Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Comets

If the voltage potential of our atmosphere is a few hundred thousand volts, then something similar should be true for the solar system as a whole. The electric potential between the inner and outer solar system should be enormous. An object moving from the outer to the inner regions, or visa versa, should experience electrical stress similar to that experienced by meteorites entering our atmosphere.

Comets, with their oblong orbits around our Sun, should display evidence of electrical activity, which is exactly what they do.

Long before comets enter regions warm enough to melt water, they develop long tails rich in water.

However, comets are not icy bodies. They are rocks. Space probes that have observed comets up close, and even landed on them, have found no source of water, only barren rock and dust.


Comet 67P in January 2015 as seen by Rosetta's NAVCAM

By ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM
https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/16456721122/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40847079

The electrical explanation this is that the water observed in the tail of comets is synthesized through nuclear fission. Atoms of heavy elements are ripped apart by electric stress. Oxygen and hydrogen is in this way synthesized.

This also makes the abundance of deuterium in comets' tails easier to understand. Heavy elements have a larger proportion of neutrons in their nuclei than lighter elements. Ripping heavy elements into parts would result in a general abundance of heavy isotopes in the elements produced.

No comments:

Post a Comment