Comet Elenin

[gary31]

More diplomatic? Of course. Better? That's subjective, and to me, best = most efficient, and saying "you are wrong, this is right" is about the most efficient way I can think of. Especially as in this case, where there are clearly numerous things that Dotini is flat out wrong about.

I see best/most efficient method being the one that will most likly change the persons point of view, not of being the easyest way to state the facts.

When someone publishes a scientific paper that is chock full of absolute and utter malarky, they get ripped apart. They get pilloried, as publicly as possible. There's no "feelings" in science. No one writing a rebuttal sits and thinks to him/herself "Gee, I'm going to hurt Franks feelings by pointing out, to the world, that what he's is saying is complete hogwash."

I agree and thats the way it should be, but this that is at a professional level and they ussually they have the ability to see and have some understanding of the data that supports the paper. Most lay people do not have this ability and do not understand what science is, let alone what psuodoscience is.

I do think there are some people whose arguments are so flawed its hard to comment on the issue without hurting their feeling or changing their mind, i ussually stay out of those discussions (hence why i only made one post in the contrails vs. chemtrails thread).

I do appologise if this sounds smug or condesending,
Gary

 

[Exorcet]

Pluto. Just imagine yourself going through twenty-odd years of academics and career field experience, to find out that they (scientific cummunity) have re-classified what you've always known as a planet to a star. Pretty hillarious from my perspective.

Pluto isn't a star, and never will be. And if one had been studying Astronomy, they might have found themselves questioning Pluto's position as a planet, or at least known about the objections. The change didn't happen over night.

 

[DKLion3s]

Pluto isn't a star, and never will be. And if one had been studying Astronomy, they might have found themselves questioning Pluto's position as a planet, or at least known about the objections. The change didn't happen over night.

They changed it's classification, is the example I set forth.

 

[GT5Junkie]

I see best/most efficient method being the one that will most likly change the persons point of view, not of being the easyest way to state the facts.

That's where we disagree, because from seeing Dotinis posts, I don't think there's anything that will change his mind, and I am only concerned about limiting his damage to others.

I do think there are some people whose arguments are so flawed its hard to comment on the issue without hurting their feeling or changing their mind, i ussually stay out of those discussions (hence why i only made one post in the contrails vs. chemtrails thread).

And that's something I cannot do. Those are the threads that need commented on the most. You're absolutely right, and have hit the nail on the head, in that some arguments are so flawed that it's almost impossible to not say things that may seem rude or "attacking" when viewed in a non-debate context. If someone has a well reasoned argument with supporting evidence it's very easy to say "I understand where you're coming from, but this is why I think you're wrong." With an absence of reasoning or evidence, what's left to say? I'm not going to lie and say that I understand where they're coming from, because I don't. The only part of the statement left to say is "this is why you're wrong."

I do appologise if this sounds smug or condesending,
Gary

Not at all, and you're probably a better (but not necessarily more efficient) man than I for it.

 

[DKLion3s]

I think you guys need to debate this in terms of "degrees of accuracy", rather than right or wrong. Dotini isn't fully wrong on the possibillities, nor is he fully right, given the Earth's trek thru our young universe so far.

An event can occur as it did, terminating the jurassic period, it is a real possibillity. However what is the degree for this occurrence today, with this particular comet? Probably 1%.

So, yeah, Dotini may be or is, supporting his theory based on the one percent. In the same token, the opposition doesn't have definitive evidence of 100% either. 99% does make for a convincing case, though.

And it works the same vice-versa.

 

[GT5Junkie]

I think you guys need to debate this in terms of "degrees of accuracy", rather than right or wrong. Dotini isn't fully wrong on the possibillities, nor is he fully right, given the Earth's trek thru our young universe so far.

An event can occur as it did, terminating the jurassic period, it is a real possibillity. However what is the degree for this occurrence today, with this particular comet? Probably 1%.

So, yeah, Dotini may be or is, supporting his theory based on the one percent. In the same token, the opposition doesn't have definitive evidence of 100% either. 99% does make for a convincing case, though.

And it works the same vice-versa.

1% is WAY too high. If every long period comet that came close to earth had a 1% chance of wiping us out we'd be getting wiped out every hundred years or so. Add a . And about a dozen or two zeroes and you might be in the neighborhood.

And many of things that he is saying are flat out wrong. 0% chance of being correct. That photo is PROOF comets are self luminescent? Wrong. The photo shows that it's surface is 100% rock? Wrong. That the link he provided said that a sun storm burned down the telegraph lines in 1859? Wrong.

 

[blaaah]

An event can occur as it did, terminating the jurassic period, it is a real possibillity. However what is the degree for this occurrence today, with this particular comet? Probably 1%.

So, yeah, Dotini may be or is, supporting his theory based on the one percent. In the same token, the opposition doesn't have definitive evidence of 100% either. 99% does make for a convincing case, though.

And it works the same vice-versa.

1%!
If we ever had a 1% scenario the whole world would be on shut-down.
1% is 1/100 chance. 0.0001% would still make headlines.

 

[Dotini]

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C/2010 X1
http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/STEREOorbit/C2010_X1.html
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C/2010 X1
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/221672-Comet-Elenin-is-Coming-
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=17P
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=596
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Comets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periodic_comets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-periodic_comets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_comet
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414124424.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071001165932.htm

Here's a list of links for more information for those still interested in comets. Despite the pronouncements of the nattering nabobs of negativism, there is still much to learn about comets and their true nature. Over the coming months, we will learn much about Elenin and other comets that we didn't know before. I hope our journey will be a polite one, but so far the odds don't look good. Great comets tend to bring out many repressed collective fears and memories resulting in bizarre forms of behavior and other socio-psychological effects.

I will make periodic posts with NASA and other observational data that will buttress my case, and tend to refute the know-it-alls who've rashly asserted the case is closed. As always, I will reply to polite questions, but of course there are those already in attack mode who deserve only disapprobation.

Respectfully submitted,
Dotini

 

[blaaah]

Great comets tend to bring out many...do you have a particular source for that bit.

 

[BobK]

Despite the pronouncements of the nattering nabobs of negativism, there is still much to learn about comets and their true nature. Over the coming month, we will learn much about Elenin and other comets that we didn't know before.

I don't believe anybody in this thread has ever said there is not much to learn about comets and their "true nature", least of all the "nattering nabobs of negativism".

Again you are being disingenuous.

 

[Dotini]

Interesting, do you have a particular source for that bit.

You can google 'comets and social unrest' and immediately see references to panic caused by Halley's comet, and the suicide cult sprung up around Hale-Bopp. History is replete with celestial visitations occurring in times of great distress and change. The battle of Milvian Bridge, which marked the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity was heralded by the apparition of a cross in the sky, which Constantine took as his signal to attack. See in hoc signo vinces

"Comets are perhaps at once the the most spectacular and the least well understood members of the solar system"
---Marcia Neugebauer, JPL

 

[Dotini]

I don't believe anybody in this thread has ever said there is not much to learn about comets and their "true nature", least of all the "nattering nabobs of negativism".

Again you are being disingenuous.

Wfooshie, GTJunkie and some others have asserted that comets are icy snowballs that do not glow.

I have asserted that comets are rocky bodies that glow and self-illuminate when in the solar system due to electrical properties. At least Gary is bright enough to acknowledge that comets emit X-rays.

We can't all be right. I intend to prove to everyone's general satisfaction that I'm closer to the true nature of comets than they. I have several months to do it, so be patient.

I'm not being insincere. I'm been roundly trashed as ignorant by an echo-chamber of self-congratulatory pontificators. I have every right to defend my claims, and sincerely will.

 

[Famine]

Wfooshie, GTJunkie and some others have asserted that comets are icy snowballs that do not glow.

I have asserted that comets are rocky bodies that glow and self-illuminate when in the solar system due to electrical properties.

Halley was Whipple's iconic "dirty snowball" - 80% by mass of water in the form of ice, with a dark covering rich in carbon and an overall density in the nucleus of 0.3 grams per cubic centimetre.

We can't both be right.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can be.

 

[Sureboss]

I have every right to defend my claims, and sincerely will.

Of course you do, but do you not also have a right to back-up such claims? Numerous examples where you have been categorically proven wrong, yet you just ignore it, it seems to me that what ever evidence is provided to counter your argument, you will see it as a personal attack and will blankly refuse to change your opinion.

There will always be "passion" in such debates, that's why this sub-forum is different to the rest of GTP, it's inevitable, but you shouldn't always take it personally. As others have said, how could you tell a modern day flat-earth theorist they are wrong without insulting them?

I don't think being insulted (in the right context and manner) is always that bad a thing in this part of the forum.

 

[GT5Junkie]

I have asserted that comets are rocky bodies that glow and self-illuminate when in the solar system due to electrical properties.

And the only evidence you've provided was an incorrectly interpreted photograph, and you haven't revisited the topic since.

And you're wrong right out of the gate. If you claimed that some comets MIGHT be rocky rather than icy then you could get away with it (you'd still have no evidence to support your claim though). But you haven't, you say "comets are rocky bodies" which is flat out false. The density of comets have been measured, are you insisting that all these measurements were done in error? How can you even think of saying that?

The density of every comet that has been calculated is between .3 and .7 gm/cm^3. Even the lightest rocks are 2.0 gm/cm^3 or more, and really you're talking about 2.5 or 3.0.

 

[DKLion3s]

1% is WAY too high. If every long period comet that came close to earth had a 1% chance of wiping us out we'd be getting wiped out every hundred years or so. Add a . And about a dozen or two zeroes and you might be in the neighborhood.

And many of things that he is saying are flat out wrong. 0% chance of being correct. That photo is PROOF comets are self luminescent? Wrong. The photo shows that it's surface is 100% rock? Wrong. That the link he provided said that a sun storm burned down the telegraph lines in 1859? Wrong.

1%!
If we ever had a 1% scenario the whole world would be on shut-down.
1% is 1/100 chance. 0.0001% would still make headlines.

You both have missed the point of my post. The figures are just hypothetical.
The suggested debate platform (degrees of accuracy) is what I'm trying to convey.

There usually is not 100% accuracy, from a non-scientist, in these type of debates. And even scientists don't debate with 100% certainty, they have margins of error calculated in their findings.

 

[Dotini]

Numerous examples where you have been categorically proven wrong, yet you just ignore it, it seems to me that what ever evidence is provided to counter your argument, you will see it as a personal attack and will blankly refuse to change your opinion.

I don't think being insulted (in the right context and manner) is always that bad a thing in this part of the forum.

Ha ha!

I have NOT been proven wrong at all! A posse of self-appointed thought Gestapo have merely asserted that I have been proven wrong. Piffle! The mighty Famine has cautiously stated that we could both be right. TM has not weighed in yet. The debate has just BEGUN and YOU declare the winner??

It'll take months for the comet to get here, and years for the truth to be settled. It'll be settled by NASA, and not by the knuckle-dragging "morons, bigots and dinosaurs" (thanks, Famine!) that must be tolerated here at GTP.

If you enjoy insults I have some really choice ones available. But because I'm older, better educated, and generally a person of better character, it is I who must be patient, polite and tolerant until the truth finally is revealed in its own good time.

Laughing my ass off,
Dotini

 

[Famine]

Am I going to have to get a purple spandex suit and wear my underpants on the outside (no capes!)?

 

[Touring Mars]

There is an interesting press conference from NASA regarding the Hartley 2 comet and there is notably quite alot of discussion of the jets...

The first thing I would say about the NASA image linked to previously in this thread is simply this... it is impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions whatsoever simply by eye-balling the image. The image alone means very little, however impressive and intriguing it may be. Multiple images taken at multiple wavelengths over a period of time are necessary to draw meaningful conclusions, as is a detailed spectroscopic analysis of the light coming from the various regions, as is knowledge of the relative position of the Sun at any particular time. As far as I can be bothered to check, it would seem fairly clear that, insomuch as this analysis has been reported so far, that the visible jets in this image are indeed jets of gas, dust, water vapor, ice etc., being illuminated by the Sun. Obviously, this fact doesn't mean that there are not other things happening too. It is well known that comets emit x-rays due to their interaction with the solar wind, for example.

 

[Dotini]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0x-j1D4oJE
Here's the entire NASA Hartley 2 press conference - all 43 minutes.
The most "brilliant" question asked at the Q&A session at the end was asked by Emily Lakdawalla, the Planetary Society journalist/blogger, when she asked about the light emanating from the base of the jets at the surface of the comet. At 26:45 into the video, she poses the following question to the panel of scientists:

Question : "I've gotten a lot of reader questions [ stating ] that they are confused about how we can see the jets being lit up at the surface...and I know that there are things like forward [ light ] scattering going on, but I'm wondering if you can just explain that in terms that the public can understand." { note: the very tail end of Emily's question was accidentally cut-off in mid-sentence }

Answer : "This is Mike A'hearn. I'll take that question. I think I understand your question before you got cut-off. The gases that come out you don't generally see when we take pictures because most of the pictures we take are white light. Sometimes we take pictures that are sensitive only to the gases of a particular molecule, but usually they are white light, and we see the jets because sunlight is reflecting off the tiny particles of dust and ice that are being carried up by the jet of gas. Uh, if a jet is being produced on the dark side, we in fact don't quite see the base of the jet, we only see the jet when it gets up above the edge of the nucleus so that the sun is above the horizon."

At 4:30 into the video, right after the introductions, Mike A'hearn leads off the Ice-chunk/snowflakes picture show with this statement:

And here you see a lot of things. You see lots of detail on the nucleus. We can trace individual jets down to discreet features on the comet. But we have to be, uh, and we can also see that there are jets clearly coming from features on the night side of the comet, in darkness, and that's an important result."

So, which Mike A'hearn are we to believe as regards light emanating at the base of the so-called "jets"? The guy at the beginning or the end of the video?

Naturally, NASA must be very cautious as to confirming the nature of the jets. If they are confirmed as plasma discharges, then the whole structure of current cometary theory must be rewritten, which NASA is unable to do - YET.

 

[Famine]

I'll try to make it clear.
I would like to decide by myself, wether this place is the right for me or not AND I would like to decide by myself, whom I want to answer and whom I want to ignore, can't live with that? Your problem.
So, PLEASE stop telling me to stay out of threads and participate in the GtPlanet community, only because you do not like my style of having a discussion or simply posting what I want, as long as I do not attack somebody or post total random spam. (And I know that you think now this is the case (posting spam)).

Here's the issue.

You've stated - stated - that people posting opinions contrary to yours are abusing and attacking you and that the staff support them.

Stating an opinion that isn't the same as yours isn't abuse or a personal attack - it's discussion. The staff support discussion, in this forum particularly. If you post an opinion that has sound basis in fact and reason, you should be able to counter countrary opinions with facts and reason. This isn't "an aggressive attitude" - it's debate. The staff support debate, in this forum particularly.

Your complaints seem to be centred around the fact you've been requested to provide evidence of a claim you made and you didn't like it. Providing evidence is in fact the responsibility of the claimant and part of debate. If you state an opinion, provide facts to support it and use reason to develop it, you will enjoy a healthy discussion and debate. If you state an opinion, provide no facts to support it and use supposition to develop it, you will not enjoy a healthy discussion and debate.

As Duke points out, if you don't like having to provide evidence to support your claims, the Opinions forum probably is the wrong place for you as people in here will challenge it and your claims and opinions. This is also largely true of GTPlanet as a whole.

You, as a moderator, should encourage people to be active on this site, and not the opposite.

One has to appreciate the irony of you ordering us not to tell you how to behave as a member, then telling us how to behave as moderators...

 

[FoolKiller]

We can't all be right. I intend to prove to everyone's general satisfaction that I'm closer to the true nature of comets than they. I have several months to do it, so be patient.

It'll take months for the comet to get here, and years for the truth to be settled.

I have followed this thread silently, as I was pulling out one or two interesting nuggets of actual information every 20 or so posts. I was going to be quiet right up until you posted this.

Your OP seemed a bit dramatic in light of the fact that, as you just said, nothing will be proven for months or years, don't you think? You drew this doom and gloom scenario just over 24 hours ago and are now saying you will prove it in months? Honestly, if you are correct you won't be proving anything from your OP. We'll be dead, or at a minimum I'll be dead and your computer won't work.

I honestly believe your speculative dramatic statements are what causes the negative reactions. Were you to remove all the end of the world drama from your OP it is an interesting post about a flyby from a comet and how the scientific community can use it to learn more about comets. Because the simple fact that we are flying probes into, around, and through the tails of comets tells me that the experts believe we truly do have a lot more to learn about comets than the simplified explanations we get in grade school. We have an opportunity with this comet.


Now, simply because I am actually posting now I will post this question that I have had from the beginning.

Consider the curious name Elenin (for discoverer Leonid Elenin, a Russian astronomer). Think E-l-e: Extinction level event. Think E-l-e / n-i-n: Eleven/nine, or 11/9/11, and it is very scary.

"Which leads us all to the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks...Kyle." - Eric Cartman

But seriously, wwwwhhhhaaaatttt? Did you seriously bring some kind of weird numerology or something into this and then act offended when people looking for scientific facts acted less than civil?

I have been relatively silent in most of your threads lately because of things like this. I honestly don't know if you are being serious or not. I decided to quit trying to figure it out when you described aliens in a way that exactly matched a couple of episodes from the original Battlestar Galactica. I can say I am not surprised when people run across it and react the way they do.


EDIT: It also occurs to me a few people here may want to make sure to give this sticky'd thread a good read:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=50628

 

[GT5Junkie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0x-j1D4oJE
Here's the entire NASA Hartley 2 press conference - all 43 minutes.
The most "brilliant" question asked at the Q&A session at the end was asked by Emily Lakdawalla, the Planetary Society journalist/blogger, when she asked about the light emanating from the base of the jets at the surface of the comet. At 26:45 into the video, she poses the following question to the panel of scientists:

Question : "I've gotten a lot of reader questions [ stating ] that they are confused about how we can see the jets being lit up at the surface...and I know that there are things like forward [ light ] scattering going on, but I'm wondering if you can just explain that in terms that the public can understand." { note: the very tail end of Emily's question was accidentally cut-off in mid-sentence }

Answer : "This is Mike A'hearn. I'll take that question. I think I understand your question before you got cut-off. The gases that come out you don't generally see when we take pictures because most of the pictures we take are white light. Sometimes we take pictures that are sensitive only to the gases of a particular molecule, but usually they are white light, and we see the jets because sunlight is reflecting off the tiny particles of dust and ice that are being carried up by the jet of gas. Uh, if a jet is being produced on the dark side, we in fact don't quite see the base of the jet, we only see the jet when it gets up above the edge of the nucleus so that the sun is above the horizon."

At 4:30 into the video, right after the introductions, Mike A'hearn leads off the Ice-chunk/snowflakes picture show with this statement:

And here you see a lot of things. You see lots of detail on the nucleus. We can trace individual jets down to discreet features on the comet. But we have to be, uh, and we can also see that there are jets clearly coming from features on the night side of the comet, in darkness, and that's an important result."

So, which Mike A'hearn are we to believe as regards light emanating at the base of the so-called "jets"? The guy at the beginning or the end of the video?

I'm not seeing any contradiction.

Naturally, NASA must be very cautious as to confirming the nature of the jets. If they are confirmed as plasma discharges, then the whole structure of current cometary theory must be rewritten, which NASA is unable to do - YET.

How is flat out saying they are "dust and ice" being cautious as to confirming the nature of the jets, and how does it open up the possibility that they are plasma discharges?

 

[GT5Junkie]

Ha ha!

I have NOT been proven wrong at all!

Please provide a credible link/source that states the magnetic storm in 1859 burned down telegraph lines.

Please provide indisputable proof that comets are self luminating.

Please explain the density calculations that NASA has done on every single comet to date.

 

[wfooshee]

And here you see a lot of things. You see lots of detail on the nucleus. We can trace individual jets down to discreet features on the comet. But we have to be, uh, and we can also see that there are jets clearly coming from features on the night side of the comet, in darkness, and that's an important result."

So, which Mike A'hearn are we to believe as regards light emanating at the base of the so-called "jets"? The guy at the beginning or the end of the video?

Ya know, once the jetted material passes out from behind the object and into the light, it becomes visible in the sunlight.

Put a fog machine in the back yard of a house. Put another one in the front yard of the house. Put a spotlight in the street in front of the house, illuminating the house.

To an observer standing in the street in front of the house next door, the front yard fog machine is clearly visible, as is the fog emanating from it. The back yard fog machine is hidden behind the house, yet the fog becomes visible as it drifts out from behind the house. In both cases the fog is illuminated by the spotlight, and the observer will note a bright white cloud. There is no one who standing as that observer would then say, "Ooh, look, the fog is glowing!" Nor would they say, "Hey, the fog from the back is different than the fog from the front. Some weird mechanism must be at work here!" just because he can't see the source.

Oh, yeah, forgot to state the obvious: Do this at night!

 

[GT5Junkie]

To everyone else, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Dotini seems to be a "student" of James McCanney.

James McCanney is a pseudoscientist whose "topics of expertise" range so widely that badastronomy.com has an entire section for debunking his BS. I don't really want to get into it, but the guy makes a living pushing ridiculousness, virtually none of what he says is supported at all (and most of it is easily proven absolutely wrong). Take a look at his website, and besides seeing that it appears to have been designed by a nine year old with ADD in 1994, you'll find that it is far easier to click a link that somehow involves sending him money, than click a link that links to some actual science. He's a tabloid scientist.

 

[GT5Junkie]

Dotini:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/snowballs.html

McCanney's Claim #1: Comets are not dirty iceballs, but hot, rocky bodies with no water.

The core claim McCanney makes is that comets are not frozen balls of dirt and ice, as mainstream science would have you think. This is a striking claim. Noted astronomer Fred Whipple coined the phrase "dirty snowballs" to describe comets, meaning that they are dust, rock, and gravel all bound together in a matrix of ice (the ice itself has all sorts of things in it like water and ammonia). This has been the working paradigm for decades. If McCanney is right, and comets are hot and have no water, this would throw cometary science on its head.

Well, McCanney is wrong. You'd better get used to reading that sentence. The way to tell is by looking at the predictions made by mainstream science versus McCanney. He says comets are hot and dry. Mainstream science says they are cold and icy. The obvious questions is, is there some way to tell? Is there some way to measure a comet's temperature?

Yes, there is! You use a spectroscope. This is a device that breaks light up into its constituent "colors", like a prism which breaks up white light into the rainbow of colors. This rainbow is called a spectrum (plural = spectra).

The spectrum from an object depends on many things, but mostly on its temperature and what its made of. For example, the Sun has a spectrum that looks very much like that from a ball of hydrogen gas heated to about 6000 Celsius (about 10,000 Fahrenheit)-- because that's just what it is! A cooler star has a slightly different spectrum, as does a hotter one. An object's spectrum is like its fingerprint, and with it you can identify many of its characteristics.

Astronomers have been taking spectroscopic measurements of comets for decades. The result? Comets are cold. In fact, the temperatures measured are consistent with them being balls of frozen gases. If they were hot, the spectra would be very different, and this simply isn't seen (as indicated in the link above).

Okay, so they're cold. That's half of McCanney's claim shown wrong right away! But are comets dry? In principle, this should be easy to prove wrong or right. Just look for water on a comet!

In his book ("Planet-X Comets & Earth Changes", pages 2-7), McCanney says that he predicted comets are dry, and have no water ice. He then claims his theory was vindicated when the space probe Giotto arrived at Comet Halley, and found it to be very dark, indicating it had no water ice (ice is bright). But surprise! McCanney is wrong again. In reality, Giotto detected lots of water, finding that 80% of the material emitted by Halley was composed of water! Just because something is dark doesn't mean it's dry. Hasn't McCanney ever been anywhere where it snows? Snow or ice is only white and pristine while it falls. After it sits on the ground it gets mixed up with dirt, turning brown (or black in a city). That's why they're called "dirty snowballs".

And it's not just Comet Halley that has water ice; astronomers see lots of water ice in comets. His claim that comets are dry is grossly misleading, to put it delicately. And the fact that he doesn't mention that comets have been seen to have ice almost all the time is also grossly (I would even say suspiciously) misleading. He harangues on this over and over in his book and in radio interviews. But he's dead wrong. Comets have water, and lots of it, and there is lots of proof of it. Tons, in fact, in every comet!

Let me be clear here: the claims that comets are hot and dry are crucial to his theory. Without them, his theory is dead. Guess what? Comets aren't hot and dry. His theory is dead.

Conclusion: Comets are cold balls of ice, not hot and dry. McCanney is wrong.

 

[gary31]

Hey AlexP no offence but you don't seem to be adding to this discussion.

On another note i do not think scientest debate much, i think they ussually present their theorys with data to suport their hypothosis- at lest in an ideal world.

Just to make myself feel better i think i need to say comets are not self illuminating.

[/quote]Isaac Newton (1642-1727). From Newton's 'Principia', a related quotation: "... we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances". [/quote]


Oh...Bad asrtronomy is a great book...everyone should read it.

 

[Dotini]

I have followed this thread silently, as I was pulling out one or two interesting nuggets of actual information every 20 or so posts. I was going to be quiet right up until you posted this.

Your OP seemed a bit dramatic in light of the fact that, as you just said, nothing will be proven for months or years, don't you think?

In hindsight, yes, Foolkiller is dead-on right. My OP was way too melodramatic, and I regret it and would do it better next time. My breathless prose created too much blowback.

Regretfully,
Dotini

 

[Duke]

To everyone else, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Dotini seems to be a "student" of James McCanney.

I obviously do not know Dotini in any personal manner, so I haven't yet decided if his persistent disaster-trumpeting is merely for his own entertainment or whether he truly is that credulous.

I will also say that Phil Plait is one of my minor heroes.

In hindsight, yes, Foolkiller is dead-on right. My OP was way too melodramatic, and I regret it and would do it better next time. My breathless prose created too much blowback.i

Still can't decide.

Than, after I tried to defend a member, a moderator wasn't too fond of this idea, so I had to defend myself and so "the snowball started to get bigger". (lousy metaphor I know lol)

Let me tell you how much I love that you keep insisting "a moderator" has a personal grudge against you, when I've made it clear that NONE of the staff has posted in here in ANY official capacity.