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Giant Snowballs In Space? No, Says Reseacher

University of Washington

Contact: David Brand
dbrand@u.washington.edu
(206) 543-2580

December 9, 1997

Giant Snowballs In Space? No, Says Researcher, They're Simply
Black Snow On The TV Screen

San Francisco -- When University of Iowa space physicist Louis
Frank presented his evidence last May, he had much of the science
community shivering with anticipation. He claimed to have
discovered 20- to 40-ton cosmic snowballs, the size of houses,
pelting the Earth at the rate of 30,000 a day. What's more, Frank
presented images he had captured of the giant snowballs.

But the snowballs may not exist. University of Washington
geophysicist George Parks has analyzed Frank's ultraviolet (UV)
camera images and has concluded that the white snow in space is no
more than black "snow" on the television screen.

After a close analysis of one hour of data supplied by Frank,
Parks says he and his collaborators are certain that Frank has
been looking at "instrument noise." It is very similar, says
Parks, "to the static you hear on your hi-fi."

Frank and Parks will debate the real vs. phantom snowballs here
today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San
Francisco (Dec. 9 at 4 p.m.).

Frank first proposed his theory of the cosmic snowballs --
actually small comets -- in 1986, but the idea was widely
discredited. Then, earlier this year, he presented evidence from
the Polar satellite, which carries an instrument that can produce
both UV and visible light images. Frank compared the same spots on
both types of image and concluded that these were clear evidence
of the existence of the comets.

Parks says that at first he was "agnostic" towards Frank's data.
But when he saw the far more detailed images from the Polar camera
he became suspicious. It was simply unlikely, he says, that the
clusters of spots on the images could have been caused by
snowballs in space. Parks began an analysis of his own images
taken with the Ultraviolet Imager (UVI) on the NASA Polar
satellite. There he found the same dark spots that Frank had found
on his images.

He grew even more uneasy about Frank's analysis when he found that
the UVI had recorded the same dark spots while pointed at a UV
light in the laboratory.

When Parks began a minute examination of the images, made by
breaking the clusters of spots down into tiny picture point, or
pixels, he found statistical evidence that he was seeing not real
events, but what he calls an "instrument artifact."

After Parks had detailed his analysis in an article for
Geophysical Research Letters, Frank released one hour of data that
overlapped with Parks' UVI images. Parks has made a comparison of
the two and now believes, even more emphatically, that Frank has
been attempting to interpret background noise.

What is causing the spots on the images? Park blames the very
complexity of the cameras themselves, which consist of a number of
parts, including optics, an image intensifier that includes a
device for multiplying electrons, a TV screen and a
light-gathering charge-coupled device. Parks suspects that the
dark spots change character as the camera's high voltage is
varied.

Parks claims that Frank has taken complex images and selected only
one tiny area as evidence of the comets' existence. "He nevers
shows the full image because it always looks corrupted by noise,"
he says.

Is Parks then denying the existence of cosmic snowballs? "The
burden is on Frank, he's got to prove they exist," Parks says. "He
is seeing things that are scientifically not permitted. It would,
for example, be easy for me to say these dark spots are UFOs, but
it would be up to me to prove it."

###

Parks and Frank will hold a press conference at 9 a.m., Dec. 9, in
Room 112, Moscone Center, San Francisco. They can be reached at
the AGU press room, (415) 905-1007.

Parks is staying at the Holiday Inn Union Square, (415) 398-8900.