Welcome to Space News from The Electric Universe, brought to you by The
Thunderbolts Project at Thunderbolts.info It seems that NASA's New
Horizons mission to the dwarf planet Pluto continues to provide planetary
scientists with new challenges and deepening mysteries. At the top of the
list are the recent images of the planet's surface revealing features that
look like sand dunes. That's a problem because Pluto's atmosphere is far too
thin and weak at present to generate the necessary winds for dune creation.
New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern said of the discovery,
"We have detected vast fields of features that look like dunes. Now we are being careful to
say they look like dunes. They may or may not actually be dunes. Their origin is under
debate. The New Horizons team is now suggesting that Pluto's atmosphere must
have once been dense enough to produce dunes or dune-like features, if only
some exotic force could be called upon to drive the necessary winds.
Improbable dunes are not new to planetary science. In recent years we've discussed such
"dunes on bodies throughout the solar system", including the planet Mars.
In previous Space News episodes, we have even reported on the discovery of remarkable
sand dunes on the Comet 67P - remarkable because under standard
assumptions no comet should possess the atmosphere necessary to create dunes.
Until very recently, comet science never ventured into speculations about
winds on a comet's surface. Yet images of a giant rock
named Cheops on Comet 67P revealed what appeared to be
wind streaks trailing away from the rock.
Not only that, Rosetta scientists subsequently found more than a dozen
similarly "wind-streaked rocks or boulders". Initially, mission scientists
speculated that the comet's jets must have somehow created the improbable wind,
a concept they ratified formally by giving the imagined process a name. They
called it, "localized gas driven transport". More recently, comet
investigators have proposed an even more extreme process on the comet,
similar to saltation in Earth geology. That process will not just require an
atmosphere, but turbulent winds acting on the comet's surface with energies beyond
anything previously imagined. Given the scale of the mysteries, we can only urge
NASA and the European Space Agency to open discussion of an electric comet
hypothesis. For theorists of the Electric Universe and the Thunderbolts Project,
the electric behavior of comets is simply undeniable. In the case of comet 67P,
the question is logically posed by the greatly enhanced electron fluxes and
densities close to the comet nucleus. But many additional layers of evidence
have accumulated as well, up to the point of
virtual certainty a comet's electrical activity is
fundamental to the very nature of these bodies. Only electric fields and
consequent electric discharge will explain the filamentary comet jets. Indeed,
experiments with electric fields on dusty surfaces, including demonstrations
by Billy Yelverton, have reproduced numerous cometary surface features,
including all manner of sand dunes. The freshly coined language of so-called
'localized gas driven transport' becomes unnecessary the moment one considers the
demonstrable attributes of electric discharge activity - not just the ability
to transport dust but to configure dust into all of the defining surface
features of 67P. In last February's Space News, The Impossible Dunes of Comet 67P
we registered a prediction - that dramatic and seemingly inexplicable
changes on the surface of 67P would be imaged by the Rosetta Spacecraft.
The increasingly energetic filamentary jets are aligned and draw together
and it appears that the dust is being gathered into unique configurations on
the surface and globally levitated above the surface. This increases the
confidence of Electric Universe proponents that surface electrical
activity could profoundly reconfigure the dust layers in the course of the
next few months. ESA scientists have recently released images taken over a period of
6 weeks, beginning in late May. The images reveal erosional features up to
hundreds of meters in diameter forming at a rate exponentially faster than predicted
by standard comet theory. As one mission scientists recently stated, "These spectacular
changes are proceeding extremely rapidly, with the rims of the features expanding
by a few tens of centimeters per hour. This highlights the complexity of the
physical processes involved". The ESA website acknowledges that the
sublimation of conjectured subsurface ices cannot begin to explain the
observed phenomena. They state of the features, "The rapid rate of expansion is
unexpected, models of sunlight-driven sublimation would predict erosion rates
of just a few centimeters per hour, and thus the scientists believe that additional
mechanisms are required to explain the observations." These same edge recession
features were also seen dramatically on comet Tempel 1 when the Stardust NExT
spacecraft imaged the comet in 2009, it found that the wall of a prominent mesa
on the comet had receded tens of meters. Before the opportunity is
forgotten, we encourage Rosetta scientists to consider experiments such
as the one shown on your screen, by Billy Yelverton demonstrating the receding
margins of dust or silicate material around the pathway of an electric
current. Electrical forces can readily produce dunes on comets, but what
about the dunes of Pluto? The planet moves on an elliptical orbit through a weak
heliospheric electric field. That fact alone makes the question well worth asking -
whether the surface of the dwarf planet, immersed in electric fields and buffeted
by ionic winds, is giving us a compelling demonstration of electrical activity
similar to that of comets. The fact that Pluto
is now known to exhibit a comet-like tail is just
another reason to ask the question. The greatest stumbling block for
understanding Pluto is the story of its formation and its supposed primordial
origins. It's atmosphere and surface features may fit better with the
Electric Universe theory of recent capture, perhaps as part of the Saturnian
Entourage. Alternatively, Pluto's axial tilt suggests a possible former
association with Uranus. From the Electric Universe perspective, this is
the path for future investigation. Familial resemblance is among planets
rather than the force-fitting of data into the now refuted story of the solar
system's history. In forthcoming episodes, will continue to explore the growing
mystery surrounding both the New Horizons and the Rosetta missions.
For continuous updates on Space News from the Electric Universe stay tuned to
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