I just do not have time to respond to all of these yet. I'll be back h34r:

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Hi Duane, I think you already replied to most of these in threads about Mars, and for a lot of these images the mainstream explanation is given on the webpages. Just keep in mind that for the explanation several different processes are inferred (tectonics, volcanism, wind/water erosion and impacts), while the EU model infers only one mechanism.

Time is a factor, I would have compiled a lot more and different images if I had the time, Ganymede, Callisto Io and the comets and asteroids are left out for one.

Cheers.

*sigh* Well, if you're right, then at almost every such location we shoul expect the subsurface to be honeycombed with fulgurites, where the discharge currents branched. We'll be there soon, and when they are not found, I will have you to dinner-- with crow as the main course. S

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

Oh, that reminds me that there are visible fulgurites on Mars, at least there is a good chance that the "sand dunes" found inside channels and valleys are fulgurites (didn't one of the rovers study one of these features in more detail?). Here is an example http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/10/08/.

Eh, Steve, if they are found , you can come over here for dinner. I promise you won't get "charged".

Cheers.

Umm, no VanderL, there are not. Your picture, following the EU theme, shows fissures, not fulgurites.

Please read up on fulgurites because you don't know what they are.

For anyone interested and too lazy to follow my link, a fulgurite is what is left in the ground after lightning has struck. The lightning pulse enters the ground, leaving a "tube" of melted quartz. Lightning tends to penetrate the ground, not splay across it. It follows the path of least resistance--which is almost always into the ground, not along it.

Hey Steve, can I get into that dinner too? I want to watch the crow consumed. And V, if the EU model turns out to be right, not only will I come over for dinner, I will fly there and pay for it.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Hi Duane,

Actually I know what fulgurites are, and they don't necessarily stay subsurface, particularly not when the giant discharges also "clean" the topsoil from the surface.
Schiaparelli Crater also show these features and this is what the EU has to say on the process:

From the Holoscience website:
Sounds not unreasonable to me, but it could be that I'm wrong. Pity we don't have any idea yet on these particular ridges (have to check the Rover's images again, I seem to remember some of these ridges in a crater).

Haha, like the crow flies. If the EU explanations turn out to be true, you're all invited to a party here.


Cheers.

I'm interested to know what specific elements of the Electric Universe model this includes (rather than just 'all of it'), and what kind of evidence?

For example, the Heliospheric Current Sheet (implying electric current) is consistent with the Electric Universe model, and I would guess that this particular characteristic is not in question?

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Hi Ian,

I think Duane and Steven are not questioning the existence of magnetic fields and electric fields in space, they are not convinced (ooh, is that a euphemism?) that discharges play a role in shaping planetary surfaces, and, most importantly, the Electric Star model (hey, lets add an Electric Scar model).
My guess (actually my hope) is that if electric discharges are proven to exist on either Io or comets, and/or the likelihood is proven that craters, channel, crater chains and rilles are electric scars, the party is on. Right, Duane/Steve and whoever wants to join?


Cheers.

I am not prepared to dispute energetically over Io. Here is a tidally-heated small moon, belching Sulfur into the second-strongest magnetic field in the solar system. Who can dispute that ionized S will be summat affected by local magnetic/electric effects-- there's a trail of ionized S diffusing clear out of the Jovian system. Electric forces can rule, where particle size is small. I just don't overextend that into electric bulldozers plowing (ploughing) up the turf, everywhere. Steve
PS-- I didn't enter the sprites string as grist for your mill, but if you do proper homework, we can debate it here. Hm, that looks snide, even to me. Actually. I trust your sense of proportion. S

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

Hi Steve,


Well, the Io item can wait (it's been discussed before and at the moment no real news is available), let's take the Sprites into the EU model. In the EU model lightning (actually weather systems in general) are powered externally by the space currents. So in this model it isn't surprising that electrical discharges reach beyond Earth's clouds. After all they are all connected to the same electric circuit.
This kinda long page tells exactly why and how sprites, elves, gnomes, blue jets, and knots fit into an EU model.
Just imagine the Earth's atmosphere as a capacitor (ionosphere is positive, Earth is negatively charged), that is "leaky" and "self-repairing". The "leaks" are what we experience as lightning, sprites and such, self-repairing because the charge can build up again to "leak" over and over.


Cheers.

I saw nothing new from the standpoint of planetology or astrophysics. It is not a surprise that meteorologists have been peddling folk-wisdom for years under the label of science. Now that they (in the person of their computers) are able to model better, I am encouraging clan and sib to discontinue pejorative terms like 'weather-guesser' and 'oracle'.
At solar-system scale, though, while the currents are large in the absolute sense they are spread over huge volumes, so there is seldom the sort of catastrophic event EU would have me believe in. Our upper atmosphere is positively charged, not because we are receiving excess positive charge from the sun: rather, when upper atmosphere atoms are photodissociated (ionized), the electrons, being some thousands of times lighter than the anions, are much more likely to escape. The purely electric effects of solar wind are, for the most part, homeostatic (you should pardon the expression). We seem to agree on the dynamics from the mesoshere downward.
Or have I misunderstood? I confess to not having read this string in its entirety, and have no sense of how to separate data from doctrine. Is there a summary I could consult? Steve

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

Excellent point, and I believe that this is the crux of the matter. Are there cosmic currents of sufficient magnitude to do any kind of physical damage?

On the one hand, I think you are absolutely correct in saying that current densties are too small to do anything significant, and that is what we observe most of the time.

But I think that a good analogy is to look at the natural currents and voltage here on Earth, and we also note that most of the time, they do no significant damager; but on occassion, if the conditions are right, we get lightning. And because we see lightning on a fairly reguarly basis, we accept its powerful nature. See for example Lightning Damage at the LSU Agricultural Center. (Are the affected particles small?).

I would also argue that we see some evidence of the conditions necessary for cosmic currents to show their destructive power, the most obvious example being solar flares whose power is transmitted to Earth, often resulting on devasting consequence. See for example, Major Solar Storm Begins Onslaught of Earth, which reports that a solar flare could "knock out power to an entire Canadian province[I] " (my emphasis).

As for cosmic currents causing planetary cratering and scarring, we have to acknowledge that the power is available, but I will also acknowledge that the Electric Universe theory has to present more evidence on how the conditions might arise to do so.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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I can't speak for Steve, but VanderL has encapsulated my objections rather succinctly. The observed physics of an electrically powered sun are not there, despite there being 10s of probes sent all over the solar system. The means by which the EU people say the sun is powered is simply not there Ian.

If the means of this electric power isn't there, then the theory can't be right. Too me, this is so absurdedly obvious that I cannot see how some seemingly very intellegent people are taken in by the theory.

As to electrical reshaping of planetary surfaces, give me a break. Listening to VanderL, every crater every where is the result of electricity. (No offence V ) He links to an obviously glacially carved valley and says it looks electrical. Maybe if you shut your eyes!

Everything I see on the EU sites VanderL has pointed me to ignores physics, ignores causes, ignores more mundane explanations in favour of an other-worldly, never seen, ultra-fantasic event. They link to a thermal image and say "wow this looks funny, electrical currents could be a cause", yet they ignore the fact the image is made up of very subtle differences in temperature. It is not science Ian, its conjecture and imagination.

One of the images that just makes me HOWL is the 3 meter long fissure they claim was caused by a lightning, or at least an electrical, strike. They then go on to say "and this is how it would work for a fissure on Mars". Well, holy hannah, the "fissures" they point to are hundreds of kilometers long! Let's ignore the simple explanation that they were caused by running water, water that has multiple and long lines of evidence, and invoke this fantastical, unexplainable, unobservable "planetary sized electric strike" that came out of somewhere (nowhere? where?) to strike Mars with enough energy to create this 1000 Km long, rilled, fissure. The strike also is able to do this without melting the rock it strikes, leaving no ejecta, and at the end of the fissure leaves a fan that resembles flood debris.

Ayuh, ok.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Hi D,

Yes, we're at it again, the evidence is in the pictures of course, and you don't seem to grasp the difference between an Earthly small discharge creating a fissure, and a planetary-sized discharge creating a large fissure. I never said that a small discharge can create these enormous channels and craters, it takes something special to do so, namely planetary discharges that are orders of magnitude larger.
The funny thing is that discharges can be scaled up, and still give comparable results, only larger and longer.
On the electrical powering of the stars, it only takes a drift of electrons towards the Sun that could very well go undetected, even with several probes out there.

No offence taken, but the explanation on why the channels (and the craters, and the collapse pits, and the some of the "sand dunes", and the short deep "tributaries", as well as the fresh-looking cliffs and the fact that the valleys don't always run down, but also up, and straight through hills) look like they do is consistent, and only one hypothetical event is necessary, if you say the valley is the result of glacial activity, where is the ice, where is the water, where did the water go, etc etc.
These stories of rifting, subduction, impacting, flooding, glaciers, are all stories, based on the history of Earth, but we don't see enough water (or evidence of it), ice or tectonics to account for what we see. The electrical explanation is just as valid as the current explanations, and it predicts melted surfaces, it takes into account several strange features with no explanation (did you check out Schiaparelli Crater?), plus all the feature that have an as yet unverified explanation.

I know these explanations are hard to verify, but there are laboratory experiments with discharges that show the features we actually see. I just want to show that these features are consistent with an electrical discharge explanation, and your objection is that we don't need any.

No it doesn't ignore physics, it does question the more mundane explanation in favor of an explanation that could pan out to be just as mundane as the current explanation.

Cheers.

You've got it backwards VanderL, I understand what you are saying about samll vrs large, what I don't get is where a "planetary sized discharge" can come from.

You are right that it takes "something special", something never before seen that defies the laws of physics and has no analagy on any planet, Mars included.

There is nothing in any science I am aware of that says that lightning can be scaled up to the point where it magically appears out of nowhere with enough energy to create a 100KM long fissure in rock. The idea is laughable.

VanderL, you know very well that this statement is wrong. You cannot even try to suggest the explanation of why it is wrong was somehow ambiguous, as it has been shown to you mathematically and practically that this is wrong.

The valley is in an area of the Earth that is dryer than the driest desert--the Arctic. The erosion of the walls and rim suggest it has been around for eons. There are similar valleys throughout the Rocky Mountains where I live and have crawled around and through. Some still have glaciers in them, some don't. Some show evidence of runoff from the melting glacier, some don't.

For this specific example, I cannot say where the glacier went.

I'm sorry VanderL, but you are just wrong here. There is plenty of evidence of water, especially in the early history of Mars.

No VanderL, it is not. In fact, it is not even close. What gets to me is you have been shown by a physicist all of the areas the EU model falls flat. Are all of our theories and explanations correct? No, probably not. But they are not so far off as to allow the Electric Cosmos model promoted by the EU sites you link too.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

I would have expected a few more specifics; to say that NONE of the evidence is there I find equally surprising. So let me first go though a summary of the Plasma Universe. and I'd be grateful for corrections.

• The Interplanetary Medium is a plasma [ref] with the following characteristics:
• --a. It is highly conductive (approaching that of aluminium metal) [ref]
• --b. It is electrically neutral overall. [ref]
• --c. Electric currents flow through the Interplanetary Medium, vis-à-vis, the Heliospheric Current Sheet. [ref]
• --d. When currents flow through a plasma, the plasma can "self-oganise" into filaments called Birkeland currents (or plasma cables) and form double layers that can electrically insulate one area from another. [ref]
• --e. Wherever there are magnetic fields, there is an electric current (and vice versa)
• --e. Electric currents flow throughout the Interplanetary Medium [ref]
• --f. The weak electric currents in the Interplanetary Medium can manifest themselves in the Earth's Magnetosphere [ref] as stronger auroral currents [ref]

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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Something never before seen, agreed. Defies the laws of physics? I don't understand.

Ten year ago, sprites, jets and elves had never been seen before. Did they defy the laws of physics before they were seen?

Regards,
Ian

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There is one area where we might achieve some degree of agreement, VanderL. I am convinced, by many lines of evidence, that the extreme temperature of the solar corona (certainly not the photosphere or the interior) is caused by linkage between the rotation period and the solar magnetic field. Said linkage is achieved by the ions created by the heat of the deeper layers. In a fully convective environment, I expect the field lines to get twisted and knotted. The resolution of these stresses comes in the plasma environment of the corona. Net result? Extraordinary corona temperature, which we may interpret as high-velocity particlessome of them exceeding escape velocity for Sol surface.
I still don't buy your excavation techniques, tho. Convince me, preferably by showing mechanism and cause, and demonstrating that the cause exists. Best regards-- Steve

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

Hi iantresman,

There are several things that bother me about the things written about the EU. One that comes to mind is that a significant number of the craters and rills seen on the various planetary, satelite, cometary, and asteroidal bodies in the solar system come from scarring by large sudden currents leaping into or out of these bodies.

[The EU mechanism for lighting up the sun is just too weird to discuss at the moment]

Getting back to the craters and rills. The EU web-site shows a picture of craters made in an iron slab with an arc-welder, or something like that, and says [paraphrasing] look, these look just like craters on the moon, only smaller. [Or was it the Martian super-volcanos?] So here's three-part a question for you.
- How many electrons had to go through the iron plate, to remove how many atoms?
- Scaled up, how many electrons had to go through Copernicus Crater on the moon [or Olympis Mons] to create it?
- How long did it take?

I'll have some further questions for you later, based on the answers here.

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Forming opinions as we speak

Well, let us start with this one. First, the interplanetary medium is not a plasma, although it contains them. Rather it is a mix of plasmas, hydrogen and dust. [ref]

It is the idea of a Plasma Universe that is part of the argument being made here by the EU people. It is part of what is disputed. Each of the references you give uses the base that the Plasma Universe is correct as it's starting point. It is a useless exercise to dispute them when the very basis of their applicability assumes a Plasma Universe as correct.

Regarding the physics, I ask that you review Tim Thompson's various posts and papers, as I do not have the inclination to repeat them. Put simply, the physics don't work Ian.

As for the sprites etc, the fact they were not seen before is irrelevant to this discussion. As they were never before postulated, it could not be said that they defied the laws of physics. In fact, there is nothing to suggest that they defy physics, unless you know something more about them then anyone else.

The fact that they are not well understood doesn't mean they won't be.

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Here's an interesting article, related to EU
The Galactic centre region

This article talks about the measurement of the magnetic field in the galactic center, giving some specific values for the field intensity, which may or may not be in agreement with the EU model. I'll be interested in hearing how it matches with EU estimates.

__________________
Forming opinions as we speak

Here's another paper about galactic magnetic fields. This one is 50 pages, but fairly straight-forward to read [I said, having spent fifteen minutes skimming, and reading the intro and conclusion only].
Introduction to galactic dynamos

This paper appears to fairly main-stream, and doesn't say anything that seems to support the EU model, but it does gives some very specific information about the amount of electro-magnetic phenomena in the interstellar media. These numbers are well substantiated by observation, and do not show the kinds of concentrated currents that EU claims.

Typing correction

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Forming opinions as we speak

This is a bit of a nit-pick. Yes, it also contains photons, electromagenetic radiation, asteroids, the odd man-made satellite, etc etc. But by and large, the interplanetary medium is a plasma, and behaves like one.

<!--QuoteBegin-Duane@Nov 30 2004, 12:51 AM
It is the idea of a Plasma Universe that is part of the argument being made here by the EU people. It is part of what is disputed. Each of the references you give uses the base that the Plasma Universe is correct as it's starting point. It is a useless exercise to dispute them when the very basis of their applicability assumes a Plasma Universe as correct.[/quote]

It is irrelevant whether the plasma universe is presumed correct or not. I gave several statements that are either correct or incorrect. I agree that it is useless disputing any of them, but at the very least, they make a foundation for a plasma universe.

I've given ample evidence for the role that plasmas play in space.

I have no doubt that there are alternative explanations and alternative perspectives on everything that I've mentioned, but that does not devalue the points that I have made.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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The kinds of CONCENTRATED currents that could cause interplanetary thunderbolts, or planetary scarring, are NOT present in interplanetary space. You won't get an interplanetary bolt out of the blue, so to speak.

The Solar System is a different place to what it was in the past.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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plasma-universe.com

It's not a nit-pick, it is a polerized difference. Radiations are plasmas, at least in the context of what we are discussing here, but non-ionized hydrogen is not. To use your analagy, it would be closer to say the interplanetary medium is a gas.

Furthermore, the interplanetary medium does not behave like a plasma. A plasma in the interplanetary medium acts like a plasma (surprise surprise) but the medium it forms part of is neutral.

I'm sorry Ian, but you make the statement that the universe is a plasma, then state a number of observations that would be accurate in a plasma universe.

Or have I misunderstood?

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

So are you saying that the currents that could lead to planetary thunderbolts are present in the solar system?

__________________
All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.~ Carl Sagan ~

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.~Socrates, 500 B.C. ~

Let every man judge according to his own standards, by what he has himself read, not by what others tell him. ~Albert Einstein~

Please forgive a naive question,Ian. Why is it necessary to invoke a causal mechanism that no longer exists? Why should I believe your fossil evidence, when it can be explained by familiar, ongoing causes? :huh: S

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.

Did you mean that? Electromagnetic radiation (photons, IR, UV, gamma X-rays) is not a plasma. Alpha particles (alpha radiation) can make up part of a plasma since they are equivalent to He++

And I think you may have hit upon the different defiinitions of a plasma between astonomers and plasma physicists. The latter would call a partially ionised gas a plasma, even if it is minutely ionised, even though it is a mixture of neutral gas and ionised gas.

But here is the key point. A partially ionized gas does behave as a plasma because it permeates the neutral gas. And it can have all the characteristics of a plasma.

I guess this is similar to a sovlent containing an electrolyte in which the degree of dissociation of ions can be extremely small; technically, the electrolyte is the substance which can disociate into ions (eg sodium chloride), but generically, the whole liquid is called an electrolyte, for example, as in an Electrolyte Drink.

And here again, an electrolytic solutions appears to behave as such, even though it is just the electrolytic ions moving.


<!--QuoteBegin-Duane@Nov 30 2004, 02:29 AM

Furthermore, the interplanetary medium does not behave like a plasma. A plasma in the interplanetary medium acts like a plasma (surprise surprise) but the medium it forms part of is neutral.[/quote]

So here I must disagree with you because of the coupling between the plasma and neutral hydrogen via mobile electrons. Likewise, the same process appears in the local interstellar medium, so even the interstellar medium behaves as a plasma.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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The currents are present, though the current densities generally are not. I say generally because we do sometime see increased current densities, such as when solar flares cause city blackouts.

I also believe that lightning, sprites, jets and elves are part of the sun-earth auroral circuit. So although a typical lightning strike discharges several megawatts, sprites and elves can discharge several gigawatts (ref), with certain auroral bursts measuring 150+ gigawatts (ref).

A lightning strike can do this amount of damage, see Lightning Damage at the LSU Agricultural Center.

It is thought that the a more powerful lightning strike may have produced a 40-FOOT TRENCH on page 25 of in this article from an article on lighting in the June 1950 issue National Geographic magazine.

If we guess that the 40-foot trench was produced by a 150-megawatt superbolt, imagine what a 150+ gigawatt blue jet might do if it touched down.

Regards,
Ian Tresman

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plasma-universe.com

Luckily,perhaps, down is not the direction in which they propagate. Additionally, how did your blue jet acquire 4 decimal orders of magnitude more power than anybody else's? My imagination is good, but I usually keep a tighter rein. Regards-- Steve

__________________
Ignoramus et ignorabamus.-- Reymond

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen.--Hilbert

Pick one.