| Electric Comet Crackpottery |
(Note: For those who have arrived here from a Google search: Google sometimes attributes a quote to 2012hoax which credits McCanney as the "originator" of the Electric Universe theory. He is not. He is just one of its proponents. The quote given by Google is not from 2012hoax and we are unsure as to how it became attributed to this page, presumably it is a Google glitch.)
James McCanney
James McCanney1 is a pseudo-scientist operating mainly in the area of "electric universe" theories. His ideas are unconventional at best, and at worst they are pseudo-scientific nonsense. To this he adds various conspiracy theories, most of which involve NASA supposedly misleading the public. Astronomer Phil Plait has crossed swords with McCanney a few times, and his take-down of McCanney's ideas can be found at the Bad Astronomy website.2
BOOKS by McCanney include;
- Planet-X, Comets and Earth Changes.
"the wide range of earth-changes you may see or experience upon an encroaching Planet-X. Learn why it will ignite into a huge comet as it enters the solar system and the "actions-at-a-distance" that could drastically affect life on Earth."
- Surviving Planet-X Passage.
"A guide to expected "Earth Changes" and how to survive them .. survival after a natural disaster (including a a pole shift) and how to rebuild a calendar in one afternoon and night from a pile of rocks."
- Atlantis to Tesla - The Kolbrin Connection.
- Principia Meteorologia - The Physics of Sun Earth Weather
[any intended parallel with Newton's Principia is astonishingly hubristic!]
McCanney and comets
In his "Electric Comets" theory, McCanney claims that comets behave like giant electrical “vacuum cleaners” in space, attracting material to themselves and eventually growing into planets.
THIS THEORY HAS ABSOLUTELY NO BASIS IN REALITY, AND IS DISPROVED POINT BY POINT FURTHER DOWN THIS PAGE.
Comet C/2012 S1
McCanney has made several ludicrous predictions regarding comet C/2012 S1.
The following extracts are taken from his webpages and from an interview with McCanney on Freedomslips Radio (aka Revolution Radio)3 in October 2012:
McCanney: "This is gonna be a big one, and it's gonna have a major league interaction with Mars .. Mars could have it's orbit changed .. we could see Mars lose its two moons. We could see a new atmosphere on Mars .. We will lose sight of Mars for a period of time. There will be terraforming on Mars .. We're going to have some electrical alignments .. the discharge of the solar capacitor, that a comet has a discharge, the Earth has a discharge .. you can start to get for example Earth weather when this comet is at a great distance .. They've measured the nucleus size of this comet coming in, C/2012 S1, but they're not talking about it, and the reason it's kind of a sensitive issue is cos it's gonna come so close to Mars .. Mars is gonna slow down in it's orbit, it's gonna drop into a lower orbit, and potentially come much closer to Earth."
"There are gonna be electrical discharges, there's gonna be terraforming, we might see the major volcanoes on Mars going off, we might see electrical discharges that cut new paths through the surface of Mars, creating canyons .. Mars could have a much bigger atmosphere .. The closest passage will be October 3rd 2013, but these interactions are gonna start much sooner, weeks, months possibly before."
Conspiracy claims
"C/2012 S1 (ISON) … this comet will be important and comes at a time when the new world order is trying to keep the lid on celestial issues."
"I find it striking that NASA is just, they don't even talk about this, they don't even mention the passage of Mars, so what does that tell you?"
"I think they probably have been watching this thing for a long time, and so finally they decided, well, this thing is gonna be so big, the public's gonna know, we'd better announce it. [..] and NASA is quiet as a church mouse. Now what does that tell you? They don't want the public to really be aware of this or even look at that."
"So absolutely NASA hides data, and that's just the tip of the iceberg [..] when I say NASA, it's divided into 2 levels, the upper military secure level, tier 2 level, which I call the garbage science, that's what they pawn off on the public, the top level of science, at that level those people typically don't know, they don't know what's going on in the upper levels, and I know that for a fact."
Planet X multiplied
McCanney claims that there is not just one "planet X" but many, and that they are created when comets grow into planets:
- "The reality is, there are many, many, many, many planet X objects out there."
- "the big comets are building up matter, they have the potential to become planets."
- "there's many, many planet X objects. We don't have a good handle on the history of these objects, some of them, not all of them, are gonna cause disasters to Earth.
He believes that Planet X does not have to hit the Earth for it to have devastating effects, but again this relies on his Electric Comets theory, which is wrong:
"my book talks about what I call “action at a distance.” That is, the object does not have to be anywhere near Earth to cause dramatic Earth changes. For example, the object could interact electrically with the Sun, as it is doing now, the Sun would throw out an enormous solar flare and that would drastically affect our weather, causing tremendous storms that would devastate the Earth. It could reverse our magnetic field, causing a high amount of radiation to come into the planetary surface. It could increase the number of volcanoes that become active and cause earthquakes. We already know that the Sun can do this without the Planet X object being near Earth."
Website
McCanney sells a variety of survival equipment on his website, including a wide range of water filters and accessories, non-GMO Corn seed, and an emergency sun-star clock.
"imagine the USA with riots in the city streets and no bat man to save you … it's coming … the things you are going to need are on my sales page …"
Here are a few examples:
"stainless steel water filter WITH 4 CERASYL WHITE CERAMIC FILTER ELEMENTS … ALL FOR $229.00"
"Modular Filtration and Storage System .. $185.00 plus $26.00 shipping"
Corn Seed. "10 lb. boxes (about 18,000 seeds estimate) for $50.00 plus $10.00 shipping [..] i will NOT be selling this corn seed next spring and decided to distribute what we have NOW in case the world is all messed up by spring."
"EMERGENCY SURVIVAL RE-CALENDAR PORTABLE SUN-STAR CLOCK … $39.95 [..] HOW ABOUT A NATURAL DISASTER THAT LEAVES YOU STRANDED FOR MONTHS AT A TIME … or in the ultimate case … a planet X (large comet) passage causing a pole shift … within days or week's you would begin to lose track of the calendar and time [..] after the last pole shift ALL societies wrestled for hundreds of years to re-establish the calendars … modern science denies that any of this happened … this helps to keep the masses ignorant and under the control the world "leaders" who do not want you to know how to keep track of time [..] my new product release is a device that is very inexpensive but allows anyone to quickly re-establish and maintain the calendar and time [..] such as a pole shift where our earth axis along with our orbit were permanently altered … the only people who will be independent and survive will be those who have the ability to re-calendar and rebuild the time … the cost is just $39.95 [..] you can practice now with our current solar orbit and conditions."
The Electric Comets theory disproved.
McCanney's "Electric Comets" theory can be broken down into a number of steps. Each and every one of these goes against the actual evidence:
1. There are excess protons in the solar wind.
2. This builds up a huge electrical voltage between the Sun and the outer solar system - the "Solar Capacitor".
3. Clouds of planet-building materials are floating around in the Solar System.
4. Comets attract this material to themselves by "discharging the solar capacitor".
5. Comets GAIN mass and grow in size.
6. Comet orbits become less elliptical and more planet-like (near-circular) due to "tail drag".
7. The comet grows into a planet sized body.
8. The new planet becomes a member of the Solar System. This is how all of the planets in the Solar System were formed, except for Jupiter.
STEP 1
McCanney: "because there's an excess current of protons in the Solar Wind leaving the Sun, it builds up a capacitor."
Wrong. The solar wind does NOT contain excess protons.
The protons in the Solar wind are created from Hydrogen in the Sun. A Hydrogen atom consists of a single proton in it's nucleus, with a single electron bound to it. When Hydrogen is ionized in the Sun, the electron becomes detached from the nucleus, which then becomes a free proton. BOTH of these particles escape the gravity of the Sun and are shot out into space to create the solar wind4.
THIS PROCESS CREATES EQUAL NUMBERS OF PROTONS AND ELECTRONS:
Neutral Hydrogen atom >-ionization-> Proton plus Electron
Ionization does not alter the overall electrical charge, which is zero:
(H) —> (H+) + (e-)
McCanney cites this "charge separation" as part of his theory, but clearly it does NOT increase the proportion of protons in the solar wind. A hundred Hydrogen atoms will create a hundred protons and a hundred electrons - a billion Hydrogen atoms will create a billion protons and a billion electrons - and so on. There can never be an excess of protons.
The second largest component of the Solar wind after Hydrogen is Helium. When this is ionized, two electrons are stripped off, leaving a free Helium nucleus (an Alpha particle5) with a positive charge of 2 (written as ++).
Neutral Helium atom >-ionization-> Alpha particle plus two electrons
As was the case with Hydrogen, ionization does not alter the overall electrical charge, which remains zero:
(He) —> (He++) + (e-) + (e-)
The remaining 1 to 2 percent of the solar wind consists of ions such as C6+, O6+, Fe7+, Fe9+, and these also follow the principle of conservation of electrical charge.
To summarize; the Solar wind consists of various positively charged nuclei AND the negatively charged electrons that were stripped from them. This makes it electrically neutral overall.6 There is nothing to charge up McCanney's "solar capacitor".
THIS IS NOT JUST THEORETICAL. It has been confirmed by in situ measurements of the solar wind.
McCanney cannot claim that there is any shortage of data on the solar wind. Detailed measurements have been made over a period of four decades by many space probes, at many different locations in the Solar System, from the corona to the heliopause, and over the entire range of heliospheric latitudes and longitudes. These measurements show that the Solar wind is electrically neutral overall.
- The SWEPAM experiment (Solar Wind Electron, Proton and Alpha Monitor) has measured the ELECTRON and ION fluxes in the solar wind as functions of direction and energy. It provides detailed data of the solar wind conditions every minute.
- The SWICS experiment (Solar Wind Ion Composition Spectrometer) has determined the composition of all major solar wind ions from hydrogen to iron, and their temperatures and speeds.
- The SWIMS experiment (Solar Wind Ion Mass Spectrometer) measures solar wind composition for all solar wind conditions. It determines, every few minutes, the quantities of most of the elements and a wide range of isotopes in the solar wind.
- The CELIAS probe (Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System) continuously samples the solar wind and analyses the density and composition of particles present.
- The ULYSSES probe has measured the solar wind in regions of the Solar System away from the ecliptic. It's orbit took it above the north and south poles of the Sun. It operated for 18 years.
- The Advanced Composition Explorer has monitored the solar wind at the L1 point from 1997 to today 2012, and is expected to operate until 2024.
The solar wind generally has a density of 5 to 10 atoms per cubic centimeter.7 This will increase during solar storms, but the overall electrical charge will remain neutral since there is an increase in both positive ions and electrons.
Typical measured particle densities8:
Protons: 6.6 per cm^3
Electrons: 7.1 per cm^3
He++: 0.25 per cm^3
Overall charge: +6.6 -7.1 +(0.25)*2 = 0
McCanney's ENTIRE THEORY depends upon excess protons in the solar wind. They do not exist. His theory collapses at the very first step.
He is therefore forced to ignore the physical evidence.
STEP 2 - the Solar Capacitor.
Basically, a capacitor holds an electrical charge. One side becomes negative and the other positive. Most household electrical devices contain capacitors of various sizes. McCanney's "capacitor" supposedly stretches from the Sun to the edge of the Solar System.
A capacitor does not charge itself, it needs an external voltage to be applied (for example, the power supply of a computer charges up the smoothing capacitors). McCanney claims that his "Solar capacitor" is charged by an excess of protons in the Solar wind, which we disproved earlier.
Now even if a capacitor does become charged, it will tend to neutralize itself. For example, in the type of capacitors found in consumer devices, the oppositely charged areas within the capacitor are separated from each other by an insulating layer, called the Dielectric. Without this, the charges would neutralize each other very quickly.
However, in McCanney's "Solar capacitor" there is no such insulator - just the opposite in fact! - the Solar System is filled with an ionized plasma, which is highly conductive9, so even if an electrical potential DID (somehow) develop between the Sun and the outer Solar System, the ions in the interplanetary medium would move to neutralize this charge - the positive charges would be attracted towards the negatively charged Sun, where they would neutralize it's charge10, while the negative charges would move to the positive end of the Solar capacitor. This would also mean that the solar wind would contain ions moving in opposite directions within the same space11, which is not what we observe.
STEP 3. Clouds of planet-building materials floating around in the Solar System?
Quite simply, astronomers would have noticed this material if it existed in the quantities that McCanney claims:
The light we receive from stars has to pass through the space in the Solar System to reach us, so any material in it would affect the light in various ways - by scattering - by polarization - by extinction - by absorption. The technique of Absorption Spectroscopy is so sensitive that it has been used to analyse the chemical composition of atmospheres of planets around distant stars - McCanney's piles of planet-building materials drifting around in our own cosmic back yard would hardly have escaped detection.
A small amount of interplanetary dust does exist in our Solar System (the dust that causes the "zodiacal light" is an example), however, the TOTAL mass of this material has been estimated12 as sufficient to make just one 15Km wide asteroid. So sorry, McCanney, not enough to turn comets into planets.
STEP 4. Comets attract material onto themselves by "discharging the solar capacitor"?
McCanney: "The object coming in discharges that capacitor, when it does, there's a negative build up of charge on the nucleus, and it attracts the ions and dust, positively ionized dust, in the tail in that region of the area of the Solar System, and it attracts it in towards the nucleus."
This does not happen, because as we have already shown, the solar capacitor does not exist.
STEP 5. Comets GAIN mass, and grow in size?
ALL OF THE OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE shows the exact opposite, that comets LOSE mass:
We have close up photographs of jets of material being ejected from comets.
For example, the image shown on the right of comet Hartley 2, taken by the EPOXI mission on Nov. 4, 2010.13
The jets form when comets are heated by the Sun, causing their ices to expand into gasses. The pressure of the gas also ejects dust and solids from the comet. The materials in the jets have been identified by spectrographic analysis.
We see large Comas and tails forming:
These are created from material that is shed from the comet's nucleus. The rate of mass loss from the nucleus can be estimated, for example comet Hale-Bopp lost about 2,000,000 kilograms of material per second. Comet 17P/holmes was estimated to have lost up to 300,000 kilograms per second. The mass of the ejected dust in the coma was equal to 0.2% to 10% of the nucleus mass.14
We have seen a "garden sprinkler" effect, where material from a rotating comet was seen to move AWAY from the comet in an expanding pattern, similar to water spraying from a rotating garden sprinkler.
In 1995, images of comet Hale-Bopp showed a "pinwheel" pattern and a blob of
free-flying debris. By putting together information from the Hubble telescope and the Teide Observatory, astronomers found that the debris was moving away from the nucleus at a speed of about 68 miles per hour.15,16
We have seen a comet's tail break off, and move away from the nucleus, not towards it. This was the "tail disconnection event" of comet Encke.17
We have seen comets breaking up into smaller pieces, never growing into larger bodies:
- Comet Hergenrother broke up in November 2012. The nucleus separated into at least four distinct pieces. The comet fragments were considerably fainter than the nucleus. This is suggestive of chunks of material being ejected from the surface.18
- Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 broke up into 21 visible fragments before hitting Jupiter in 1994.
- Comet 73P/Schwassmann–Wachmann has been observed gradually disintegrating. By 1995 it had broken into 4 pieces, by 2006 into 8 pieces. There are now at least 66 pieces, listed in the JPL small body database.19 "The icy comet began falling apart in 1995 during one of its tropical trips to the sun. Astronomers believe that its crusty outer layer cracked due to the heat, allowing fresh ice to evaporate and split the comet apart .. amateur and professional astronomers have been watching the comet fall apart before their telescopes' eyes."20
- Comet Linear was seen to fragment into a flock of mini-comets.21
- The breakup of a single large comet, centuries ago, is thought to be the origin of the family of Kreutz sungrazer comets, named after German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first showed that such comets are related.
We see meteor showers when the Earth passes through the dust and debris left behind by comets.
Meteor showers can be linked to the debris from specific comets, for example:
- Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle creates the Perseids shower.
- Comet Tempel-Tuttle creates the Leonids shower. The orbits of the meteroids in the shower match that of the comet very closely
- Comet Halley creates the Orionids shower. Each time Halley appears, it's nucleus sheds an estimated 6 meters of ice and rock. In the 1910 apparition the comet lost a mass of 2.8×10^14g.22
We know that comets have a limited active lifetime, due to loss of their volatile materials:
The Jupiter Family Comets have a lifetime of about 10,000 years, or about 1,000 revolutions. Long Period Comets have much shorter lifetimes - only about 10% of them survive more than 50 passages near the Sun. The volatile materials in comets gradually evaporate and they become small inactive bodies resembling asteroids.
So, comets lose mass and become smaller, they do NOT gain mass and become planets!!
STEP 6. Comet orbits become less elliptical and more planet-like (near-circular) due to "tail drag"?
This would only work if material was being attracted TO comets, but as we have seen, material actually moves away from them.
McCanney claims "they're gonna draw in a lot of material, and that material being drawn in changes their orbit, it's a tail drag that affects the orbit of the nucleus, and so Hale-Bopp for example had it's orbit changed from 4250 years down to 2600 years in a 6 year period."
In fact, the orbit of Hale-Bopp was changed by Jupiter's gravity:
"On its way out to us, Hale-Bopp had an interesting trip. Its first encounter was with Jupiter when it passed within 0.77 AU of this largest member of our solar system during April 1996. This close approach caused Hale-Bopp's orbit to change such that instead of re-visiting us again in 4200 years it will now only be 2380 years until we see it again [estimated]."23
STEP 7. The comet grows into a planet-sized body?
McCanney: "Hale-Bopp, the comet in the 1990's, was a newly captured object developing into a planet."
"and remember comet lovejoy that recently passed through the solar atmosphere and whose planet sized nucleus was clearly visible to the naked eye observers on earth as it came out of the sun …"
"to compare it we see the planet Mercury next to the Sun, in it's orbit around the Sun, and so we see this constantly, and this object was bigger, a lot bigger."
Ridiculous! The largest comet nuclei are tens of kilometers in size (Mercury is 2,439 km):
Comet Hale–Bopp - about 60 km
Comet 29P - about 30.8 km
Comet 109P/Swift–Tuttle - about 26 km
Comet 28P/Neujmin - about 21.4 km
"The comet Lovejoy was a daylight comet that just passed through the solar atmosphere, in fact when it came out of the solar atmosphere, this was this past Spring, it's nucleus, which was much bigger than the planet Mercury .."
Wrong.
The image below was taken by the Japanese Hinode spacecraft. It shows comet Lovejoy approaching the Sun on 16 Dec 2011, just before it vanished in the glare of scattered light from the solar disk. What we see here is the nucleus AND part of the surrounding coma. The coma was resolved at about 700 km diameter. Very little of the tenuous tail is visible. Some of the elongation is due to motion blur (the comet moved about 500 km or 4.3 pixels during each 1-second exposure).24
Below, for comparison, is Mercury at a roughly similar magnification. This was during a transit of the Sun. Mercury at this time is at approximately 3/5 the distance from Earth to the Sun, but even allowing for that, it clearly falsifies McCanney's claim that Lovejoy's nucleus was "much bigger" than Mercury.
A comet can certainly APPEAR, at a distance, to be as large as a planet, but what we actually see is not the comet nucleus itself but the large gas and dust clouds that surround it - these clouds are extremely thin, far thinner than any cloud on Earth, but the dust reflects a lot of sunlight, and the gasses glow from ionization.
Images taken by SOHO and other probes can make comets appear much larger than they really are. SOHO's coronagraph uses a disk to block the Sun's bright surface in order to reveal the faint solar corona. It was never designed to image comets or planets. Consequently the brightness of comets causes the image to bloom, and the CCD pixels to bleed along the readout rows. These images are often posted on YouTube, etc, and give an extremely exaggerated impression of comets size.
Also, when we say a comet "grows" a coma or tail (sometimes of enormous size) this does not imply that there has been an increase in it's mass or gravity. It is just the same material spread out more thinly (analogy: a kettle of water when boiled can "grow" to fill a living room with steam, but there is no increase in mass.)
STEP 8. The planet becomes a new member of the Solar System? This is how all of the planets in the Solar System were formed, except for Jupiter.
The formation of the solar system (and planetary systems around other stars) is best explained by the Solar Nebula model.25
Other theories and beliefs
Many of McCanney's other ideas are just as awful as his electric comets theory, but since these are not doom or fearmongering only a brief mention will be given here:
- He believes that the Sun generates it's energy near the surface. However, it is very well established that fusion in the Sun occurs internally. He used the "missing neutrinos" problem as evidence against internal fusion, but this problem has long since been solved.
- He believes that the moon landings were faked, and that the Van Allen Belts were an insurmountable problem to manned missions. This is complete nonsense and is comprehensively debunked here: http://www.clavius.org/envrad.html
- He is a Velikovsky apologist.
"I’m going to mention also that NASA has spent decades downgrading his work, but what my work shows is that Velikovsky was right on the mark."
Velikovsky's errors are explained here: http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/vdtopten.html
And here: http://www.skepdic.com/velikov.html
- He believes that some astronomers who "knew too much" were murdered.
- He claims to have devised a more efficient method of calculating Prime Numbers, but mathematicians have said that his supposedly novel idea is just "a very convoluted method that is essentially the Sieve of Eratosthenes, but harder." (Eratosthenes lived from 276 to 194 B.C.) See http://tysondw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/james-mccanney-and-his-book-calculate.html
- He believes the Earth's weather is driven by electricity from space:
McCanney: "Earth itself is a comet, it's discharging the solar capacitor, and our weather is driven by this. If we didn't have these electrical currents our weather would be extremely bland, and that's what my weather book, it starts out by talking about Earth weather, and how it is literally 100 percent driven by electrical currents from outer space."
Very basically, Earth's weather is driven by the uneven distribution of heat energy it receives from the Sun, weather systems try to equalize this. Energies from other sources than the Sun are very small by comparison. For example, a beam of the solar wind as wide as the entire magnetosphere carries only about 1/3500 as much energy as the sunlight hitting Earth - and only about 1% of that is given to the magnetosphere - and of that, only a fraction reaches the upper atmosphere - and practically all of that is channeled to the auroral zones near the poles. (Paraphrased from http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education/FAQs3.html#q36)
- He believes that hurricanes are caused by a "return current" in his solar capacitor - this theory has been debunked by Phil Plait here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/mccanney/misc.html#hurricanes
- He also believes that the weather can be manipulated by lasers from satellites, and that the New World Order are using military satellites equipped with this technology to attack America.
- He propagates Tesla myths.
McCanney had planned to rebuild Tesla's "wireless power" transmitter tower. Unfortunately, if this idea had ever been used, almost all of the power that was broadcast would have ended up going elsewhere than the intended receivers. Broadcasting is fine for sending information, but ridiculously wasteful for sending power. Some of the exaggerated claims that have been built up around Tesla are explained here: http://www.edisontechcenter.org/tesladebunked.html
Rants
McCanney's conspiratorial rants against NASA can be found liberally sprinkled around his "thoughts for the day" page. The following are some rather comical examples (taken from archived pages at the Wayback Machine):26
"word is that every NASA scientist is listening to my radio shows and reading my books … note that these i understand are pirated copies of my books (what else would you expect from a bunch of liars ant thieves)."
"many people commented after the NEAT V1 egg all over NASA's face deal that they probably spent some of their $17 billion a year budget on a better photo shop program to doctor the pics if such an event ever happened again."
"Hey NASA … is phil plaitte and that other clown that no one can pronounce his name the best you can come up with ??? these are 3rd tier piss ants that left their minds on the coat rack when they checked in to get their PhD piece of paper … how about sending out at least a tier 2 scientist like yeomans, muma or a'hearn or the great hal weaver to defend the dirtly snow ball comet model ??? why do they hide behind these hired "outreach bozos" ??? or are the jpl/goddard/mauna kea boys hiding and positioning themselves to release the NASA "new electric comet model" ??? you guys really stink big time !!! you people really cannot be serious …. then there are your other hired hands who intercept my email, create similar web sites like the "jamesmccanneyscience" page that was used to redirect people to as your agents spoofed my email address advertising pornography … or how about he disinfo crew that tries to bad mouth me and carry on your crazy planet X BS and try to drag my good name into the disinformation campaign that you created (and which failed due to my efforts) … remember it was me that caught you clowns passing photos to the alien contactee of your contrived planet x campaign of may 15, 2003 … you guys are really pathetic … jim mccanney" February 14, 2005
"how could we pay for 60 years of NASA and have literally nothing to show for it"
??!!!
"they are bent on once again assuming they will find a dirty snow ball in spite of the fact that halley's comet, comet borrelly and wild II had NO NO NO ice or snow."
In fact, spacecraft observations of Halley showed that the gases ejected from the nucleus were 80% water vapor, 17% carbon monoxide and 3–4% carbon dioxide.27
Other webpages
Other web pages critical of McCanney include the Planet-X debunking site Planet-x.150m:
"McCanney has found the formula for success: rant about evil governments and the evil NASA, give few details on Planet X and claim everyone who doesn't agree with you is a government disinformation agent. This simple formula has worked as people seem to enjoy his silly conspiracy rants."
"A good example of Mr. McCanney's dishonest conspiracy rants is found in an article on McCanney in the UFO magazine MUFON. Among the many false statements in the article Mr. McCanney claims that astronomer Dr. Eugene Shoemaker died before he could tell the world that comet Hale Bopp was on "a course that would bring it close enough to Earth to wreak total devastation". This is obviously a lie since Dr. Shoemaker died on July 18, 1997 several months after the passage of comet Hale Bopp. Like most of what Mr. McCanney has to say the facts don't seem important as long as the conspiracy theory he tells sounds sinister and gains him an audience."
"Running around on late night radio shows. complaining that NASA and the government are trying to pollute minds, well that is no way to be taken seriously."28
WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE
A Wikipedia article on McCanney was deleted for several reasons:29
He never passed WP:PROF in academia.
A Google search for <McCanney "dipole red shift"> suggests that his work is mostly discussed only in Internet forums and his own website.
The only cited references are self-written articles and a biography from his own site. Thus fails WP:BIO due to lack of multiple independent sources that mention him in detail.
The claims in the article as to notability are unverifiable and not backed up by any citations.
There is no mathematical problem that is known as "the Prime Number Problem". The website devoted to this exudes whackiness.
Not backed up by citations in reliable sources.
Charitably, this is original research unfit for Wikipedia; less charitably, it's a probably a scam. It's just possible that his physics is good, but his math is worse than wrong: it's gibberish.
I spent some time reading in hopes of finding some claim as to what problem was solved, but only saw an ever-increasing crackpot index.
