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Recent scientific reports highlight increased scientific interest
in a long enduring mystery on the Moon.
For well over half a century,
scientists on Earth have puzzled over the cause of occasional mysterious flashes of light
seen on the lunar surface,
or what is called Transient Lunar Phenomena.
Reports on the nature of these light episodes
range from a temporary increase in the brightness of a surface,
to an apparent reddening of a surface with no accompanying brightness,
to other odd color changes such as blue, green or violet,
and even an unaccounted darkening of the lunar surface.
In fact, reports of these mysterious light events on the Moon
date back at least over 1,000 years.
But for several decades,
many astronomers were highly skeptical of the phenomena's existence.
That is largely because the Moon has long been believed to be long geologically dead
and no dramatic activity should be seen today.
But in recent years, statistical analyses have indicated that the phenomena
overwhelmingly seem to be genuine.
Yet, there remains no consensus scientific theory on the underlying mechanism.
To date, most astronomers have believed
the phenomena either involves meteoritic explosions or outgassing.
However, some mainstream astronomers have also entertained
that the phenomenon is electrical in nature.
As stated in a recent Phys.org report,
"Such flashes could also occur when electrically charged particles of the solar wind
react with moon dust."
Recently, a team of scientists from the JMU University in Bavaria, Germany,
began operating a privately built lunar telescope
to try to gain a better understanding of Transient Lunar Phenomena.
The images the team obtains will be compared with those of the European Space Agency
and may provide insights into the cause of the mysterious lights and flashes.
From the Electric Universe perspective, Transient Lunar Phenomena may be important
both in terms of the Moon and our solar system's current electrical environment,
but also the stupendous electrical events that may have shaped the Moon's surface.
Today, planetary scientists do acknowledge
that dramatic electrostatic events occur on the Moon,
even as the result of the Moon's interaction with our own planet.
As noted by NASA scientist Tim Stubbs,
"Earth's magnetotail extends well beyond the orbit of the moon
and, once a month, the moon orbits through it.
This can have consequences ranging from lunar 'dust storms' to electrostatic discharges."
In recent years, scientists have also entertained that subsurface electrical sparking
in permanently shadowed regions may cause the breakdown of lunar soil.
Nevertheless, the outgassing hypothesis
remains the preferred explanation among astronomers for Transient Lunar Phenomena.
But there are several important clues that point to the phenomena's electrical nature.
If the light episodes are indeed a form of electrical arcing,
then we expect to see them most commonly in high points of terrain,
which electric arcs are always drawn to.
In fact, many transient lunar phenomena
are associated with the edges of so called lunar maria
which planetary scientists believe are the sites of ancient volcanism.
But an analog to the lunar phenomena may be the bright plume seen flaring on comet nuclei,
which comet scientists also routinely interpret as "outgassing".
Consider this close-up image of the comet 67P, taken on July 3rd, 2016.
The plume appeared suddenly when the comet was over 500 million km from the Sun,
a distance at which the sublimation of water ice is not expected at all.
The lead author of a paper on the phenomenon stated,
"We saw a bright plume of dust blowing away from the surface like a fountain...
It lasted for roughly an hour, producing around 18 kg of dust every second."
The team admitted they had no idea what could have powered the plume.
The ESA website stated,
"Initially, scientists thought that the plume
might have been surface ice evaporating in the sunlight.
However, Rosetta's measurements showed there had to be something more energetic going on
to fling that amount of dust into space."
The Electric Universe has always proposed
that comet activity is fundamentally electrical discharge activity
caused as the comet moves through plasma regions of varying electrical potential.
Again, it is not a coincidence that the plumes seen in this image
appear to be focused at the edge of a pit or crater
which we do expect if it's a form of electrical arcing.
Another aspect of Transient Lunar Phenomena
is the extraordinary events that shaped the surface of the Moon itself.
For many decades, the Electric Universe has proposed that the massive cratering on the Moon
was caused not by meteoritic impacts over eons of time
but by high-energy electrical discharge
in an epoch of planetary instability in the inner solar system.
In fact, as far back as the mid 1960s,
the amateur astronomer Brian J. Ford performed plasma discharge experiments
which reproduced the rate of highly circular crater formation seen on the Moon.
In the 1970s, the engineer Ralph Juergens performed a rigorous analysis
which showed that the lunar rills,
which consistently show no internal debris from collapsed lava tubes,
which are improbably wide at up to 7 km,
and which routinely become narrower at their so-called outflow ends,
are not collapsed lava tubes as standard theory has proposed for decades,
but they are the features of electrical discharge.
The notion of the Moon as an electrically scarred body was the basis
for an outrageous prediction offered by one of the great heretics of the 20th century,
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky.
Well before the Apollo space missions,
Velikovsky predicted the discovery of remanent magnetization of moon rocks,
a required lingering effect of tremendous "lightning bolts" from space.
To the astonishment of planetary scientists, the prediction was confirmed.
As stated in the 1971 paper, 'Determining the origins of lunar remanent crustal magnetism,'
"The discovery of lunar magnetic fields of crustal origin
was a major scientific surprise of the Apollo program."
The electrical origins of lunar geology enables us
to make predictions for the ongoing study of lunar transient phenomena.
Since the Moon has no atmosphere, we expect electrical discharges to be diffuse
with the glow seen over large areas.
However, bright flashes will typically occur at high points
due to a sudden concentration of electrical discharge,
which we see on earth in the form of St. Elmo's fire.
The pinched up rims of craters, the craters' central peaks,
and any high points of terrain,
will be the consistent locations of bright transient flashes.
The scarring events that formed these features appear to make them ideal lightning rods
for much smaller scale electrical activity today.
Like every other body in the solar system,
the Moon is subject to the electrical input of the Sun.
In fact, in recent years astronomical papers have proposed
that the interactions of protons from the solar wind with silicas in the lunar soil
may be the source of the surprising abundance of lunar water,
and electrostatic dust levitation on the Moon
as well as many other airless bodies in space
is now routinely acknowledged in astronomical literature.
So it is with great confidence, we predict that future scientific investigations
into transient lunar phenomena
will point not toward outgassing nor any other conventional geological process,
but rather, they will continue to affirm the electrical nature of the phenomena
which predominate the solar system
and the universe as a whole.