<Somebody else mentioned that man made xenon gas Ions may not react the same as ones from the comet, of course he/she is right. I certainly don't know what causes the tails, but as I have said before, there are alternatives that should be explored, mine is one that I would like to see proved or disproved. I know what sublimated water vapor does in -30 degrees and in an atmosphere. I can speculate on what it should do in a near perfect vacuum and at 10 degrees Kelvin but I certainly haven't experienced it.

Your speculation remains that we’re not dealing with ions then? You keep returning to water and ice crystals. Such crystals would be in a bath of extreme cold, true. Ions, however, are directly affected one-on-one by the Solar wind (which is incredibly hot), particle-to-particle. The escaping hydrogen is ionized by the charged subatomic particles of the Solar wind, which in turn cause the tail to light up. This is not light from the Sun, but rather light from the tail itself. The particles are energized and they glow. An uncapped florescent tube. Swamp gas in space. Ball lightning. Plasma.

I can tell you that all the theories, including mine have flaws. I know for a fact that the tails on the comet look amazingly like the Ice Fog apparitions we see here in Alaska only infrequently. I know for a fact that all of the theories speculate that the comet is generating sublimated water vapor which simply must turn to a solid at some point in the comets travels. There should be similarities in the optical characteristics of those ice crystals.



I know that the cold Ice Fog also discharges static electricity and have personally been struck by lightning while flying my Cessna in it, and also once while onboard an Alaska Airlines MD80 class airliner.





Now you’ve done it. We’ve got other pilots onboard here who would like nothing better than to turn one of our boards into a piloting board.
;^)

It is feasible and logical to me that the comet falling toward the sun at the rate of speed it is moving could come into a tremendous charge due to friction with the few molecules of what ever are floating around in space. I can understand the comet giving off a trail of Ions if it is in fact surrounded by the same material whether Ice Crystals or what ever they are, but the nucleus of the comet would therefore have to be charged positively while the coma would have to be neutral, and the Ion trail charged negatively. But the nucleus would have to be to one side of the coma or the other, it could not be in the center of the coma. Else you would have a neutral charge throughout. Kind of like anode placement in an electrolysis bath. Put the anode in the center and it won't conduct. To the left or right and it works OK.

Not an electronics lab rat, so I’ll have to take your word on the anode placement, but I think you’ll find a similar experiment with an object the size of a comet’s nucleus, with all the proper charge properties played against those of the Sun and the Solar wind to have a somewhat different result.

Space only looks empty. It’s really a very complex environment.

This would also follow that the entire other side of the coma from the nucleus would be giving off the Ion trail. It is possible that the Ion tail is only visible if it is in shadow of the Coma? Kind of an ambient light kind of thing. If the Coma is as big as the Earth, or Bigger, the back side of it, away from the sun, would have to be darker, if not totally black from lack of sunlight.

As the ions in the comet’s plasma tail is energized to glow, so is the coma. There would be no dark side. The comet has literally become a light bulb in space, and the Sun is that bulb’s energy source.

By the way, at 50 years old, I have heard and even reiterated the majority of the statements you have made to me thus far. I am looking for both support and for faults with my postulations. I do appreciate your criticism but I would rather you found faults with my utterings, not just reiterations of other theories. But if reiterations are all you have, that is OK too.

By the way, at 46 summers, I’ve been around the block a few times myself.

Cheers,
Dan