Some people are taking Louis A. Frank’s small comet discovery seriously. William Abbott is one of them. In his latest post he addresses the presence of lots of water at high altitudes in Jupiter’s atmosphere. He doesn’t buy the explanation proposed by NASA’s Juno scientists who call them “Mushballs,” slushy ammonia-rich hailstones formed by the gas giant’s violent thunderstorms. That designation reminds Abbott of astrophysicist Ernst Öpik’s “Dustballs,” the name given in the 1920s to the faint meteors that glow brightly for about 2 seconds entering Earth’s atmosphere. Frank thought this class of faint meteors, Öpik’s Dustballs, were small comets. “Perhaps NASA’s Jovian Mushballs, with their flashes of light, are also Frank’s small comets,” concludes Abbott. (PH)
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