Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe.
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[Host, Michael] Recent science news headlines have proclaimed that the intriguing
mystery of the bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres has been resolved.
According to a paper recently published in the journal Nature,
investigators with DAWN's mission have ruled out the source of the bright spots is ice,
and have instead decided they're most likely a large salt deposit.
Other recent analysis from scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany
suggests the bright spots are caused by a combination of salt and some water ice.
In this Space News, we asked Thunderbolts
Picture of the Day managing editor Steve Smith
to explore this and many other questions about the mysterious dwarf planet.
[Steve] NASA launched the DAWN spacecraft on September 27, 2007
and on September 5th, 2012 DAWN fired up its ion thruster engine
and headed out toward Ceres after having spent a year in orbit around Vesta.
Ceres is larger than Vesta, in fact, Ceres was once considered
the largest asteroid in the Solar System,
but it's either been upgraded or downgraded depending on how you want to look at it,
to a dwarf planet - and it is about 950 kilometers in diameter.
It's big enough to be roughly spherical, like Pluto, which is another dwarf planet
and several of the recently discovered objects called TNO's,
or Trans Neptunian Objects like Sedna or Quaoar or Varuna, for example.
Ceres is about as large as Saturn's moon Tethys
- Tethys is about 1,070 km in diameter -
as well as Dione, and Dione is 1,120 km in diameter.
So, that's probably why the features on Ceres
are similar to both of those moons of Saturn
because of its size and density being similar to them.
DAWN analyzed gravitational perturbations
on other asteroids like the Asteroid Pallas,
which ranks as the 3rd largest asteroid (I believe) in the asteroid belt,
and those analyses indicated that its density is about 2g.cm³
So, according to astrophysicists it ought to be covered with a thick ice layer.
There might also be a layer of silicate rock beneath the ice
because it's sister asteroid Vesta is primarily composed of silicates, as well.
Ceres also compares with Pluto's density at about 1.8g.cm³
But, on other Space News segments with Wal Thornhill, he explains why the mass
of an object might not agree with the amount of matter that's actually present.
One of the most interesting features on Ceres is the crater Occator,
and they named it Occator because it means 'the harrower'
since Ceres was the Roman goddess of farming and agriculture.
Occator is a large crater about 90 km wide and 4 km deep.
There is a large bright rounded rim with a shallow depression
and surrounding bright patches inside the crater,
10km across and more than 500 meters deep.
The bright spots were initially thought to be ice.
[Host, Michael] In a previous Space News, we explored the possibility
that the bright spots on Ceres were electrical in nature.
However, from the beginning of the mystery Steve Smith favored the notion
that the bright spots would be composed of silicates, called a 'high albedo powder'.
What of the likelihood of intense electrical activity on Ceres today?
[Steve] When the feature was announced,
I argued against the ice idea from the very beginning,
and I also argued against water (in general) being on Ceres.
Planetary scientists seem hell-bent on finding water somewhere,
but I stated from the start that it will be a high albedo powder
since some of the first data from Ceres transmitted by DAWN
showed that it was composed of silicates, carbonates and sulphates;
so any calcium, potassium or magnesium compounds would be bright white.
When the Spirit rover's rear wheel got stuck on Mars and it dragged through
the dark surface layers, it churned up a layer of bright white magnesium sulphate.
So, my thinking was along the same lines that beneath the dark surface layer,
indeed which Ceres possesses, would be a bright white mineral compounds.
But, before getting into that more deeply
a little review of Ceres perhaps, would be good.
The vast majority, if not all craters on its surface
look like they're aligned with its center of gravity.
They have flat floors, scalloped edges, vertical sidewalls,
craters on the rims of other craters, hexagonal formations, crater chains -
pretty much everything that I've written about
in past Pictures of the Day about the Moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury,
any other rocky planetary body or moon in the Solar System.
But, one of the funny things about Ceres is the alignment
to the center is (pretty much) an absurd configuration.
It implies that all the objects that struck Ceres impacted
the dwarf planet at 90º to its surface, which doesn't make any sense at all.
Now, there are more than a 130 bright areas on Ceres,
similar to that bright region in Occator crater,
and most of them are associated with the impact craters on Ceres
and these areas of salts (like magnesium sulfate most likely),
they were created when water ice sublimated in the past.
They say that itwas impacts from meteors that stirred up ice and salt.
And, there's a quote from investigators
at the DAWN mission headquarters and they say,
"The global nature of Ceres' bright spots suggests that
this world has a subsurface layer that contains briny water-ice".
Now, with the penchant for NASA researchers
to the see water and ice everywhere that they go,
we should probably reserve judgment about that announcement for now.
And, in fact, not all of the NASA investigators
think that there is water ice on Ceres.
One of the other major anomalies on Ceres
is the bright mound called the Lonely Mountain,
and this is described by NASA scientists as
'sharply defined with almost no accumulated debris
at the base of the brightly streaked slope and mysterious'.
Now, a feature that can be found on various rocky bodies is a fulgamite
- a rounded, circular formation
that appears to be melted and raised above the surrounding terrain.
And, probably the most famous fulgumite in the Solar System
would be the Olympus Mons structure on Mars,
which is a gigantic mound, most often referred to as a volcano.
The bright raised mound with the shallow depression in Occator crater
is similar to what you see at Olympus Mons.
They're both isolated structures, particularly the central formation
which is brighter than the surrounding megalith.
So, you have to ask yourself, are any of the electrical effects
associated with Electric Universe theory evident on Ceres?
I would say yes, they are.
There are definite signs electric activity, but are they happening today?
I would have to say no. And now, this is my viewpoint,
it doesn't necessarily agree or disagree with anybody else,
but I would say that for Birkeland current filaments
- sometimes associated with what I call an 'electric auger phenomenon'
on Mars, Venus, Earth or most other rocky bodies to take place,
there has to be something: there has to be some force, or some influence,
to align the electric charge flow.
Birkeland currents you have to remember, are also known as 'field aligned currents',
but there's no magnetosphere on Ceres.
There's also no electromagnetic field of any kind
so, there's nothing to align the solar wind current.
Bear in mind also, that the solar wind is probably
something like 3 atoms/cm³ at this distance to Ceres.
I would say that charge density is so low on Ceres
that there's nothing there to electrically erode the surface.
However, when you look at the mounds on Ceres, the crater anomalies,
all this bright material, the cracks and rilles that are winding their way
through its topography, and all those tall peaks in the centers of the craters.
That all only leaves one conclusion: Ceres is an electrically disfigured world.
So, is this a paradox? You see electric activity on Ceres,
but nothing that can electrically erode it is present.
That isn't a paradox, since it's a principle tenet of Electric Universe theory
that the Solar System was involved in catastrophic events
some 10,000 years ago, or so.
So, you have to think that Ceres, as I like to call it,
is a 'freeze-dried mausoleum', and I've written that elsewhere.
Many Pictures of the Day argue that the craters in the Solar System
are the result of gigantic electric discharges from a source that's
pretty much in the recent past, but that's no longer active.
And, it was probably another celestial body (or bodies)
that catastrophically interacted with each other.
That event, or events (probably events)
left planets and moons burned, blasted and scarred.
And so, as of now, they're going to start taking observations
from a much lower orbit and they'll get a resolution of 35 metres/pixel.
They'll also get infrared, gamma ray and neutron spectrograms,
as well as, high-resolution gravity measurements.
So, let's hope we can get some better data and resolve a few questions.
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