Deep Impact

Please explain some of these problems with the “Oort cloud” (aside from the fact that it has never actually been observed.)

Why do comets have so much chrystalline dust when most known space dust is not chrystalline? Where did comets get their large amounts of heavy hydrogen, and how do they contain organic compounds, including methane and ethane? If comets deposited our oceans, why is water so scarce in the rest of the solar system? If comets have been bombarding earth for millions/billions of years, where are all the craters in the lower sedimentary layers? The comets in Jupiter’s family have a lifespan of around 12,000 yrs on average, how could they have been around for millions of years? Where is the star that supposedly dislodged the comets from the “Oort cloud”? Why are there no known comets with hyperbolic orbits? Why are there so many small comets concentrated at earth’s orbit? Why is there not abundant water on Mars?

Dr. Brown’s Theory has real scientific answers for these problems. Does anyone else? Or will I just get the standard responses when one is confronted with a truth that one does not want to admit - ranting, rhetoric, excuses and diversions?

Take the Grand Canyon for instance. In the theory that I subscribe to, it was created by a large "lightning bolt" (not God) just like Valles Marineris on Mars and rilles on other bodies through out the solar system.
The major problem with current other theories is where is the dirt????? A flood would have not created those features. A large electrical discharge from planets coming close together, would not only dig the trench but also lift the dirt off of the planet(comets and asteroids). Plasma discharge would cause crystalline dust from melting and cooling on a comet.
If there was a recent disaster(12,000yr), it would look like the Earth was just created. Large electrical discharge from planets coming close together would do all kinds of things like kill the dinos, it would flash bury things, could move mountains. There is always the possibility that the solar system was terraformed and the moon moved into place by civilizations that have been around for the life of the universe, which if you go by observations of distant galaxies(pencil beam survey) has had to be here for hundreds of billions of years. To say we are the most advanced life in the universe is presumptous. We really dont know anything outside the Earth, we dont even know how our Sun works(dont say fusion), to say the universe was formed at any particular time is really kind of guessing.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Unworthy1</i>
<br />Please explain some of these problems with the “Oort cloud” (aside from the fact that it has never actually been observed.)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That it has not been observed is supporting evidence, not an argument against it. The theoretical magnitude of Oort cloud comets is in the 50s, well beyond the capabilities of the world's largest telescopes. If we could see these comets, they could not be in the Oort cloud unless they could somehow give off their own light.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">This Oort cloud that you speak of sounds a bit like fantasy also, considering that it has never actually been observed.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Much of modern physics and astronomy is not directly observable, but is inferred from other observational evidence. If things that can't be observed should have their existence doubted, then the first to go would be the God hypothesis.

That said, note that I agree that the Oort cloud really is a fantasy and does not exist. However, the observational evidence that cannot be denied is that all "new" comets (that have not been around their orbits before) arrive in the planetary region traveling on orbits with an average period of 3.2 million years. To date, only two ways of explaining this remarkable fact have been conceived. The first is that there is an invisible reservoir of comets at a distance of 43,000 au from the Sun -- the so-called "Oort cloud". The other is that comets originated from an exploded planet and were injected into orbits with all different periods and all at the same time. Then 3.2 million years after the explosion, the only new comets that can be seen are those with 3.2-million-year orbital periods. How does Dr. Brown explain this most important of all comet properties related to origins?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why hasn't either of the Voyager spacecrafts or Hubble seen any evidence of this "cloud"?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Neither is close to the Oort cloud, and neither has a telescope capable of observing comets out to the Oort cloud.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If anyone reading this is openminded enough to really want to know the truth, you will read his book and then make your decisions.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Why? What you have already told us about the book is sufficient to dismiss it. Or do you have answers to the six challenges I gave in my last message, any one of which shows that the hypothesis cannot be true?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why do comets have so much chrystalline dust when most known space dust is not chrystalline?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Burnt carbon residue from the explosion blast wave.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Where did comets get their large amounts of heavy hydrogen, and how do they contain organic compounds, including methane and ethane?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">They were once a part of a planet. But for the reasons cited, that parent planet cannot have been Earth. Besides, fortunately for us, Earth has not exploded.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If comets deposited our oceans, why is water so scarce in the rest of the solar system?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The "oceans" idea is controversial even in mainstream theories. The new data from Tempel 1 shows that comets probably contain no more water than asteroids or meteorites.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">If comets have been bombarding earth for millions/billions of years, where are all the craters in the lower sedimentary layers?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Removed by glaciation and plate tectonics. Nonetheless, hundreds of crater remnants have been discovered in the last few decades.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The comets in Jupiter’s family have a lifespan of around 12,000 yrs on average, how could they have been around for millions of years?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">They came from the Oort cloud or the exploded planet 3-plus million years ago. Why pick on only the Jupiter-family comets? There aren't that many of them. Almost all other comets have longer periods and lifetimes.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Where is the star that supposedly dislodged the comets from the “Oort cloud”?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Interstellar origin has been proved impossible. They are leftover remnants of the primeval solar nebula (mainstream theory) or fragments from an exploded planet (exploded planet hypothesis).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why are there no known comets with hyperbolic orbits?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Because there are no interstellar comets.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why are there so many small comets concentrated at earth’s orbit?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">That just isn't true at all. Only a handful of comets come close to Earth's orbit anywhere along the comet's orbit. If there were any "concentration" (which there isn't), one would have to argue that Jupiter was the favored planet.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Why is there not abundant water on Mars?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Mars had a one-time, giant flood immediately following the explosion. That water all evaporated or was absorbed into the crust.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Dr. Brown’s Theory has real scientific answers for these problems. Does anyone else?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Obviously, mainstream theory and EPH have answers. What are Brown's answers to the six challenge problems I listed?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Or will I just get the standard responses when one is confronted with a truth that one does not want to admit - ranting, rhetoric, excuses and diversions?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Apparently, ranting, rhetoric, excuses and diversions are in the eye of the beholder. But perhaps you will surprise us with solid, observation-based answers to my challenges that purport to show the hypothesis you believe in is astronomically ruled out. -|Tom|-

<i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
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Could we just concentrate on the two competing theories at hand here? Deep Impact proposed a rare opportunity to pit the EPH (which Dr. Van Flandern is an expert in) against the almost universally accepted "dirty snowball" theory. That's enough data to take on board for most of us at the moment.

Unfortunately, since the Deep Impact data are dribbling out (at best), I guess it's easy to start looking at other theories.

Word is that, exactly as many of us predicted, NASA is claiming a crater size of 100m (just ekeing into the very generous 100-250m range NASA allowed itself before the mission). They haven't seen the crater, mind you. Let's hope we have something definitive and are not left with this makeshift estimate before this is all over.

Tom, regarding the gravity- versus strength-dominated models, is it true that the gravity-dominated one (favored by NASA) required that a large portion of the debris (75%, according to Lunar and Planetary Laboratory simulations) would have settled back to Tempel's surface within 24 hours? If so, the fact that the cloud kept expanding, showing apparently little regard for gravity, looks like a big strike against the gravity model.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by davidjinks</i>
<br />regarding the gravity- versus strength-dominated models, is it true that the gravity-dominated one (favored by NASA) required that a large portion of the debris (75%, according to Lunar and Planetary Laboratory simulations) would have settled back to Tempel's surface within 24 hours?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Yes, that figure sounds about right. Gravity-dominated basically means the comet is held together mostly by self-gravity and would offer no hard surface for the impact. The probe would have caused more of a disturbance than an explosion, with lots of loose debris over a wide area lofted off the surface but remaining gravitationally bound to the nucleus. The "rubble pile" model is a popular version of this. It should have made the comet get much brighter (slowly) than it did because much more dust and small debris would have come off the surface.

Strength-dominated means the comet is held together by the cohesive forces of a solid rock. The impact causes instant vaporization, a bright flash, and an explosion that creates a small crater (10-20 meters). Dust and debris would be sent out from a limited area at explosive speeds. Because the probe was sent into the brightest spot on the nucleus in the available area, the excavated material is sure to be blacker, forming a black ejecta blanket around the small impact crater. That ejecta could easily extend out 100 or more meters, and is probably what they saw through the thick dust outpouring.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Let's hope we have something definitive and are not left with this makeshift estimate before this is all over.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Amen to that. But it will almost certainly require some very fancy image processing because the contrast differences are so small, the average reflectivity being only 4% to begin with. So in the final analysis, it might not be possible to see the crater walls. -|Tom|-

Tom,

It will take me a while to generate some responses, but one thing I would like to quickly point out is that apparently you have no problem believing that Mars, which has trace water at best, obviously experienced large scale flooding in the past, but earth, with about 70% of it's surface area currently covered with water, did not experience a global flood. Do you see the ridiculousness of your reasoning?

And to the gentleman who thinks that the Grand Canyon was carved by planetary lightning (were you being sarcastic?), if you have ever seen a good picture of the Grand Canyon from the air, it looks just exactly like it was eroded quickly with a tremendous amount of WATER. No other explanation is remotely reasonable when you look at the evidence - the facts.