In the 1990 book "The Big Splash" Dr. Louis A. Frank speculated that the
odd Noctilucent high-altitude clouds seen at polar latitudes in summer
were due to miniature dark-colored comets being disrupted as they hit
Earth's gravity field, and depositing ice crystals in the outer atmosphere.
If that's the case (not many think it is), then this could spot them:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aim/index.html

Pat

That theory, after being presented, was viciously counterattacked
in the journals.  Frank and coworkers went through remarkable gyrations
to try to explain away the contradictory evidence.  I doubt anyone but Frank
believes it today, if even he does.

The general consensus, IIRC, is the evidence he used (UV imaging from
a satellite) was just artifacts from cosmic ray impacts on the detector.

        Paul

Though some covered multiple pixels.
Well, here's the chance to figure out whats actually going on.
Dr. Frank dreamed of a spacecraft like this, and although I also have
very hard time buying his mini-comets theory, here's an opportunity to
figure out exactly how those damn noctilucent clouds form.
I've seen one of those BTW; back when I was doing weather observation
work at Jamestown airport we had a section down at the base of our
weather observation form to give details of anything oddball we'd seen.
In my twelve years of working out there, the only really oddball thing I
saw, and noted in that section, was a strikingly brilliant noctilucent
cloud  that appeared around an hour and a half before sunrise. Small in
size but very beautiful, it made me wonder if some artifact of a
Vandenberg launch hadn't floated over on the jet stream, as they had
launched something on a Titan IV two days before.
Theoretically, we were supposed to cross anything out we wrote in error
without erasing it, by drawing a horizontal line though it, and
continuing below.
After my fifth attempt to try to spell "noctilucent" without a
dictionary, the "white-out" started getting used.
Not strictly government standard, but I wanted to have them know what I
was talking about.

P.S. After years of effort, I have actually learned that "Satellite" is
spelled that way, and not "Sattelite", "Sattilite", or "Sattellite".
I consider this a major victory, ranking right up there with the correct
spelling of "vacuam".

Pat

On Fri, 6 Apr 2007 09:15:13 -0500, Pat Flannery wrote
(in article <131clgl6cas2...@corp.supernews.com>):

Yes, but how do you spell nookyaler? ;-)

--
You can run on for a long time,
Sooner or later, God'll cut you down.
~Johnny Cash

I subscribe to David Brin's cometary model: If outgassing is gradual
enough, an insulating mantle accumulates which slows more and more the
loss of inner volatiles.

(While Brin is better known as a science fiction writer, he used to be a
planetary scientist. His model of cometary evolution was his doctoral
thesis.)

The smaller the comet, the greater the surface to volume ratio, and the
tinier the gravity. I believe a miniature comet would have a miniature
life span.

So I'm skeptical of Frank's theory.

Hop

I still have trouble with "tessellation" and "parallel".

(running spell checker . . . Heh! "Flannery" is the only objectionable
word.)

Hop

I ran this through my favorite spell checker:

vacuam - no
vaaculum - no
vacum  - no
vaccum - no

A void, typically in outer space, that sucks. - ok
A void, sometimes between one's ears, that sucks. - ok

;-)

Dave

Just the way it sounds.

George W. Bush
The President Of The United States Of America

His mini-comets were a couple of hundred feet wide maximum; basically a
pile of snowflakes covered with a thin black crust.
To me, the big hole in his theory is that one of these hitting the
atmosphere should have generated a meteor shower like you've never
seen... a whole pile of meteors coming from one point in the sky in a
split second. He never did explain how the whole thing could come apart
into so fine of particles that none would heat up on hitting the
atmosphere, given that particles the size of a grain of sand can
generate quite a flash on the way down.
Anyway, the book was a fun read, and I applaud him for thinking outside
the box. Even he was having a hard time buying his own theory by the end.

Pat

What the hell is that? Sounds like something to do with high voltage
electricity.
Ranks right up there with the time David Sander dropped "valsalva" on me
out of the blue.

Valsalva (n.)
1.) Forked rubber device used to close the nose in a Apollo space helmet
so that one may generate back pressure against the inner ear during
shifts in air pressure.
2.) One of the lesser dwellings of the Norse heroes; traditionally
located directly to the north of Asgard's brewery.
3.) Minor female character in Henry Miller's "The Tropic Of  Climaxes";
traditionally located directly to the north of a Parisian lamppost.

Garuntee gets me also.

I'm sure Rand Simberg would agree.

Pat

I could have sworn it was spelled that way when I was a kid.
When I found out it was spelled "vacuum", I thought I was in a "Twilight
Zone" episode where the world is exactly how you remember it, except one
word is spelled differently... you know why? Because a time traveler
bought Noah Webster a beer in 1805. When Noah asked him why he had done
this, he replied "To screw with Pat Flannery's brain in 1972. Now let's
talk about how 'sattilite' is to be spelled."  "Do you mean 'spelt'?"
Webster asked. "Shut up and drink." the time traveler replied with a
cruel laugh.

Pat

In article <131cv77rno2i...@corp.supernews.com>,
Hop David  <h...@cunews.info> wrote:

Most everybody is skeptical of Frank's theory... to put it politely. :-)
The properties of his stealth snowballs need to be rather carefully
tuned -- and to show remarkably little natural variation -- to escape all
other forms of detection.

For example, people have looked for them in archived Hubble images.  If
there were really as many of them as Frank proposed, then some of them
should have crossed Hubble's field of view by chance... and even highly
nonreflective objects shouldn't have been completely invisible to *those*
cameras.  Yet none were found.

It's just possible that Frank found a real atmospheric phenomenon -- if
memory serves, there was some mildly supportive evidence from another
group -- but nobody takes his proposed cause very seriously.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air;               |   Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead.               | he...@spsystems.net

What Dr. Frank is most likely talking about as miniature dark-colored comets
are most likely Cosmic Snowflakes. They would not be dark, but are made of
ice crystals and are clear. Water below a certain temperature is stable and
will not sublime even in a vacuum. And the Cosmic Snowflake originate in a
zone of the magnetosphere that promotes growth, actually accumulates water
and grow bigger.

Cosmic Snowflakes are new pristine snow and contain very little, if any,
other material. The presence of Cosmic Snowflakes can be seen through their
impacts on other things, like Teflon/Silver Shielding, Aerogel, coated
(teflon/silver) Aluminum, and glass. A Cosmic Snowflakes model explains the
morphology of these impacts much better than the current ultra high energy
impact that causes less damage, or low speed impact in glass causing bruises
(spider web surface fractures).

Dr. Louis A. Frank's theory that these odd Noctilucent high-altitude clouds
are of a Cosmic Origin would fit nicely with the Cosmic Snowflakes theory
and how they are generated. Generated in Earth Orbit, from Oxygen sent off
in a fountain during Solar Storms to be combined with Hydrogen from the
Solar Wind trapped in the magnetosphere. Heading towards the
Magnetosphere's tail and the Earth's shadow. Where the plasma dynamics of
the Magnetosphere get interesting;

...while c) shows the down-tail propagation of this disruption and the
subsequent induction of tail reconnection and plasmoid formation at...
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/cowley.html
Registration now required at;
http://www.meted.ucar.edu/hao/aurora/txt/x_a_2_0.php
minus the plasmoid, but a nice graphic
http://modelweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/magnetos/data-based/modeling.html

Forming Molecules O-- H+ OH- H2O- H2O+ and water +H2O- which are polarized.
Even ionized Snowflakes with both negative and positive charge. Growing.
1000H2O------ meets 1000H2O+++++++++ yielding a larger more neutral
Snowflake 2000H2O+++. Held in the Cosmic Snowflake growing area (a Blizzard)
by plasma dynamics and becoming more neutral. Plasma Dynamics involving
large ice crystals collecting charge (positive and negative), increasing
mass changing the dynamics, right up to the point where the Plasma Dynamics
becomes the secondary or a high order term in their dynamics, and gravity
becoming the dominate force.

But, even before Gravity becomes the primary force on Cosmic Snowflakes,
it's effects as a secondary higher order term are felt. Every 28 days, as
the Moon orbits the Earth and passing close to the Earth's shadow and the
Cosmic Blizzard, the growing Cosmic Snowflakes are perturbed according to
their mass, moving them within their plasma confined zone, mixing them and
giving them different dynamics within the Magnetosphere's tail. Some,
falling back to Earth, gravity and plasma dynamics being of the same order
of magnitude, they don't rain down on Earth at random.

Clouds formed by charged Cosmic Snowflakes falling to the Earth's poles
during the Summer. Dr. Frank should look for a correlation between the
Lunar cycle (28 days) and the high altitude clouds.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @ WeBeG...@GMail.Com
--

Cosmic Snowflakes are clear, like all Snowflakes made of ice. The white
appearance has to do with refraction/reflection of the light by the
Snowflakes. Makes them rather hard to see with the Hubble.

Also, they haven't gone unnoticed by everyone. They have been noticed in
their impacts with Spacecraft, it's just the explanation of what caused the
impacts (or model) is incorrect. From the Teflon/Silver/Paint shielding
material used on many Spacecraft the ratio of Cosmic Snowflakes to
Micrometeoroid  impacts is quite high. Fifty percent or more of the so
called Micrometeoroid impacts are actually Cosmic Snowflake impacts of
various sizes and various purity. The most pristine Snowflakes only
debonding the Teflon from the Silver and Paint, leaving no hole. Some with
lots of debonding and a little hole (dirty snowflake, or snowflake with
nucleus), and finally holes with very little debonding (micrometeoroid).
Even some impacts that may be two or more Cosmic Snowflakes stuck together.

Very shallow craters are formed in Aerogel by Cosmic Snowflakes. A glass
lined crater with little or no other debris from Cosmic Dust. Impact of low
density Cosmic Snowflakes with low density Glass.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @ WeBeG...@GMail.Com
--

IIRC, someone analyzed the size of the putative comet shadows
(these were supposed to be shadows cast by water vapor on the
UV glow emitted by the earth's polar atmosphere as the comets
disintegrated near the Earth).  The shadow sizes were the same
whether the satellite was close to Earth or far away.  This
argues strongly for interpreting them as instrumental artifacts,
not actual images (which would grow or shrink, on average, as
the satellite moved closer or farther away).

        Paul

The shadow cast by an object on another object is the same size as view from
up close or far away, as long as the distance is taken into account. It's
my understanding that the shadows have other properties that would be
strong arguments against an instrumental artifact. Motion across multiple
pixels with time, yielding reasonable 2-d position and velocity estimates.
Also, two satellites would have to observe the same object or shadow, as
opposed to one satellite observing two different objects from different
altitudes.

Your description would be true for an object that is blocking the view of
another object, in between. UV reflected from the Earth, blocked by an
orbital water cloud. Size would change wrt distance.

lol, here too, satellite, vacuum, but even words I know how to spell get
spelled consistently wrong from time to time. Island was a particularly
hard one for me in the past, simple word but...as the watchman on an
ancient sailing vessel said, "Is land", pointing off in the distance.

What?

Is Land!

What?

IS LAND!!

Oh, Island is land.

"Werewolves..."
"There wolves...there castle."

Abby Normal

news:0001HW.C23BC20B02DE8BD3B019F94F@enews.newsguy.com...

You realize that's just his way of keeping his opponents off balance, don't
you, sorta like Lil' Kim?

news:131dhv85jpuqk0c@corp.supernews.com...

The first time I ran into that, in spite of all that college physics and
math, was when I was reading one of the Iron Man tech manuals. Describing
the process of building one of those suits shows that someone *really*
flipped random pages in a science dictionary.

Can you list any more?

If they glittering, then they glittering. You have to look for glitter.
Important things to consider when looking for glitter:

14) Focus on what is glittering (radiating energy, refracted, reflected,
changed)
22) ...

I was very happy to make the second hit on the Google search for "Escher
tessellation".

But I guess the word isn't as well known as I thought :(.

Hop