Comments on: An Inside Look at Comet Holmes

By: vee

vee — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:01:22 +0000

have anyone heard about resent Nasa THEMIS project? http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/themis/main/index.html
so we have 3 events (themis, holmes and deep impact) that suport this whole electromagnetic plasma theory thing. :\

By: vee

vee — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:54:56 +0000

I cant believe i finally found the after action report on this subject. Thank you i was very informative and unclear at the same time.

what about the relative volume\size of the comet in 2007 before the event and in 2008, in correlation to the amount of material being ejected out of it? How is it possible that the comet is still there? Shouldn't it just be vaporized into dust after such violent expansion?

By: Ian Tresman

Ian Tresman — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 08:54:58 +0000

The comet is immersed in an electrified medium, the interplanetary medium (Solar "Wind"), which is a fully-ionized plasma. ANY object that comes into contact with a plasma, will charge because of the faster moving electrons.

Field-aligned Birkeland currents are inferred from the filamentary structure (Mendis, 1978, Moon and the Planets, vol. 18, May 1978), the X-rays detected from Comet Hyakutake (Lisse, 1996, Science, Volume 274, Issue 5285), and a cometary "aurora" (Houpis, 1981 Astrophysical Journal, Part 1, vol. 243).

Electric currents up to a billion Amps have been established in cometary system by Mendis (1978, ibid), Ip and Mendis (1976, Icarus, vol. 29, Sept. 1976).

To ignore electromagnetic interactions is to ignore the basic properties of astrophysical plasmas.

By: Bill

Bill — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:03:43 +0000

Why pooh-pooh the electric folks? There is little the icy model has to offer on the behavior of Holmes. Who can believe in a 100 year heat capacitor, which is the best explanation the conventional community can come up with (as for collisions, how does that explain a persistent spherical coma much bigger than the sun)? The electric people made predictions that have been realized (for instance, the rocky composition – read, refractory material inclusion); the regular community has scrambled for sensible press releases.

By: neoguru

neoguru — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:44:20 +0000

My money's on a collision.

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:24:36 +0000

Aye Karumba! Trust a Lightning Bolts fan to claim it's "electromagnetic" – sheesh!

By: DestroyAllHumans

DestroyAllHumans — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:10:32 +0000

Has Comet Holmes had a second outburst yet? It did several months after being discovered in 1892 when it outburst just like it did last year.

I was wondering if Holmes might have cyclical outburts like Old Faithful or these are just random events, such as an impact or collapse of its ice crust?

I think Holmes is well deserving of a space probe mission to it to see just what is going on out there. Hint, hint, NASA

By: Brian Sheen

Brian Sheen — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:10:17 +0000

Hi Nancy,

Many thanks for this update review of Comet Holmes.

It was a great event for all those who study our solar system. Although visible to the naked eye it was not well covered in the Media. The reason? no one could answer the basic questions at the time.

I actually have images of the 1892 eruption and no I did not take them myself!

By: quantum_flux

quantum_flux — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:43:54 +0000

no wait

By: quantum_flux

quantum_flux — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:14:23 +0000

Clearly the effects must be electromagnetic, I'm betting.