You said..

>I don't know why I am bothering to explain the obvious to you again since you have ignored what other educated people have told you... In my last post I pointed out obsevations that disproved your nonsense and you ignored them... this will be the last message I waste on you on this subject

>Dan Apted, in his never ending quest to humiliate himself wrote:

>"Please try to educate me if you dare, on how the matter in a comet tail can hold itself in concentration and move at millions of miles per hour without thrust, and without drag being present, and with out any gravitaional or magnetic forces to keep it concentrated, and prevent it from difusing. "

>First off: It ISN'T concentrated! it is darn near a perfect vacuum... as it goes away behind the comet it becomes more and more diffuse and appears to fade out. It is illuminated by the sun and appears to glow.

This is your first mistake, the tail doesn't go behind the comet, it moves around the comet as the comet moves around the sun. As the comet passes around the sun and begins to move away the tail actually "proceeds" the comet. The coma end is always aligned toward the sun. Thus only when the comet makes its approach to the sun does the tail actually apear to follow the comet.

>Second: As the gas and dust boil off they experience pressure from the solar wind and some light (photon) pressure from the sun.

I agree that this is the traditional explanation, but why can't we reproduce this effect when we expell vapors from any spacecraft.

>Third: observations show the material is concentrated in the tail and not in your silly "ice fog" all around it uniformly...thus you are wrong. A testable aspect of your "theory" fails to support it!

The only observations that apear to show the material as being concentrated are photographic and spectrographic. Both methods depend on a return of reflected light. Lasers shot into the tail don't return anything. Either in the tail, or in the other areas around the comet.

>fourth: the coma which is at the head of the comet's tail is observer to extend many many kilometers in _front_ of the nucleus...again a testable aspect of your theory that fails....

Wrong again, the coma always appears between the comet and the sun, either in the approach, appogy, departure or perogy of its orbit. It has nothing at all to due with the "front" or "rear" of the comet.

>fifth: We have sent probes to comets and sure enough found nothing that supports your nonsense. In fact all data seems to support the accepted view and much of it disproves your theory

Wrong again, we have only used accidental approaches of probes near to comets. We have never sent a single comet thru an aparent comets tail. What you will find when we do is that the tail is illusive at best. It will be like trying to fly thru a rainbow, you will never get there.

>sixth: nothing we say or whatever proof we put forward will get you to change your mind. You will hold on to it no matter how much proof is supplied showing it to verifiably nonsense... this is the definition of insanity and is very sad. I refuse to waste any more time on you and your pathetic need to be right. I advise others to just give up too and just view you as the pitiful fool you are...

Your sixth wrong statement, show any observation which is made using x-rays, radar, lydar, sonar, anything which shows a concentration of anything in the tail and I will forever recant. I take spectrographs of the "tail" from lights shining in "Ice Fog" and I see the same "tail" that I see with my naked eye. The reason is very similar to the effect of a fresnel lense. When light passes through at the correct angle, it is bent and appears concentrated.

I am happy to waffle and change my Ideas based on new evidence. My entire view of what I see in the sky was forever changed by my earthbound observations of sublimated water vapor (Ice Fog).

It is pittyful when obviously inteligent people take as gospel that which has been taught to them. Experiment with my theory, and with your conventional view if you dare.

Dan