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New reports in popular science media highlight some of the theoretical limitations
in planetary science and geology today,
limitations which have resulted in countless mysteries
related to the planets, moons and comets.
The reports in question propose that volcanism
on various bodies throughout the solar system
is more pervasive than scientists have ever previously believed.
Even supposedly occurring on comets.
On March 6, 2017 Astronomy.com published the article,
"Planetary scientists are turning up volcanoes everywhere they look."
The report focuses heavily on a theoretical phenomenon called cryovolcanism,
or ice volcanoes.
On planet Earth scientists theorize that the shifting of tectonic plates
is a cause in both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
But on several other worlds which are not thought to have plate tectonics,
planetary scientists believe they observe another type of volcanism
called cryovolcanism.
A cryo volcano or ice volcano is hypothesized to result when gravitational forces
produce tidal heating and other effects in an icy body, producing volcanic eruptions.
For decades planetary scientists have believed that tidal heating
is the cause of the most dramatic volcanism in our entire solar system,
on the Jovian moon, Io.
The Astronomy.com article outlines the hypothesis as follows:
"Io and other Galilean satellites (such as Europa and Ganymede)
are in synchronous rotation around Jupiter.
Io then becomes caught up in a tug-of-war between Jupiter's gravity
and the gravity of these other satellites...
This in turn leads to the bulging of Io’s crust up and down
and the resulting friction produces a large amount of heat and a molten interior.
When the pressure builds, it occasionally erupts melted rock and plumes of gas.
However, as previously reported on this series, observations in recent years
have effectively falsified the tidal heating model for Io’s so called volcanoes.
In 2013 a geological survey found that the surprising locations of the plumes
“...can't be reconciled with any existing solid body tidal heating model.”
But the problems for the volcano hypothesis on Io
began almost immediately after their discovery.
In fact, in 1979, it was the world-renowned astrophysicist Thomas Gold
who first proposed that Io’s so-called volcanic plumes
were in fact high-energy electrical discharges.
Nine years later plasma scientists Anthony Peratt of Los Alamos Laboratories
and co-author Alex Dessler also proposed an electrical mechanism for the “plumes”
If the plumes are in fact electrical discharges,
this would account for numerous anomalies with the standard hypothesis,
including their filamentary structure,
a completely anomalous feature for any volcanic plume;
as well as their surprising movements across the surface of Io.
But perhaps most significantly,
the electrical interpretation explains the electrical currents
that have been found connecting the Jovian atmosphere and its icy moons.
Planetary scientists insists that the source of the electrical currents
is charged particles from volcanic eruptions.
But this hypothesis was complicated when scientists also found
the auroral footprints of the moons Europa and Ganymede.
A research team wrote of this discovery
“Europa is not thought to be volcanic, so what could produce the electrical current
that zips along and eventually gives rise to Europa’s auroral footprint?”
Similar problems also face planetary scientists who seek to explain
the high velocity features seen jetting from the Saturnian moon Enceladus.
More than a decade ago the discovery of the enormous jets and plumes
at Saturn's south pole astonished scientists working on NASA's Cassini mission.
Scientists had expected the moon to be geologically dead
and the last place they expected such activity would be the moon’s south pole,
as reported by Space.com at the time.
"The finding flipped everything scientists knew about Enceladus on its head,
because what should have been a dead moon appeared to be geologically active
and while it's supposed to be the moon’s coldest region, turned out to be its warmest.
A co-investigator of the Cassini mission said of the discovery,
“This is as astonishing as if we'd flown past Earth
and found that Antarctica was warmer than the Sahara.”
The tiny moon is a mere 504 kilometers in diameter
and the icy plumes were seen to reach up to 480 kilometers high.
Investigators settled on the notion that liquid water must be present under the surface
like a Yellowstone geyser in order for it to erupt in high speed jets.
A NASA news release stated,
“The rare occurrence of liquid water so near the surface
raises many (new) questions about this mysterious moon.”
But the immediate assumption of liquid water near the surface only showed
that the surprising discovery caused no reassessment of a theoretical framework.
Scientists settled on the notion that Saturn must be
”gravitationally leading Enceladus”,
producing so-called cryo volcanoes at the moon's south pole through friction heating.
In 2015 planetary scientists made the surprising discovery
that particles in the Enceladus plumes are electrically charged.
A lead investigator studying data from the Cassini plasma spectrometer said of the discovery,
“What are particularly fascinating are the bursts of dust that CAPS detects
when Cassini passes through the individual jets in the plume.
Each jet is split according to charge though.
Negative grains are on one side, and positive ones on the other.”
As in the Jovian system we see an electrical connection between Saturn and Enceladus.
The comparability of the gas giants’ respective environments is summarized
by Thunderbolts Picture of the Day managing editor Steven Smith in his article:
”Enceladus Is Plugged in,”
“It is easiest to get an idea of what is happening on Enceladus
by comparing it to another moon in the solar system: Jupiter's moon Io....
Io acts like an electrical generator as it travels through Jupiter's plasmasphere,
inducing over 400,000 volts across its diameter at more than three million amperes.”
"That tremendous current flows along its magnetic field
into the electric environment in Jupiter.
The same kind of electromagnetic activity connects Enceladus with Saturn's poles..."
In the Electric Universe interpretation,
neither the one-way electrical transaction scientists propose,
nor the assumed charge neutrality of Jupiter, Saturn and their respective moons,
can be valid.
The electrical discharge activity that scientists misinterpret
as cryovolcanism on Io and Enceladus
may be comparable to the filamentary jets of comets, which are also electrical in nature.
Ironically, in the March 2017 Astronomy.com report
“Are there volcanoes on comets?”,
the article suggests that so-called volcanic activity has occurred on
Comet 29P Schwassmann-Wachmann in its orbit between Saturn and Jupiter.
It states,
“The strange activity may be due to the comet’s unusually long day/night cycle.
Unlike most comets, which rotate on hourly scales,
29P rotates only about once every 60 Earth-days.
During the comet’s long night, material may pool in chambers beneath the surface.
When the comet rotates into its long day, the gas expands, flexing the surface.
High pressures can help the gas break through the surface,
exploding outward in a volcano-like event.
Instead of hot magma, frozen gas streams from the comet.”
However, neither the imagined subsurface cometary ice, nor the theoretical nozzles
from which comet jets supposedly emanate, have ever been found.
The 2012 paper, “Cometary jet collimation without physical confinement”
published in the American Geophysical Union acknowledged the dilemma as follows,
“Contemporary models postulate that these jets collimate
when the expanding gases and dust pass through a physical aperture or nozzle.
However, recent high-resolution spacecraft observations
failed to detect such apertures on comet surfaces.
Furthermore, these models do not explain why cometary jets
appear to be directed normal to the local gravitational potential,
and/or to originate on the faces of scarps.”
In fact electrical discharges producing comet jets on the faces of scarps
is a prediction of the Electric Comet theory
which states that electrical activity will always center on the sharp points of a body
which act as kinds of lightning rods.
Yet today consensus scientific theory remains
that comets are slowly sublimating ice balls that produce outbursts
or sometimes disintegrate due to increasingly strange processes.
In the Electric Universe theory, a comet's activity
is a result of its experiencing voltage spikes in its changing plasma environment.
One of the most promising, yet still overlooked pathways of discovery
is the growing evidence for a link between cometary outbursts and dramatic solar activity.
At the 2016 Thunderbolts Project conference, “Elegant Simplicity”
Russian scientist Dr. Subhon Ibadov presented the talk,
“Nature of electric comets, electric discharge mechanism of comet outbursts
and thunderbolts lightning in comet nuclei due to solar flares.”
On the planet Mars recent discoveries may provide a clue
to the electrical phenomena that planetary scientists sometimes interpret as volcanism.
In 2012 amateur astronomers spotted enormous plumes jetting from the Martian surface.
The plumes were more than 250 kilometers high
and several hundreds of kilometers in length.
Similar bright enormous plumes have occasionally been spotted on Mars since 1997,
leaving astronomers completely baffled.
However, in 2016 scientists reported that a dramatic appearance of the plumes
occurred immediately after Mars was hit by a coronal mass ejection.
In standard reasoning there is no reason why charged particles from the Sun
would produce such a dramatic dust raising event.
As one scientist stated,
“It's very surprising that was affecting Mars right before the plume was first observed.”
A New Scientists report on the discovery acknowledged
the unavoidability of an electrical interpretation.
It stated,
“One possibility is that plasma could be interacting with ice grains or dust
lower down in the atmosphere and electrically charging them,
boosting them higher, but it's not clear how the effect would be big.”
It's surely no coincidence that Martian plumes appears strikingly similar in structure
to the plumes on the moons Io and Enceladus.
Perhaps the single greatest obstacle in the space sciences
is the ongoing assumption of charge neutrality for celestial objects.
On our own Earth, scientists are still making extraordinary discoveries,
completely unexpected in standard theory,
confirming our planet's dynamic electrical environment.
This includes the recent discovery of “supersonic plasma” jets high up in our atmosphere
that could push temperatures up to almost 10,000 degrees Celsius.
A Phys.org report on the finding,
which will be the topic of a forthcoming Space News episode, states,
“The theory that there are huge electric currents, powered by solar wind
and guided through the ionosphere by Earth's magnetic field,
was postulated more than a century ago by Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland.
While much is known about these current systems,
recent observations by (the ESA’s Swarm mission)
have revealed that they are associated with large electrical fields.”
If our own Earth so presents such mysteries for institutional science,
what further surprises might distant world still hold?
Moreover, how many ongoing mysteries will finally be resolved when space scientists
abandon the notion of an electrically sterile and disconnected universe?
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