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To: stormer

I love the two tails. Just blows the socks off of present scientific theories.


66 posted on 07/18/2013 12:39:22 PM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: American in Israel

How so? The multiple tails emanating from comets are well understood. The tail pointing directly away from the sun is composed of ionized gasses sublimated off the comet’s surface and propelled by subatomic particles emanating from the sun (the solar wind), and the other tails are made up of dust, rock, and ice fragments too heavy to be affected by that process. These particles are gravitationally bound and stream behind in the comet’s wake. Due to differential composition and heating on the comet’s surface, material is liberated at varying rates and locations, so given the comet’s speed and trajectory, a number of tails may fan out from the nucleus.


68 posted on 07/18/2013 1:49:10 PM PDT by stormer
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To: American in Israel

And in fact, in the picture I posted the differentiation of the tails is clear; the blue one is ionized gas (these are sometimes greenish), and the other appears redder because it is reflecting sunlight rather than being actually luminous. The other clue as to the tails’ origin is in their shape - the ionized gas is pushed straight away from the sun, while the fragmented material is in an arc.


69 posted on 07/18/2013 1:55:27 PM PDT by stormer
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