>>507963529Evidence from probes that have visited comets argue against their being "dusty snowballs".
They appear to be solid bodies like asteroids and minor planets in every way except for their highly elliptical orbits.
their highly eccentric orbits cause them to pass through regions of significantly different voltage within the Suns plasmasphere.
Recall that there is a weak electric field emanating outward from the Sun.
The solar plasma near the Sun is at a higher electrical potential (voltage) than is the plasma out in the far reaches of the solar system.
Because comets spend much more time in the outer (lower voltage) reaches of their orbits than they do in the near Sun (higher voltage) region, they reach voltage equilibrium with the low voltage of the Suns outer plasma.
as a comet approaches the inner range of its orbit, the voltage difference between it and the solar plasma through which it is traveling rapidly increases.
As current flows to the comet in response to this voltage difference, the well known cometary effects appear: a tail and coma plasma sheath in glow mode surrounding the comet nucleus and jets (plasma arc discharges sometimes pointed in the direction of the Sun) that produce the craters observed on comet surfaces.
it is also this electric discharge that forms the amino acids, the building blocks of protein.