In reply to Mauro Lacy's message of Sun, 15 May 2011 19:02:45 -0300: Hi, [snip] >On 05/15/2011 06:14 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> In reply to Mauro Lacy's message of Sat, 14 May 2011 15:49:13 -0300: >> Hi, >> [snip] >> >>> Most probably, the reason is comets are charged bodies. The electric >>> field of the comet interacts with the electric field of the Sun, and a >>> CME occurs. The electric interaction is also the reason for cometary >>> tails, by the way. >>> The level of denial the academic community is in regard to this, is >>> simply astounding. >>> >> This feels intuitively wrong. If the charge were high enough to cause such >> havoc, and were repulsive (as the direction of the tail would imply), then >> the >> whole comet should never get anywhere near the Sun. >> > >If gravitational attraction is greater than electrical repulsion, the >overall effect will still be attraction. >An attractive inverse square law plus another (smaller) repulsive >inverse square law, will still be an attractive inverse square law.
...but the tail blows away from the Sun, implying that it is carrying the charge. As it blows away it should leave the rest of the comet neutral (the comets charge should be on it's surface). Especially as it gets really close to the Sun where the surface is heated enough to evaporate easily. IOW the charge should all boil off, on the first pass, leaving none for subsequent passes. I wonder if you get solar flares with every cometary impact, or only with some of them? (BTW I don't think I should have entered into this discussion at all.) Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
