Now onward to thunderstorms:
"Petersen goes on to suggest that the electric charge which manifests during a thunderstorm might be traced to a phenomenon of this kind--the charge carriers in this case being small droplets of water however."
While there is ofcourse no reason why a magical, invisible and undetectable force like the 4th dimension could contribute to thunderstorms, the conventional explanation is far simpler and therefor more likely than Petersen's.
Comets:
"But that comes later. He begins by pointing out that the prevailing theory of cometary origins implies that comets should display a random distribution in their angular momentum about the sun. To test that conclusion he constructs a histogram showing the observed angular momenta of the 235 long-period comets that appeared between January 1, 1901 and 1982. It turns out that their angular momenta are far from randomly distributed; instead, they tend to very small values--close to zero in fact. From this distribution Petersen concludes that in truth they possessed strictly zero angular momentum initially and therefore could only have originated from the sun. "
Comet Motion
"Comets obey the same physical laws as other bodies in space. Therefore, they move according to the basic motion and universal gravitation laws formed by Newton. The orbit of a comet is elliptical. The geometrical constants that describe this ellipse are the semi-major axis (a) and the eccentricity (e). The semi-minor axis (b) relates these quantities by b=a(1-e2). The focus is located a distance a*e from the center of the ellipse. Three other constants are required if the orientation of the ellipse is needed to be
described. The eccentricity of a comet is very large, approaching the value for a parabola. This high value are just as possible as circular orbits."
So a circular orbit will have an excentricity of zero (a=b), and a hyperbolic
Angular momentum h, gravitational constant G, M and m mass
h^2=GM a(1-e^2)
and energy E
E = -G M m/2a
So if a -> infinity, E goes to zero and we have a parabola
Eccentricity Energy Geometry
>1 >0 hyperbola
1 0 parabola
<1 <0 Ellipse
0 <0 circle
The website continues:
"The dynamical constants of this moving body are energy and angular momentum. The total energy is inversely proportional to the semi-major axis. If the energy reaches zero, the semi-major axis becomes infinite, and comet escapes its orbit. The angular momentum is proportional to the eccentricity and the energy, so the larger the angular momentum, the more elongated the orbit. Energy determines the size of the orbit and the angular momentum of the shape"
Scientific American, sept 1998, "The Oort cloud" discusses the distribution of the energy of known long period-comets. Uncorrected for the interactions with the planets their energy appears to be >0, indicating interstellar origin. But when corrected, their distribution is slightly negative, indicating that the comets came from the edge of the solar system.
So did the comets 'come from the sun" ? Probably, but during the formation of our solar system.
And what about the 'jets' ?
Finally in this light one can understand the capacity for high drama that comets often display aloft. The essential clue was discovered by the space probe Giotto when it intercepted Halley's Comet during its recent return. Pictures sent back revealed that the nucleus was far from the passive snowball that had been expected. In fact, its surface was seen to erupt in "jets" at many discrete points. Petersen's model explains that behavior easily. That is, the gaseous material being generated at the eye, near the center of the nucleus, must escape to outer space through a maze of small passages. In the course of time condensable components will freeze in these passages and eventually block some of them. Ultimately
only a few would remain open, and those few would spew out gaseous materials in the form of more powerful jets--which would carry along dust-sized particles as well. "
But no 4th dimension is required to understand these 'jets', when the comet approaches the sun and is heated, such jets are merely escaping of 'heated' gasses from the comet.
So conventional astronomy can very well explain the observations and requires no invisible '4th dimensions' which do not add anything to the explanation and only open more questions.
"Firstly, he agrees with Donnelly that the supposed ice age residues are indeed products of cometary impact--the boulder clay being identified as precipitation from the comet itself while he traces the loess to a peripheral Fortean-type fall as noted earlier."
Now we also reach Petersen's conclusion about the origin of the clay. It was due to comets impacting earth. But we see loess being deposited all the time and no comets impacting. So the conventional explanation once again wins here.
Length of the day:
----------
From: Steven H. Schimmrich[SMTP:sschimmr@calvin.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 1998 10:56 AM
To: evolution@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: Janet Miller's Peterson site
At 10:44 AM 10/15/98 -0700, Joel Duff wrote:
>
> Did anyone notice that on Janet's "Links, letter and comments" page that
> one of the TWO comments posted there is by our friend Joseph. I can hardly
> call that a glowing recommendation of Peterson that Joseph finds him
> appealing. I wonder is Janet has been listening in on the recent exchange
> here.
I personally can't help wondering if either Janet, Jospeh, and Peterson are
all the same person or if they all know each other and work together. It's
hard to avoid that conclusion when reading Janet and Joseph's comments about
Peterson's obscure book. Both always avoided the question when I asked it
during the discussions a few weeks ago.
- Steve.
-- Steven H. Schimmrich, Assistant Professor of Geology Department of Geology, Geography, and Environmental Studies Calvin College, 3201 Burton Street SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 sschimmr@calvin.edu (office), schimmri@earthlink.net (home) 616-957-7053 (voice mail), 616-957-6501 (fax) http://home.earthlink.net/~schimmrich/