Posted on 10/19/2004 11:13:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Given the reality of the dark spots, which soon became known as "atmospheric holes" because of their appearance in the images, there is only one explanation which has endured over all these years to present. That is, the holes are due to the shadowing of the atmospheric light by an object above the atmosphere. This object simply cannot be a stony or iron meteor because the holes are very large, tens of miles in diameter. A rock of this size would provide a disastrous impact on the Earth's surface. As it turns out, water vapor is very good at absorbing the atmospheric light and thus appearing as a atmospheric hole in the images taken by the spacecraft camera. The only other step in the interpretation is to note that a cloud of water vapor will have only a brief existence in interplanetary space so that it must be delivered to Earth as a small comet filled with water snow which is disrupted and expands as it impacts into our atmosphere.
(Excerpt) Read more at smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu ...
Sources of Terrestrial and Martian WaterAbstract: There is no agreement on the origin of water on Earth and Mars. A number of sources have been proposed but the pieces of this puzzle do not currently fit into a coherent picture. We list various geochemical measurements that can serve as discriminators and we use them to examine the principal proposed mechanisms for delivery of terrestrial and Martian water. Important new developments have occurred in our understanding of the presence of water during early and late stages of Earth's formation. It has long been thought that the region of the solar nebula where Earth formed was too dry for hydrous mineral phases to be stable and form a "wet" Earth, and that water was delivered by impacts of asteroids and/or comets with Earth after it formed. However, several recent measurements support the existence of water oceans on Earth shortly after its formation, as early as 4.3 to 4.4 x 10^9 years ago. The source or sources of this early water are not obvious at this time. Two new mechanisms proposed for the formation of a wet early Earth are adsorption of nebular gas onto fractal dust grains in Earth's formation region and migration of hydrated silicates from the outer asteroid belt region of the solar nebula. On the other hand, late stage delivery of significant quantities of water from asteroidal and cometary sources appears less likely that previously thought. Isotopic and molecular ratio considerations do not favor asteroids or comets as the main contributors to what is commonly termed the "late veneer" in Earth's formation. There are two important caveats to this last statement. First, our measurement of the composition of comets and asteroids may not be representative of their bulk atomic, isotopic and molecular composition. Second, comets and asteroids currently sampled spectroscopically and by meteorites may be unlike those falling to Earth during its formation. Independent of the role comets and asteroids may have played in the delivery of water, they appear to have been the principal source of organic compounds once the Earth's crust had solidified.
Humberto Campins
Michael J. Drake
January 30, 2006
On the Deuterium Abundance on Mars and Some Related ProblemsAbstract: Strong fractionation of deuterium in photolysis of H2O and above the hygropause reduces the production of HD relative to H2 on Mars by a factor of 3.7 total. The model by Y. L. Yung et al. (1988, Icarus 76, 146-159) for deuterium fractionation in chemical reactions on Mars corrected for this factor results in (HD/H2)/(HDO/H2O)=0.43. This value may fit the deuterium abundance observed by V. A. Krasnopolsky et al. (1998, Science 280, 1576-1580) if the eddy diffusion coefficient does not depend on solar activity: K=1.4¥1013n-1/2 cm^2 s-1 (model 2)... The three-reservoir model for hydrogen isotope fractionation suggested by Krasnopolsky et al. (1998) involves a reservoir composed primarily of water ice in the polar caps that isotopically interacts with the atmosphere. Assuming that water ice is half of the total volume of the polar caps and the polar-layered deposits, the total loss of water from Mars is equal to 65 and 120 m for models 1 and 2, respectively. Along with thermal and nonthermal escape, these values may include the loss of water by oxidation of regolith, if the released hydrogen escaped with isotopic fractionation. Although the solar-wind alpha particles are the main source of He on Mars, capture of the solar-wind H+ and D+ ions by Mars has a negligible effect on the thermospheric abundances of H and D. Improved observations of minor components in Mars' thermosphere may resolve the problem of eddy diffusion at various solar activity and choosing between the models.
Vladimir Krasnopolsky
Icarus, Volume 148, Issue 2,
pp. 597-602 (2000)
Clandestine comets found in main asteroid belt - Earth oceans origin
newscientist space | 23 March 2006
Posted on 03/24/2006 5:26:05 AM EST by S0122017
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1602203/posts
Scientist Says Ice Meteors a Sign of Climate Change (Environut alert)
Reuters (Yahoo) | Fri Sep 27, 9:54 AM ET | Emma Ross-Thomas
Posted on 09/27/2002 12:06:27 PM EDT by narby
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/758461/posts
UFO cloud wakes seen by NASA satellite
Eoenquirer
Posted on 03/22/2007 10:12:41 PM EDT by djf
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1805355/posts
Quibble -- military surveillance satellites do see them, or at least the results of their impacts.Icy minicomets not so dead!J.J. Olivero and his colleagues at Penn State have been monitoring the sky with a microwave radiometer in their search for emissions from high-altitude gases. During more than 500 days of observations, they detected 111 sudden bursts of water vapor. Olivero et al suggest that these bursts occur when small, icy comets vaporize at very high altitudes. These minicomets are of the same size (about 100 tons) and frequency (20 per minute over the whole atmosphere) as those predicted by L.A. Frank. Frank's icy comets have been received with about as much warmth as "cold fusion." One reason for the unpopularity of icy comets is that they would have provided sufficient water to fill the ocean basins, thus undermining the accepted view that our oceans derived from outgassed water vapor from deep within the earth... the minicomets do have some counts registered against them: (1) The effects of all the purported water vapor on the ionosphere should be easily detected but they are not; (2) Seismometers emplaced on the moon have not detected their impacts there; and (3) Military surveillance satellites have not seen these housesized objects.
by William R. Corliss
Science Frontiers
No. 72: Nov-Dec 1990
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
Did comets flood Earth’s oceans?
EurekaAlert | 16 June 2004
Posted on 06/16/2004 5:30:59 PM EDT by ckilmer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1154794/posts
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We barely have photo evidence for earth impact. I’m sure cassini does not have the resolution for detection on other planets.
It looks like there may be a serious amount of water at the lunar polls where the sun does not shine.
Any small amount of water from comet impacts is immediately evaporated by sunlight into the near lunar vacuum.
The existence of polar lunar water tends to support the comet theory.
“What a crock, if space is really so full of small comets why don’t we see them hit the moon?”
These are mini comets. We barely detect them in the upper atmosphere which is 50 miles up. We won’t detect them 240,000 miles away on the moon.
In re the Carolina Bays: how about smacking a small comet into an ice sheet? The splattered ejecta would melt after it made a dent...and there would be no meteorite to find.
The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization
by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith
I get a 403 (access forbidden) error on that link
(be aware that this is a pretty old topic; and f’instance, FReeper “timer” got banned from FR, probably seven years ago)
Why is it so credible that our atmosphere is bombarded continuously with small pebbles and grains of sand, (bits of rock and metal) but not small bits of ice? Frank’s theory (of small extraterrestrial ice bodies vaporizing in the upper atmosphere) seems perfectly plausible to me.
There’s really no alternative, but the so-called skeptics found one. :’)
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