It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
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.
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.
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.
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?