Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) color shows heavy presence of C2 (diatomic carbon). Why?

Link to spectrum diagram

The spectrum of Comet ISON is dominated by a green spectral line from diatomic carbon (C2). This substance is common in the atmospheres of comets, and it glows green when illuminated by sunlight in the near-vacuum of space. The spectrum also shows a weaker but still significant blue emission line from C2. Comet ISON's mixture of green and blue light gives it the aqua hue seen in many long-exposure photographs. Finally, the spectrum reveals a contribution from atomic oxygen. This element is familiar to readers of spaceweather.com as a source of green light in auroras.

That's all good. What is diatomic carbon and how is it formed?
Link to description of diatomic carbon

The following is from here

the diatomic species C2 does exist by itself in vacuum. The two carbons are identical, so one cannot be more positive than the other more negative, so the bond cannot be ionic. It is a covalent bond, in fact a very strong one: a triple bond, just like the triple bond in a molecule of acetylene gas ( C2H2: H-C=C-H ). But C2 is not stable, it wants to bond to the other C2's in the neighborhood and make C4, C6, C8, C60 buckyballs, nanotubes, graphene sheets, graphite, soot, whatever. And if it was in air it would grab the nearest oxygen molecule and react right away and start a fire. Scientists call C2 a "radical". That is an un-finished molecule, a half-a-molecule, that has broken bonds facing outward, looking to bond with something else. Each Carbon atom likes to have 4 bonds, and the other carbon in C2 can only reach 3 of them. The 4th sticks out in the opposite side of each carbon, into empty space. So you cannot get any C2 in a container or handle it. With the right instruments, scientists can see some C2 molecules glowing a little as they fly past in a vacuum. And other scientists can do computations which say that is the color of glow is what C2 would make, if it exists. And that is how we know about C2.

If you've read this far, you are a geek. Thank you. Here's my point. C2 is totally unstable and considered a free radical. It want's to chain up into C3,4,5,8, etc. How would a thermally driven sublimation of volatile ices explain the energy needed to drive carbon, in any form, into C2? The input energy seems way too high for infra-red driven sublimation. So could this copious C2 add even more evidence to Electric Comet Theory? How would sublimation explain this?

It's a fact that diatomic carbon is created from an electric arc.

Diatomic carbon (systematically named 1λ3,2λ3-ethyne and dicarbon) is an inorganic chemical with the chemical formula C
2 (also written [C
2]). It is a colourless gas that only persists in dilution, or as an adduct. It is classified as a very strong acid; diatomic carbon is highly corrosive. It occurs in carbon vapor, for example in electric arcs; in comets, stellar atmospheres and the interstellar medium; and in blue hydrocarbon flames.[1]

source linked here

I didn't understand a word you said! But boy you sure sound like you have a degree in something important!
Please could u post this in a bit more "human" language for us mere immortals lol. Sounds interesting

reply to post by Senduko


go to youtube and search "electric comet theory" . Watch that video. It's a "fringe" scientific theory. Interested yet?

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Oh I am genuine interested in your thread, I was sincere in asking you to explain it in a bit more understandable way.

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Wouldn't the electric comet theory address this concern?

The solar wind hitting the surface of the comet could "borrow" the free electrons freeing up C2 as a byproduct.

The current "giant dirty ice rock" theory would not address this phenomenon.

I am not an expert in the EC theory, but someone on this site is bound to be, maybe an expert can chime in.

God Bless,

InverseLookingGlass
reply to post by Senduko

 

go to youtube and search "electric comet theory" . Watch that video. It's a "fringe" scientific theory. Interested yet?

EXACTLY,

I thought this observations would fit in perfectly with EC.

God Bless,

I just knew that it is found in comets, and around the Sun without all the Hoo- hah! So I'm taking it that the same observation would not be seen outside a solar system into deep space.

reply to post by smurfy


C2 is in the comet coma. We don't know what the comet itself is made of. The prevailing theory of icy dirtball (or whatev) could be dead wrong.
C2 is also created by burning some gasses like acetylene. No reason it would be shocking to see the C2 spectral lines outside the solar system.

Electric comet theory describes a comet like a capacitor made of solid rock and the electric arcing/sputtering causes the particles to be jetted. Electric arcing is known to produce C2. Is this the "smoking gun" for EC theory?

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Please check out the discussion going on about the properties of Comet Ison is this thread.

I have referenced some of what you have in your post , with the link.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Is there any possibility that the C2 is being created by an interaction between some other carbon base in the tail, or comet itself, and the solar wind? It would not be the first time I had heard of solar wind exciting one or another particle and causing interesting reactions.

reply to post by TrueBrit


Good question. I don't know enough to model the volume of C2 through to the physics of production. What caught my eye was that the C2 seems to be by far the biggest component of the coma.

burning of a hydrocarbon would free up C2 but we are talking about cold space barely warm enough to sublimate water.

So OK, let's say this body is high in solid carbon? It would take too much solar wind and the brightness would correlate with solar wind exposure, which is in no way constant. The DST crowd explained the production of x-rays from the comet as solar wind collisions but the data was hand-wavy to me. Are they really observing x-ray production over time or just basically a snapshot. ISON is "hot" in the x-ray spectrum. Weird for a snowball.

Electric arcing with a material that contains carbon is one possibility for both x-ray and C2 production. It's indisputable that C2 is created from electric arcing on Earth. so...

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


That all makes pretty good sense to me. How hot would carbon need to get to make carbon vapor though. This is another way to produce C2. It does sound like evidence for the Electric theory if you can rule this out. I'm assuming that it's pretty ruled out by the fact they call comets ice balls. If it's not hot enough to melt ice it's not making carbon vapor.

The OPs first post was pointing to the fact that carbon has four "connectors" electrons in it's outer shell. It's rare to have just C2 because the last 2 connectors left over grab onto other atoms. So it would have to be produced actively on the comet.

How does the mainstream theory normally explain it?

Interesting thread.

S and F

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Ison has definitely had its moments of intrigue, doesn't act like a fluffy iceball. I'm leaning to a more dense core and I believe the suprises will keep coming. I'm not sold on a sol /Ison 'big' event, but its well beyond the conventional 'comet'. Nice work!

InverseLookingGlass
reply to post by smurfy

 

C2 is in the comet coma. We don't know what the comet itself is made of. The prevailing theory of icy dirtball (or whatev) could be dead wrong.
C2 is also created by burning some gasses like acetylene. No reason it would be shocking to see the C2 spectral lines outside the solar system.

Electric comet theory describes a comet like a capacitor made of solid rock and the electric arcing/sputtering causes the particles to be jetted. Electric arcing is known to produce C2. Is this the "smoking gun" for EC theory?

But it does make sense that a comet's outer crust is under pressure from inside. As it heats up, the frozen components turn to gases and expansion takes place. Eventually the crust bursts amd there is outgassing, as well as solid material from inside. The coma is a tentative atmosphere of gases and dust. Comets ouside the solar system are not easy to detect if at all, same goes with the outer solar system, (although I think some were detected by number crunching...don't ask) they have no albedo, and you can't see the beggars. So it seems what you see is a visitor that is being changed by the solar wind, and gravity and ultimately friction.

Sublimation in space is fairly common, it is a extremely high vacuum, almost a perfect vacuum by the standards reached on Earth. In vacuum, chemicals and things behave quite differently to bulk like on Earth. Firstly comets are thought to originate from the oort cloud, which is almost a chemical freeze out zone so to speak, were basically all but helium and hydrogen would effectively be solid.

The sun is a second or third generation star, which means that the cloud that it formed from would have contained alot of heavier elements/metals (anything heavier than helium is a metal to astronomers) So the prevalence of carbon and carbon2 is not all that hard to understand in origin. Dust clouds, even the dense ones, are mostly vacuum of the order of 20 or so atoms per cubic meter. It is not like you might imagine in Sci-fi where clouds are big thick smoggy things.

Anyway, so it is not really difficult to paint a picture that collisions between individual atoms such that they can form molecules is not all that common and something light like carbon might only really form Carbon2 rather than Carbon3...

the other influence is the sun, and the UV radiation. UV baking something causes lots of interesting effects, also high energy electron radiation from solar wind also has a nice effect of dissociating molecules... i know this because iv done extensive Residual gas analysis and fracture/cracking is a big effect you have to deal with. So there being alot of molecules like Carbon 2 in the mass ejections from a comet are not one bit a shock to me. Anything on the object that escapes the surface would be baked in UV and to a lesser extent Electrons, in increasing intensity as you approach the sun, finding alot of trace singular elements is actually very likely.

reply to post by ErosA433


I think I follow what your are saying but the usual culprits for ices such as water, CO2 methane, ethane, cyanogen, etc are not dominating the spectral analysis. My surprise is that C2 is dominant and the energy to drive C2 from other molecules in such large amounts does not seem to add up.

I realize this comet vaporized but I still can't quite believe the solar wind and electron flux can account for that amount of C2. It should have been hydroxyl radicals and H2O