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Published online 16 November 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.261
News: Briefing
Sun loses crown as biggest body in the Solar System
Comet Holmes is now bigger than the Sun. So are we doomed or is there a more mundane explanation?
The Sun is no longer the largest object in the Solar System: that honour has fallen temporarily to a previously innocuous comet. The comet, called 17P Holmes, shot to prominence in late October when its brightness suddenly increased roughly a million-fold.
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The article suggests that Holmes is experiencing global warming, is it possibly populated?.
That is one of the funniest questions i have ever read lmao.
What is the forcast for earth passing through the dust clouds of this comet in future years. Will we see increased meteor activity since its period is only seven years and the 1892 and 2007 "dust clouds" are apparently very large.? Orin Keplinger orink@t6b.com
The brightening of Comet Holmes is easily explained in terms of the Solar Capacitor model put forth by James McCanney. I would suggest that the traditional view of comets is severely flawed and has to be re-thought.... something not allowed by the present establishment. The brightening is the result of a discharge of the solar capacitor as the comet entered the allignment of planetatary orbits and the dust cloud is not a dischrge from the comet as they would have you believe, but an attraction of the cosmic matter which will enlarge the comet. This could well result in the formation of a new "Planetoid"
Bob, anybody with just a basic grasp of astrophysics knows that MacCanney's theories are pure nonsense. As my time is too precious to refute your warped explanation, may I just refer you to: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/comet_massloss.html
Boy, reading some of these comments gives me great insight into how ignorant & superstitious the general public truly is about astronomy. It never ceases to amaze me at what people will come up with based on junk they've heard & call it "scientific". I'm no authority on the subject but I don't think you have to be a "rocket scientist" to figure some of these things out for yourself. Firstly, Bob, if a planetoid was the result of this event then why didn't it happen before when the same thing happened in the late 1800's? Why haven't other planetoids formed from such events that we know of? Or is this speculative theory of yours just for future events? And, Leonard, I think your question is the longest oxymoron I've ever seen. How can an object in space experience GLOBAL warming? The word "global" refers to our planet, the Earth, & global warming refers to our own atmosphere here on the Earth. Obviously, the comet is not inside the Earth's atmosphere. You know this reminds me of that story about the woman who got extremely afraid & upset when looking out an airplane window & not being able to see the land mass of Europe after only five minutes of flight from Miami, Florida. When all she saw was water she thought something was terribly amiss. It's a wonder that "flat earth" people don't make comments here as well. But then again, I doubt they believe computers exist either so that would preclude their knowledge of this event. LOL Well, if I didn't learn much about astronomy from this article, I sure did learn a lot about sociology.
What always amazes me about so-called "Scientists" is what probably amazes them about the general public, they believe in completely unsubstantiated theories. Look at the Michalson-Morley experiment (6Hrs of results) compared to the Dayton Millar/Morley experiments (20,000 hrs of results) and which do they CHOOSE to believe? Why Michelson-Morley of course. They see three dimensions in front of their eyes and yet "entangled particle" experiments show infinite velocity ie dimensions are inventions of our common genes and we live in a zero dimensional multi-verse where everything can instantaneously affect everything else within the rules yet to be discovered. So what do they believe? The entanglement experiments on dimensions or their own eyes and three dimensions? Their own eyes of course and yet for another experiment, the moon on the horizon illusion, they listen to the cameras used in the experiments rather than their own eyes. This smacks not of Science but of "science", small minded science deriding other people's belief systems based not on experiment but biassed "scientific" belief. Surely in the early days of the 21st Century it is time for Science to begin again after its 100 year hibernation of shamanism. After reading Aeona's piece I sure learned a lot about the closed mind (Grins) see bodgeitandscarper.org and you might learn something, .... or at least have a damn good laugh. This space isn't for publishing but it also isn't for deriding the beliefs of people like Bob when your own beliefs are no more bizarre compared to the real workings of the multi-verse. Sorry but petty-mindedness and laughing at other people just winds me up.
The difference between the Michelson-Morley experiment and Dayton Miller's is that Michelson and Morley's results have been independently verified on numerous occasions, while Miller's were not. That the etheric drift observed by Miller was observed by no one else, neither at the time nor (and with considerably more accurate apparatus) since, is strongly indicative of an error in his experiment.
Ha ha, very amusing discussion going on. Leonard, great joke, pity others seem to have missed the sarcasm. Now to the comets. What always amazed me was that the "tail" is always facing away from the sun... so I can only surmise that the tail is in fact light from the sun reflecting somehow from "behind" the core? Which would imply that: a. there is a sphere of debris around the core (the coma?); and b. light from the sun is only visible around the edge of the shadow cast by the core??? (Can you guess I'm not an astro-physicist?) Interestingly, the tail also grows as the comet gets closer to the sun. Which leads me to another hypothesis - could the "heat" or "energy" from the sun be causing the core to break off? If so, then the debris would have to dissipate quite quickly, and the force of the sun's energy must be very strong. The debris would (in my simple newtonian mind) naturally follow the same eliptic path as the core from whence it broke off, creating the tail effect... Would love to get an easy to understand explanation.
Is this striking effect not also interesting in relation to the hypothesis that 'life', or essential building blocks of life, was brought to the earth by a comet. Seeing that comets can get this big seems to increase the probability that, given a comet containing some ammino acids or viruses or whatever, some of it would enter the earth's atmosphere. (This is not my field so forgive the ignorance.)