Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™
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Throughout our solar system, on rocky planets, moons, asteroids, and comets
we see evidence for events never discussed in standard geological textbooks.
We see carpets of highly circular, cleanly cut craters and crater chains,
in defiance of the notion of periodic bombardments shaping these rocky topographies.
We have suggested that these features
have been carved by high-energy electrical discharges,
a hypothesis supported by decades of laboratory experiments.
On our own planet, we also see abundant evidence for the geological influences
of a kind of cosmic lightning.
In these episodes, we are considering that the complex processes
in electrical discharges may help to explain
the extraordinary geology of the American Southwest.
In the previous Space News, Thunderbolts contributor Andrew Hall
proposed that a process known as sputtering discharge
produced the amazing features in Utah's Canyonlands called the Arches.
Today, Hall presents his case that the same electrical processes
produced countless of the spectacular, sharply cut features
seen throughout the Colorado Plateau.
In Part 1 of Sputtering Canyons,
we discussed Arches National Monument and evidence it was formed
by a complex sputtering discharge process.
That process involved a thermal spiking, barrier discharge in a layer of wet sandstone.
In Part 2, we'll take a broader look at some regions on the Colorado Plateau
where similar sputtering discharge took place.
One of these is Monument Valley.
Monument Valley was formed by sputtering discharge
that almost completely etched a layer of the original dome away.
What is left are the lonely pinnacles and buttes iconic to Western movies.
The reason these pinnacles and buttes are left standing,
while the same layers of sandstone etched away around them,
is due to preferential sputtering.
Preferential sputtering is normally associated with sputtering an alloyed metal
where one element in the alloy sputters more efficiently,
eroding away faster than the other alloy metal.
In Monument Valley, the buttes and pinnacles left standing were portions of the dome
that resisted sputtering because of a difference in charge density.
They were like the inefficient alloy in the metal.
The part of the dome that lifted away, did so when the wet layer --
the icing in the layer cake --
became a charged, hot ionized mud.
A sheet of high charge density developed at the base of the mud
with an attraction to the clouds above --
and like an electromagnet picks up a junk car --
the storm's electric field lifted away the overburden to dissolve in electric winds.
The buttes and pinnacles are remnants that didn't have the same charge in their wet layer,
so they didn't get pulled away by the electric field.
The reason is: they were struck by lightning.
In the dark mode, drifting plasma current that causes sputtering,
there's always the potential to spark.
Manufacturers are careful to avoid this because it will flaw the finished surface,
it leaves imperfections.
The pinnacles and buttes are these types of imperfections.
They were parts of the dome where an arc or many arcs struck
and dissipated built-up charge.
It altered the ground charge beneath the strike zone
so the electric field couldn't pull the material away.
Therefore, the buttes and pinnacles were preferentially -- not sputtered.
In the parlance of the semiconductor industry,
the charge layer was doped by the presence of water and minerals,
which gave it an excess of electrons.
When lightning struck, it depleted the charge and left an excess of "holes,"
or the absence of electrons
which canceled the attractive force of the sputtering discharge.
The evidence for this is manifold.
To begin, consider the cap rock formations and spires found on buttes.
Butte tops aren't flat.
They generally have something like a step pyramid, dome or pinnacle on top,
which is where lightning discharge struck most intensely.
Notice in the images below the pyramidal caps.
The rock below the caps is darkened significantly more than the adjacent stone.
Not only is there black patina,
but there is also more redness to the rock itself in streaks below the caps,
with deep vertical fracturing.
The charge depletion from lightning, and the subsequent recombination of
the most severely depleted zones beneath where it struck,
heated, shocked and hardened the rock more in these areas than in others.
The step pyramid structure or terracing on canyon walls and buttes
is another evidence of sputtering.
Each sedimentary layer has different compositions of minerals and moisture,
differentiating the dielectric property of each layer.
The zone of charge depletion under lightning strikes
spreads out in a conical diffusion pattern,
but the cone is stepped or terraced
because there is a step voltage across each dielectric layer.
Where there are towering cliffs with sheer vertical walls,
it's because a monolithic layer with a consistent dielectric
caused a single large voltage step.
Where there is very hard rock,
the edges we'll find are torn in chunky blocks.
The flat, smooth breaks are not the result of millions of years of erosion of any type --
wind, rain, ice, exfoliation, or flowing water.
Any of those actions would have the opposite effect,
roughening the surfaces and rounding the edges.
These rocks have such smooth, flat faces, and sharp, angular, undercut edges
because they were broken by mechanical shearing
as the neighboring rock was ripped away.
Evidence of shearing is especially evident on monolithic walls.
Sharp-edged breaks are everywhere, leaving smooth, flat faces,
hardly roughened, or rounded by any act of erosion.
Arching fissures are evidence of spalling,
where the material tore away in flakes,
cupped upward in the direction of shear.
The arches often show concentric creases
where flakes broke away in smaller sections deeper into the rock.
One can see the same type of concentric flaking in broken glass.
In some places, the canyon walls have that look of broken glass
but in others it looks more like the broken end of a brick of hard cheese.
Perhaps a well-aged Parmesan -- stiff, dry and flaky,
but with a low shear strength.
There is almost always a thin layer of hardened rock at the interface
between each terrace.
This is where charge accumulated at the boundary layer of the strata
and the current hardened the charged sheet of rock more so than the surroundings.
Each dielectric layer spreads charge to the interface of its layer,
driven by the electric field, to balance the voltage drop across that layer.
So a charged sheet develops at the interface of each layer,
and a step voltage to the next layer,
which creates a surface tension at the interface,
which makes the rock hard and dense.
What is sandwiched between is often loosely consolidated.
Pinnacles in this region, Monument Valley, occur in two different types.
There are fulgurites, like the burnt shard of Agathla peak
which are the direct result of lightning
striking the earth and boiling up the crust in an electromagnetic blister.
These types of pinnacles were discussed in Lightning-Scarred Earth, parts 1 and 2.
Sandstone pinnacles are where lightning struck
and altered the charge in the rock beneath it,
creating an electrical 'shadow' to sputtering discharge.
They are literally the shadow of lightning strikes.
Now, the footprint of a brief strike, comparatively speaking,
produces a narrow cone of protection.
How the cone slopes and steps depends on properties of the rock layers
and the electric field potential,
but more sustained, or potent striking
begins to diffuse charge depletion outward from the cone,
forming nodes or star-like breakouts, formed horizontally.
Still larger accumulations of strikes diffuse charge further,
and these nodules break out into 'wings' or dikes of charge depleted rock.
The shadow footprint grows as arcing continues,
elongating charge depleted zones into wedges
with dikes growing out the tips and edges.
This is actually the beginning of a fractal dendrite,
as lightning bombardment soaks the charge from the ground
diffusing outward in branches and creating a depleted zone protected from sputtering.
If the process were to continue before the surrounding sputtered away completely,
the dendrite nodules would grow and branch in ever smaller fractal repetitions,
like branches of a tree.
As adjacent rock is struck,
the depleted zones connect into networks of wedges, ridges, and pinnacles.
Generally, the pinnacles and buttes left on a dome are layered flat,
but in some areas buttes display a dip,
a slant to their slope,
indicating horizontal winds influenced the deposition.
Sputtering follows the voltage gradient,
and so carves away from the lightning depleted zone in alignment with the strata
because the voltage gradient follows the dielectric layers,
cutting at 90 degrees to the dip angle
and leaving a straight-edged, non- vertical wall like this mountain.
If this mountain were eroded by conventional notions of wind rain and mass wasting,
the rock would obey gravity and erode in a vertical wall.
It's in details like this that prove electrical formation.
What we see in the stepped pyramids and terraced canyons
is the result of two types of charge transport in a solid-state matter.
One is called drift ionization caused by the external electric field of the storm,
and the other is called diffusion current
caused by differences in charge density within the material of the dome itself.
Drift current is the flow of charge created by the external electric field of the storm,
which primarily drives the ionized region downward,
vertically through the layers of sandstone.
Drift currents obey Ohm's Law.
Diffusion currents obey Fick's Law, which is related to Ohm's Law
but accounts for variations in charge density
that causes ionization to migrate from a region of high charge concentration
to a region of lower concentration.
No external electric field is needed for diffusion current
because the difference in charge concentrations creates a gradient
between those regions that results in a local electric field.
And that's what this diffusion responds to.
It's the primary process that migrates charge horizontally --
spreading through each layer of sandstone.
What gets carved away by sputtering leaves distinct scalloped edges
in very dry, low conductivity material?
The scalloping is a fractal phenomenon of electrical diffusion
that repeats the scallop shape in ever larger scallops.
In wetter environments, it's not as apparent, or it may be totally absent,
because water diffuses charge more evenly,
which creates smoother, rounder surfaces.
Compelling evidence the scalloped and terraced walls are a result of charge diffusion
is shown in this image, where the archetype of all fractal shapes emerges --
the Mandelbrot Set.
Although it's not a computer perfect rendition of the Mandelbrot Set, it's nearly so.
It's a naturally generated fractal based on the same mathematical relationships
of iterating three-dimensional motion
that governs electrical charge diffusion in solid-state electronics.
It appears on this canyon wall
with nodes and vine-hair-like structures growing outward
in exactly the same formation and orientation as the Mandelbrot Set does.
The implication is obvious.
The shape of the canyon walls, the terracing, the fractal repetition of form --
everything known about applied physics dictates
this is the result of electrical current diffusion on a continent-scale semiconductor
under the influence of a gigantic electric field.
The physics is not only laboratory proven,
it's been used to make every semiconductor device ever manufactured.
In fact, geophysicists and even Hollywood CGI artists,
simulate geologic forms like watersheds and river systems,
canyons and mountains,
using the fractal geometry of electrical diffusion.
So, what is being described here has been acknowledged by consensus science.
The scientific conclusion that these landforms are the result of electrical diffusion
caused by an intense electric field influencing Earth's crust,
in an event and the manner Electric Universe theorists
have described since Immanuel Velikovsky
is scientifically unavoidable.
Yet avoid it they do -- consensus science, that is.
To quote from a Wikipedia article on diffusion,
"Analytical and numerical models that solve the diffusion equation
for different initial and boundary conditions
have been popular for studying a wide variety of changes to the Earth's surface.
Diffusion has been used extensively in erosion studies of hillslope retreat,
bluff erosion, fault scarp degradation, wave-cut terrace/shoreline retreat,
alluvial channel incision, coastal shelf retreat, and delta progradation.
Although the Earth's surface is not literally diffusing in many of these cases,
the process of diffusion effectively mimics
the holistic changes that occur over decades to millennia."
Let me just repeat the last sentence.
"Although the Earth's surface is not literally diffusing in many of these cases,
the process of diffusion effectively mimics
the holistic changes that occur over decades to millennia."
So, what they're saying is they think it's just a coincidence.
Rather than conclude in a proper scientific fashion
that electrical current diffusion has a role in shaping the landscape,
they conclude it's just an amazing coincidence.
One hates to be critical to hard-working geophysicists
but to have an empirically proven answer staring you in the face
and ignore it in favor of a preferred narrative,
is what a politician does, not a scientist.
The idea that diffusion "mimics the holistic changes
that occur over decades to millennia" is really absurd.
Diffusion is caused by charge transport from higher to lower concentrations.
Conventional erosive forces of water, wind and ice act on the land from the outside in,
not from the inside out.
Diffusion is an inside-out process
from the atomic level outward as charges migrate from atom to atom.
So there are notions that violate physics
but they call it a coincidence instead.
Fortunately, in the EU we like to deal in truths.
So in Part 3, we'll examine a few more examples of sputtering canyon evidence.
Thank you.