"russ_watters", I don't appreciate you conscripting my posts and inserting them into your sniping attacks on other users. It's not fair to me and it's not fair to the person you are launching this blundering attack against.

The first several inches of regolith is the loose powdery stuff which is kicked up by walking astronauts, but after that, the next few feet of it is densely compacted by eons of being covered over by new regolith. You can push in so far, but after a couple inches, its time to break out the mallets and assist matters.

You can see similar material properties on a beach. There's a surface layer of the light stuff that you sink into when you walk, but beyond that, the sand becomes very dense from compaction.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

I quoted the abstract of the paper.
Statements like "we observe a progression of crater morphologies analogous to that seen in craters on the moon" and "... similar to what is observed for lunar craters" clearly show that your "I have to say they don't support the impact hypothesis of crater formation on any known planetary body" is wrong.
Unless you explain what is wrong with the experiments described in the paper.

What is regolith?
From the link I gave: "unconsolidated debris".

Can you explain why wet cement or flour are not good approximations for regolith?

("Is this a joke?" is not an explanation.)

I provided a paper which supports the impact cratering model.
Show me the evidence that disproves it.

Glass beads with a diameter between 50 and 500 micron: is this a bad approximation of lunar regolith (only 10% has a grain size above 1 mm)?

Impact cratering experiments have reproduced morphology and scaling of lunar craters.
From the paper: "[crater] morphology depends largely on impact energy".
You claim that the evidence disproves impact cratering models, yet you do not explain what is wrong with the experiments.

Are you referring to the solar wind?
Have interplanetary electric arcs been observed producing craters?

What was the size of the probes, and how did they try to observe the expected ejecta?

Except that meteors have been observed.

Where do you expect to observe the electric arcs making craters?

The key points are summarized in the abstract, which I quoted.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Feel free to provide evidence for this accusation.

Are you saying that you are confused by my posts?

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

This experiment and picture is really lacking in information.

Is there anywhere on the web site mentioned that would have this info?

Some basic questions like:

What type of material are we looking at in the photograph?

What was used to create the arcs? Arc welder? Tesla coil? High energy laser?

What magnification was this photograph taken at?

How large are these craters in the picture? 1mm? .01mm? microscopic?

You said a mouthful, there.

This may be true. If it is, there is a massive conspiracy to ignore the obvious implications of a plasma-filled universe.

For starters, electromagnetic forces affect plasmas about forty orders of magnitude more strongly than does gravity, and its influence falls off simply with distance, unlike gravity which falls off with square of distance, geometrically faster. Despite this, astronogers fail to identify what are clearly electromagnetic effects (light pumping in stars, heavy ion shedding by stars, bending and polarization of light), instead choosing to presume everything is at its heart a consequence of gravity, strong nuclear or weak nuclear forces, depending on how close they stand to it and how hard they squint.

And when even this already overly-large stable of forces couldn't cope with the radio age of astronomy, strange new forces like unobservable dark energy, black holes, wormholes, WIMPs, MACHOs and a veritable zoo of other fabled beasts to rescue the big bang creationist myth.

I fail to get the analogy here. Why wouldn't a geologist want to study one of the prime actors of terrestrial tectonic activity?

That most of the universe is in a plasma state doesn't strike you as significant? Keep in mind your experience is limited by your lifelong habitation in the ostensibly "neutral" and very thin lithosphere-atmosphere boundary of Earth.

Ironically this is the most cogent and salient thing you've said really.

Can you be more specific? How is it relevant? Birkeland currents can and do carry massive electrical discharges across incredibly vast distances. And when I say vast I mean distances that make gravitation negligible. Imagine our star is at a scale where it is the size of a grain of sand. You know how close the nearest other grain of sand is? Four miles away. How much gravitational influence can two grains of sand four miles apart have on each other? Now charge both grains and immerse them in a conductive medium and watch them go to town. Electromagnetic forces dominate the universe, on every scale.

And we have a tie for most cogent postbit.

I explained above how the powerhouse electromagnetic forces easily overwhelm any possible meddling by gravity on a cosmic (and even an interstellar) scale. As for density, if you're referring to the density of plasma in space, it's approximately as dense as an evacuated fluorescent light bulb. Even the weakly ionized gas in fluorescent tubes conduct so fiercely they need a resistor (ballast) to keep them from tripping circuit breakers or catching your house on fire.

It would be just as easy to plug in the observed orbit and derive the electromagnetic forces at work, the way attempts were made to derive gravitational influence, and it would be just as speculative. Gravity models were tested when the Ulysses orbited the sun's poles, and they failed. The gravity models predicted weak magnetic fields at the poles which would create a massive influx of "cosmic rays". This idea should have been falsified by the observations that no large influx of cosmic rays was present, and quite strong magnetic fields were found at the poles. Instead, astronogers immediately suggested some sort of "pressure force" was bending "magnetic waves". There's a litany of other failures in one of my previous posts, failures of models, revealed by the Ulysses probe.

Plasma is an idle daydream?

So wheres your Plasma model?

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Landedeagle,
I know this is from way back on page 2 of this thread, but I just had to ask some questions about this image.

1) What is the material that was used in the picture?
2) What is the magnification?
3) What was the voltage used to produce the "cratering"?
4) What was the amperage?
5) What was the distance between the target and the probe to produce the effect?

There is nothing on the website that gives any of these data. This would be absolutely necessary to understand the effect and compare it to what you insist is happening.

Thanks!

__________________
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

JimTKirk, i beat you by 2 posts above ^^ =D>

Seems we're both after the same thing.

I've already told you why I dispute your conclusions. If you remain unconvinced, I can not force you to believe me.

If you'll read my posts you'll see I did exactly that, in detail.

You are entitled to that opinion, I can't force you to accept evidence that contradicts it.

This is getting tedious and is wasting a lot of time and board space. Read my posts, I cited evidence again and again, but I can't make you believe it.

Yes, with a variety of improbable ad hoc conditions unlikely to have been met on the moon (i.e. covered with flour, or wet cement, or buckets of glass beads).

Sigh. Yes I have. Many times now. Please read my posts.

Please read carefully. I said Birkeland currents and I meant Birkeland currents. Do you doubt they exist as I've described them?

Perhaps.

This is just getting nuts. Your posts are flying all over the place and you don't seem to be reading my posts very carefully. I don't feel I should be obliged to waste my time any more correcting your gibberish. I'm spending half my time here previewing my responses to you to make sure I've got the quoted quoted quotes formatted correctly, it's a waste of my time. I'm afraid I can't give you much attention until you start behaving more reasonably.

So I see! Good on ya!

__________________
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

Yes, your posts confuse me a great deal. You seem to be interested in debate, but only the arguing part of it, and never considering evidence presented. Your strategy seems to be to contradict in any way you can imagine posts by people you don't seem to like, and to reflexively characterize anything you didn't already know as rubbish or even lies.

So, Landedeagle...do you refuse to answer my question?...I really need to know before I proceed...

Yes landedeagle, I'd like to know too!

__________________
Hanlon's Razor - "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Asimov's addition - "Or ignorance."

"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage

I believe you are correct, we were not given a full data set for that image, so we have to treat it with caution. If you want to know the precise details of this specific experiment, perhaps you should inquire about buying their book. There are many things people can learn by reading books. If you are unable to get a copy of the book, perhaps you could try to contact the webmaster of the site. I've personally corresponded with a member of the team and I'm confident they will be eager to provide this data to you. When you get this information I'd appreciate it if you'd post it for our benefit here.

Why aren't flour or glass micro beads a good approximation of the Lunar Regolith?

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Uh huh... 8-[ Exactly. So, not only does no EC model exist, none is necessary? Have you ever heard the term "hand waving" before?

Hey, I have a theory. It accurately describes how the universe really works, but it contains no mathematical models, makes no quantative predictions, and conflicts with existing data at face value. I promise, though, that it could explain how the universe works if I wanted it to. Wanna buy my book? :roll:

I say again: tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...

Well, your the one claiming the theory, and if you know a member of the team, you should ask him.

I'm sure not many people here are going to order a book based on a picture with no information other then speculation.

Glass microbeads would in fact be a very good substitute for lunar regolith. The problem with the model is not that glass beads aren't like lunar regolith. The problem with the model stems from the fact that glass beads in a bucket do not accurately reflect conditions where massive craters exist on the moon. These craters on the moon are not simply regolith churned around by plopping rocks. The craters extend into the bedrock, and regolith only occurs as a thin skin over craters. Glass beads are not a good substitute for bedrock, unfortunately. The lunar regolith resembles nothing so much as welding slag. For those of you familiar with arc welding, you know what I'm talking about, those little spherules of metal that spew away from the impinging arc of electric current. Why does lunar regolith share morphology with welding slag? Because the regolith was created by electric arc machining.

So you're interested enough to pester me about it but you won't go to the source to find your answers?

I don't even know that the book is written, or available for purchase at this point. I do know the web site is to promote and explain the ideas expressed in a book, and they feature a few chapters online already. They may even feature it all online some day, I don't know. You can use email for free, though. If this information is as important to you as you claim, then you won't mind asking them for it. Also you surely must understand I can not simply order these people to turn over data, nor do I have any magical access that you do not. If I were to get the data it would take just as long and it would be the same data you could get for yourself.

Honestly, though, I don't know why you're questioning this. Electrical erosion can be used to deposit or erode virtually any material humans produce, and a lot that we can't produce yet. This is no great mystery, except to those who simply haven't heard about it. People can't be blamed for not knowing, there is a lot of information whizzing around these days, and most of it is dubious if not stubbornly dogmatic.

The point is, you are the one that presented the theory. Now the posters on this board have to do the research?

I looked over the web-site you mentioned. I even read how the space shuttle Columbia was really destroyed by lighting :roll: . But didn't find much evidence of lightning causing craters and the Grand Canyon.

You stated that the paper does not support impact cratering.
The authors of that paper do not think so.

And you claimed that the experiments are not a good appoximation, but you did not explain why.

You simply avoided the issue.

Where exaclty do you explain (instead of just claiming) that flour or sub-millimeter glass beads are not a good approximation for regolith?

The paper shows experimental results, not opinion.
You have not been able to support your claim that the conditions of those experiments do not apply to the Moon.

It is not a matter of believing, but of evidence.

Provide evidence that it does not apply.

In the part you snipped, I quoted a sentence from the paper: "[crater] morphology depends largely on impact energy".
In other parts you snipped, I pointed out the similarity between the glass beads and lunar regolith.


No, you claimed without providing evidence (images without any additional information are not good evidence).

Birkeland currents are the result of the interaction of magnetosphere and solar wind (oh look, solar wind!).
How do they connect planetoids or planets to each other?
Are these currents responsible for interplanetary electric arcs that produce craters?

So, on one hand we have repeatable experiments which reproduce morphology and scaling of craters, on the other we have "perhaps" observed interplanetary electric arcs.
Where is the evidence?

Asking for evidence is not reasonable?

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Huh? I'm guessing by "EC model" you mean "electric cosmos model". If it doesn't exist, what have we been discussing here?

Heard of it, and I think I just witnessed you doing it. How can you argue against a model you say doesn't exist? You aren't making much sense. And add to that "hand waving" some hyperbole which I also noticed coming from you.

Thank you for that admission, at least. What you have there is a hypothesis, not a theory. Theories are hypotheses that are supported by some evidence. If your hypothesis makes no predictions, and conflicts with existing data, perhaps you should abandon it. I think that's what I've been urging you to do, actually. Isn't quoting a valuable privelege that shouldn't be abused? I think so.

When you've been given the evidence multiple times, then pointed to that evidence many more times, yes, it is not reasonable to keep asking.

Why don't you focus on the contents of my posts?

By the way, I am waiting for you to provide evidence for this claim of yours:
The BA sure does not like insults on his board.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

Having personally done welding of this type, I can tell you its not the only way to get that kind of fine particulate material.

Acetyline torching also causes a spray of superheated metal to form fine particulate accumulation. Abrasion grinding ALSO creates the same kind of superheated fine particulate accumulation.

What causes the fine particulate in metalwork is the result of heating the metal in use to the melting point in the presence of an accelerant force.

In arc welding, the accelerant is the magnesium coating of the rod itself responding to electricity and reacting with the air around the contact point.

In acetyline torching, the accelerant is the pressurized oxygen used to both energize the acetyline burning and propel away the melted metal to create the break.

In abrasion grinding, the accelerant is the physical action of the wheel upon the metal. This one is the closest to the physical reality of impacts on the moon.

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Did you read the paper I cited?
If you do not have access to it, I can send you a copy.
Then you might explain why you do not accept the results of that paper (which contradicts your claim that impact cratering is disproven by evidence).

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)

We're done here. This thread has derailed itself well. In my opinion, landedeagle is a troll, and is now gone.

__________________
Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com