THOTH
A Catastrophics Newsletter
VOL VIII, No 2
March 31, 2004
EDITOR: Amy Acheson
PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong
LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart
CONTENTS
SCIENTIFIC INFIDELITIES . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Acheson
OLBER'S PARADOX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don Scott
OPPORTUNITY FAVORS THE HERETIC . . . . . . Wal Thornhill
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
SCIENTIFIC INFIDELITIES
Mel Acheson
In the course of space age explorations, it has become apparent that the
universe is not composed as we were taught in school.
Quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) were thought to be the most distant and
energetic objects in the universe. They were expected to be distributed
randomly throughout the sky. Instead, they cluster around nearby active
galaxies.
The arms of spiral galaxies were thought to orbit the galaxies' dense
nuclei. They were expected to move with velocities that decreased with
distance, like the planets. Instead, they move with nearly constant
velocity, independent of distance.
Planetary nebulae were thought to be expanding shells of gas blown off by
exploding stars. They were expected to be spherically symmetric and
isotropic. Instead, they display intricate organizations of filaments, often
with axial cylinders and cones or with equatorial toroids that emit x-rays.
Comets were thought to be snowballs sublimating in the solar wind. Their
tails were expected to be a tenuous mist of water vapor and dust blown away
by the pressure of solar radiation. Instead, they are asteroid-like rocks
with filamentary ion tails that sparkle with x-rays.
The solar neutrino flux was thought to be produced by fusion reactions at
the core of the Sun. It was expected to be large and constant. Instead, it's
half what it should be and it varies with sunspot numbers.
Nor are the surprises confined to astronomy. Speciation was thought to be
fueled by random mutations of genes. Selection pressures were expected to
push variations into novel species. But generations of fruit fly experiments
(not to mention centuries of selective breeding of domestic animals) have
backed Darwin to the wall with exclusive demonstrations of regression to the
mean.
DNA was thought to control the origin of form for organisms and their parts.
Particular sequences of amino acids were expected to generate particular
forms. But most DNA merely sits in the nucleus of cells like old journals in a library's archives. The cells of the gluteus maximus have the same DNA as the cells of the elbow, and molecular biologists can't tell one from the
other. Macroscopic form flows from some other spigot.
The crust of the Earth was thought to be cracked into several plates that
floated on the churning magma below. Subduction trenches were expected to
balance the growth of crust from ridges of sea floor spreading. But like the
rivers that run to the sea without filling it, the ridges spread many times
faster than the trenches can subduct.
These vignettes merely illustrate the disappointment of theoretical
expectations that is common throughout the sciences, from the finest details
to the broadest generalities. The Big Bang can't explain the Large Scale
Structure of the universe, nor can gravitational lensing explain the subtle
details of the Einstein Cross. Darwinian evolution can't explain the
quantized and stable structure of species, nor can genetic determinism
explain adaptive mutations.
In themselves, these disappointments don't detract from the value of
science. In fact, they enhance it. The explanations work IN PART, for a
certain set or level of data. Because some data surprise expectations, they
provoke reexamination and revision--or replacement--of accepted theories.
Many people find this dubious state exciting: It's an environment conducive
to discovery.
Other people find this state threatening. They crave certainty. Because
human cognition can devise only provisional knowledge, it can never satisfy
the craving. But the fervor of a pseudo-religious faith can. Doubt-free
belief can maintain the illusion of certainty by disallowing troublesome
questions, ignoring recalcitrant data, refusing to discuss or to publish
alternative interpretations, and denying funding to speculative research
projects. Because this pseudo-religious attitude is part of science as
it is actually practiced, it validates the postmodernist critique of science
as a social construct that perpetuates the power of the status quo.
Theories come and go with the insights and conceits of each age. What seems
not to change is people's propensity to believe in the theories. They
believe the theories are more real than the concrete ambiguities of their
experiences and observations. They stumble over those ambiguities and
supplicate their imaginations to invent fantasies that will sustain their
faith and explain away the infidelities of observations.
Most celestial bodies don't conform to gravitational beliefs. But if the
theory of gravity is more real than the observations of celestial bodies,
the observations must be corrected. Therewith astronomers invent fantasies
of black holes and dark matter, a universe of "things unseen," to sustain
their faith in gravity. The archetypal evangelist of the Christian faith,
Paul of Tarsus, set the cornerstone of fideism: "Now faith is ... the
evidence of things not seen." The faith of astronomers puts to shame the
faith of the merely righteous.
It's been over 2000 years since Democritus came up with the idea of atoms
and Anaxagoras came up with the idea of heliocentrism. Ptolemy and
Copernicus told different stories to explain the movements of the planets.
But they all saw the same movements of the same points of light, and they
all understood those movements in terms of mechanical metaphors.
That was all right when there WAS nothing new. But now space age instruments
ARE finding new things. When seen close up and in a literally different
light, the twinkles in the night sky reveal forms and movements that neither
Ptolemy nor Copernicus saw. And these new things are ambiguous, anomalous,
even contradictory of accepted beliefs. They appear "unreal." They invite
new ideas. But the primary preoccupation of astronomers and physicists today
is amending their beliefs to excuse the observations they didn't predict.
Knowledge is not observing what's there, because we have to interpret our
observations in the context of some theory. Knowledge is not theorizing
about what's there, because we have to verify our theories in the context of observations. Knowledge is what we JUDGE to be true in the context of
particular theories and observations. It's the product of reason. And reason
is sensitive to initial assumptions and to the evolution of context: What we know alters the environment of what we CAN know and extinguishes what we knew.
It would seem reasonable to make the most of reason's sensitivity to initial
assumptions. Especially now that circumstances have enabled us to observe
more than we've ever observed and to hypothesize more than we've ever
imagined, we should deliberately explore contrary initial assumptions and
probe the possibilities of novel explanations.
One recent contrary possibility is the nascent idea of plasma. Everyone
seems to agree the universe is composed mostly of plasma--whatever that is.
It's neither solid nor liquid nor gas, but how much it's not is debatable.
It has something to do with ions: bits of matter that are charged with
electricity--whatever that is. Sometimes it behaves differently under the
same circumstances. Sometimes it behaves the same from the atomic scale to
the galactic.
It's a complex animal, and its investigators are like the blind men poking
the elephant: Magnetohydrodynamicists examine a leg and think it's a hot gas. Plasma cosmologists examine the trunk and think it's an electrical current. Geneticists examine the cellular tail and think it's DNA. Semiconductor engineers examine the belly and think it's a crystal. Geologists examine the face and think it's magma. And each group is correct--until they presume to know it all and claim the others are mistaken.
The blind men poking the elephant should keep in mind how much of the beast
they can't poke: They've missed everything inside, i.e., everything outside
the range of their senses. How much of the universe lies outside the range
of our senses today? Compare what we observed before the space age with what
we observe now with tech-enhanced senses. How much more will we observe with
the enhancements of next century's instrumentation? That consideration alone
should elicit a snicker at any boast of current certitude.
Is our idea of truth compatible with how we come to know truth, or is it a
reification of the truth we have come to know? People take for granted that
our ideas of "what's there" derive from a "there" that contains the "what,"
in contradistinction to a "here" that contains the IDEA of the "what." But
there have always been objections to this metaphor of objectivism. Twenty
three hundred years ago, Pyrrho insisted we can know nothing with certainty.
Kant demonstrated with logical rigor that the "here/there" chasm couldn't be
crossed. Objectivism ends in this unknowable reality that's merely
hypothetical.
Of course, no one lives like that or does science like that. The reality of
our lives and our sciences is not the hypothetical object of an abstract
dichotomy but the actual occurrence of human experiences. We come to understand those experiences in various ways that emerge from the experiencing. It's a process that's profoundly metaphorical: Just as we use instruments to expand the domain of our senses, we use metaphor to expand the domain of our understanding. It's a process that's certainly not certain.
The knowledge we were taught in school was at best only practice--practice
at understanding prior experiences. Learning to understand is distinct from
believing in prior understandings, and the dynamics of learning should lead
us to expect not fidelity and conformity but dubiety and discovery. The
infidelities and anomalies of unexpected experiences are the keys that unlock future understandings.
Mel Acheson
thoth@whidbey.com
********************************************************
OLBER'S PARADOX
By Don Scott
"Why is the sky dark at night?"
According to the following logical thought sequence (mathematical
derivation), it should be horrendously bright.
1) The apparent intensity of a light source decreases with the square of its
distance from the observer. (Assuming no interstellar dust absorption, this
is true. Lumens received from a star will vary inversely as the square of
the distance to that star.)
2) If the distribution of stars is uniform in space, then the number of
stars at a particular distance, r, from the observer will be proportional to
the surface area of a sphere whose radius is that distance. This area is
directly proportional to the distance squared. A = (pi)r^2
3) Therefore, at each and every possible radial distance, r, the amount of
light coming toward us should be both directly proportional to the radius
squared (the number of stars) and inversely proportional to the radius
squared (they get dimmer with distance).
4) These two effects cancel each other.
5) So every spherical shell of radius r should add the same additional
amount of light.
6) Ergo: In an infinite universe, if we sum (integrate) the light coming
from all the infinite number of possible values of r, the sky should be
infinitely bright.
But the sky is not infinitely bright. Why?
The resolution of this paradox can be achieved by considering how astronomers solved the problem of defining the ABSOLUTE luminosity (brightness) of a star. Because of (1) above, the more distant a star is, the dimmer it appears to be. In order to set up a standard, astronomers arbitrarily agreed that if a star was placed at a distance of 10 parsecs (approximately 32 1*2 light-years) from us and if it looked like a magnitude 1.0 star at that distance, they would agree to say that its ABSOLUTE LUMINOSITY was 1.0.
There is a well-known relationship between distance and apparent magnitude of a star. For example, if we put that same 1st magnitude star at a distance of 517 LY (light-years), its APPARENT MAGNITUDE would be only 6.0. Humans cannot see any star whose magnitude is higher (less luminous) than 6.4. The 200 inch Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar can see down to about magnitude 23 or so.
There are approximately 8400 stars in our night sky that are brighter than
magnitude 6.4. We do not see the others; they are too dim. Yes, yes, Carl
Sagan used to talk about millions and millions of stars ? but we can only
see about 8400 with our naked eyes. Carl was well known for his tendency to
exaggerate. We get the impression of millions and millions when we look up
at the Milky Way, but we can see only 8400 stars ? that's it ? and that1s
under ideal conditions.
Of course, some stars are VERY much brighter than absolute magnitude 1.0 and
thus would be visible farther out than 517 LY. But, many are much dimmer
too, so as a rough approximation let us consider the average star. If it is
farther away than 517 LY, we cannot see it (AT ALL). So it might as well
not be there AT ALL. The total light in our night sky (at least the way we
can see it with our naked eyes) is not affected by much of anything that is
dimmer than magnitude 6.4 (typical stars farther away than around 517 LY).
Even for the blue-white giant stars whose absolute luminosity puts them at
?10 or ?12 (much brighter than absolute magnitude 1.0), there exists some
finite distance beyond which they too become invisible to us ? their
apparent magnitude slips down beyond 6.4.
There are a very few vastly distant objects that we can see such as the
Great Andromeda Galaxy M 31. It is over 3 million LYs away. But it is such
a concentrated collection of stars and plasma that it looks to us about as
bright as a single magnitude 4 star.
The point is this ? the infinite sum implied in step (5), above, is incorrect. The sum STOPS (is truncated) at a distance of about 500+ light years for the typical star (and somewhere beyond that even for the brightest ones). There is an upper limit on the absolute brightness of a single star; there is no such thing as an infinitely brilliant star. So there is a finite upper limit to the integration process described in step (5) above. It doesn't go out to infinity.
It may also help to remember that the human eye is different from
photographic film or a CCD chip. It does not integrate over time. The
longer we expose a photographic plate to starlight the brighter the image
becomes. (There is a limit even to this process in film due to what is
called reciprocity failure.) But, humans can stare at the night sky all
night long and not see anything they didn't see after the first few minutes.
Things don't get brighter for us the longer we look at them. So
theoretically the longer we expose our CCD camera chip, the brighter the
image (deeper into space we can see). This is not true for the human eye.
We can see the 8400 or so stars that we can see, and all the zillions of
others might as well not be there AT ALL as far as our humble naked human
eyes are concerned.
Olber's Paradox is not a paradox at all if you look at it correctly. It is
yet another example of theoretical mathematics applied incorrectly to a real
world phenomenon. Or a mathematician might say, "They got the upper limit
on the integral wrong."
Don Scott
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/
********************************************************
OPPORTUNITY FAVORS THE HERETIC
By Wal Thornhill
04 February 2004
[editor's note: This article was written as a day-by-day commentary while
the Mars rover missions were in their early phases of exploration. It
reflects only that data which has been released to the public to date. More
will be added to the holoscience website later.]
*******
".. modern science seems to have exploded into a multitude of highly
specialised areas and distinct disciplines that may at times be
interconnected, but that by and large ignore one another. There appears to
be an overwhelming trend toward a proliferation of distinct and autonomous
'subdivisions'. Researchers in different fields often experience great
difficulties understanding each other."
- Etienne Klein & Marc Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY - The Adventure of
Physics
********
The Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, is about to begin its voyage of
discovery on the surface of Mars. It is an opportunity for heretics to test
their expectations in light of the new information pouring in from Mars.
Otherwise, interpretations of new discoveries will be fashioned to fit
stories created long ago and uncritically disseminated among separate
disciplines. For example, astronomers tell geologists that the planets were
formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Geologists tell astronomers that craters
were formed primarily by impacts of comets, asteroids and meteors.
Astronomers tell geologists that there is an invisible reservoir of objects
that caused the impacts. Physicists tell geologists that the process of
radioactive decay can be trusted as a reliable clock to date rocks. The
geologists assure the particle physicists that nothing could have happened
in the past to upset these radioactive clocks. Physicists tell astronomers
that most of the stable elements which make up the planets and stars were
formed primordially in a series of supernova events.
These are all simply stories. Countless facts don't fit the stories but they
are not allowed to spoil the telling. Astronomers have not been able to show
theoretically or empirically that the elements came from supernovas or that
the planets came from a collapsing nebula. Pointing to evidence of
'accretion disks' around some stars simply begs the question. We know from
observation that stars can expel matter (which defies gravitational theory).
The disks are therefore more likely to be 'expulsion disks.' Similarly,
geologists have never witnessed a crater formed by cosmic impact. Their
attempts to replicate the features of planetary craters by high-velocity
impacts or explosions have failed ? but the story remains. Products of
short-lived radioactive isotopes found in some meteorites contradict the 4.5
billion year story. The elements that would have formed primordially in
supernovas don't match the elements found on solar system bodies. Supernovas
are rare events that disperse matter.
The resulting rickety edifice of fact and fiction is sold under the name of
planetary science. Like the game in which a story is made up by adding
disconnected sentences together, it does not make much sense and no one can
predict where it is leading. In this 'Alice in Wonderland' environment each
new discovery must be a surprise. Then the story is simply amended, not
rewritten. It clearly demonstrates the dysfunctional nature of
over-specialized science.
The only recourse in this situation is to return to the empirical approach
to science - that is, to work from the observable present back through time
as far as reliable information can be extracted and to undertake laboratory
experiments to test ideas. Do not assume old gravito-mechanical theories are
relevant in a plasma universe. Accept that theorists do not understand
gravity, or electrical effects in plasma. Unfortunately, to take this
approach in the age of the theoretician and computer modeler is to brand
oneself a heretic.
>From Astrobiology Magazine come the following report excerpts:
DEPTH TO BEDROCK, ZERO
by Astrobiology Magazine staffwriter
The first impression of the Opportunity landing site in color is the light,
exposed area about ten meters from the rover's location inside a crater. The
region has by now accumulated a plethora of adjectives and names: bizarre,
alien, hummocky, layered, crater-rim, outcrop, stratigraphic slice, tabular,
segmented, slabby.
But what has scientists most intrigued is that the slabs are bedrock.
Bedrock is the solid, intact part of the planet's crust. ..To find bedrock
is to know geologically that the history of this location is free from rock
and boulder transport, mainly by wind, water, lava and impact debris.
Whatever happened on Mars over billions of years, that hummocky slab bears
its records.
See photos at:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs
THORNHILL COMMENTS:
The assumptions in the assured statements above are manifold. All we have is
a terrestrial theory of how planetary crusts are formed that glosses over
many questions and anomalies. Sediments accumulated by the action of wind
and water are supposed to account for a great deal of the stratification
seen on Earth. Patches visible in the layers of the Martian rocks appear to
contain pebbles and other small stones. So scientists argue by analogy that
the Martian layers could have formed in water. Drifting volcanic ash or
wind-borne sediments also could have built up the thin layers. However, the
great depths of layered material (up to 9 km in Valles Marineris) found on
Mars, a desert planet with little atmosphere, must call into question
conventional ideas about the origin of sedimentary material and its metamorphism into layered rock. The Moon and some asteroids, where wind and water never existed, also show evidence of layering. Back on Earth, many mineral deposits defy orthodox explanations.
It is bold speculation that "..the history of this location is free from
rock and boulder transport, mainly by wind, water, lava and impact debris."
and that "whatever happened on Mars over billions of years, that hummocky
slab bears its records." We live in the space age now. We must look beyond a
terrestrial model for the formation of planetary surfaces, including the
surface of our own planet, Earth.
The Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, landed in a 20 meter wide crater in
Planum Meridiani. The surrounding region has some of the most spectacular
etched surfaces seen on Mars. Just east of Terra Meridiani is a 470-km diameter circular depression known as Schiaparelli Basin. In June 2003 Mars Global Surveyor imaged a small crater in that Basin that exhibits most of the strange Martian features that challenge geologists when using terrestrial analogies. If we can explain those features simply and coherently it should help us to understand the exposed bedrock that Opportunity is about to investigate.
See photo at:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs
Official caption: Schiaparelli sedimentary rocks. Some of the most important
high resolution imaging results of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars
Orbiter Camera (MOC) experiment center on discoveries about the presence and
nature of the sedimentary rock record on Mars. This old meteor impact crater
in northwestern Schiaparelli Basin exhibits a spectacular view of layered,
sedimentary rock. The 2.3 kilometer (1.4 miles) wide crater may have once
been completely filled with sediment; the material was later eroded to its
present form. Dozens of layers of similar thickness and physical properties
are now expressed in a wedding cake-like stack in the middle of the crater.
Sunlight illuminating the scene from the left shows that the circle, or mesa
top, at the middle of the crater stands higher than the other stair-stepped
layers. The uniform physical properties and bedding of these layers might
indicate that they were originally deposited in a lake (it is possible that
the crater was at the bottom of a much larger lake, filling Schiaparelli
Basin); alternatively, the layers were deposited by settling out of the
atmosphere in a dry environment. This picture was acquired on June 3, 2003,
and is located near 0.9°S, 346.2°W. NASA/JPL
THORNHILL COMMENTS:
Sorry, the explanation above just doesn't hold water. It is a series of ad
hoc mechanisms linked together with 'may' and 'might.' To begin, it is
baldly stated that the feature is an 'old meteor impact crater.' That is an
opinion, not a fact. The floor of an impact crater is supposed to be formed
of shattered rock. This crater floor is layered rock. So the crater 'may
have once been completely filled with sediment' - or else the assumption is
mistaken. Regular, episodic sedimentation is called upon to produce such
even layering. Some method of cementation is also required to form each
distinct layer. Whatever happened had to have repeated more than 20 times
with precision to give such a regular appearance. Finally, 'the material was
..eroded to its present form.' We should like to know how that miracle was
performed. Neither wind nor water moving across the landscape could produce
the circular symmetry seen here. And it does not attempt to explain the
strange landscape surrounding the crater.
There is a better explanation. In an electric universe, surfaces and
atmospheres of rocky planets are exchanged in the process of their
electrical 'birth' from a gas giant planet and in subsequent electrical
interactions with other moons and planets in the process of achieving a
stable orbit. Both Jupiter and Saturn have moons that would be classified as
planets if they orbited the Sun. Saturn's moon, Titan, has an atmosphere
heavier than Earth's. Later this year, when the Cassini spacecraft and
Huygens probe arrive to observe it first-hand, Titan may have much to teach
us about a planet that didn1t manage to leave home.
The birth of planets by expulsion, followed by accretion of the
'afterbirth,' leaves significant scars and layering on their surfaces, as
does establishing a stable planetary orbit. Orbital dynamics tells us that
two planets, which began in close association, will come together again at
regular intervals. This would make the process of electrical deposition and
erosion between the planets episodic and regular for a short time
(geologically speaking). The result is a global 'onion skin' build up of
crustal materials together with various erratic mineral deposits.
Superimposed are the effects of electrical erosion that occurs only upon the
closest approaches between two planets (the same electrical forces that
caused the initial expulsion preclude impacts). Electrical erosion tends to
be concentrated hemispherically because of the short duration of closest
approach. It also leaves the most dramatic scars. They take characteristic
forms of circular craters (universally mistaken for impact craters), raised
blisters (often mistaken for volcanoes), sinuous channels (usually mistaken
for water or lava erosion channels), and etched or 'fretted terrain' (no
conventional explanation).
The crater above can be explained simply by using the electric universe
model. The layering predated the crater. The crater is electrical, not
impact. The so-called erosion was an integral part of the formation of the
crater, caused by rotating Birkeland filaments. Birkeland filaments twist in
pairs to form a rope-like Birkeland current. It is the form in which
electrical energy is transported across the cosmos. The current density is
highest in the Birkeland filaments themselves so the erosion rate falls off
toward their center of rotation ? the center of the crater. The result, in
the sedimentary layers, is a neatly terraced central peak, the untouched
remains of previously existing sedimentary layers.
A note in passing: the small circular craters on the eastern lip of the
large crater illustrate a recurring pattern in electrical cratering.
Lightning is attracted to high points so subsequent discharges will tend to
form craters centered on the rim of an existing crater. It is a pattern that
is inexplicable by impacts. Also, in the upper right side of the image are
some typical electrically etched, or "fretted" depressions with the circular
'cookie cutter' effect in the walls produced by cathode arcs. It is a
pattern that the Galileo orbiter saw being formed on Jupiter's electrically
active moon, Io.
But that is not all that we can glean from this remarkable image. There is a
procession of linear ridges running approximately north-south. They are
given a feathered appearance by myriad short orthogonal ridges. The
electrical explanation is simple. All of the ridges are soil metamorphosed
and hardened by lightning coursing just below the surface. On Earth they
would be classed as fulgurites. The north-south ridges show the
direction of
the global electric field that gave rise to the lightning. The stubby
orthogonal ridges are the result of the corona discharges feeding the main
lightning channels. The entire area then seems to have been electrostatically "cleaned" or etched free of loose soil, exposing the ridges of metamorphosed rock. Since the electric field was predominantly horizontal, the pattern shows the usual disregard for topography. The pattern can be traced down into the crater, up across the central peak and out the other side.
Returning to the Mars Rover, Opportunity, we can see that it is sitting in a
small electrically etched crater and the exposed 'bedrock' will be layered
and show signs of modification by an electric arc. The vertical faces of
some of the exposed rocks look as if they were cut. The kinds of things to
watch for are pitting, surface glassification or a burnt appearance, damage
caused by the explosive release of trapped gases, shock metamorphism, and
isotopic and elemental anomalies. A few of these characteristics can
also be
produced by an impact explosion. However, these rocks are layered, not
shattered. One thing to look for, if shocked crystals are found and their
orientation determined, is the direction from which the blast originated.
Electrical cratering has a blast center that moves below ground and around
the crater's center. An impact has a stationary blast center above ground
that coincides with the crater's center. An example on Earth of shocked
minerals oriented to a subterranean moving blast center can be found in the
giant Vredefort Dome structure in South Africa.
THE REPORT CONTINUES:
The rover will look at the fine soil nearby, in hopes of finding out why
this particular region is rare on Mars in being rich with iron-oxides. The
surface soil's top layer is grey, much more grey than anything seen on Mars
before. On the surface, Meridiani is the darkest color yet visited. But this
dark layer gave way when the airbags were retracted revealing a deep maroon
layer underneath. Steve Squyres [principal investigator for rover science]
described the competing theories as either 3we have soil with two distinct
components of coarse, grey grains on top of fine red soil--or we have
aggregates that are grey but when squished, the red comes out.2
THORNHILL COMMENTS:
Since orbital images of the landing area shows three distinct color
gradations, a first guess is that once outside this crater, the view will
suddenly change to what is expected to be lighter colored soil. The
brightest areas seen orbitally are the crater rims, followed by the flat
plains, then the darkest interior to the craters, where Opportunity now is
snapping charcoal-grey scenery. Since the horizon's range is mainly
restricted to 10 meters for now, once outside this crater the startling
picture of a dark grey Mars will likely change yet again.
See http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=we7zdrqs for diagram of
hematite distribution in Sinus Meridiani, where Opportunity is located.
THORNHILL COMMENTS:
Researchers think the hematite could have formed on Mars by thermal
oxidation of iron-rich volcanic eruptive products during eruption or it
could have formed by chemical precipitation when iron-rich water circulated
through the pre-existing layers of volcanic ash. No volcano has been
identified as a possible source and the pattern does not look like
wind-blown fallout. And why is hematite concentrated in this one small
region on Mars?
The Nobel nominee, the late Prof. Louis Kervran, had heretical views on the
low-energy transmutation of common elements to form anomalous mineral
deposits. He wrote: "There is no need to look for iron's origin in the
centre of our planet; it is a 'surface formation' at the level of the
earth's crust. There is no connection between the core and the mineral
strata; but all the classical theories speak of 'concentration,' of
water-borne materials, of hydrothermal eruptions and of deposits. Even if
all of this is accepted, these theories presuppose the existence of iron
accumulated in certain locations. Therefore the iron existed but where did
it come from?"
Without necessarily subscribing to Kervran's ideas about the origin of the
earthly iron deposits, powerful electric discharges through other common
elements, like carbon and oxygen, can form iron deposits. "On the surface,
and often at a certain depth, superficial alterations have TRANSFORMED THE
CARBONATE INTO A PURE HEMATITE, a formation difficult to explain since a
mere ordinary and superficial alteration should give limonite [hydrated iron
oxides] and not hematite," says F. Blondel. [Chronique des Mines Coloniales,
Sept. 1955.] He goes on to say, "The hematite production on the surface is
not well-clarified."
I suggest that water played no part in the Martian hematite deposition. The
splash of iron oxides on this part of Mars is best explained as a recent
exogenous deposit. It is recent in the sense that the deposit seems to have
buried the fields of boulders strewn across the planet by the earlier
electrical event that scoured Valles Marineris. The outlines of the
distribution pattern shown above conform to that of other electrically
etched surfaces, notably the 'calderas' on Io. The pattern need not be
related to topography as we should expect if a lake were involved.
The dark grey surface inside the small crater is probably an electrically
modified version of the deep maroon soil underneath, itself a fine-grained
hematite deposit. The most likely modification would be physical, in some
form of melting and glassification of the hematite. That effect was seen by
Apollo astronauts in the soil and centers of small craters on the Moon. Next
would be a heat induced chemical change, possibly to metallic iron. It is
also possible for surface ion implantation to occur, with hydrogen being the
most likely atomic addition. Or it may show evidence of nuclear
transmutations ? after the manner of Kervran. The combination of
possibilities allowed in the electrical scenario is so diverse that it is
difficult to predict precisely what will be found. However, it is probable
that the surface has undergone a change from the soil beneath requiring a
source of energy not to be found today on Mars.
On descent, a crater was imaged near Opportunity's landing site. It shows
clearly the dark crater floor and lighter surrounding surface. Squyres said
the science team "looks to 'head for the big one' - a 150 meter wide crater,
probably 10-15 meters deep at least and about half-a-mile away. The bright
rim of that crater may well be another remnant of bedrock or something
different altogether."
The larger crater should show more evident signs of electrical activity than
the modest crater Opportunity finds itself in. The heretics welcome
Opportunity and wish it success!
*******
"Thus the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think
what nobody has thought, about that which everybody sees." Erwin Schrödinger
(1887-1961)
*******
Wal Thornhill
copyright Feb 2004
www.holoscience.com
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http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/
http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/
http://www.bearfabrique.org
http://www.grazian-archive.com/
http://www.holoscience.com
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/
http://www.electric-universe.org
http://www.science-frontiers.com
http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm
http://www.dragonscience.com
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