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Where did asteroids come from?
For decades, in the standard story of our solar system,
we have been told that asteroids, as well as comets and meteoroids,
are the so-called leftovers of the early solar system.
In this view, comets and even asteroids have been proposed
as a possible source of our planet's oceans.
Of course, when spacecraft have visited comets
they've not found anything like the dirty snowballs of conventional theory.
In this conclusion to his three-part presentation,
physicist Eugene Bagashov explores the latest scientific papers
into the evidence for the water of the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu, respectively,
and what it means for an understanding of the solar system's history and origins.
Spectral data from both Ryugu and Bennu seems pretty similar.
One of the prominent features of spectra of these bodies is the high absorption
at the infrared wavelength of about 2.7 microns,
and the researchers acknowledge that it must be associated with the OH- groups
in the minerals on the surface.
However, their idea of how it got there is pretty peculiar.
They think that it's the remnants of the water that formed in the inner belt
together with the parent asteroids of Bennu and Ryugu
and later was evaporated when they migrated into the inner solar system.
Now of course, we are well aware of another process
which is considered to be fundamental for the electric comet hypothesis,
the idea that hydroxyl groups and water itself might be formed
due to the electrochemical interaction between the protons from the solar wind
and oxygen in the minerals on the surface of an airless body,
such as a comet or an asteroid.
A few years ago, this process has been confirmed in the laboratory experiments
that were simulating the interaction of the solar wind with silicates.
For more details, I'd recommend watching Thunderbolts Project documentary
The Electric Comet
and brilliant Franklin Anariba's talks available at the Thunderbolts Project YouTube channel.
So in principle, the detection of OH signal should be considered trivial
and not really indicative of anything in the EU perspective.
These bodies might have been formed anywhere,
including the inner solar system itself,
and still demonstrate the same spectral absorption line.
Nevertheless, with regards to that, even in research papers
the scientists from both teams keep repeating the mantra
that it was the asteroids and comets that brought water to the Earth
whereas it is already known that there is at least as much water in the mantle
as on the surface of our planet.
How would Ryugu and Bennu keep any significant amount of water ice anyway
if the temperatures on their surface are higher than the sublimation limit for water?
It's probably important to emphasize here
that what Hayabusa2 and Osiris-Rex are observing
is only structural OH- groups, not the water itself.
Even more so, they have to go quite a long way
to somehow get rid of the water in their scenario.
In particular, Hayabusa2 scientists have to imply a significant radioactive heating
of the parent body of Ryugu asteroid in order to heat it up enough
to produce the water-poor minerals that are observed on its surface.
And on top of that, they have to imply impact scenario
as they note that in order to produce the observed spectrum of Ryugu,
a short-term catastrophic heating is also needed.
But at the same time, they note that impacts would heat only a part of the surface,
so they need a lot of them.
So maybe in this case a single short-term electrical heating would be more appropriate.
Otherwise, the spectra of both Bennu and Ryugu
are more or less consistent with the high abundance of phyllosilicates,
that is essentially sedimentary rock.
Now, how would sedimentary rock end up on a tiny asteroid
otherwise than as a result of its ejection from a much larger planet,
is a good question that we should address to the Astrophysical community.
Moreover, the present data from Osiris-Rex shows that the specific spectral feature
of magnesium-rich Phyllosilicates at 16 micrometers is not observed,
from which the researchers conclude that the minerals should be iron-rich instead
and that's not all there is.
"... spectra of Bennu also exhibit two features at 555 and 340 cm^(-1)
that are probably attributable, at least in part, to magnetite."
In my opinion, this is a potential indication
that this asteroid was once part of a larger planet such as Mars,
although I wouldn't discount Venus and Earth or Moon and Mercury, too.
In previous decades, there has been some debate regarding possible formation
of nano crystals of magnetite in Martian meteorites
due to the influence of hypothetical bacterial life,
though the shapes of crystals don't seem to match the ones produced by bacteria on Earth.
I think it would be very funny if the samples collected at Ryugu and Bennu
would show these biogenic crystals of magnetite instead,
proving that these rocks originate from Earth.
But that is only one of many possibilities, of course.
Most likely the minerals would be transformed too much
during their excavation process anyway.
Last thing I wish to mention with regards to the spectrum of these objects
is that it demonstrates reddening at large phase angles,
that is when the detector is placed far away from the line
connecting the Sun and the asteroid.
At the moment, scientists cannot explain this peculiar property,
but perhaps it is caused by a much higher degree of ordering of the material on the surface,
which would be consistent with the scenario of their excavation
under the influence of extremely strong electric fields
but probably pretty hard to explain from a rubble pile standpoint.
Speaking of the electric comet ideas, a recent press release by NASA
states that some unexpected dust particles were observed near the asteroid Bennu.
Now, I would envision two scenarios here.
First of all, those might be some sort of electrostatic dust fountains
that are produced due to the potential difference across the surface of the asteroid.
It is well known and acknowledged that the dayside of such objects
should be charged positively with respect to the nightside.
There are two primary causes of that effect.
Firstly, the photo ionization of the surface on the dayside makes it more positively charged
and secondly, the solar wind is blocked by the asteroid itself,
so that it's night side is experiencing a plasma shadowing, so to speak,
and the solar wind protons cannot expand into this shadowed region as quickly as electrons,
so together this might cause potential differences of the order of a few hundred volts
between the day side and the night side.
But of course, so more localized potential differences on the surface are also possible
due to some topographic features, different elemental composition and albedo across the surface,
its potential local magnetization, and so on.
It's interesting that the researchers themselves
note some peculiar reflectance differences across the surface of both asteroids
and they also note that it might be produced through some process of dust transfer,
the nature of which "remains unclear".
However, to be completely fair, the gravity on these asteroids it's so weak
that according to the researchers, at least on Bennu,
"...material can achieve orbit through downslope migration."
So dust particles might just be rolling downhill and end up in space.
That is if we assume that no other forces are acting upon this dust,
which is obviously not the case.
But anyway, the second scenario I would envision
is, that these are not dust particles in the first place.
Unfortunately I don't know all the details of this detection,
as the only information we have on it is basically one paragraph from NASA press release.
So perhaps the option I'd like to propose might be ruled out,
but from the publicly available data it still seems to be a viable option.
So I'd propose that these bright dots that we see on the NavCam images
might actually be just charged particles emanating from the vicinity of Bennu,
and picked up by the camera.
What exactly these particles are,
ions or electrons, or maybe even photons, is not clear yet
but any of these, as far as I understand, could trigger the camera matrix pixels.
And it is clear, I think, that in this case, whatever they are,
their production should be caused by some electromagnetic interaction
of the solar wind plasma, or maybe the cosmic rays with the asteroid.
Continuing this topic, it's quite a shame that both Hayabusa2 and Osiris-Rex
are very poorly equipped to study the really important properties of Ryugu and Bennu,
that is their interaction with space plasma.
It might sound ridiculous, but none of these spacecraft have Langmuir probes,
plasma wave suits of instruments, or any detectors of charged particles whatsoever.
The only thing we have in this department, is the magnetometer on Mascot lander
that spent some 17 hours on Ryugu in early October of 2018
and then died when its batteries ran out.
Well, hopefully we'll see some data from it eventually, as so far I've seen none.
I suspect that the instrument might show some remnant magnetization of Ryugu,
as if it represents a piece of planetary crust
it should bear some imprint of its magnetic field.
But also, if it was excavated electrically, the currents running through and around it
would also generate some fields that might be retained in the asteroidal rock.
Perhaps this magnetometer might register some other interesting effects,
for example the changing magnetic fields during the progression of day and night cycle,
as the surface of the asteroid charges and recharges positively and negatively,
or the variation of the magnetic field
due to the interaction of the asteroid with the solar wind plasma.
There is a slight hope that Rex's X-ray spectrometer on board of Osiris-Rex
at some point might detect soft X-rays resulting from Bennu's interaction with the solar wind.
The hope is only slight, because the lowest value of energy it might detect
is 700 electron volts which might be a bit too high,
as for example Rosetta mission has shown
that the negative electric potential of Comet 67P nucleus
with respect to the ambient solar wind is only about 200 to 400 volts,
and only about 200 volts of potential difference were detected
by Cassini spacecraft at the Saturnian moon Hyperion,
and Pluto emits X-rays charge exchange with the solar wind
at only 300 to 600 volts of potential difference.
Summing it all up, I would say that the data that has been released so far
does not contradict the scenario under which the asteroids Bennu and Ryugu
represent a relatively homogeneous,
internally strong but highly porous rocks that have been electrically excavated
from the surface of one of the bodies in the inner solar system
during a relatively recent planetary catastrophe.
Their complex surfaces indicate that most likely this material
does not originate from the asteroid belt.
However, as I've noted in the very beginning,
the so-called rubble pile scenario
also does not directly contradict the Electric Universe paradigm.
But, my personal opinion is that these bodies
are most likely internally homogeneous and strong.
As the instrumentation onboard of both Hayabusa2 and Osiris-Rex spacecraft
is very limited in terms of studying the plasma environments of Ryugu and Bennu,
we're left with only observations of secondary evidence for their electrical activity,
like these dust particles or whatever they are,
that were spotted in the vicinity of Bennu.
But hopefully, we'll be able to draw at least some conclusions from these missions.
It would be especially interesting to see the results of the analysis
of collected samples when they would return to Earth,
but that is still quite a long time away.