- (Above: Mysterious domed craters and trenches on Mars
point to electric discharge in recent geologic times.)
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- In the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day for March 25,
we compared photographs of small blue-gray spherules on Mars to the results
of laboratory experiments by plasma physicist C J. Ransom. For his replication
of these Martian "blueberries", Ransom used a bed of hematite,
a primary constituent of some Martian soils. By blasting the material with
an electric arc, he produced an array of small blue-gray spherules and
fused globules virtually identical in appearance to those seen on the surface
of Mars. (Link: www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueberries.htm)
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- Experiments of this sort will prove invaluable to our
understanding of planetary evolution and geology. An electric arc is a
plasma event, and plasma events are scalable, which means that the same
formations can occur at virtually every scale -- from centimeters-long
sparks in laboratories to light years-long "jets" in active galaxies.
Elementary structures of plasma discharge, now well documented in the laboratory,
appear in lightning strikes, in auroras, on the Sun, in nebulas, and in
remote galaxies.
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- The ease with which electric arcs create the Martian
"blueberries" not only draws our attention to many apparent analogs
on Earth (Link: www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050328blueberries.htm),
but to other larger scale formations on Mars. In our Picture of the Day
for March 29 (Link: www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050329domedcraters.htm)
we showed images of a couple dozen "domed" craters on Mars, which
have puzzled planetary scientists for several years. The spherical domes
rest within circular craters and look very much like the spherules in Ransom's
experiments, which also rested in craters with partially fused rims.
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- On Mars the anomalous formations lie in the Arrhenius
Region, some 36,000 square kilometers of terrain in the southern hemisphere
east of Hellas Planitia. (More precisely, the region is located between
235° and 240° east longitude and 40° to 45° south latitude.)
Planetary scientists have expressed their wonderment over these improbable
formations while offering equally improbable guesses to account for them.
A recent article published by R. Foxx, et al., listed five proposals, two
of which (cinder cones and table mountains) they sought to substantiate
as alternative possibilities, depending on when the domes were created
in relation to the surface material in which they lie.
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- There is more to this region than the domed craters,
as can be seen in the picture above. (We've placed a more complete picture
of the region here: Link: www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/images05/050405domes-l.jpg)
The weirdly "wormlike" formations, exposed within craggy trenches,
have provoked astonishment from scientists and a host of speculations about
"artificial tubes" or "transportation systems" beneath
the surface. But speculations in the direction of artificiality or intelligent
construction can be excluded through consideration of similarly grooved
and ridged formations in other contexts such as the Gorgonum Region (Link:
www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/images05/050405gorgonum.jpg), just one
of thousands of examples. The presence of these formations will be an important
theme in future Pictures of the Day.
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- Here, in brief, is an electrical interpretation. An interdisciplinary
investigation of data concerning Mars suggests that in the past the entire
planet was subjected to interplanetary-scale plasma discharge events. Vast
regions were excavated to depths measured in miles. Some of the material
was accelerated electrically into space; some was emplaced back on the
surface to form the ubiquitous but unexpected layering whose origins are
now debated by planetary scientists.
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- Diffuse discharges baked the surfaces of implanted layers,
as in a plasma oven, giving rise to hardened strata exposed in the walls
of canyons. Arc discharges burnt and blasted craters into the surface.
Lightning many times more energetic than that of thunderstorms we know
today ripped across the Martian landscape. Many of the blast channels it
left are mistaken for flood or lava erosion, a perception that can be easily
corrected through attention to detail.
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- But in the floors of many of these channels appear glassified
ridges, or "fulgurites", as in the Gorgonum Region noted above.
On a smaller scale, the lightning's transverse coronal filaments, always
perpendicular to the direction of the primary discharge, formed and fused
these characteristic ripples in the regolith of the Arrhenius Region. In
some channels, multiple lightning strikes have cut terraces, each with
its faint fulgurite ridges. The existence of these mysterious ridges is
a crucial prediction of the Electric Universe.
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- In the electric view, therefore, both the domed craters
and the accompanying trenches of the Arrhenius Region are the result of
cosmic lightning strikes. Where an electric arc "stuck" birefly
to a point on the surface before being extinguished, it produced domed
craters, as in Dr. Ransom's experiments. Dr. Ransom has informed us that
in his experiments, if a lower energy arc was extinguished before a complete
spherule was formed, the result was a dome. The fully rounded spherules
were the result of higher-energy discharges. From the Electric universe
viewpoint, the domed craters and the "wormy" channels simply
reflect two common electrical discharge effects on a surface. We expect
to find them in close association. And we can confidently predict that
more extensive laboratory experimentation will confirm the association
in every important detail.
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- Author's Note: Credit must be given to Wallace Thornhill
(Website: www.holoscience.com) for much of the interpretation offered here.
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- Photo Credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
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