Re: Challenge to Jim Scotti

Article: <6iclfr$fv1@sjx-ixn1.ix.netcom.com> 
Subject: Re: Challenge to Jim Scotti
Date: 1 May 1998 14:16:27 GMT

In article <6i64v6$48k@pmgm.Stanford.EDU> John Ladasky writes:
> Especially for an elliptical orbit.  The angle can be greater or 
> smaller than 90 degrees.  The only constraint is that the angle
> can never be zero.  Then it's not an orbit. (Nancy, of course, has
> claimed that zero degrees *is* compatible with an orbit.)  In 
> that special case, the object is headed straight towards or straight
> away from the Sun.

(Begin ZetaTalk[TM])
It's hardly a "special case", as it happen often enough to man to be a
daily affair!  Dropping off a cliff, out of an airplane, or giggling a
pot on a ledge.  Oops!  And straight to Earth goes the "orbit".  Your
inability to put aside Newton and THINK about the orbits you observe
has backed you into a corner.  MUST you accept what someone hundred of
years ago has handed out as an explaination of WHY bodies orbit as they
do?  This is why you have the Flat Earth Society today!  They are
clinging, for comfort, to a notion that does not stand up to the larger
picture, the larger pool of facts known to man.  Divide and conquer,
apparently, as if you narrow the field of view to only a few facts,
then the theory fits!

The orbit of your Moon, moving so slowly as to take 28 days to make an
orbit, is NOT fast enough to keep it where it is within Newton's
formulas.  You must EXCLUDE mass to get this to work, treating the Moon
as thought it were a baseball or a hand-held rock.  Is this reasonable
or logical?  Nevertheless, those who apply Newton's formulas as through
they were edicts handed down from God simply shrug their shoulders and
don't even try to reconcile the contradictions.  "Oh well" say they,
and just look the other way when the formulas don't work!  Then you
teach your young that the formulas are LAWS!  This is religion, not
science!

The silly notion that the only thing keeping orbiting objects in place
is their speed of motion and the original angle between the
gravitational giant and the orbiting object is, needless to say, too
limited.  You assume your tiny comets, dirty snowballs rounding the
Sun, are kept away from the Sun due to this, in spite of VISUAL CLUES
that another force is at work.  The tails of these comets point AWAY
from the Sun.  Just as the tail is affected by the Solar Wind, just so
is the BODY of the comet.  Why is this not reasonable?  Because we are
saying it, and Newton did not?  We are asking our emissary, Nancy, to
respost our existing words on comet and Solar Wind interaction, to
expand on our statements here.
(End ZetaTalk[TM])

........
ZetaTalk: Repeating Comets

Repeating comets are attracted to the Sun, are heading for it, but miss
due to the same sensitivity to the solar wind that causes their dust
clouds and gasses to blow away from the Sun.  Humans assume that tiny
particles will be more affected by the solar wind than larger
particles, but this assumption is wrong.  If this were the case, then
how to explain the Asteroid Belt, which has trash of all sizes,
seemingly unaffected by the solar wind.  A small object may lose its
velocity faster than a larger object, due to the gravitational
differences, but the effect is the same when they are sensitive to the
solar wind - they are pushed away.  Comets that hit the Sun have,
through repeated trips around the Sun, lost enough water vapor so that
the balance of their composition weighs against repulsion by the solar
wind.  In short, they've lost their protection.  They come zooming
 in from outer space, but this time, they don't veer out, they collide.
 In fact, comets close their orbits, coming closer and closer to the
Sun, during this process.  

Where a repelling force exists, such as the solar wind against a comet,
the comet will veer out upon approach and as it gains speed coming into
the Solar System, veer in again.  The increasing speed of comets allows
them to push past their sensitivity to the solar wind, to some degree. 
Thus they have a quick trip around the Sun while held at the distance
where they are essentially getting a blast of wind they cannot proceed
against.

The solar wind is steady, its change incremental, as with every measure
closer the intensity increases by a similar steady measure.  The length
away that the comet maintains is not explained by an analogy such as a
car hitting a brick wall or a diver entering the water or even a man
walking into a hurricane.  The comet is slipping to the side as it
approaches, going in the direction of least pressure, of least
resistance, while still aiming for the Sun.  The point where this
balance is reached is dependent on the speed of the comet, which
increases steadily the closer it gets to the Sun, and the intensity of
the blast from the solar wind.  At every point along its orbit, these
determinators are at play.  When out in space the comet's pace is
relatively sedate, and thus slides to the side rather than approaching
the Sun directly.  When it enters your Solar System the reverse is
occurring - the speed effect overcoming the solar wind push, so that
the comet curves toward the Sun, but always these two factors are at
play.

Quite clearly some comets are periodic, as they appear regularly after
a set number of years, approach from the same direction, turn around
within the Solar System at the same place, exit the Solar System in the
same direction, and give the same predictable appearance.  But comets
that have a long period have been documented in the past in a manner
that leaves much doubt.  Where astronomers within this very millennium
assumed the Sun orbited the Earth, just how accurate can their records
have been?  And how does one know that a previous comet is returning,
even when it approaches from the same direction?  Is it not possible to
have more than one comet with the same track through the Solar System? 
Humans are barely out of the Dark Ages, and if honest would admit that
they are guessing.  Do they have these comets marked?  Do they have an
accurate basis of comparison?  What are they judging on, the pencil
sketch made by someone in antiquity?  

Humans think that because mankind spots comets as they loom into range,
announcing themselves by outgassing as they enter the Solar System,
that human scientists know where the comet has been, and know what its
orbit has been.  They do not.  They can't find these tiny dark specks
when they are out in space.  When they catch sight of them, the comet
orbits are already taking into account their sensitivity to the solar
wind.  This curve starts well outside the Solar System, a fact known by
astronomers.  

Humans think that a comet's orbit is maintained by its momentum.  Of
the factors affecting a tiny comet that approaches the Sun, the force
of its current momentum is not dominant.  Any child who has thrown a
ball and watched it drop toward the Earth as it sped along its
trajectory can sense this.  Archers allow for this in attempting to hit
their target, aiming above the trajectory to account for the drop. 
Momentum is an effect, not a cause.  What caused the momentum if not
gravity.  A ball thrown in space, where there is no gravitational
influences nearby, will continue apace, but a gravity pull behind its
path will slow it down.  When a comet is leaving your Solar System, it
is heading at an essentially straight line away.  Gravity behind the
comet slows it down, and thus the momentum disappears.  

Humans see but what is essentially the end result of a comet's orbit,
or at least that portion of the orbit that involves the Sun's gravity. 
The tiny comet, dark until it enters the Solar System where it flares
under the influence of the Sun, cannot be located by humans while it is
out in space.  They assume that the orbit is broader or at least as
broad, when out in space, as that seen when the comet becomes visible. 
It is not.  As we have explained in detailing the 12th Planet's entry
into the Solar System, comets aim for the Sun, and if influenced away
from the Sun by any factor, adjust their orbit away from the Sun. 
Then, as they near the Sun and, caught in the grip of this giant's
gravity pull, accelerate, the increasing speed allows them to come
closer.  Humans only see that part of the orbit where the initial
adjustment away from the Sun has already occurred.  They see but half
the picture.

The human argument that the long orbit can be determined by the angle
of entry, the parabolic curve, is therefore absurd.  Some long period
comets have several foci, and some only one.  Just how does blind man,
peeping up from a planet he cannot leave, looking out from a Solar
System he has never left, know how many foci this or that comet has? 
Since a parabola and even an ellipse smoothes to an essentially
straight line, how do they know how far that straight line goes before
a turn around is effected?  They do not.  They are guessing.