Welcome to a new series. In this series, I want to briefly cover the history of the idea of
electrical cratering and the associated experiments that confirmed the idea.
I then want to examine how exactly each type of crater can be formed
by examining real examples alongside experimental evidence.
In this episode, we will cover the history. Let's dive in and find out more.
Conventional wisdom will tell you that the craters we see on the moon were made by meteor impacts.
When you examine the sheer variety of crater types you start to question how a simple impact could
create this and the strange river like structures, ray patterns, connected impacts, etc. Experiments
using impactors have failed to create all these patterns. Electric experiments conducted over many
decades by independent researchers have been able to reproduce a huge variety of these crater types.
When astronauts brought back the first moon rocks they were surprised to discover that they were
magnetic although Velikovsky had previously predicted that this would be discovered.
On earth lightning which strikes a rocky surface can magnetise the surrounding rock without melting
it. Could the lunar rocks be magnetised due to enormous electrical discharges?
In 1963 Robert Dietz suggested that a lightning bolt might create shocked minerals near craters
in a manner similar to that thought to occur from meteorite impacts
but that these would be very localised. He was obviously only discussing terrestrial lightning.
Both Hannes Alfven and Anthony Peratt had noted that experimental plasma effects
have been shown to be scalable over at least 14 orders of magnitude.
Brian Ford was an amateur astronomer and in the mid-1960 was the first to perform experiments on
electrical cratering. He used a spark machine and demonstrated the similarities between laboratory
and lunar craters. His experiments were based on a discharge onto a metal plate.
He published an article in the magazine Spaceflight where he
outlined his idea for electrical cratering.
Ford's idea was very different to Velikovsky's ideas as he favoured a more mainstream approach
to the problem. His concept was that in the early solar system the high temperatures
would have strongly suggested the presence of a highly ionised plasma around Earth and the Moon.
An imbalance of charge could easily have built up and this could have led
to the pronounced scarring of the lunar surface. He performed experiments to show
the similarities between the electrical craters and those found on the Moon.
Many decades later Tara Desai and her colleagues would experiment using lasers fired onto a metal
plate. These produced simple indent craters but also much more complex versions with a
cone in the centre. Analysis of the shapes of the craters showed that they were similar in shape
and contour to example craters. What is rather intriguing about this work is that a laser is
essentially an electromagnetic pulse. Normally electrical breakdown occurs when there is a
sufficiently high electric field strength in an insulating medium, like air. We will go
into more detail about this in a future video. Once this occurs an avalanche process can start,
which forms a plasma which can become the conducting path.
But this breakdown process can also be initiated by an intense laser pulse. The process is somewhat
different and does not require a potential difference to be initiated. But in this case,
it would have required a breakdown in the air prior to touching the metal surface but in all the
experiments they utilised a vacuum chamber. In the experiment, they were attempting to demonstrate
the similarities between craters formed through lasers and those found naturally. From the report,
it would appear that this seemed to be limited to simply showing how they were able to form simple
bowl-shaped craters but also craters with a central peak. Their aim was to try and show
that a similar mechanism could be used to explain all types of craters.
Both Ford and Desai's work were based on creating craters on a metal surface
which is not really representative of most planetary bodies.
C.J. Ransom expanded on these experiments by using materials that are found on planetary bodies
such as sandstone, barium carbonate powder, and aluminium hydrate powder. He has written a
number of papers, some in conjunction with Wal Thornhill about the results of his experiment.
He was able to demonstrate an extensive range of features found with a range of plasma and sample
conditions. These included crown-like features with spherules around the crater, rimless circular
and non-circular craters, crater fields,
multi-ring craters, and a variety of Lichtenberg discharge patterns.
Sometime later Billy Yelverton started experiments examining electrical discharges
and surface formation. In particular one aspect, he focused on was what would happen to particles
in an electric field as well as a discharge. He also showed evidence of crater formation
as well as demonstrating the effect that the field would have on the smaller particles
and how this could be responsible for many other features not just craters,
including the carving of plains, valleys, the formation of ridges, and mountain-like structures.
What both CJ Ransom and Billy Yelverton showed was that the material used as the surface
made a huge difference to the types of patterns observed.
One interesting aspect of Billy's work is that in some cases he used an AC power supply
but in others used a rectifier to turn it back to DC. When either the anode or cathode were
either above the surface or below the surface he noticed the same pattern whether using AC or DC.
More recently both Electric Universe Eyes and Ben Hyde have continued some of these experiments
to examine the effects of electrical discharge on solid rocks and sand or
other particles looking in particular at electric geology which Billy had touched upon.
There are also a variety of other experiments conducted using plasma
which were examining the damage that can be caused during certain experiments.
These also demonstrate similar scarring effects on either the anode or cathode.
In the next episodes, I want to examine different types of crater or scarring
formations and try and explain how these could have been created using a discharge.
If you know of any other experimentalists I have missed out please let me know down in
the comments. If you have any images or videos that show electrical scarring that you think
show certain types of effects then please drop me an email.