Louis A Frank was a scientist at the University of Iowa who theorised that small comets made of ice and water crashed into Earth's atmosphere to create lakes, rivers, and oceans. He interpreted small black dots found on NASA camera data (from its satellite Dynamics Explorer, as the small comets. Other scientists thought they were transmission errors. It produced a spate of articles repudiating the small comet theory, as one might expect, but in spite of all that Frank dug in his heels and together with science writer Patrick Huyghe, published a book, 'The Big Splash: a scientific discovery that revolutionises they way we view the origins of life, the water we drink, the death of the dinosaurs, the creation of the oceans, the nature of the cosmos, and the very future of the earth itself.' A bit of a mouth full one might say. In 1999 Frank looked at images from NASAs Polar satellite and still thought he could see small comets. Again, other scientists objected to the theory advanced. The idea was unpopular one might say and Frank was shunned by his peers.
Frank was an experimental physicist and made the first measurements of the plasma ring around Saturn, was the first to measure solar wind plasma funnelling directly into Earth's polar atmosphere and was the first to observe with a scientific instrument the belt of ions around the earth known as the 'ring current.' Frank also discovered the thta aurora, a light phenomenon that looks like the Greek letter theta hovering above the polar cap. For further info go to http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/www/faq.htmix … and www.windows2universe.org/?page=/comets/small_comets.html
(the first link is bothersome. A better way to find the site is to key in 'small comets' into your web browser and it should come up five or six down)