Are We Living In A Box?

[Crazy Eddie]

I am now deeply puzzled as to why you think "NASA" continues to espouse the "dirty snowball" theory.

Because I subscribe to NASA's "science news" emails...

Science reporting and scientific THEORY are two extremely different things. "Dirty snowballs" is easier to explain to stupid people than "snowy dirtballs" which is the description that came out of the Deep Impact mission. NASA press releases will almost always use the former description, while sometimes explaining in later paragraphs "There's more dirt than snow, of course." They'd probably be better off coming up with a better phrase, like "frozen mudball" or something, but that's harder for stupid people to grasp.

Don't forget, this is NASA we're talking about. A full third of its budget is dedicated to public outreach, and they cast an extremely wide net.

Asteroids as "extinct comets" is still part of the dirty snowball model—the idea being that all the ices have since melted away. When an actively blazing comet shows a dry, rocky surface with no sign at all of water...

There's no sign of SURFACE water. The jets are coming from reservoirs underneath the surface of the comet, but there's not much to dispute what the jets are actually made of.

Give me a moment here to copy and paste the entire text of the book so that you won't have to buy it.

A simple excerpt will do, particularly if there's a part you think is relevant to the nature of comets/asteroids.

Credit for posting a clip about neutron stars, but:

the usual counter-argument is always that "the laws of physics are different" long ago or far away.

Hard to tell from that single (couple of) paragraphs, but it sounds like he's laboring from a misunderstanding of what "neutronium" actually is. Or maybe I am, I don't know. But neutronium in theoretical neutron stars isn't an atomic structure so much as it is a superdense matter where nuclei are packed extremely close together by gravity. It's indeed true that the "normal laws of physics" don't apply because ABNORMAL ones apply in that case.

He's extremely correct that the actual evidence for this premise is relatively flimsy -- I haven't thought about that in a long time -- and that the assumptions about the nature of neutron stars are based entirely on the pulse frequency and further assumptions about their cause. There are probably far more likely explanations that would be consistent with known (and testable) physics.

 

[Metryq]

there's not much to dispute what the jets are actually made of.

Stardust Shatters Comet Theory (3)

The shock came from the discovery of minerals that can only form at extremely high temperatures, up to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. The minerals could not have been created in the cold depths scientists had envisioned. Also, the investigators have yet to find any markers left by water, and some components appear to exclude the presence of water in their formative phase.

Deep Impact—Where’s the Water? This is the first of a series of articles.

But as best we can tell, until very recently there had been no public acknowledgment by NASA that none of the prior comet visits (Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2) had revealed surface water!

Again, I am recommending Donald Scott's book as a primer to the "electric universe" (aka plasma cosmology). If you read one or two articles on waterless comets or electric stars without any foundation in the science that has been going on for the last century, then you are trying to form an opinion while walking into the middle of a conversation.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

there's not much to dispute what the jets are actually made of.

Stardust Shatters Comet Theory (3)

The shock came from the discovery of minerals that can only form at extremely high temperatures, up to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. The minerals could not have been created in the cold depths scientists had envisioned. Also, the investigators have yet to find any markers left by water, and some components appear to exclude the presence of water in their formative phase.

Deep Impact—Where’s the Water? This is the first of a series of articles.

But as best we can tell, until very recently there had been no public acknowledgment by NASA that none of the prior comet visits (Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2) had revealed surface water!

Again, I am recommending Donald Scott's book as a primer to the "electric universe" (aka plasma cosmology). If you read one or two articles on waterless comets or electric stars without any foundation in the science that has been going on for the last century, then you are trying to form an opinion while walking into the middle of a conversation.

Wait, so if mainstream scientists are wrong about comets, that means the electric universe idea is fact? You are too much.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

there's not much to dispute what the jets are actually made of.

Stardust Shatters Comet Theory (3)

The shock came from the discovery of minerals that can only form at extremely high temperatures, up to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit. The minerals could not have been created in the cold depths scientists had envisioned. Also, the investigators have yet to find any markers left by water, and some components appear to exclude the presence of water in their formative phase.

Deep Impact—Where’s the Water? This is the first of a series of articles.

But as best we can tell, until very recently there had been no public acknowledgment by NASA that none of the prior comet visits (Halley, Borrelly, Wild 2) had revealed surface water!

You linked those before. And it remains relevant, so I repeat: there is no dispute over what the JETS are made of. The halo and tail of the comets are both known to be composed of water and other volatiles, and WELL known at that, because for decades that was the only part of the comet we could even see and examine. They probes that studied Halley on its last pass confirmed as much.

It's the surface composition of the COMET ITSELF that is (or was) up for debate. The present leading theory is that the comets are essentially very porous asteroids with vast water reservoirs beneath a stony surface (interestingly, Ceres and Vesta appear to have the same basic structure).