Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
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In the previous Space News, we discussed the electrical nature
of dramatic dust-raising events on the planet Mars.
Today, we review one of the great ongoing mysteries in the history of Mars exploration.
In January of 2004,
the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity arrived at the Red Planet about three weeks apart.
Due to the extreme dustiness of the Martian environment,
it was believed that the rovers would be hindered by dust accumulation
of their solar panels and were only given anticipated lifespans of 90 days each.
Fast forward more than 11 years to 2015.
For reasons that no planetary scientist has successfully explained,
the rover Opportunity is still alive and transmitting data to scientists on Earth.
The rover Spirit survived for over 6 years until 2010
and only expired after being ensnared in the soil of a Martian crater.
Let us go back to the beginning of the rovers' respective journeys.
When their missions began, the rovers' solar cells
were providing 900 Watt-hours (Wh) of electricity per day.
Over the months that followed, Spirit's output dropped to 400 Wh daily
while Opportunity dropped to about 500 Wh due to dust accumulation on the panels.
But then, to the amazement of mission scientists, Opportunity's power began to increase
and kept on increasing until the power peaked at just over 900 Wh.
As reported by newscientist.com, the Mars rover Opportunity,
"...stumbled into something akin to a car wash"
which somehow cleaned its solar panels.
Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
admitted that the cause of the surprise cleaning could not be explained;
"These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape."
The remarkable cleaning occurred in spurts during the Martian night.
The team managing the rover reported that on at least 4 occasions over a 6 month period,
the rover's power output suddenly increased by up to 5% in a single night.
The ad hoc explanations immediately followed.
The first suggestion was that the Martian winds
might have somehow swept dust off of the panels.
Others wondered if frost could have caused the dust to clump,
exposing the panels to more sunlight.
It was even suggested that the tilting of the rover while climbing hills
might have caused a portion of the dust to drop off.
One wonders, does one's car become cleaner
when one drives uphill on a windy day in the desert?
With Opportunity still alive in 2015,
having now lived more than 40 times longer than its anticipated lifespan,
more than ever the enigma demands explanation.
The great irony is that scientists working with NASA
have developed technology that provides the answer to the mystery.
Self-cleaning solar panels that rely on electrostatic cleaning
have proven extremely effective at dust removal. As noted in a 2010 review,
"The technology was developed for future rover missions to Mars,
but it could work here on Earth to keep solar panels operating at peak capacity.
It uses electrostatic charge to repel dust and force it to the edges of the panels.
It can remove 90% of the dust on a solar panel in a two minute cycle..."
As noted in the previous Space News, the accepted models of the Martian atmosphere
have never adequately explained the dramatic dust-raising events on Mars.
A 2006 NASA report of the strong electric fields in Martian dust storm states:
"Dust particles [could] become electrified in Martian dust storms
when they rub against each other as they are carried by the winds,
transferring positive and negative electric charge in the same way
you build up static electricity if you shuffle across a carpet."
But the tenuous Martian atmosphere, less than 1% as dense as Earth's,
and an average of about 75 degrees colder,
is not substantial enough to generate the mechanical winds required
to generate such huge, sometimes planet-wide dust storms.
Despite its atmospheric deficiency,
Martian dust storms are much larger than any seen on Earth
and the planet's fierce dust devils, some as tall as Mount Everest,
would dwarf the typical tornado on Earth.
On Mars, without the ameliorating leakage by a storm clouds that we see on Earth,
rather than lightning, we see glow discharges
which occur from the ionosphere to the ground and drive the so-called dust devils.
In 2005, The Thunderbolts Project made a highly controversial assertion
about the greatest dust storm in Martian history.
The article ― When Dust Storms Engulf Mars ―
asserted that the massive global dust storm in the summer of 2001,
involved a packed assembly of dust devils
carrying great volumes of Martian dust into billowing clouds.
Since its publication, the assertion has been confirmed
though the concept of compact dust devil congregations
can only seem absurd to conventional schools.
In the standard theory, an atmospheric vortex
requires a vastly larger circulation of wind,
a condition that precludes what seems clearly to be seen
in edge-on pictures of storm fronts on Mars.
In the Electric Universe, planets, like comets,
are charged bodies that are interacting with our changing plasma environment.
Laboratory experiments have demonstrated the ability
of electric fields and electrical discharges to levitate dust
and to organize dust particles into familiar planetary features such as sand dunes.
On March 18th of this year, a new NASA
press release has provided further confirmation
that this process is indeed occurring on a large scale on Mars.
The report states:
"NASA's... (MAVEN) spacecraft has observed two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere:
an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud
and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.
The presence of the dust at orbital altitudes from about 93 miles
to 190 miles above the surface was not predicted."
Mission scientist Laila Andersson states:
"If the dust originates from the atmosphere, this suggests we are
missing some fundamental process in the Martian atmosphere."
Also surprising to MAVEN scientists was the discovery of a highly energetic glowing aurora
that reaches shockingly deep into the Martian atmosphere.
As one team member states:
"What's especially surprising about the Aurora we saw
is how deep in the atmosphere it occurs
- much deeper than at Earth or elsewhere on Mars...
The electrons producing it must be really energetic."
The scientists have concluded that the source of energetic particles is the Sun.
The report states:
"MAVEN's Solar Energetic Particle instrument detected
a huge surge in energetic electrons at the onset of the aurora."
These observations are reminiscent of a 2014 scientific paper
which states that charged particles from the Sun provoke increased lightning on Earth.
It was the Norwegian experimentalist Kristian Birkeland
who correctly hypothesized in the early 20th century,
that electric currents from the Sun power the Earth's Auroras.
For many decades, the scientific mainstream largely rejected Birkeland's thesis
favouring instead the idea that Earth's magnetosphere is an impenetrable envelope
squeezed by the solar wind to induce auroral activity.
Only when satellites detected the magnetic signatures
of electric currents in the aurora, in 1973,
was Birkeland's hypothesis irrefutably validated.
However, more than a century after Birkeland's polar expedition
to investigate the Northern Lights,
mainstream scientists still express surprise or even astonishment
when they observe the tell-tale signs of electrical circuitry
connecting the Sun and the planets.
In recent years, NASA investigators have observed what they described as
"giant magnetic ropes" that "connect" Earth's upper atmosphere to the Sun
and explosions in the outskirts of Earth's magnetic field.
The so-called ropes to which the investigators refer,
are commonly described in plasma science as electrical Birkeland currents,
named after Kristian Birkeland.
The rope-like structure is not just a curiosity.
It's the structure taken by current flow due to the long-range attraction
and short-range repulsion between current filaments.
The so-called twisted magnetic fields
are simply the signature of the electric current flow.
In plasma cosmology, these entwined plasma filaments act as transmission lines
carrying field aligned currents across interplanetary and interstellar space.
As stated in many recent Space News episodes,
each new discovery brings NASA scientists closer to finally
inevitably acknowledging the electrical circuitry throughout the solar system.
Until this reality fully dawns on space scientists,
the list of surprises will continue to grow.
For continuous updates on Space News from the Electric Universe,
stay tuned to
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