link to Home Page

Re: Hale-Bopp THEN and NOW (1-6)


Article: <5ehr6d$krb@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>
From: saquo@ix.netcom.com(Nancy )
Subject: Re: Hale-Bopp THEN and NOW (1-6)
Date: 20 Feb 1997 15:38:53 GMT

In article <5efr19$c55@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Lamont Granquist writes:
>> [You] in fact have no idea just which of the comets making
>> unscheduled appearances are first time visitors or returnees!
>> In all honesty, you DON'T!
>
> Nancy, lets just hypothetically say that you walk into a baseball
> game after having just stepped out to buy some hot dogs and beer.
> As you enter the stands you are just in time to see a baseball
> arcing high over the field which subsequently lands over the
> center field wall for a home run. Now, in the second
> immediately preceding when you walked back into the stands,
> where was the baseball? How do you extrapolate the trajectory
> backwards in time? The same principle works for comets...
> lamontg@nospam.washington.edu
>
>> Your next point, that you "integrated trajectories" of objects
>> similar to Hale-Bopp. Pardon? What objects are you aware
>> of that have 4,200 year cycles?
>
> Returning to the baseball analogy, you pick starting positions
> and velocities of baseballs which give them roughly the orbit
> that you observe to the accuracy of your measurements.
> lamontg@nospam.washington.edu

(Begin ZetaTalk[TM])
BIG BIG DIFFERENCE in that you can examine the ENTIRE behavior of objects in trajectories on Earth, and thus fit the limited view you have of any given trajectory into a known pattern. There is NO comparison here, as the turnaround of comets out in space, outside of your view, is a COMPLETE UNKNOWN!

We beat this to death over a year ago on this message board, in the Re: Ephemerides - the Zetas Explain thread. Bottom line, you have the comet entering at point A, circling around the Sun and leaving at point B, then going out into space and SOMEHOW, magically, moving from point B to point A again for a re-entry into the Solar System. The explanation given is that it forms an ellipse, which is a DESCRIPTION of what you are viewing during the limited time it is in the Solar System, not an explanation. The fact that planets or objects orbiting the Sun form circles or ellipses does NOT translate, as at all times these bodies have the Sun to their side. The comet, shooting AWAY from the Sun, has more pull backwards than sideways, in the extreme. So why would it move to the side, dramatically, from point B back to point A?

The current explanation for comet behavior doesn't even take into consideration recent evidence that comet orbits form more of an ice cream cone shape that an elliptical shape. This gets published and promptly forgotten, as the adjustment in thinking give astronomers a headache. So much more comfortable to cling to the old and familiar, and then there's the issue of challenging your gods. So logic goes out the window, and pig-headedness reigns.
(End ZetaTalk[TM])