they can get that far away from the nucleus.”
The source of the comet-snow may be the very same garish jets that first caught everyone’s eye.
The process begins with dry ice in the comet’s crust. Dry ice is solid CO2, one of Hartley 2’s more abundant substances. When heat from the sun reaches a pocket of dry ice—poof!—it instantly transforms from solid to vapor, forming a jet wherever local topography happens to collimate the outrushing gas. Apparently, these CO2 jets are carrying chunks of snowy water ice along for the ride.
Because the snow is driven by jets, “it’s snowing up, not down,” notes science team member Peter Schultz of Brown University.
Ironically, flying by Hartley 2 might be more dangerous than actually landing on it. The icy chunks are moving away from the comet’s surface at only a few m/s (5 to 10 mph). A probe that matched velocity with the comet’s nucleus in preparation for landing wouldn’t find the drifting snowballs very dangerous at all–but a high-speed flyby is another matter. This is something planners of future missions to active comets like Hartley 2 will surely take into account.
Comet snowstorms could be just the first of many discoveries to come. A’Hearn and Sunshine say the research team is only beginning to analyze gigabytes of data beamed back from the encounter, and new results could be only weeks or months away.
Stay tuned for updates from Comet Hartley 2.
Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
Where is the data from the computer models?
You know, the ones that’ll show exactly how many degrees Earth will warm up if the comet should enter the Earth’s atmosphere and dump all that carbon dioxide pollution.
Come on, this is NASA! Where are Hansen and Gavin when you need them? This could toss Earth’s climate over a catastrophic tipping point and into a full-blown runaway greenhouse condition!
From Ian H on November 19, 2010 at 11:58 pm:
Do you mean another website besides thunderbolts.info?
Ian H says:
November 19, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Electric universe cultists. Please go away. Your theory is a bunch of incoherent drivel.
Translation: The science is settled!
Response: Roll eyes 🙂
Ian H.,
The observations & measurements of the physical perameters, the facts & evidence, support an electromagnetic analysis & interpretation.
But at the very least, these observations & measurements require a critical comparison between the electromagnetic model versus the “dirty snowball” model — not a dismissive rejection.
Interplanetary space (within the solar system) is a world of plasma (free electrons & ions) and with that plasma come magnetic & electric fields.
Failure to acknowledge or take into account that physical fact dooms the validity of any model.
A model to have any validity must take into account all physical dyamics present within the system being studied.
The “dirty snowball” model is a gravity “only” model — that simply doesn’t account for all the physical dynamics we know are present and active within interplanetary space.
Re: “Electric universe cultists. Please go away. Your theory is a bunch of incoherent drivel. What – you think a website full of diehard skeptics is going to give your pseudoscientific claptrap an uncritical reception? Go found your own website and leave us alone or we will mock you mercilessly at every opportunity.”
It truly saddens me to see such uninformed hostility on the Internet. Let’s review some of the critical points that are being made by the EU theorists …
EU Theory derives directly from plasma cosmology, which was once considered a direct competitor to the now-conventional Big Bang Theory. There was actually a time when these current conventional theories were ridiculed — and it is from one of these statements of ridicule that the term “Big Bang” was coined.
Plasma cosmology remains a peer-reviewed subject. Papers are regularly published in IEEE’s Transactions on Plasma Sciences. And to the apparent dismay of many astrophysicists, IEEE remains the largest scientific institution in the world. It’s understood within cosmological circles that Big Bang Theorists generally refuse to read IEEE.
Plasma cosmology’s “shocking” claim is that we can understand cosmic plasmas by studying laboratory plasmas. The reason why this is important is because most astrophysical textbooks readily admit within the introduction that 99% of the observable matter in space is matter within the plasma state.
Now, up until 1986, the consensus view was that there existed no observational evidence for large-scale electromagnetic fields in space. All of that changed in 1986, when a magnetic field was for the first time observed to be associated with a galaxy at Germany’s Effelsberg. Since then, magnetic fields have also been observed to permeate intergalactic space as well, all the way up to the largest scales that we can observe on.
The thing that all of the plasma cosmology critics need to own up to is this: In an observational sense, magnetic fields and electric currents tend to go hand-in-hand. Where you see one, within the laboratory at least, there is little doubt that you’ll see the other. However, what’s been going on in cosmology and astrophysics recently is that theorists are insisting that they retain a right to propose exotic “new physics” causes for these large-scale magnetic fields. It appears that they will accept virtually ANY unusual explanation for the magnetic fields SO LONG AS IT IS NOT ELECTRIC CURRENTS. To be clear, there exists no philosophy in this approach. It is not in the least scientific.
The situation gets much worse though.
As of the last decade or two, radio astronomers like Gerrit Verschuur — one of the world’s most famous — have been studying these interstellar structures called “anomalous high-velocity clouds.” They are anomalous because they exhibit redshifts which are extraordinary for their locations. And they are called “clouds” by astronomers and conventional theorists even as maps of these structures demonstrate, with little doubt, that they are HIGHLY FILAMENTARY. Verschuur is very clear on this.
Now, the thing about these redshifts is that they are of course typically inferred to be the result of a motion relative to the observer. The thing is, the speeds have no satisfactory explanation within the conventional gravity-centric view. But, more than that, these filamentary structures exhibit very particular redshifts frequently observable in all-sky surveys of hydrogen (21-cm wavelength) at 50 km/s, 35 km/s, 13 km/s and 6 km/s.
For those who have studied plasma cosmology — like Verschuur — these are very special redshifts because they are the critical ionization velocities for the universe’s dominant elements. A CIV occurs when charged particles are slammed into a neutral cloud of gas. The CIV emission depends upon the elemental makeup of the neutral cloud of gas. So, in a universe filled with hydrogen, any charged particles slamming into that cloud of neutral hydrogen will tend to emit hydrogen’s CIV. And in the process, the neutral cloud of gas will become ionized.
Hannes Alfven predicted many years ago that these CIVs would be observed in space, just as they are observed in the laboratory. And to be clear, any observation of CIV’s affiliated with interstellar filaments would be a slam-dunk for plasma cosmology proponents, as it would demonstrate that the filaments are most certainly FLOWS OF ELECTRICITY.
Verschuur is trying to tell the world — with great difficulty — that these “clouds” are not clouds at all — but rather interstellar flows of charged particles. The Big Bang Theory has no need for such an observation, nor any need for CIVs in space, so not surprisingly, these findings have failed to inspire much further investigation.
And, instead, what we tend to get on the forums is a lot of misinformed talk about how the Electric Universe is so pseudo-scientific by people who haven’t even spent the time necessary to actually check on what it says and the status of its predictions.
And every single one of you guys who clings to the Big Bang model need to realize that you are going along with this idea that astrophysicists and cosmologists can invent their own causes for the galactic-scale magnetic fields. This is the real pseudo-science, guys. Clearly, this approach is intended to suit the conclusions of the Big Bang Theory — which proposes that electromagnetism is subservient to gravity in this universe, even as the electric force is on the order of 10^36 times more powerful than the gravitational.
It helps to go back to the 1950’s, before we sent probes into space. The timeline really does matter in cosmology, because at that time, as the Big Bang was gaining in credibility, everybody thought that the matter in space had to be the same state as the matter we observe here on Earth: gases, liquids and solids.
But, the observation that space is populated instead by matter in the plasma state above all others as the universe’s preference, should have had more impact upon cosmological thinking. After all, to think that we can change the state of matter for the entire universe, and not have any profound effects upon our cosmological beliefs as a result, is really quite extraordinary.
But, sure enough, within time, the mathematical models for cosmic plasmas would diverge from the models which worked in the laboratories. It was alleged that cosmic plasmas were like superconductors, and that they could instantaneously charge-neutralize over great distances; that they could not support electric fields; and that they could possess frozen-in-place magnetic fields. All of these mathematical tricks had one goal in mind: Deprive the plasmas of the electromagnetism which we observe them to possess within the laboratory.
And to this day, believe it or not, these modeling techniques continue on. Hannes Alfven would try to warn the astrophysicists time and time again — and even as he was receiving the Nobel physics prize for his creation of magnetohydrodynamics — and the astrophysicists just refused to take advice from this “outsider.”
To be clear, Verschuur’s findings indicate the presence of an additional electrical power input which is clearly not being considered by climate change modeling techniques. And were scientists to study these electrical flows in depth, they’d suddenly find that they could predict the behavior of the Sun.
This is not “fringe” science, guys. The real fringe science is astrophysics and the Big Bang Theory. This is merely the application of laboratory plasma physics to our observations of space. This is how the scientific method was intended to work.
I should also add the following:
Some years ago, when a smooth bell curve shaped microwave emission was observed to be coming at the Earth from all directions, Big Bang cosmologists — interestingly enough — smelled blood and successfully convinced the world that this observation represented the end of plasma cosmology.
It turns out that, rather than being some sort of pinnacle of proof for the Big Bang, the conclusions reached by these cosmologists clearly indicate a lack of familiarity with what a plasma is, and how they tend to behave in the laboratory.
The pronouncements were dramatic. Some cosmologists even claimed that there could not be any other possible explanation for this signal other than a relic of a primordial explosion which created both time and space itself! In terms of scientific inferences, this was clearly a rather metaphysical explanation. And yet, many fell for it because few people actually know what plasmas are, or how they behave in the lab.
As these dramatic pronouncements were being made, all that one had to do to undermine such claims was to talk to a plasma physicist. Microwave emissions from plasma beams are in fact so common that there is a saying in the laboratory that plasma beams ALWAYS create microwaves.
Now, to be fair, these emissions are spikey in nature. They are technically called “synchrotron.” And the CMB, by contrast, is a bell curve shape. So, plasma cosmologists have a burden to explain how it is that the synchrotron becomes “thermalized.” And papers are indeed written on this subject. There are numerous possible explanations — and each of these possible explanations are based upon laboratory plasma physics principles. It is not an exercise in metaphysics in the least to explain this.
In fact, Verschuur would go on to identify MANY DOZENS of correlations between WMAP hotspots in the CMB with the filaments he has studied in his HI hydrogen all-sky surveys. The gist? That the CMB is in fact an electromagnetic fog created as a byproduct of these interstellar filaments of moving charged particles.
Now, I get that a lot of people are highly dubious of these things. I totally get it. It is really quite fantastic if true. It’s such an embarrassing oversight. We’d have to go back very far in time to correct all of the mistakes that have been made, and accepting Verschuur’s claims are basically an admission that all of the astrophysicists and cosmologists are basically wrong — and not even the experts we should be consulting.
What I don’t get is this notion that people erroneously cling to that we should not look further into these topics with serious sums of money. Verschuur is one of the world’s premier radio astronomers. Hannes Alfven basically invented plasma cosmology, and received the Nobel physics prize for his creation of the plasma models. Anthony Peratt is a former advisor to the Department of Energy and a researcher on the world’s largest plasma laboratory, the z-machine. Wal Thornhill was the ONLY theorist to accurately predict two separate flashes in the Deep Impact mission, and this prediction was based upon fundamental plasma physics principles.
I’ve studied the EU theory for several years now. I’ve spent much time debating Tom Bridgman and APODNereid on this subject. There has been a coordinated campaign to convince the public that there is nothing of any worth to see here. One over-the-top activist named Leroy Ellenberger has actually written letters to Peratt’s superiors in an attempt to interfere with his work on the Electric Universe.
At one point, Peratt’s plasma-universe website was hacked by some kids who thought it might be funny to ridicule the EU crowd. Peratt needed only to walk down the hallway to the CIA’s office to spawn an investigation which landed at least one hacker in jail.
These are not “fringe” scientists. They are making accurate predictions. They deserve to be heard out. This debate is incredibly complex and long, and it must be treated with the highest respect and objectivity that we afford any scientist doing important work. There’s just no philosophy in favoring the Astrophysical Journal over IEEE in a knee-jerk fashion, given that Einstein himself was an outsider.
I now firmly believe that we will, within the next 20-30 years, see all of our views on space and the Sun overturned. And people will be shocked once they learn of the Sun’s true energy source.