TMG PRESENTS A GRIM FAIRY TALE IN THREE ACTS

FLUFF, FLUFFIER, & FLUFFIEST
(OR- How to constantly revise reality to protect the accepted theories at all costs)

by James McCanney

It happened in an instant... it was 1986 and the Giotto space craft (the only satellite going to comet Halley that had an onboard camera) was approaching that famous comet's nucleus through the clouds of dust and gas that surrounded it / as the light faded due to the dense clouds eclipsing the solar light the only light came from the comet nucleus still buried deep in the cloud (clue#1... why is the comet nucleus illuminated when the sunlight is blocked by the dense comet coma? hmmmm, could this be a "self luminous" object with an energy source other than sunlight...e.g. the plasma discharge current striking the comet nucleus?) ... and (clue#2... how can the comet continue to form a tail from "solar radiation - sublimating ices off the comet nucleus" when the sunlight is so completely blocked by the dense comet coma?) / no one at NASA or ESO or Harvard or Yale or Cornell or JPL or anywhere else... not even the news media... thinks to ask such difficult questions as they are all beaming with "the right stuff".

On with our story... an aging Fred Whipple has been invited to witness the "confirmation" of the dirty snow ball comet model / all the calculations had been done... all the journal articles had been refereed and all the PhDs had been given to the bright new crop of cometary scientists at all the best universities after years of hard study / book sales were brisk and the public had purchased and read and applauded / a comet was said to be a sparkling white snowy ball with some dust that was released as the sun's heat burned off the outer layers / "artists' full color art work dramatically reproduced the scientists' predictions" / the Giotto space craft moved closer to the comet nucleus sending back picture after picture... each one better defining the pure white potato shaped "snow ball" / the excitement rose to fever pitch as small jets could now be seen and the pure white nucleus became better defined with each returning photo / at last as the pure white nucleus that Whipple knew had to lie in the center of all the dust and gas became clearly defined - Whipple screams out on international television...'it's the nucleus.. there it is... it's the nucleus!!!!' / just then the Giotto space craft broke through the final layers of gas and dust to reveal what is now known to be the darkest, blackest object ever photographed by any space craft in the history of the space program / silence and shock filled the direct feed television and Giotto's picture broke up / something terrible had gone wrong / there was no snowy nucleus / what was it? and how could all the journal articles have been wrong? / the nucleus was not a loosely packed dirty snow ball but was a pitted burnt carbonaceous chondrite (rock) / dead silence filled the room / seconds later the Giotto space craft started to gyrate wildly and the last signals received from it were with the electron particle counter off scale, circuits in overload and the magnetic sensors off the scale / surely the space craft had been designed to exceed all expected criteria by the comet specialists at ESO and NASA / Giotto had been hit by an electron beam / giotto was temporarily rendered inoperable it as it passed directly to the sun ward side of comet Halley's nucleus / but from where could such an electron beam come from?? / the dirty snow ball theory never said anything about anything like that.

Act II - FLUFFIER

The theorists worked feverishly through the night to recalculate in an attempt to make the theory fit the data / one scientist postulated that if the "snow and ices" were in deep pits on the surface of the nucleus then we wouldn't be able to see them but the solar radiation could penetrate and eek them out / yeahhh! everyone exclaimed and by morning the slightly dirtier than expected (but still dirty) "dirty snow ball model" was reconstructed / the news media quickly constructed "apologetics articles" stating that the nucleus was a bit dirtier than expected but none-the-less the dirty snowball model had been "confirmed" (of course by the proponents who had no opposition since they had fired and destroyed the careers of anyone who had objected over the past 20 years) / NOW let's look at how far this "theory" had to be stretched to make things fit / prior calculations never took into account that there would be eclipsed solar radiation at the comet nucleus so right here we are dealing with a factor of at least a million less energy than the original "calculations" needed to make the snow ball model work in the first place / and now they were confronted with the slight (but not insurmountable) problem that the "snow and ice" was not visible and at most could not have been located over more than 1 to 2 percent of the surface area / the sunlight now had to "burrow in a ferret out" the ice in these hidden pockets / with less light energy than a Christmas tree bulb at a distance of 100 feet they had to somehow show that 300 tons of ice were sublimating per second and additionally, certain areas had enough force to blast dust out with such force that the jets would be visible from earth / never mind that pesky high energy electron beam.. they had their hands full with just reconstructing the dirtier than expected nucleus / other features of the photos should have told them something also / for example the light was coming from the nucleus and shining outwards getting fainter as one looked away from the nucleus / if this light were from the sun (the only source of energy in their model) then the light should have been brighter to the sun ward side of the nucleus and dimming as it reached the nucleus / as before no one ever bothered to notice or ask those questions / actually some were asking those questions but they were labeled as trouble makers,"pseudo scientists" and "crackpots" and anyway... who would listen to someone who had been fired for incompetence and trying to publish "incorrect science" /

Part III - FLUFFIEST

We are a full 14 years since the halley's debacle / in addition to this "crime" against science other data was taken of comet halley including spectrographic data collected by professional astronomers with professional grade equipment (paid for with your tax dollars) that showed the comet nucleus giving off a distinctive red shift / that data was squelched too / comets certainly do not give off red shifted light / not more than 6 years later a new comet entered the solar system/ it had been here before not just 4200 years ago / we called it Hale Bopp / the ancients certainly had another name for it as they did for the comet Venus which was a huge comet before it was a planet / but of course the ancients were ill trained savages with no knowledge of orbital mechanics and their fanciful tales of Jupiter throwing lightning bolts across the heavens to mars and earth were just figments of their primitive imaginations / with a budget of 14 billion dollars a year - that is congress proof - and the largest collection of equipment and PhDs ever amassed by mankind, the elite core of scientists at NASA could not possibly be wrong / comets by edict are dirty snow balls and anyone who suggests otherwise must be a poorly educated ridiculously misguided pseudo scientists with a secret agenda to gain notoriety amongst the populous by creating fear and misinformation about what all good followers know are harmless tiny little snowballs / and everyone lived happily ever after.

James McCanney
(pseudo scientist and author of The Plasma Discharge Comet Model)