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[–] Grospoliner 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

Pseudoscience.

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[–] SkepticalMartian 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

@mathgrunt

Correct, this is junk science that has been debunked many times. It should be deleted.

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[–] Sullysq [S] 1 point -1 points (+0|-1) ago 

Thank you. Thank you for offering more to a discussion than ad homonyms and blind dismissal. I'm going to take this opportunity to counter your source's debunking efforts.

To his first point that solar wind is electrically neutral and implicating that therefore electrically inert. These are two very different things.
First the basics of this premise. Electrical charge means the presence of potential, either negative or positive. Electrical current is the movement of charged particles between potentials. Neutral particles can and do carry electrical current. Plasma is the state of matter in which electrons have become disassociated from the nuclei of atoms and move freely. Every plasma has an electric current.

Being a ball of plasma and not a ball of gas as Phil Plait describes it, the sun is inherently electrical by it's very nature. By wikipedia "The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. This plasma consists of mostly electrons, protons and alpha particles with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV." That's Kilo electron Volts. The sun and its solar wind is electrical.

Going further into his refute of the "not a dirty snowball" claim we find him centering on the idea that it was claimed to be hot by someone. Obviously a comet is not hot. Yet he clings to this point. I can only assume he believes that if the light from a comet were electrical and not sunlight reflecting off ice particles then it would have to be hot like a lightbulb and that by focusing on this obvious fact of temperature that he is successfully debunking the whole idea. It's too bad for him that we have things like the aurora borealis that glow magnificently at very low temperatures in upper polar atmospheres beginning at 60 miles above the earth and stretching visibly to 600 miles above earth to prove this "electricity is hot" idea false.

His only other point against the "not a dirty snowball" claim is that "comets have been found to have ice almost all the time". The video I submitted addresses the ice, where it's found, where it hasn't been found, and it's nature when found. There's no need for me to adress that again here.

For a bit of extra fun I'd like to point out his own dirty snowball claim.

Snow or ice is only white and pristine while it falls. After it sits on the ground it gets mixed up with dirt, turning brown (or black in a city).

What mechanism does he propose is in action on the comet that mixes this snow and dirt? Trucks? Simply flying through space? That would explain why so many planetary poles are so black with dirty snow just like our own, I suppose.