I am a science guy and I did answer the question. Most of these questions I don't need to research at all. When I post a website, it is usually to save a lot of typing. You might notice that I post a lot of information from NASA. There are plenty of folks on mingle who don't have a science background who can pose a question without pretending that they know more than they know.

Questions dealing with misuse of the term, electric field, electric charge, static electricity, etc. combined with non-functional statements about solar discharges are mostly meaningless. Most people don't understand cosmic rays, ions, hydrogen nuclei, solar discharge, solar ejecta, elemental positive charges, or what they have in common.

Just because you don't understand the science behind the world around you, doesn't mean others don't either.

(Again) Comets do not have a mechanism to produce an electric field like the Earth and the Sun or Jupiter. Some bodies, like Mars, have lost the ability to produce such a field which is why they don't have much of an atmosphere. Some bodies like comets and asteroids never had them in the first place.

i'm not doubting you or nasa, but when it come to things that can only be studied through a telescope, i have to question when it is stated as fact. without actually going to a comet, mars, asteroids, anything we are not capable of going to, i cannot say for sure anything is a "fact"...sure, comets are a big dirty snowball, but they are much more or much less, we only know by making an educated guess... when we land on one and see what they really are, then it will more of a fact....

Ahhhh. We seem to have found the root of the problem. If you would go to the website I posted ... twice, you would see that NASA went to a comet and exploded a huge crater to get samples for the instruments on the spacecraft to examine. A huge amount of direct data was collected ... not through a telescope ... and a wealth of information is there for anyone who wants to know anything "FACTUAL" about comets. However, they did take some good telescopic pictures during the event.

So as to the question of my "opinion" as to "of what comets are made"
My opinion wouldn't mean anything since NASA has already been there and sampled the damn thing.

Comets are not all alike. Some have more of one element and less of another. The exploding of a star by supernova sends much of it's contents flying through space. This is the material of which comets, planets, most non-hydrogen normal matter objects in space are made. There are exceptions.

Stars burn helium to produce heavier elements and in turn burn those to produce still heavier elements. They produce lots of carbon, oxygen, silicon, etc. and much smaller amounts of uranium and heavy metals. The basic ash of a star is iron. The heavier elements only are made during the supernova process.

That said, the composition of a comet is generally the stuff that was spewed out of the last supernova and in proportion to the percentages of elements produced. The heavier elements tended to gravitate towards the center of the solar system making rocky iron laden planets and the lighter elements tended to congregate along the outer reaches of the system. This isn't the case in all stellar systems but it is the case with ours.

The example I gave earlier of protons, cosmic rays, ions, etc., etc., all have one thing in common. They are all the same thing as regards solar wind.

An individual ion, proton, etc., has an electric charge of one. However, when we discuss the interaction of celestial bodies with solar wind in the context of a magnetic fields, we are discussing the magnetic field of a body such as the Earth, not an individual proton. The protons are ejected from the Sun and, because they have a charge, are funneled along line of force caused by the Earth's magnetic field. These particles follow the lines of magnetic force to the poles and the interaction with the atmosphere is what we see as Aurora Borealis.

The Sun's primary magnetic field is caused by the same spinning motion as the Earth but it has secondary magnetic fields as well. The seething currents of charged ions produce multiple poles all over the surface of the Sun. These poles are connected by the same lines of magnetic force as the Earth ... but millions of times stronger and adjacent to an unlimited supply of ions to travel along those lines. Billions of amps of current travel along those lines creating the "ropes" discussed earlier in this thread. They have nothing to do with comets. If a comet got near one it would get cooked producing even more ions. If the tail of a comet happen to roughly line up with a rope, the ionization of the particles in the tail could produce an alternate path for the rope briefly as a tree would being hit by lighting.

Comets don't survive long near the Sun because the ice melts and the comet falls apart. Gas and dust produced by the melting is blown away by the solar wind. The interaction of the solar wind hitting the gas in the tail is similar to the Aurora Borealis. Some of it is just reflected light. In any case, the comet has no magnetic field of it's own to produce any effects.The Perseid meteor shower, and others, are the remnants of comet tails. Each falling star is just a piece of gravel from the once comet. The Earth passes through these remnants like clockwork.

These are the facts as I understand them, not opinion or speculation.

path of comet Elein:

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=elenin;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb

well, while your sitting praising and putting people down at the same time, maybe you could answer her question while doing so, a very simple one at that... do you think that comets have an electrical charge/field? i know you can post websites that say what scientists think, you have proved that, and a spectral analysis is just that, they look at in and make conclusions, and says nothing of an electric field... but if you just wanna post websites, thats fine too, but don't try thinking your some kind of science guy that way, because anyone can post a website....

I am a science guy and I did answer the question. Most of these questions I don't need to research at all. When I post a website, it is usually to save a lot of typing. You might notice that I post a lot of information from NASA. There are plenty of folks on mingle who don't have a science background who can pose a question without pretending that they know more than they know.

Questions dealing with misuse of the term, electric field, electric charge, static electricity, etc. combined with non-functional statements about solar discharges are mostly meaningless. Most people don't understand cosmic rays, ions, hydrogen nuclei, solar discharge, solar ejecta, elemental positive charges, or what they have in common.

Just because you don't understand the science behind the world around you, doesn't mean others don't either.

(Again) Comets do not have a mechanism to produce an electric field like the Earth and the Sun or Jupiter. Some bodies, like Mars, have lost the ability to produce such a field which is why they don't have much of an atmosphere. Some bodies like comets and asteroids never had them in the first place.

Ahhhh. We seem to have found the root of the problem. If you would go to the website I posted ... twice, you would see that NASA went to a comet and exploded a huge crater to get samples for the instruments on the spacecraft to examine. A huge amount of direct data was collected ... not through a telescope ... and a wealth of information is there for anyone who wants to know anything "FACTUAL" about comets. However, they did take some good telescopic pictures during the event.

So as to the question of my "opinion" as to "of what comets are made"
My opinion wouldn't mean anything since NASA has already been there and sampled the damn thing.

Comets are not all alike. Some have more of one element and less of another. The exploding of a star by supernova sends much of it's contents flying through space. This is the material of which comets, planets, most non-hydrogen normal matter objects in space are made. There are exceptions.

Stars burn helium to produce heavier elements and in turn burn those to produce still heavier elements. They produce lots of carbon, oxygen, silicon, etc. and much smaller amounts of uranium and heavy metals. The basic ash of a star is iron. The heavier elements only are made during the supernova process.

That said, the composition of a comet is generally the stuff that was spewed out of the last supernova and in proportion to the percentages of elements produced. The heavier elements tended to gravitate towards the center of the solar system making rocky iron laden planets and the lighter elements tended to congregate along the outer reaches of the system. This isn't the case in all stellar systems but it is the case with ours.

The example I gave earlier of protons, cosmic rays, ions, etc., etc., all have one thing in common. They are all the same thing as regards solar wind.

An individual ion, proton, etc., has an electric charge of one. However, when we discuss the interaction of celestial bodies with solar wind in the context of a magnetic fields, we are discussing the magnetic field of a body such as the Earth, not an individual proton. The protons are ejected from the Sun and, because they have a charge, are funneled along line of force caused by the Earth's magnetic field. These particles follow the lines of magnetic force to the poles and the interaction with the atmosphere is what we see as Aurora Borealis.

The Sun's primary magnetic field is caused by the same spinning motion as the Earth but it has secondary magnetic fields as well. The seething currents of charged ions produce multiple poles all over the surface of the Sun. These poles are connected by the same lines of magnetic force as the Earth ... but millions of times stronger and adjacent to an unlimited supply of ions to travel along those lines. Billions of amps of current travel along those lines creating the "ropes" discussed earlier in this thread. They have nothing to do with comets. If a comet got near one it would get cooked producing even more ions. If the tail of a comet happen to roughly line up with a rope, the ionization of the particles in the tail could produce an alternate path for the rope briefly as a tree would being hit by lighting.

Comets don't survive long near the Sun because the ice melts and the comet falls apart. Gas and dust produced by the melting is blown away by the solar wind. The interaction of the solar wind hitting the gas in the tail is similar to the Aurora Borealis. Some of it is just reflected light. In any case, the comet has no magnetic field of it's own to produce any effects.The Perseid meteor shower, and others, are the remnants of comet tails. Each falling star is just a piece of gravel from the once comet. The Earth passes through these remnants like clockwork.

These are the facts as I understand them, not opinion or speculation.

....




Great post, metal.

he has posted a gradeschool website that explains nothing...

As far as whether the body in question was a comet or asteroid, I'll be back in a few...

I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the great post I was commenting on was entirely his own writing. He didn't copy a website, he wrote in his own words. Maybe you were talking about his link?

As far as whether the body in question was a comet or asteroid, I'll be back in a few...

he has posted a gradeschool website that explains nothing... 1 site, that is basically worthless... what "comet" did they land on?.... it wasn't a comet, it was an asteroid, just like the one they are orbiting now. metal, you need to get your facts straight, you say your a science guy with your 1 link, which was worthless to anyone outside of the 8th grade, and make all these claims... they never landed on a comet, it was an asteroid... prove me wrong....

This link:

http://deepimpact.umd.edu/flash/di_science.html

Deals with this mission

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

To investigate this body:

http://cometography.com/pcomets/009p.html

Every page I visited, from NASA and universities, opts for the term "comet" rather than 'asteroid' to describe '9P/Tempel 1'.

These websites are actually directed at voters to show "where the money went" and at learning institutions from grade school to college as a resource. The text is written to be easily understood (apparently not easy enough) for your typical reader but also containing the advanced concepts and data used at the most advanced levels.

This particular website has an unusual format which I like that gives a long series of topics of interest in "clickable" form to gain additional information.

There is a whole set of data about the core. Asteroids don't have cores.

There is a wealth of information about the ice surface. Asteroids don't have ice surfaces.

There were direct observations of the coma. Asteroids don't have comas.

Most telling is the use of the word "comet" in every context including, as you noted, the name of the comet, 9P/Tempel 1.

Did you ever see the movie "Clueless"?

I found those links gibberish

If one could explain the effect on a gravity funnel

I would be happy to add something