ITN: CO2 Powers Hartley !

[Outbackmanyep]

So electric comet theory can explain all these things yet there is no evidence at all to backup the claims, just hypotheses.

And also, the solar wind does not have an effect on the nucleus of a comet from what i have read, it doesn't reach the nucleus at all!

[sjastro]

Sorry for my persistence here and thanks so much from your answers. I really do appreciate them. They are certainly keeping me on track & I'm doing lotsa reading at the same time, also.

So what of flourescence ? (Eg: as in Tempel 1's 'Solar pumped flourescence'). I understand that flourescence happens when a substance absorbs light (or EMR) of a different frequency to that which the substance emits (which ends up being a lower frequency).

No problems Craig.

A lower frequency emitted photon can occur if electrons jump more than one energy level. On return to the ground state a photon may be emitted for each energy level the electron drops back into in which case the sum of the emitted (lower frequency) photon energies for each level equals the energy of the absorbed photon. Alternatively it might drop straight back to the original level and have the same frequency as the absorbed photon.

The reverse can also happen … the emitted light can end up being of a greater frequency, than what it absorbs.

So, in this case, if you didn't know the frequency of the exciting energy source, you could still work backwards from say, a particular higher frequency spectral line, to see what the frequency of the original exciting source was, and thus guess, as to where it might have come from.

You can't as the emitted photon will not have a higher (frequency) energy. If it did and the atom returns to it's ground state this would violate the conservation of energy. (Where did the emitted photon get it's extra energy?)

I guess you could only do this if you know what the flourescing substance is to start with. I gather it would be possible to work out what the substance is, from the lower frequency absorption spectrum pattern (perhaps, in a different band), which should match with known substances ?

What can be done is to attempt to reproduce the comet conditions in laboratories to get a matching spectrum. For example as has already been seen, NASA have deduced the particle size of the jets by IR analysis of ice particles on Earth of different sizes until they got a matching spectrum.

If the original exciting source was broad spectrum and high energy, there would be lots of flourescence, ie: emission lines corresponding to every element and compound in either crystalline (solid) or gaseous state in probably, all bands (?). If there's not a lot of flourescence lines, then the exciting energy can be assumed to be fairly low (?)

If the exciting source was broad spectrum, sporadic or irregular, and high energy, then the spectrum would change from measurement to measurement. If it were continuously broad spectrum and high energy the lines would be persistent from photo to photo (?)

I'm not sure what you are stating here.

If a material is absorbed at a particular wavelength it doesn't matter whether the spectrum of the exciting radiation is monochromatic, variable frequency or composed of lines and bands. (The Sun as an exciting source has a continuous spectrum). If the exciting radiation contains the wavelength at which absorbance occurs, the spectrum of the emitted photon will essentially be the same.

Regards

Steven

[sjastro]

Alex,

Why don't you explain how an EC can reproduce the IR spectrum.

Regards

Steven

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by Jarvamundo

There is plenty of sputtering on all of these objects.

Your question is: Is there evidence of eletrical arc (or glow) discharge in a detectable range of the onboard equipment.

Sputtering happens with or without and answer of yes to the above question.

ie... happens on the moon, due to bombardment of solar wind. comets experience higher levels of this bombardment, sputtering is guaranteed to happen on the comet whether it be ice, rock or marshmallow.

If you can't see this simple fact, we have much to do!

Not simple to me where is the Bremsstrahlung that would be associated with sputtering?

Regards

Steven

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

Originally Posted by Outbackmanyep

So electric comet theory can explain all these things yet there is no evidence at all to backup the claims, just hypotheses.

No.

The electric comet theory has already made prior predictions for many of the anomalies encountered by the recent comet missions.

http://thunderbolts.info/predictions.htm#cdi

I would welcome any predictions of the dirty snowball sublimating puff ball hypothesis, so that i may understand and compare the models.

"no evidence at all" is a statement seeking to dismiss these 'prior' published predictions. 'No evidence at all' rarely makes it into peer reviewed engineering journals and ICOPS conferences.

And also, the solar wind does not have an effect on the nucleus of a comet from what i have read, it doesn't reach the nucleus at all!

If the 'solar wind' was totally removed from existence, there would be a difference in cometary display and surface activity, so it does 'have an effect'.

Of-course there is an insulating plasma sheath surrounding the comet.

Are you saying that if the solar wind did not exist, we would receive no change to the nucleus activity? Is this a prediction of the dirty snowy puff balls?

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

Originally Posted by sjastro

Not simple to me where is the Bremsstrahlung that would be associated with sputtering?

Which is exactly my question, do we have an on board sensors for this?

Also, what is the explanation of Temple1's pre-impact flash?

EC's is the discharge that craig seeks. Did the onboard capture this? or did it BLIND the camera by saturating the pixels?

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by CraigS

The reverse can also happen … the emitted light can end up being of a greater frequency, than what it absorbs.

Originally Posted by sjastro

You can't as the emitted photon will not have a higher (frequency) energy. If it did and the atom returns to it's ground state this would violate the conservation of energy. (Where did the emitted photon get it's extra energy?)

A bit obscure (and a second order effect anyway), but its called Two-Photon Absorption (TPA). From Wiki:

TPA is the simultaneous absorption of two photons of identical or different frequencies in order to excite a molecule from one state (usually the ground state) to a higher energy electronic state. The energy difference between the involved lower and upper states of the molecule is equal to the sum of the energies of the two photons. Two-photon absorption is a second-order process several orders of magnitude weaker than linear absorption. It differs from linear absorption in that the strength of absorption depends on the square of the light intensity, thus it is a nonlinear optical process.

Originally Posted by sjastro

I'm not sure what you are stating here.

If a material is absorbed at a particular wavelength it doesn't matter whether the spectrum of the exciting radiation is monochromatic, variable frequency or composed of lines and bands. (The Sun as an exciting source has a continuous spectrum). If the exciting radiation contains the wavelength at which absorbance occurs, the spectrum of the emitted photon will essentially be the same.

Ok. I was wondering whether variations in the exciting source would turn up somehow in the spectrum. Thinking more about this, I think it would simply mean that if you took 10 spectra over a short period of say, a couple of seconds, there might be differences when you compared them against eachother. From these differences, you might be able to describe the time domain nature of the exciting energy. If this was different to the continuous energy radiated by the Sun, it may be reasonable to deduce that it came from some other source. These differences would only be evident however, if you intentionally went looking for them by taking multilpe spectra over short intervals. How short ?? Who knows !!

Thanks for your help.

Cheers

[Outbackmanyep]

Originally Posted by Jarvamundo

No.

The electric comet theory has already made prior predictions for many of the anomalies encountered by the recent comet missions.

http://thunderbolts.info/predictions.htm#cdi

I would welcome any predictions of the dirty snowball sublimating puff ball hypothesis, so that i may understand and compare the models.

"no evidence at all" is a statement seeking to dismiss these 'prior' published predictions. 'No evidence at all' rarely makes it into peer reviewed engineering journals and ICOPS conferences.

If the 'solar wind' was totally removed from existence, there would be a difference in cometary display and surface activity, so it does 'have an effect'.

Of-course there is an insulating plasma sheath surrounding the comet.

Are you saying that if the solar wind did not exist, we would receive no change to the nucleus activity? Is this a prediction of the dirty snowy puff balls?

For one i never said that the solar wind didn't exist, and two is that just because EC theory predicted something there is no way they can prove that the observed phenomena had anything to do with the "predictions"

[Outbackmanyep]

The pre-impact flash.......when you look at the video there is an impact, a brief ejection of material behind the impactor then an almighty explosion. (The video i have saved shows this, i haven't been able to find it on the web again)
On the surface of it, my initial thoughts were the impactor broke through the surface or "crust" then released it's energy below the surface as it vaporised.
The pre-impact flash may not have been exactly that, it could have been the actual initial impact.

Of course Alex wouldn't swallow this, but to me thats how i interpret it.
Of course we'd need more information about the impact itself to determine anything.

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

And also, the solar wind does not have an effect on the nucleus of a comet from what i have read, it doesn't reach the nucleus at all!

I know you didn't say that the solar wind didn't exist.

I was pointing out the logically inconsistencies in your argument.

You say the solar wind does not have any effect on the nucleus.

For this to be logically coherent, we could then remove the solar wind without any resulting effect or change on the nucleus.

The Electric Comet theory suggests this cannot be done. No solar wind = big changes on the effects on the nucleus.

I tend to think both models require the solar wind to explain the nucleus activity, maybe you are suggesting something different?

and two is that just because EC theory predicted something there is no way they can prove that the observed phenomena had anything to do with the "predictions"

Which is why we are exploring the details of the instrumentation, chemistry and physics involved in this very thread!

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

Originally Posted by Outbackmanyep

The pre-impact flash.......when you look at the video there is an impact, a brief ejection of material behind the impactor then an almighty explosion. (The video i have saved shows this, i haven't been able to find it on the web again)
On the surface of it, my initial thoughts were the impactor broke through the surface or "crust" then released it's energy below the surface as it vaporised.
The pre-impact flash may not have been exactly that, it could have been the actual initial impact.

Of course Alex wouldn't swallow this, but to me thats how i interpret it.
Of course we'd need more information about the impact itself to determine anything.

I am happy to examine your interpretations as they crystallize.

Ofcourse they would carry more weight if they were made prior to the event.

I, as an inquisitive layman, will also hold these ideas accountable qualitatively as a complete picture develops. IE: Ideas will need to be logically consistent across all phenomena.

Maybe we could look at the expectations of a projectile 'breaking through surface crust' then vaporizing "BELOW", resulting in a below crust explosion causing such a large emission?

I would expect that should this interpretation you have suggested actually happened, we would've seen a noticeable increase in H20 IR and some form of 'ejection of material', particularly the crust which you are suggesting is 'blown apart'? This does not seem to have occurred?

Questions:
* What do you suggest the crust is made from? if no surface ice detected?
* Given the size of the explosion (blinded the camera to saturation levels), would the vaporization blow out this crust? It would have to yeah... if thats what you are claiming we see?

A clear qualitative difference between these 2 ideas is that, electrical discharge does *not* require large explosions of matter to explain the pre-flash *or* blindingly large flash. Snowball seems to require this in great amounts.

But hey lets explore these ideas.

[CraigS]

Guys;

I found a couple of very interesting papers, which seem particularly relevant to this discussion.

The first is Spectral Analysis of the Chandra Comet Survey 12th April, 2007.

These guys looked at X-Ray spectra using Chandra of 8 comets including Tempel 1, C/1999 T1 McNaught Hartley (is this Hartely 1?) and several others.
Particularly interesting is their focus on the effect of the plasma solar winds on each of these comets during their observation periods.Here's a quote for Temple 1:

A.7. 9P/2005 (Tempel 1)
X-rays.
The observation of comet 9P/2005 (Tempel 1) was designed to coincide with the Deep Impact mission Lisse et al. (2007). The allocated observation time of 291.6 ks was split into 7 periods, starting on June 30th, July 4th (encompassing the Deep Impact collision), July 5th, July 8th, July 10th, July 13th and July 24th. The brightest observing periods were June 30th and July 8th. The focus here is on the June 30th observation.
...
The brightest point for the June 30th observation was located 11 000 km from the nucleus. The morphology appears to be more spherical than in other comet observations.
Solar wind.
Observations were taken over a long time span covering different solar wind environments. There was no significant solar activity during the 30 June 2005 observations (Z.K. Smith et al., ibid. Lisse et al. (2007)). From the ACE data, it can be seen that at June 30, the comet most likely interacted with a quiet, slow solar wind.

A good paper .. particularly relevant to Alex's cause. It speaks of ion impact effects etc.

I was heartened to find that there are some attempting to look into the effects and impacts of the Solar wind on Comets !

I'll do another post about the second paper.. Coming up.

Cheers

[Outbackmanyep]

Originally Posted by Jarvamundo

I know you didn't say that the solar wind didn't exist.

I was pointing out the logically inconsistencies in your argument.

You say the solar wind does not have any effect on the nucleus.

For this to be logically coherent, we could then remove the solar wind without any resulting effect or change on the nucleus.

The Electric Comet theory suggests this cannot be done. No solar wind = big changes on the effects on the nucleus.

I tend to think both models require the solar wind to explain the nucleus activity, maybe you are suggesting something different?



Which is why we are exploring the details of the instrumentation, chemistry and physics involved in this very thread!

Alex, this is from "Introduction to Comets" (John C Brandt, Robert D Chapman - 2004)

Solar-wind Interactions
A comet presents an interesting obstacle to the solar wind. The solar wind does not see the nucleus, and it's interaction with the dust and neutral species is limited.
The cometary plasma, consisting of ionised molecules and electrons, is a serious obstacle. The ionised molecules cannot cross the magnetic field lines in the solar wind and an interaction takes place. Comets can be considered "soft" obstacles because of the way the ions get onto the field lines. The neutral molecules are released from the nucleus by sublimation and flow away from the comet at approximately 1km/s. The ions are produced by photoionisation (an easily modeled process) and the lifetimes are such that this occurs over a wide range of distances. When ionisation occurs, the ions are trapped on the field lines. This is called 'mass loading' and, because the ions are essentially at rest with respect to the solar wind speed of 450km/s, the flow is slowed. Near the comet this effect is strong, but is weak well away from the comet. Thus, the field lines wrap around the comet like a "folding umbrella" to produce the general picture due to Alfven described in sections 1.7.2 and 4.4.2.


NB - I might add that further into this chapter there are results obtained by in-situ spacecraft which correlate the information given here.
If you want to know more i suggest you buy the book and read it!

[CraigS]

Ok .. don't worry about that second paper. It seems to go on about some other theory about how comets are formed. We can do without that at the moment.

It seems that there are several theories about the Tempel 1 Impactor generating more energy than was expected. Some papers talk of chemical exothermic reactions caused by the comet chemicals upon impact, others talk of rebound effects, etc.

Interesting also, (I note), is that twenty and ten seconds before the impact (that is, ~ 200 and 100 km distant from the nucleus), the Deep Impact impactor suffered two collisions with large dust particles that disturbed its orientation (A’Hearn et al. 2005b).

So things were happening before the impactor impacted !!

This could also explain the pre-impact flashes.

It doesn't have to be electrical discharges, Alex.

Cheers

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

It doesn't have to be electrical discharges, Alex.

Of-course it doesn't have to be, but we can keep in mind the associated expectations of all proposed causes. Here we can then build a qualitative description of what is going on, so i (we) can understand the model.

EC theorists (not me) made these mentioned predictions prior to the impact, as it was an expected feature from an already existing holistic model. Call me crazy but i see merit in predictions.

Can we please have this coherent view from the snowball team? Surely it can be explained to layman like us? A theory should be able to do these things?

Re OutbackManyEp: I get you now... yes i have acknowledged the insulating plasma sheath, in my first reply to you.

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by CraigS

A bit obscure (and a second order effect anyway), but its called Two-Photon Absorption (TPA). From Wiki:
TPA is the simultaneous absorption of two photons of identical or different frequencies in order to excite a molecule from one state (usually the ground state) to a higher energy electronic state. The energy difference between the involved lower and upper states of the molecule is equal to the sum of the energies of the two photons. Two-photon absorption is a second-order process several orders of magnitude weaker than linear absorption. It differs from linear absorption in that the strength of absorption depends on the square of the light intensity, thus it is a nonlinear optical process.

Craig,

Up to this stage the discussion has been based on comparing the energy of a single absorbed photon to the energy of a single emitted photon.

The energy (and frequency) of the emitted photon is determined by the energy spacing levels in the molecules not the incident photons.
The incident photons are only there to supply energy to push the electrons into higher levels. It is immaterial whether this is accomplished by 1,2....n photons at a lower (frequency) energy compared to the emitted photon. The point is the sum of the energies of the incident photons cannot be less than the energy of the emitted photon as this will violate the conservation of energy.

The 2 photon absorption effect is a very good example of why a variation in the incident radiation doesn't effect the spectrum of the molecule. The emission line or peak is at the same frequency irrespective if it took 1 absorbed photon at a higher frequency or 2 absorbed photons at a lower frequency to supply the required energy for a electron transistion to occur.

Ok. I was wondering whether variations in the exciting source would turn up somehow in the spectrum. Thinking more about this, I think it would simply mean that if you took 10 spectra over a short period of say, a couple of seconds, there might be differences when you compared them against eachother. From these differences, you might be able to describe the time domain nature of the exciting energy. If this was different to the continuous energy radiated by the Sun, it may be reasonable to deduce that it came from some other source. These differences would only be evident however, if you intentionally went looking for them by taking multilpe spectra over short intervals. How short ?? Who knows !!

If you saw a variation in the spectra with time there are 3 possibilites.

(1) There has been a change in the physical state of the object.
(2) There has been a thermodynamic change.
(3) There has been a chemical change.

For (1) Consider the NASA spectrum of Hartley 2 and the comparative ice samples. http://epoxi.umd.edu/3gallery/20101118_Sunshine2.shtml

Note the OH peak seems to have disappeared from the 100 micron lab ice spectra. This is an example of IR scattering where the sample being tested is much thicker than the IR wavelength range. This can also apply to Vis-UV radiation except the thickness limit is much greater as Vis-UV photons have much more energy and do not scatter as readily.

(2) Has already been discussed. The conversion of comet ice to gas can change the spectra.

(3) Let me give you a down to Earth example. IR spectrometers are used to check the oxidation stabilty of engine oils. The IR spectrometers produce constant IR radiation.
Fresh engine oil does not contain the carboxyl peak (the same peak that is found for CO2). When the engine oil oxidizes the carbonyl peak "grows" with time.

Regards

Steven

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by Jarvamundo

Which is exactly my question, do we have an on board sensors for this?

Also, what is the explanation of Temple1's pre-impact flash?

EC's is the discharge that craig seeks. Did the onboard capture this? or did it BLIND the camera by saturating the pixels?

Alex,

You are either missing the point or dancing around it.

If your comet jets are an example of sputtering then Bremsstrahlung which extends into the IR region would have been detected.
This would result in a spectrum devoid of peaks.

Regards

Steven

[CraigS]

Thanks Steven.

Back to Bremsstrahlung, Alex ?

As I understand it, this produces a different looking spectrum ?

Cheers
PS: [EDIT]: Steven's post#117 beat mine somehow !!

[sjastro]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Thanks Steven.

Back to Bremsstrahlung, Alex ?

As I understand it, this produces a different looking spectrum ?

Cheers

Bremsstrahlung is a continuous spectrum. In the IR region (thermal Bremsstrahlung) it would be quite featureless compared to the IR spectrums showing H2O and CO2.

Alex still has to address the hydroxyl radical in all of this.

Regards

Steven

[Jarvamundo (Alex)]

Yep, totally, trying to find literature to examine on level expectations of Bremsstrahlung with EDM, to compare with spectro instrumentation.

Thanks for this.