Empirical Science expects us to buy into the most extraordinary jokes, accept obvious stupidities as facts, simply because it says they are facts arrived at through the scientific method.
Perhaps the most absurd fact they want us to accept is that comets, those heavenly displays of fire trailing a blazing star-bright point of light as it courses its way around the sun, to burst into two or a thousand pieces, to emerge whole for a future pass, or to pass once never to be seen again, are made up of ice and that the fire we see is merely the reflection of sunlight off ice crystals which are being shed in the sun's solar wind.
We have a periodic table of elements in which those at the simple end, the lightest elements, are stable, and those at the other end, the heavier elements, uranium and plutonium, are unstable, and we have about a dozen elements that can't exist on Earth, that are created for milliseconds in the laboratory before they simply convert back, break down into simpler elements, simply disappear.
To any thinking person, especially to those whose fingers have been burnt in a fire, this would indicate that we exist in a field of heat, electromagnetic radiation, that controls the stability of the elements around us. After all, one of the most stable of elements, iron, can be heated up and it will begin to melt. It can be incinerated in an atomic blast.
This notion, that the heat from the Earth and the sun provide a field that controls the existence of the elements that can exist in that field, suggests that elements that are unstable on Earth, let's use uranium as the example, might well be stable in a lesser field. It would also suggest that elements that are unstable on Earth, but which, like uranium, can exist when combined with other elements in something like pitchblende, which stabilizes uranium on Earth, simply couldn't exist in a stronger field, read hotter conditions, say on the surface of Mercury.
Where would those lesser fields be found in which uranium might be stable? The further away from the sun something exists, the less of a field it occupies so that perhaps, out in the orbit of Pluto, uranium is not only stable, but some of the elements that can only be created momentarily in our laboratories might be the unstable elements.
In fact, we don't know what the heaviest element is that might be able to exist in the absence of a field, of any heat at all, in a stable condition because we are stuck here in the field that makes up the Earth's orbit around the sun.
But that wouldn't be the case with deep space objects. Chunks of elements that couldn't exist on Earth, or which might be only boundary elements on the Earth's surface, are more than likely to be drifting in the space between the stars. Thus, as the Earth moves in space, a space in which there are hunks of rocks made up of elements that are heavier than can exist on the Earth's surface, the sun's gravitational field would attract some of these hunks toward it. Some might simply pass the sun at a glancing blow, others might take up orbits, either long period or short period, and still others might be so fragile that they would simply break apart as they made their closest approach to the sun.
What would we expect of such hunks of heavy elements?
The hunks of heavy elements would not be emitters, would not become hot so long as they were far enough away from the sun. But as the sun pulled them closer, its field would do the same thing to the elements that a fire does to the elements that make up your finger. The elements would come alive, become unstable, and start to emit. Soon the emissions would reach the visible range and the hunk of rock would start to burn like a miniature star. As it burned, it would give off a part of itself, burning particles which, when caught in the solar wind, would stretch out back and away from the comet as it approached the sun.
The closer the comet came to the sun, the brighter it would become, the bigger its tail would become and the more chance there would be that the sun would cause it to break up. Even short and long term comets, settling into orbits for multiple passes, would eventually deplete themselves, burning themselves into the fragile state needed for break up with the sun's emission field.
So, with a perfectly reasonable explanation for the fire we see in the sky, how does empirical science come up with ice, and more amusingly, what does the conclusion that comets are made out of ice do to the defenders of the icy fire and how does it affect the consistency of the rest of empirical science, which is made up of fantasies just as absurd as the increasingly ridiculous assertion that comets are made up of ice?
As with everything, the history of ice comets is directly traceable back to Newton and his baseless assertions about the nature of gravity. Newton thought up gravity by noting that the planets had a different orbital velocity constant for the planets that was different still from the constant produced by the sun, all historical measurements that had been around for years. He named the constant gravity, and theorized that gravity was what was holding the moons in place around the planets and the planets in place around the sun.
Thinking that he could prove the existence of gravity mathematically, he computed the amount of gravity the Earth had and the amount of gravity that the moon had. He did this by making the erroneous assumption that both were uniformly made up of the same particle, ignoring density. He then created a law of motion that said objects would travel in a straight line but for any force that caused that straight-line motion to be redirected. He said gravity was redirecting the motion of the moon, which would travel in a straight line but for the gravity of the two. Computing the gravity by volume, he computed how much gravity it would take to make the moon settle into a circular orbit around the Earth. He then said that if this equaled the amount of gravity in the Earth and the moon by volume, then his theory that gravity was proportional to the matter that made up the moons and the planets would be proven to be a fact.
Of course, his equation didn't work out. There was too much matter, giving rise to the centuries long myths of the moon being made out of cheese, its interior riddled with caves, its backside, which was never visible, a big concave valley, and even of a hollow Earth. But Newton's influence was such that the discrepancy was accepted as fact, the proportionality of gravity as fact, and when it was discovered that it worked less for the planets than the moon, and that Newton's volume assumption was close to being insane, it was decided that because Newton had shown that gravity was proportional to the matter that made up the planets, the orbital velocity constant could be used simply to find out the density of the planets, producing the gas giants such as Jupiter, and on a more far reaching stage, dark matter and black holes.
When it came to computing the orbital velocity of comets, however, the matter turned out to be ice, and thus, because nothing could go against Newtonianism, the comets became ice even though throughout recorded history they had been accepted for what they were, bits of brightly burning matter throwing off fire as they got closer to the heat of the sun.
Interestingly, Halley's comet is named after Newton's astronomer, the man who Newton hounded until his death to keep recomputing the moon's orbit so as to bring its motion into closer agreement with his prediction. Halley's prediction about the periodic nature of the comet of 1682 was based on his study of cometary orbits rather than Newtonian theory about the nature of gravity and although he financed the publication of that theory, his prediction that the comet would return in 1758 pretty much made Newton's theory fact even though he based his prediction on identifying the comet as the same comet that had appeared at 76 year intervals historically in 1305, 1380, 1456, 1531 and 1607.
With the nature of comets settled, they were made up of ice to force their orbital calculations into Newton's faulty gravity is proportional to volume scheme, the next question was, where did they come from?
Well, since the sun was sitting their in the center of the universe, having replaced the Earth at that favored position, remember, these people knew nothing about the universe, about the nature of matter, about electricity or light, but then again, neither does empirical science today, although it now acknowledges the existence of galaxies, Newtonian fantasists concluded that the source of comets must lie somewhere outside the orbits of the known planets. Knowing that Newtonianism didn't work, empirical science had created something called perturbations to explain everything that didn't conform to the orderly operation of the solar system (today it's the butterfly effect, chaos theory where the draft from a butterfly's wings could start a typhoon in Singapore). Thus, it made up something called the Oort cloud, a cloud of ice that existed some distance from the Earth.
Every once in a while, perturbations in Jupiter's orbit would cause a piece of this icy cloud to descend upon the solar system, taking the form of a comet. When comets were found to have extremely long periods, that is, when they were found to pass by and never be seen again, they were classified as long period comets and said to come, not from the imaginary Oort field, but from a new imaginary ice field outside the orbit of Pluto called the Kuiper ice belt, just as fanciful as the Oort field.
Of course, Big Bang Theory, which has been irrefutably proven to be fact by empirical science in the same manner all of its theories are proven to be fact, by denying all dissenters status, has the sun moving through space at about half a million miles per hour. It's one thing to expect us to believe that the planets circling the sun are also traveling at that speed, in addition to their measurable speed around the sun, that the moons traveling around the planets are also traveling at that speed, in uniform sync with the sun, that all the myriad asteroids are traveling in similar sync, but they expect us to believe that there are two ice belts around the solar system, ice which can be dislodged by a local disturbance on Jupiter, but which are still held together into a unified mass of icy nothingness traveling at half a million miles an hour along with the sun's imaginary travels.
Empirical science is so fragmented that the fantasies of one discipline are never considered when constructing the fantasies of another discipline. Why should the Big Bangers take into consideration cometary theory and above all, why would they want to when it contradicted their conclusions. Both are based on Newtonianism, and to challenge a sister science would be to challenge the fantasies that are putting food on your table, sending your kids to private school, supporting exotic vacations and even more exotic experiences. Phooey on challenging inconsistencies. If empirical science can make us believe that fiery comets are made up of ice, they can make us believe anything, including the notion that ice clouds surround the solar system and give birth to the fiery ice comets.
Sometimes, however, the two disciplines clash in a flash of reality. I'm not talking about the fly-by pictures we are getting of comets as actual hunks of matter, rocks in space, which the empirical community, without a red face in sight, claims are the result of a crust forming over the icy interior of the comet, but something much more telling, the Shoemaker/Levy-9 that appeared out of nowhere in 1994 and crashed into Jupiter, one after another to the great embarrassment of the Newtonianistas.
Here's my take on the Shoemaker/Levy-9 comets. Halley's comet appeared on schedule in 1986, for the ninth known pass around the sun. Everyone was waiting in awe for the spectacular display the history books described, but what appeared was a feeble, worn out comet with barely any visibility at all. In short, Halley's comet had pretty much run its course.
It passed in back of the sun and started its trip out of the solar system, it's visibility disappearing somewhere around the asteroid belt. But on this pass, it was perilously close to Jupiter when it passed its orbit, and just before it reached that orbit, a routine, but perhaps for Halley's comet unfortuitous flare up on the suns's surface occurred.
Halley's comet was noted to spring back to life, briefly flare up.
Six years later, the Hubble telescope picked up the Shoemaker/Levy-9 comets out of nowhere orbiting Jupiter on a crash course into its surface. I think these were nine fragments of Halley's comet which, when it flared up after cooling off from its pass close to the sun, simply broke apart, as tired comets are wont to do when they pass close to the sun.
Now, let's stop for a minute and examine the surface of Jupiter. When 18th Century empirical scientists realized that Newton could not possible use volume to predict orbits, and settled for using orbits to predict the unverifiable density of planets, they could use volume to determine what the planet was made up of. If the planet was dense, and its volume small, it was a dense planet, However, if the planet's volume was large, and its density small in comparison, then it was made up of gas. That's how we ended up with planets made out of gas, the so called gas giants of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus.
So with the surface of Jupiter made out of gas, and the Shoemaker-Levy-9 made out of ice, when the ice crashed into the gas, it was predicted that there would be no trace of anything left. The ice would just disappear into the gaseous surface of the planet.
The first comet hits Jupiter and what happens? A big brown stain rises up, clearly visible in the atmosphere.
Oh, my!
I remember a Japanese student asking an empirical guru at a scientific press conference to explain this anomaly (defined as anything that isn't a perturbation). Why, the humble student wanted to know, were the scientists so certain that the surface of Jupiter, invisible under its intensive cloud cover, was made up of gas. He was dismissed as being a simpleton, that the press conference wasn't called to educate ignoramuses about known facts, but to explore the possibilities of why the ice turned brown upon impact with the gas.
To make a short story even shorter, every single one of the ice blocks making up the Shoemaker-Levy-9 spewed forth its cloud of blasted rock and mud into the atmosphere just as an asteroid that might hit the Earth would do. The comet wasn't ice and the surface wasn't gas and Newtonianism is what it is on its face, just the idyll thoughts of a man who knew very little about the universe but through his position as Master of the Mint had the power of life and death over every Englishman that came into his sights, including any that might disagree with him.
Empirical science finally became comfortable with the notion that the Shoemaker-Levy-9 were very dirty comets whose sighting didn't provide enough orbital information to determine this now well-established fact.
So, comes 2003, and another potential embarrassment, the possibility that Galileo, the probe that had been circling Jupiter for eight years might plunge into the atmosphere, reach the solid surface and throw up a similar plume of bedrock and dirt that couldn't be explainable by it turning to dirty ice at the last minute.
Galileo was therefore programed to dive into the backside of Jupiter, prohibiting the possibility of finding out just what reality is all about.
Empirical science is a corrupt enterprise from the top, with strict enforcement through reputation and monetary rewards down through the ranks. We look to science for the answers to the questions we ourselves can't discover. Scientists, who don't know the answers, can't return to us with their ignorance. That would not be profitable. They therefore make up stuff, and create a consensus of absurdities in exchange for our hard earned dollars.
Peter Bros is the author of the 9 volume Copernican Series and is President of The Far Museum of Dallas, an actual history museum, which will house its collection of 50,000 rare Eastern Mediterranean manuscripts and artifacts together with actual history displays and tours in a full-sized replica of the Egyptian Temple at Dendera to be built in the Dallas Ft. Worth area. Email:peterbros@therealskeptic.com