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Originally posted by Astyanax
I've yet to see a plausible explanation by standard theorists for why comets should have such intense magnetic fields in the first place.
That's because they don't .
There is some cometary magnetism, true. What comets do contain are magnetic materials like iron and nickel, which respond to external magnetic fields such as the Sun's.
By "some" you must mean "magnetic fields intense enough to generate x-ray emissions"
Please explain how in the f*ck a melting ball of ice emits x-rays.
Please explain how in the f*ck a melting ball of ice produces a magnetic tail that can be separated from the nucleus by CME's. If the comet is "melting", how does a CME abruptly shut off the "melting"?
CME's now freeze matter?
Originally posted by Astyanax
By "some" you must mean "magnetic fields intense enough to generate x-ray emissions"
Please explain how in the f*ck a melting ball of ice emits x-rays.
Please explain how in the f*ck a melting ball of ice produces a magnetic tail that can be separated from the nucleus by CME's. If the comet is "melting", how does a CME abruptly shut off the "melting"?
CME's now freeze matter?
Your language and your attitude are a poor match for your scholastic pretensions.
X-rays are produced in many ways, of which synchrotron radiation (photons created when electrons are accelerated in a magnetic field) is only one. How X-Rays Are Produced
As for your childish question about comet's tails, have you ever blown on a small fire and watched the flames disappear, only to return more strongly when you stop? Do you think combustion ceases in the fire while you're blowing on it? Do you think hot gases and smoke cease to be produced? No, your blowing has only dispersed them, so that they temporarily cease to be visible.
If this is the level at which your scientific reasoning works, I'm not surprised you think Einstein's work is nonsense.
Originally posted by PplVSNWO
If sublimating ice blow the surface is producing jets of H2O as Phage would have us believe, why is the comet not breaking apart light a waterlogged river rock in a bond fire? I mean, that scenario is just taking water and converting it to steam, the comet scenario is turning ice to steam?
Not trying to argu with the standard model here, but I really want to know what makes those balls of rock so special compared to rocks here on earth(so special that they can take the kind of pressures involved in sublimating ice below the surface?)
Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by PplVSNWO
Not steam, water vapor. There's a difference. An remember, it isn't hot, it's pretty damned cold.
They do eject chunks of material at times. Here is an image from the Hubble telescope of it happening.
www.msnbc.msn.com...
Short period comets, the ones that get warmed by the Sun, do not last forever. Probably in the neighborhood of half a million years at the most.
[edit on 5/14/2010 by Phage]
We report on our search campaign for the fragments of the Jupiter family comet and target of NASA's CONTOUR mission, Comet 3P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, one orbit revolution after the splitting of its nucleus in 1995 (Boehnhardt et al., 1995). Fragment C was found back with coma in November 1999 at 4 AU inbound and it continued to be active during the perihelion arc until at least December 2001 when we observed it last at 3.3 AU outbound. Fragment B was observed with coma between July and September 2001 when moving outbound from 2.35 to 2.75 AU. The search for other fragments including A, D (Boehnhardt et al., 1995) and E (Kodata et al., 2000a, b; Nakamura et al., 2000) in a search area of 15 × 4 arcmin starting at fragment C along direction of the extended radius vector was not successful in July and September 2001. The limiting magnitude of this search of ~ 25 mag in R puts an upper limit on the radius of potential fragments of about 200 m (assuming albedo 0.04). The orbit deceleration parameter and the observed coma brightness of component C suggest that this object is the primary fragment that may contain a major part of the original nucleus.
Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 - Fragment B: Apr. 20, 2006
A sequence of images showing the piece of the comet known as fragment R has been assembled into a movie.
I didn't think "a few moments" meant 12 days.
Here's that same comet just a few moments later:
The above figure indicates the relative position of 59 of the known cometary fragments, as identified using the JPL/Horizons database for May 04 from 0800 - 1200 UT. Lines of motion for all fragments are indicated. For clarity only some of the fragments have been labeled.
Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by mnemeth1
Yes, objects falling in slightly different orbits will spread out in a line. It's called orbital mechanics.
Are the cars in your "choo choo train" going sideways?
Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by mnemeth1
Well, in a sense it is rocket science. The fragments are behaving according to orbital mechanics, as they should.
Recorded on May 4-6 by an infrared camera on board the Spitzer Space Telescope, the picture captures about 45 of the 60 or more alphabetically cataloged large comet fragments. The brightest fragment at the upper right of the track is Fragment C. Bright Fragment B is below and left of center.