Hi Michael -

It's true that someimtes insights have come from unexpected places. And I too have no respect for ex cathedra arguments.

But its your rather complete lack of understanding of the differences (and relationships) between asteroids and comets that is "challenging", along with your lack of awareness of the data which has been gathered, often at very great costs, both personal and financial. Despite this, I am trying not to be "dismissive".

As far as fulgerites goes, we have had the Apollos, rangers, lunakhods, and the Vikings, Pathfinder and MERs, and guess what? NO fulgerties, nothing similar.

Your points about tangential impacts are well taken. But some people HAVE looked at tangential impacts - see my book "Man and Impact in the Americas" for one example. I've spotted a few of them myself. These tangential impacts are just not well noted.

You have to remember that the asteroid and comet impacts do not occur at low speed. As I understand it, since the impacts are hyper-velocity impacts, above a certain angle, you end up with a well formed crater, instead of the lip like you described for low velocity impacts.

As far as the "rays" goes, this BBS is scarcely the place to go into the mechanics of hyper-velocity impacts, and I am not the one to do it, as generally now I have to look at notes on these which I have gotten from others anyway. I hope someone else will take the time to talk with you about these.

That said let me warn you to "watch out" for yourself, as IMO these guys are very very "mistaken".

I've got to get some sleep myself. Goodnight