Our celestial neighbour, the planet Mars.
Astronomers once considered Mars to be a long barren and geologically dead rock in space.
But since the arrival of our probes beginning in the 1960s,
the planet has come alive for us.
It does not reveal the inactive and worn down landscape
astronomers and planetary scientists had expected.
Nevertheless, investigators continued to apply geologic concepts
based on their understanding of the Earth and the Moon.
They could only see volcanism, erosion, surface movement and surface collapse,
all punctuated by episodic impacts from space over billions of years.
What force created the sharply cut gouges and depressions across the surface of Mars,
looking as if a giant trowel descended to scoop out material,
at radically different and irreconcilable depths.
Running north to south, we see massive interwoven scratches or grooves
extending hundreds of miles.
And how remarkable that a planet only half the diameter of Earth
exhibits canyons on a scale dwarfing anything seen on our own planet.
And mountains that would tower over Mount Everest.
Today, no planet outside the Earth has received more attention than Mars,
but the mysteries and theoretical contradictions have grown spectacularly.
For decades now, investigators have wondered
why the two hemispheres of Mars look as if they were formed in different worlds.
A southern hemisphere dominated by craters,
a northern hemisphere with only sparsely scattered craters.
And note, the contrasting crustal depths of the two hemispheres.
Shallow crust in the North, much thicker crust in the South.
Why would a planet evolving in isolation display such a profound dichotomy?
It's as if, some unknown force excavated the northern crust miles deep.
The hemispheric removal of crustal material
requires a force external to Mars, acting on the planet.
But when it comes to external events
scientific convention has only one thing to work with:
random collisions.
Could a planetoid or huge asteroid crashing into Mars
have removed millions of cubic miles of crust?
A shattering impact
is all that theory would allow.
But what would Martian history look like
were we to include electrical events?
Events on a scale sufficient to sculpt the surface of the Red Planet from pole to pole.
Of all the enigmatic features in the solar system
perhaps none provokes greater amazement
than Valles Marineris.
The largest canyon on any planet or moon,
the deep trench complex stretches a third of the way around the planet,
hundreds of times larger than the Grand Canyon.
It would reach from San Francisco to New York and beyond.
Prior theory of planet formation had never anticipated such a chasm on a small planet.
What natural force excavated this colossal trench?
With the arrival of the Mariner probes,
NASA scientists thought the chasm could have been cut by water erosion,
though nothing even close was ever achieved by water on the known watery planet Earth.
In any erosional hypothesis, three million cubic miles of material were removed.
3,000,000 cubic miles! And it had to go somewhere.
Neither the means of fluid drainage, nor the vast outflow required are in evidence.
Now, we know that Valles Marineris reaches to a greater depth
than any outflow channel originally envisioned.
And the tributaries imagined by some
turned out to be cleanly cut alcoves and stubby depressions.
They are not connected to feeder streams at all.
One portion of the Valles Marineris system, in particular, underscores our point here.
Planetary scientists acknowledge that Hebes Canyon,
much larger than our Grand Canyon, is an inseparable part of Valles Marineris.
The scientists have now acknowledged it was certainly not created by water.
Hebes Chasma: "a fairly large canyon in the Valles Marineris complex that has absolutely no inlet or outlet on the surface."
Nor is it plausible to suggest that surface spreading
created the massive caisson of Valles Marineris
with its repeated morphology of sharply scalloped walls.
The surface was not torn, it was carved
and the detailed images imply a removal of material
along the entire length of the chasm,
a process clearly illustrated by the neatly machined so-called tributaries
all the way up to their rounded, cleanly cut terminations.
Whatever formed the canyon complex could not stop at the margins of the primary channel,
but added irregular craters and crater chains, and surface grooves and gouges.
So, the question can not be escaped.
Is there anything known to science today
that can account for the extraordinary profile
of Valles Marineris?
There is an explanation well-known to science
though it's never entered the geologist's lexicon.
Lightning!
In the plasma laboratory, it's power is demonstrated
in electric discharge experiments.
But the form unfamiliar to conventional science today is the cosmic thunderbolt.
It was the brilliant engineer Ralph Juergens, who first suggested decades ago,
that cosmic thunderbolts carved Valles Marineris.
"..This entire region resembles nothing so much as an area zapped by a powerful electric arc advancing unsteadily across the surface..."
With the benefit of more recent data,
electrical theorist Wallace Thornhill returned to this extraordinary possibility.
"Valles Marineris was created within minutes by a giant electric arc sweeping across the surface of Mars...
...Rock and soil were lifted into space and some fell back to create the great, strewn fields of boulders first seen by the Viking and Pathfinder landers."
Yes, the electric hypothesis will unnerve many scientists
but it is the only hypothesis that meets the test of direct observation.
Here is a scar left by an electric arc on a piece of wet wood.
Electric discharge provides a direct and complete explanation for the Valles Marineris.
The so-called tributaries of the valley were cut by secondary streamers of the discharge.
That is a typical signature of an electric arc when it cuts a surface channel.
And here is the scar from electric discharge to an insulator.
Notice in particular the network of secondary streamers to the left;
a perfect counterpart to the western edge of Valles Marineris.
It was long held that this remarkable region on Mars
was the result of uplift, fracturing and spreading.
And from a distance, it did look like fracturing.
But with a closer view in front of us, it is simply irrational to cling to that interpretation.
Material has been cleanly removed, exactly as in the discharging to the insulator.
The evidence now available demands a new perspective,
a larger field of view.
In Thornhill's interpretation,
the discharge took the form of a plasmoid,
not unlike the plasmoid from which the spiral galaxy is formed.
Plasmoid simulation
On his website, Thornhill noted how the discharge effect
spiraled upward to the East and downward to the West,
an effect that shows up quite clearly on the elevation map given on his website.
In fact, if we extend the view of the elevation map,
we see an even larger effect.
It seems that the spiraling trails to the East and West nearly completed two circles
as they swung back to the trench itself.
But one difference between the northern and the southern extension stands out.
The northern extension is entirely constituted of ravines and depressions,
while the southern extension consists of ridges and mountainous terrain.
For this unusual contrast, electrical experiments offer a startling explanation.
It was George Christoph Lichtenberg who in the 18th century first showed
that electric arcs create ravine networks on more negatively charged surfaces
and elevated ridges on more positively charged surfaces.
Could it be that simple?
...that a cosmic thunderbolt carving Valles Marineris
acted on two regions of different charge, negative to the north and positive to the south?
If such was the case, the only plausible cause of the charge differential
would be an electrical exchange between Mars and other charged bodies in the past.
And what was the relationship of these events to the hemispheric dichotomies,
the removal of crustal material to the North and the densely cratered southern hemisphere?
In the electrical interpretation, the violent excavation of the surface to create Valles Marineris
would have created immense deposits of sediment on surrounding topography.
And indeed, we see that previous craters in the region were completely buried,
with only the largest craters appearing as outlines penetrating through the deep deposits.
It's apparent that the released material had a net drift to the West,
since the blanket of deposited sediment stretches all the way to the eastern flank
of the towering Olympus Mons.
Keep in mind as well that an electric discharge
at energies necessary to create the chasms of Valles Marineris
would have ejected great volumes of rocky material into space.
Much of the rocky debris would have fallen back to litter the Martian landscape.
And indeed, shattered rock of all sizes across the surface of Mars is a long-standing mystery.
And the mystery is resolved by electrical events on a continental and even hemispheric scale.
Given the energies of the events
considerable volumes of material would have surely escaped the planet altogether.
And what might this tell us about the Mars-Earth connection
in our reconstruction of ancient events?
Or the surprising discovery that rocks from Mars have fallen on our own planet?
When Meteorites Fell from Mars
One of the great surprises of the Space Age
was the discovery that certain meteorites had arrived from the planet Mars!
Initially, most scientists rejected the idea outright.
For rock to escape Martian gravity,
they could only imagine an asteroidal impact
blasting rock into space at more than three miles per second!
That is five times the muzzle velocity of a hunting rifle.
The energies would either pulverize or vaporize the rock.
But the question was eventually settled by gases trapped inside a suspect meteorite.
The gases bore the atmospheric signature of Mars.
Martian meteorite
"The trapped gases match these that Viking measured in the martian atmosphere."
By 2003, at least 30 meteorites had been identified as Martian.
But how could the removal of rock from the Martian surface have occurred?
Planetary scientists began to offer exotic speculations
based on mathematical models.
No one seems to have wondered if the vast debris fields of Mars
might point the way to discovery.
Even the smaller rocks viewed here from space would weigh tons on the Earth.
We have proposed that in a former epoch of planetary instability
electric discharge excavated the Martian surface miles deep,
throwing massive quantities of rock into space.
This would mean that most of the Martian rocks reaching Earth
would have come from well below the surface
and would not even bear the atmospheric signature of the planet.
So, it is not unreasonable to suspect that the planet Mars was not a small contributor
... but the greatest contributor to meteoric bombardment of Earth in ancient times!
On this question, ancient testimony holds a surprising answer!
Worldwide accounts describe apocalyptic wars of the gods
punctuated by lightning and falling stone!
Rocks from space falling on the Earth have no connection to lightning and thunder in our own time,
but the ancient connection is clear.
In many different languages meteorites and exotic rocks were called thunderstones,
or thundereggs,
said to have fallen in the great wars of the gods.
It seems that the answer lies with the worlds first astronomers.
They insisted the rocks from space
were hurled by the warring thundergod, the planet Mars.
"The ancient Babylonians specifically referred to meteorites falling from the planet Mars."
"You hurl the towering stone... You hurl the stone in fury."
From one land to another ancient sky worshipers celebrated the planet Mars
as the cosmic prototype for the warrior on Earth.
It seems that rocks encircling Mars,
when Mars loomed huge in the heavens,
appeared as a fiery retinue of warriors
with ablazing countenance.
The terrifying Maruts of Hindu literature
derived from the same Indo-European root as the Latin Mars.
They are the sons and companians of the Hindu Rudra,
"the Red One"
who could hardly be other than Mars itself.
The Marutas hurled in the heavens bringing blasts of fire,
of lightning and falling stone.
"The glittering army..."
"Armed with lightning spears..."
Babylonian astronomical traditions
declared precisely the same thing of Nergal, the planet Mars.
"Raging demons with awesome numbers run at his right and at his left"
the texts say.
In the same way, the classical poet described the dwelling of the Greek Ares,
the Roman Mars,
ringed by a thousand Furies.
Just as a horde of Berserkers,
or the furious Valkyries,
accompanied the devine warriors in archaic traditions of Germany and Scandinavia.
Phobos
For many years, our claim has been that catastrophic electrical exchanges
between Mars and other planets at close range
removed immense volumes of rock, dust and debris from the surface of the Red Planet.
But now planetary scientists face an additional challenge.
The surface of the Martian moon Phobos
reveals a chemistry very close to that of Mars itself.
Scientists now say that Phobos is not the captured asteroid that they have once thought.
Like the meteorites from Mars,
even this moon seems to be composed of material
blasted from the planet's surface.
"Observations from Phobos appear to match the types of minerals identified on the surface of Mars."
"This moon might itself have originated from material thrown into orbit from the Martian surface."
Theorists envision rocky debris orbiting Mars after a major impact event,
then gradually accreting into the observed moon.
But, it is surely more likely
that collisions of rocks in orbit would progressively wear them down
not create a moon...
The idea of gravitational accretion followed by meteoric impact
is, in fact, contradicted by the most visible surface features of Phobos.
Imagine the secondary collision
that impact theories required in order to create the gigantic Stickney crater
5.6 miles (9.01km) in diameter,
almost half the diameter of Phobos
along the axis of the supposed impact.
The trivial gravity of the moon could never hold together a loose collection of rocks
experiencing such an event.
Parallel channels and crater chains running in every direction.
Is it a coincidence that everything required to fuse material in the implied way...
has already been demonstrated by electric arcs in the laboratory?
Pinching material into spherical shapes -
the same electric force that produces parallel channels and crater chains.
Electric arc experiments
It should not surprise us that a body fused electrically into a rough sphere
would continue to attract the surrounding dust
created by the prior catastrophic events on the Martian surface.
But no popular theory has explained how Phobos acquired a surface layer of dust
or fine grain estimated at a hundred meters deep.
Even moderate vibrations
created by the larger supposed impacts
would immediately have propelled collected dust grains back into space
due to the rock's minuscule gravity.
Enhanced colors suggest electrical sorting of dust
The available evidence points directly to the very center piece of ancient fears
... the cosmic thunderbolt ...
and the ancient story of the great warrior in the heavens
of his raging companions
and of hurled stone does not end here.
Scarface
No surface feature on any body in the solar system
is more recognizable than the great scar of Valles Marineris.
And it appears, that ancient nations preserved the story about this memorable scar.
The scarred face of the Aztec god Xipe,
the celestial model of the devoted warrior,
is not easily forgotten.
And many cultures recall a legendary warrior or giant
recognized by his distinctive scar.
But could this scared god really have been the planet Mars?
Scarface was the name of a legendary Blackfoot indian warrior
also called Star Boy.
His counterpart among the Pawnee was the great warrior named Morning Star
not Venus they say, but the planet Mars.
The Greek Ares personified the lightning weapon
and the Greeks identified the god as the planet Mars.
When wounded in battle he rushed to Zeus with the shout of a thousand warriors
to display the deep gash.
In the different cultures, the warring god appears alternately as a hero vanquishing chaos monsters
and a rogue warrior or dark power.
We see the two aspects of the warrior archetype in the Hindu Indra,
famed for the cosmic thunderbolt.
And the giant Ravana,
who is said to have been permanently scarred by the thunderbolt.
Greek poets knew the monster Typhon as the owner of a lightning weapon
but also as the lightning scarred god.
And the same is true of the giant Enceladus,
alternately said to have been scarred by the thunderbolt of Zeus
or the spear of Athena, which meant the same thing.
We have good reason to ask, therefore,
if the scar-faced theme derived from remembered events
when planetary gods waged battles in the sky
and the planet Mars acquired it's unforgettable wound.
Olympus Mons
In it's sheer size the towering Martian mountain Olympus Mons
dwarfs anything seen on Earth.
The great mound on the Tharsis Rise stunned planetary scientists
as it rose through a dust cloud to greet the Mariner 9 mission in 1972.
Almost as flat as a pancake,
Olympus Mons is three times the height of Mount Everest
and as wide as the entire State of Arizona!
From its discovery onward,
planetary scientists interpreted Olympus Mons as a classic shield volcano,
comparing it to the great shield volcanos of the Hawaiian islands.
But, Olympus Mons is as large as the entire Hawaiian island chain of mountains,
from the sea floor to their summits.
Numerous features distinguish it from any shield volcano on Earth.
It's steep scarp rises up to 4 miles (6.43km) high.
No shield volcano offers a counterpart to this towering cliff.
(Belknap Shield Volcano) The defining feature of a shield volcano
is the gentle extrusion of fluid or low viscosity lava.
Shield volcanoes do not present a scarp
and a scarp 4 miles high is simply out of the question.
"The scarp is of unknown origin."
"This steep cliff around Olympus Mons is peculiar and not characteristic of terrestrial shield volcanoes."
In fact, one engima after another leaps out at the observer.
A blanket of incredibly fine, filamentary ridges and ravines,
a surrounding aureole,
exhibiting sharply cut ridges and channels
and stupendous carved blocks.
"The origin of the deposits has challenged planetary scientists for an explanation for dacades."
Subsequent to its formation, much of the aureole to the East
was apparently buried by equally enigmatic activity in the region.
Indeed, the Tharsis Rise as a whole is a long-standing enigma,
2,500 miles (4,023 km) across and more than 6 miles (9.65km) high.
A vast bulge of this sort has no place in the standard evolution of an isolated planet.
"The origin of the Tharsis Rise is not well understood."
Planetary scientists still debate the enigma,
but if Mars formerly engaged other charged bodies at close range,
the great bulge is the very deformation we would expect.
We have claimed that the surface of Mars was sculpted by electric discharge
in an epoch of solar system instability and planetary violence.
Yes, this is an outrageous idea,
but Olympus Mons itself has all the characteristics of a lightning blister.
Such raised bell-shaped blisters can be found on the caps of lightning arrestors
after a cloud to ground strike.
And we find them in other natural settings as well,
they're elevated fulgarites, what some have called fulgamites.
The discharge that creates raised fulgurites
is often followed by lesser strokes along the same ionized path
creating overlapping pits on the top of the formation,
just like the circular craters on the summit of Olympus Mons.
On the Martian mountain the smaller craters center on the walls of the larger
and are cut to a greater depths, as if with a cookie cutter.
The material that forms the raised fulgarite is scavenged from the surrounding surface.
The result is an encircling depression or moat.
This characteristic is so clear and obvious as to raise an critical question...
Is there a moat around the base of Olympus Mons?
Planetary scientists say there is a moat,
but that its remains are only slightly visible to the West
and the rest of the moat had been buried by later deposits of material who's origin is still debated.
They explain the moat as being an effect of Olympus Mons
sinking into the local terrain over long spans of time.
But is another explanation possible?
The features of Olympus Mons are, in fact,
a perfect fit to an electrical interpretation down to numerous details.
Several years ago, Wal Thornhill conducted a laboratory experiment
to demonstrate the effect of an electric arc
on a positively charged, or anode clay surface.
At moderate power, the electric arc raised a circular mound from the surrounding material
to create both, a moat and an encircling fluid aureole extracted from the clay,
while also carving a crater on the top of the mound
and cutting pits and gouges in its flanks.
As the power was increased,
the arc briefly stopped moving and burnt a smaller circular crater
within the pre-existing crater, leaving a glowing spot.
Scaled up to an interplanetary discharge,
that glowing spot represents a duration and temperature
sufficient to melt the floors of the Olympus Mons caldera craters
and to produce their remarkably flat surfaces.
The Olympus Mons aureole also has it's analog on the aureoles of lightning blisters
showing concentric scarring.
This distinctive pattern directs our attention to a stunning,
highly enigmatic counterpart on the Olympus Mons aureole.
In conventional terms, the similarity can only be accidental.
And, here is an equally profound mystery.
Much of the original aureole was overwritten by subsequent scarring.
It is only necessary to look closely at the images
to see that the overwriting was achieved by a force acting from above
with no regard for previously formed ridges and channels.
That's the trademark of the electric arcs acting on a surface.
In an electrical interpretation of Olympus Mons,
successive strokes from a cosmic lightning bolt
lifted the peak and carved the craters on the summit.
The Olympus Mons caldera illustrates the effect of a sputtering, rotating arc,
superimposing flat bottom craters on the summit of an anode blister.
It's rapid movement will frequently cut steep terraces
into the walls of the superimposed craters.
We see the effect most clearly on the caldera walls of neighbouring Ascraeus Mons.
On a planetary scale a cylindrical rotating electric discharge
can be seen as an array of smaller cylinders.
A good example is the cylindrical Earth auroras
formed by curtains of smaller discharge cylinders.
When electric arcs sputter across a surface
they will often stick momentarily to one spot,
creating a distinctive scalloping effect,
an effect evident on the caldera walls of Olympus Mons
and even more evident on the caldera walls of Hecates Tholus to the North.
Cleanly cut scalloping is not apparent on the walls of shield volcano calderas.
The highly filamentary blanket on the summit of Olympus Mons
is to be expected if an 'interplanetary' arc
created a focal point of negative charge
on a positively charged surface -
like the fine filamentary tail of a comet moving through the weak electric field of the Sun.
Here we would look for a similar effect on the massive cloud
of dust and sediment that fell upon the region.
Radial filaments, perhaps even electrically fused material
would have poured over the flanks and scarp of Olympus Mons
to fill the surrounding moat as a permanent record of the movement of charge.
In truth, no shield volcano on Earth replicates the morphology of Olympus Mons.
Yet, the pattern is repeated more than once on the Tharsis Rise of Mars,
not just superimposed craters and terracing,
but as seen in the laboratory experiments with electric arcs,
a spectacular array of surrounding pits and deep surface gouges.
And most extraordinary is the fact, that the expansive carved surface seen here
reveals not a single opening to the great voids that are supposed to lie beneath the surface
- the voids into which scientists have assumed these pits and gouges collapsed.
Collapsed pits are typically quite obvious
revealing either their connection to local fissures
or openings to cavernous space below.
Examined critically. the supposed shield volcanoes of Mars
do not reveal the expected features.
This may not exclude the possibility of active volcanoes in the planet's violent past,
but with higher resolution images
the spectrum of engimas has broadened spectacularly.
Electrical events are scaleable,
and it should not surprise us to find that events similar to those producing Olympus Mons
occurred on a smaller scale, as well.
In fact, the surface of Mars is replete with small mounds surmounted by craters.
Abundant cratered mounds remain mysterious to planetary scientists.
Many of these mounds are remarkably similar to raised fulgarites.
In many instances, we see the cratered mounds surrounded by moats or barrow pits.
An electrical explanation may be the only explanation that can withstand scrutiny.
Most of the formations are under half a mile in diameter.
Where we see one cratered mound we typically see others,
sometimes by the hundreds,
even by the thousands.
We see strings of cratered mounds
and we see parallel strings; an unresolved geological enigma,
but an enigma that reminds us of the parallel streamers common to electric discharge.
Many of the higher resolution images are quite recent
and yes, it is too early to impose any sweeping interpretation.
But, the greatest mistake would be to ignore the converging lines of evidence,
evidence that points to planet-wide electrical sculpting of the Martian surface
not that long ago.
Electrical Sculpting of Mars
Is it possible to identify the events that shaped the surface of the planet Mars?
A planet of vast but unrecognized landscapes,
vista after vista eluding every attempt to explain them.
Scientists labour to solve the mysteries through text book theory,
but if, as we have claimed, the cause was electrical,
they will never get the expected answers.
Many details of a new interpretation come from laboratory experiments with electric discharge,
but how far can this new interpretation take us
toward an understanding of Martian history?
One advantage of the electrical perspective
is that its every implication can be tested against massive layers of evidence now available,
including wide-ranging experiments with electric arcs.
Lab discharge between two spheres
Anode (Positive charge)
Cathode (Negative charge)
If as we’ve proposed, Mars was immersed in hemispheric discharge,
the planet can be viewed as a laboratory in space
for testing the electrical hypothesis.
Lichtenberg Figures
As seen in lightning displays,
electric arcs exhibit dendritic branching called Lichtenberg patterns.
These look very much like the dendritic erosion created by flowing water.
And electric arcs exploding across a surface can produce sinuous channels
that also resemble fluid erosion.
Lab discharge to wet wood
But there are differences.
In electric discharge to a solid surface
the electron pathways frequently create dark spotting,
or chains of craters, running along the channel floors or close by.
The presence of crater concentrations in relation to surface channels
offers a fundamental test of the electrical hypothesis.
In electric experiments, we also see coronal streamers
radiating perpendicularly from the primary discharge channel.
Both, the cratering and the coronal discharge
are keys to a new understanding of the Martian surface.
Martian Channels:
scalloping; crater chains; alcoves; pseudo-tributaries
Did electric arcs cut the great channels on Mars?
Nirgal Vallis is some three miles and more in width and 250 miles in length.
Yes, it did look like a dry river bed
when first seen by the Mariner 9 mission in 1972,
but the original confidence of planetary scientists soon gave way to doubts,
then to contradiction.
"It is not clear how this channel formed..."
A river can take many twists and turns along its path
but its tributaries will not look like the blunt alcoves of Nirgall Vallis.
Martian channels exhibit the predictable features of an electric scar.
Rotating cylindrical arcs
sputtering along the primary discharge path
produced scalloping of the channel walls
with sharp angular projections that are inconsistent with fluid flow.
The same process left overlapping craters and alcoves
that make no sense in terms of familiar erosional patterns.
We see virtually identical craters, alcoves and sharply cut stubby gouges along Nanedi Valles.
Nanedi Valles: "The valley's origins remain unclear."
Numerous other Martian rilles underscore the same enigma
and the unanswered questions grow year by year.
Nirgal Valles "tributaries"
Electric arc to wood
"Collapsed Lava Tubes"
Planetary scientists identify depressions such as these, as collapsed lava tubes.
Lava tubes form as flowing molten rock cools and hardens at it's surface,
insulating the lava below so it continues to flow in a tube that eventually empties.
When an empty lava tubes collapses,
the result will be an entrance to a lava tube cave.
A good example is "Barker's cave" in Australia.
So, a cave entrance is the first thing to look for on Mars.
The second thing to look for is a rubble field created by a collapsing roof.
And a third thing to look for is abundant outflow
since the emptying of a lava tube requires an outflow region.
Lava outflow
But in reviewing innumerable instances of claimed lava tubes collapse on Mars
we find no cave entrance,
no rubble field from a collapsed roof
and no outflow.
The depressions stand alone
with literally nothing to support the theoretical interpretation.
Like any fluid, lava flow follows topographical relief,
always running downhill.
The channels seen here change directions randomly in apparent disregard for topography.
They make 90 degree turns unrelated to surface gradients.
And they also cross over each other with no disturbance of either.
These depressions can not be collapsed lava tubes,
but what are they?
What you see here is not the planet Mars.
It is a surface affected by very high voltage, but microamp current,
creating a complex of gouges and craters.
Again, in electrical terms
craters and channels are inseparable companions.
"Fractured" Terrain
In responding to the mysterious channels and depressions on Mars,
many planetary scientists thought they saw spreading and fracturing
and, indeed, evidence of fracturing is present on Mars as seen here.
Here there are no associated craters or crater chains
and the nature of the stresses acting on the surface is an open question.
Planetary scientists think in the same terms when considering the region of Avernus Colles.
They identify the channels as cracks or fractures.
But why the concentrations of craters and crater chains?
A rotating electric arc traveling across the surface can alternately sputter forward
to produce linear chains of craters,
or advance on a continuous path to cut channels as if by a router
with uniform depth and parallel sides.
As seen in laboratory experiments with electric discharge channels,
here, the channel width will be the width of the rotating arc
at it's contact with the surface.
VEMASAT Laboratories, Earth
Avernus Colles, Mars
Crater Anomalies
The question of crater formation on rocky planets and moons must be re-opened.
The impact explanation would mean it is only necessary to count craters
in order to calculate the age of a surface.
But electric discharge on an hemispheric scale
could quickly create a surface that looks a billion years old
to those counting craters.
Plasma scientist Dr. J. C. Ransom of VEMASAT-Laboratories
conducted a series of experiments with electric arcs.
Electric discharge produced surface cratering patterns
closely resembling those observed on planets and moons.
Even a surface darkening and central bumps or mounds of so many craters on Mars
were present in the laboratory experiment.
Electric arcs can also produce cratering patterns that could never be produced by impact.
Complex terracing of crater floors and crater walls
are a common effect of a rotating electric arc
or discharge streamer.
Across the surface of Mars we observe countless examples of exotic terracing.
Impact theory was never able to resolve the mysteries.
So-called bull's eye craters
with a central crater inside a larger crater
are surprisingly common on Mars.
Could this be a rare accident?
That explanation is reduced to absurdity when two such craters are seen side by side.
In fact several bull's eye craters appear within the same region of Mars.
But an ionized discharge path of lightning does allow for subsequent discharge along the same path.
The bull's eye crater
is a logical extension of the electric model.
And when it comes to improbable events side by side
these two craters with central peaks each terminating in another crater
will certainly never be explained by impact.
Impacts do not create hexagonal craters.
But look closely at this region of Mars
and you'll see several hexagons,
an observed form taken by rotating plasma
as seen in the planet Saturn’s electrified polar hexagon.
In an extended discharge,
systematic cratering, pitting, or etching can be the norm.
That's why in industrial applications
electric discharge machining can achieve exceptionally dependable results.
The microscopic pitting of electric discharge
can give a consistent depth
and a remarkably smooth surface
despite the fact that the surface is entirely constituted of craters or pits.
The same effect can be observed on seemingly smooth surfaces
in the northern hemisphere of Mars,
surfaces that have been excavated miles deep.
But look more closely with the help of recent high-res images
and smooth surfaces are revealed to be nothing more than fields of small
densely packed craters.
The baffling crater field seen here,
like so many others on Mars,
is a perfect counterpart to an electrically machined surface.
Martian region in high resolution
Electric discharge machining (electron microscope)
And don't underestimate the scale of this dilemma for planetary scientists.
We witness a pattern at both, the low points and the high points on Mars.
From the bottom of Zunil crater in the depressed northern hemisphere
to the highest point on Mars, the summit of towering Olympus Mons.
Here no grasping for conventional explanations such as a dune field
could possibly account for what leaps out at the observer.
The baffling crater fields seen here,
like so many others on Mars,
is a perfect counterpart to an electrically machined surface.
Electric discharge machining (electron microscope)
Lightning's Dendritic Forms
Lightning in slow motion
More than two centuries after Benjamin Franklin flew his kite,
the origin and behaviour of lightning continues to amaze and to puzzle the lightning specialists.
Lightning will occasionally imprint it's distinctive form on terrestrial surfaces,
Lightning strike on a sidewalk
and even on the skin of humans.
In the laboratory, the counterpart to lightning is the Lichtenberg figure,
perhaps the most common and fascinating form taken by electric discharge.
Dendritic means tree-like branching
and dendritic forms can be easily confused with fracturing.
The dendritic patterns seen here are not fracturing, as the term is normally understood,
but electrical break down channels on a polycarbonate plate.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg appears to have been the first to demonstrate the different forms
taken by dust on positive
and negative surfaces.
A line of investigation later followed by others but with no impact on planetary science.
Late in the 19th century, industrialist Lord William G. Armstrong explored the power of electricity
to produce exquisite forms on surfaces of different charge.
The feathery qualities of Lichtenberg figures on a negative surface
could be compared to the more dendritic patterns on a positive surface.
"Captured" Lightning
At Stoneridge Engineering, the technology of Lichtenberg figures has produced an art form,
lightning captured in clear acrylic blocks.
The blocks are bombarded by electrons from a 5 megavolt particle accelerator
arriving at nearly the speed of light
but, coming to a stop within a fraction of an inch into the block,
a cloud of trapped negative charge.
Here, the event producing the dendritic channels is triggered by a simple stroke of a metallic pin.
That is all it takes for a breakdown of the insulating material
and a nearly instantaneous release of charge and dendritic channels.
A millisecond lightning storm frozen into the acrylic block.
The branching of the electron channels is a spectacular fractal pattern,
apparently occurring all the way down to scale, to the molecular level.
From what we have earlier presented
it is evident that planet-wide electric discharge
created vast regions of raised Lichtenberg figures on Mars.
Mars: dendritic ridges
Laboratory experiments show that in regions of positive charge
dust will typically gather into raised Lichtenberg formations
standing out from the surrounding terrain.
In fact, sharply sculpted dendritic ridge systems
are abundant on Mars
showing up wherever the highest energy events are implied.
The great trench of Valles Marineris is an extraordinary example.
Here, we find the raised Lichtenberg figures exactly where we would expect them,
running down from sharp cliffs and high points
in predictable patterns, stretching for hundreds of miles along the trench.
Yet, strangely, the mystery receives almost no mention by planetary scientists.
We also observe dendritic ridges on the great mound of Olympus Mons,
both, on the miles high scarp
and on the caldera walls.
In fact, the mystery is global.
We see the same pattern on the walls of major rilles.
We see it along the so-called fractured terrain of Noctis Labyrinthis.
And everywhere on Mars we see the dendritic patterns
reaching down from towering cliffs and mesas.
We even see such ridge systems descending from the rims of large craters,
opening the door to a much broader perspective on crater formation.
Scalloping
In the hypothesis presented here,
many craters on Mars were produced by the same electrical events
that created chains of craters and a great variety of channels or rilles.
As a discharge column sputters across a surface,
it's diameter will vary with discharge energy
and a narrowing or pinching by the induced magnetic field.
The pinching effect will be most strongly focused at the point of contact with the surface.
The sputtering arc will leave a unique signature in the form of scalloped walls.
Popular explanations say that surface collapse must have produced these crater channels.
But scalloping effects on Mars are by no means limited to chains of craters.
Planetary scientists cannot agree on the forces that created this bizarre channel network
north of Valles Marineris.
Other channels, that are said to have been caused by fluid flow,
either water or lava, exhibit the same scalloped walls.
Similar neatly cut scallops appear on the cliffs of towering mesas.
And the so-called calderas of the great mountains of Mars
reveal the same pattern.
Even the celebrated Victoria crater,
supposedly formed by impact,
exhibits alcoves and scallops similar to those of the great rilles and valleys.
And the scalloped walls of Zunil crater
are virtually indistinguishable from the scalloped walls of Valles Marineris.
Scallops and Ridges
Additional patterns enter the picture, as well,
including a consistent global connection between scallops
and dendritic ridge networks.
The explanation appears to lie in the fractal nature of cylindrical current sheets.
Current flow can metamorphose into secondary cylinders
and fractal-like sub-structures
to be pinched by the induced magnetic fields
into a narrow highly focused discharge.
We see this interplay of different scales
in the cylindrical currents of Earth's auroras
as charged particles enter and exit the polar regions in an electric circuit.
Invisible current sheets, magnetically pinched at Earth's poles
divide into visible curtains of secondary cylinders,
all dancing in the turbulence of Earth's upper atmosphere.
The same electromagnetic structure arising from charged particle movement
will at times be seen in the electrified tails of comets.
In the larger scale events carving the surface of Mars,
we envision multiple columns of charged particles
being pinched into a narrow discharge at the surface.
This established principle will be crucial to comprehending the giant Valles Marineris
with all of it's accompanying chasms.
Smaller scallops within larger scallops,
they are the imprint of pinched cylindrical currents,
constituted of smaller cylinders.
The pattern occurs repeatedly and is surely no accident.
Consider the consistent relationship between the scalloping effects
and Lichtenberg ridge systems.
The most prominent of these dendritic forms
are those that separate the larger scallops.
The smaller dendritic ridges define the boundaries between smaller scallops.
At both scales, the ridge networks can be seen as the final events
in catastrophic discharge activity
as charge redistribution gathered and fused lose material
into the familiar Lichtenberg patterns.
In this revisioning of Martian history
contradictions find a unified resolution
in an electrical cause.
Enigmatic craters,
crater chains,
dendritic ridges,
scalloped craters,
calderas and rilles -
all are connected to the observed behaviour of electric discharge.
Negative Lichtenberg Figures
Here is an image of electric arcing to a negatively charged surface
capturing the feathery discharge glow, or corona.
The corona is constituted of extremely fine hair-like filaments radiating from the primary streamers.
On a surface affected by electric arcing,
experiments show that regions of localised charge
can attract dust or sediment into a record of the electrical activity,
or discharge pathways, down to many fine details.
Martian surface
Here is a ridge complex on Mars
covering thousands of square miles.
The ridge forms have puzzled planetary scientists for more than a decade now.
Since standard geology does not include such forms,
this unique behaviour is a logical test of the electrical hypothesis.
Examined closely, we see perpendicular hair-like filaments illuminated by the Sun
confirming that electric discharge attracted dust into raised relief.
Martian surface
This exotic formation was produced electrically by D. Z. Parker on a CRT screen
showing a gathering of dust in a region of previous discharge activity.
The ridge with its fine filaments
offers a striking counterpart to the baffling Martian formations.
Surface Etching
We have suggested that the northern hemisphere of Mars
was eroded electrically to a depth of 5 miles or more,
as seen on the global elevation map.
It is only reasonable therefore to look for transitional zones
on the margins of the more depressed or heavily eroded regions.
If the erosion was electrical,
what should we expect to find,
particularly in the regions that separate the low lying northern latitudes
from the elevated and densely cratered southern hemisphere?
We should expect to find what we do find -
vast regions from the equator northward
showing the predictable phases of electrical erosion.
First electric arcs raking across the surface
created a network of channels
cutting the region in discrete blocks.
Then the arcs acting on the sharp edges of the blocks
continued to extend the Valley floors
leaving separate angular islands.
The islands standing out above the newly excavated terrain
were then progressively eroded into various pyramidal forms
then mounds as electric arcs continued to erode the sharp edges.
And finally the remaining mounds were etched away.
Just as industrial applications of electric discharge machining
can erode high points to produce a flat surface.
All that is left of the earlier Martian plains
are the few scattered remnants of sculpted mesas and bluffs
disappearing altogether in a flat depression farther to the north.
This transitional process can be observed across great distances on Mars
with a consistent pattern,
highly cratered elevated plains to the south
giving way to isolated blocks,
then mounds,
then a smooth lower terrain that characterizes so much of the northern hemisphere.
Blueberries
In early 2004, the Mars rover "Opportunity" returned images
that alone could alter our ideas about the recent history of the solar system.
The rover had landed in a crater
and scattered around the walls of the crater were a multitude of BB-sized spherules.
Their blue-grey colour set them apart form the reddish hue
of the iron-rich Martian soil.
Thus, the informal name given them: blueberries.
As "Opportunity" rolled across the Martian landscape it found a profusion of the little spheres
that apparently occupied the Martian surface by the trillions.
But how were they formed?
Not long after the discovery of the Martian blueberries,
Dr. Ransom set up an experiment to test the effects of electric arcs
on different materials.
He obtained a quantity of hematite roughly comparable to the Martian soil
and blasted it with an electric arc.
The results are quite spectacular.
Embedded in the soil were perfect counterparts of the Martian blueberries.
From what is now known about the Martian surface,
it's clear that if the planet was engulfed in electric discharge,
the spherules are a predictable effect.
Mars
VEMASAT laboratories
Ransom's experiments did not end the investigation either.
Cameras of the rover "Opportunity" captured a flat floored channel with parallel sides
from both walls of the channel we observed jagged razorbacks.
One more feature with no place in the geologists' lexicon.
But Dr. Troy Shinbrot, and his colleagues at Rutger's University,
recently produced this very form, razorbacks, in electro-static experiments.
And the researchers did indeed see a direct connection to the razorbacks recorded by "Opportunity".
Shortly thereafter, D. Z. Parker also produced razorbacks
on the charged surface of a CRT screen.
Both, the razorbacks and the blueberries, point to electrical events.
And electrical events are scaleable.
Formations created on a small scale can also appear on a much larger scale.
In fact, our orbiting cameras have found numerous craters with domes or spheres resting within them
looking very much like the spheres and craters of Ransom's blueberry experiments.
The pictures seen here of domed craters on Mars
are from the "Mars Global Surveyor".
But in contrast to the rover's blueberry images
the domed craters range in size from a hundred meters or less
to a mile or more in diameter.
And the pattern occurs even on a larger scale.
In the polar region of Mars the domed craters are up to many miles wide.
It is surely reasonable to ask if the tiny blueberries, and the far more massive domed craters,
were produced by the same electrical force
acting on widely different scales in an earlier phase of global electric discharge?
One thing is certain, if it was electricity that sculpted the Martian surface,
the events were vastly more dramatic than planetary scientists have ever imagined.
Symbols of an Alien Sky
Episode Two The Lightning-Scarred Planet Mars