Help Us Explain Crater Formation!

[Enemy of Empire]

Hexagonal close packing of current filaments. Is that something that can be reproduced in lab experiments? It is certainly and appealing hypothesis.

Other than trying to reproduce lightning strikes on a small scale like the arc-burst experiments of dahlenaz, I think you would have to produce a z-pinch in a plasma beam and find a way of obtaining a cross-sectional view of the beam's longitudinal axis at the point of the z-pinch.

I don't know, but I imagine that dahlenaz arc-burst experiments are creating just a single current filament? Or would a small zap like that be enough to create a multi-filamented lightning?

Plasma beams are known to undergo filamentation at the high current densities associated with arc discharges. The filamentation process appears to be determined by current density rather than size/diameter of the arc discharge so I assume that even small arc discharges will consist of a number of current filaments. Although there doesn't seem to be an explanation of why filamentation occurs, I think that it may be a simple case of potential energy being dissipated by conducting smaller amounts of current through multiple filaments, rather than a larger amount of current flowing through one filament.

[Enemy of Empire]

I stand by my hypothesis, can you stand by your dismissal?

The examples in your paper linked to in the original post are much more convincing, I only meant the image in this thread and the attempt to overlay a polygon onto it, and of course that is not a real planetary crater. Certainly there are many examples of hexagonal craters that are very clear. I think sometimes that octagonal ones are a bit harder to make a clean call on; is it a noisy circle or a noisy octagon? But again, the octagonal close packing structure is not something I had considered before, only the hexagonal one.

The octagonal craters are indeed much harder to identify and they're the reason I started this whole thing. I was watching 'The Lightning scarred Planet, Mars' and Dave Talbott was talking about hexagonal craters on Mars while the screen was showing octagonal craters. The only reason I spotted them in the first place is that I have a very high degree of pattern recognition and the octagonal craters stood out. So I wondered how lightning could possibly create two distinctly different forms of polygonal crater. It was only when I examined the effect of a z-pinch on cylinders of equal diameter, that I found the cubic close packing arrangement produced a series of isogonal octagons, which were a direct match for the octagonal craters I'd seen. Prior to that I too had only considered hexagonal geometric arrangements, long associated with electrical discharges.

[Enemy of Empire]

Does this concept that applies hexagonal close packing and cubic close packing to the
EDM process also take into consideration discharge behavior, beyond the confines of the arc?
It would seem in far greater agreement with what is seen in the experiments i've done and seen,
and in some of those, deposition processes showed their role as well... d..z

...

No, not really, the close packing concept only relates to the structural aspect of an arc discharge i.e. concentric polygonal layers of current filaments. But that doesn't mean that I dismiss other electrical effects which also occur in a lightning strike or arc discharge as contributory factors.

[Enemy of Empire]

more material
was seen to be displaced by dark-mode tendrils (electric wind) than what was
moved by an arc... So invisible tendrils may be a primary factor to entertain.

Would an arc mode discharge even be needed at all? Is possible that polygonal craters could be eroded without the violent event of arcing even occurring, and instead be a longer and slower process carried out by a steady stream of plasma, with a multi-filament and close-packed structure as described by EofE?

I'm curious now to look at images of the 'volcanoes' on Io, which seem to be some of the best examples of steady plasma flow resulting in activity on a surface, but there is no arc-mode lightning bolt coming from Saturn.

I don't think polygonal craters could be formed by a maintained arc, or 'steady stream of plasma', as the natural tendency of Birkeland currents is to spiral. This would result in the arc constantly rotating, which would cut a circular outline and not a polygonal one.

[dahlenaz]

Does this concept that applies hexagonal close packing and cubic close packing to the
EDM process also take into consideration discharge behavior, beyond the confines of the arc?
It would seem in far greater agreement with what is seen in the experiments i've done and seen,
and in some of those, deposition processes showed their role as well... d..z

...

No, not really, the close packing concept only relates to the structural aspect of an arc discharge i.e. concentric polygonal layers of current filaments. But that doesn't mean that I dismiss other electrical effects which also occur in a lightning strike or arc discharge as contributory factors.

Thanks for the reply.

How do you account for the maintenance of angles
while rotation of the close-packed filaments is occurring?

Part 2 of video taken during last session.

d..z

...

[nick c]

I don't think polygonal craters could be formed by a maintained arc, or 'steady stream of plasma', as the natural tendency of Birkeland currents is to spiral. This would result in the arc constantly rotating, which would cut a circular outline and not a polygonal one.

The process is observed on a variety of scales.
See Galactic Hexagon:

Diocotron instabilities in the Birkeland current filaments are most likely responsible for the hexagonal shapes seen in galaxies. Electric power can act with trillions of times more force than gravity.

also:
Saturn's Hexagon

Beams of electricity flowing through plasma produce a central column surrounded by concentric cylinders. The cylindrical filaments create evenly spaced vortices surrounding the column. As the filaments rotate around one another, a preferred hexagonal cross-section forms within the innermost column.

[dahlenaz]

I don't think polygonal craters could be formed by a maintained arc, or 'steady stream of plasma', as the natural tendency of Birkeland currents is to spiral. This would result in the arc constantly rotating, which would cut a circular outline and not a polygonal one.

The process is observed on a variety of scales.
See Galactic Hexagon:

Diocotron instabilities in the Birkeland current filaments are most likely responsible for the hexagonal shapes seen in galaxies. Electric power can act with trillions of times more force than gravity.

also:
Saturn's Hexagon

Beams of electricity flowing through plasma produce a central column surrounded by concentric cylinders. The cylindrical filaments create evenly spaced vortices surrounding the column. As the filaments rotate around one another, a preferred hexagonal cross-section forms within the innermost column.

Nick, I am not sure if your post is a reply to the question i posted:

How do you account for the maintenance of angles
while rotation of the close-packed filaments is occurring?

But while we sort that out i would offer that craters are a down-scale phenomenon
of electrical discharges within a suitable environment. There-fore the environment
is thoroughly envolved long before an arc is formed and as such, the pinching of filaments
that are active in the environment and have already become involved
with the material in that environment could possibly be acting to scoop the material,
or dislodge it prior to the completion of the pinching action... We might be seeing signitures of
this action, in certain craters, as radial characteristics down the side of the crater...
In experiements the loss of lifting capabilities has been seen when an arc is formed
where dark-mod discharge forces had been already active displacing material.

We might think of the hexagonal characteristics as evidence of the pinching action
of the filaments as they crowd together and must leave behind their influence on some material
as they loose their influence over it while beginning to combine themselves into an arc discharge.
That was part of the geometry factors which i was introducing earlier.

I am inclined to think that we can't apply up-scale behavior/characteristics to down-scale results.

d..z

...

[willendure]

Clearly I feel that the Earth's magnetic field flipping is an error. The magnetic fields measured in various places on the Earth that lead to this conclusion were all formed by electric currents, in my view. And these electric currents could travel in any direction. So the magnetic fields end up pointing in any direction. This can get more scientific but that is the general idea.

I mentioned the decaying magnetic field because of the extreme importance of this. If indeed the magnetic field gets too weak in a few thousand years, say, then life on this planet would change dramatically. And even if the magnetic field was going to flip, if it was at a weak level for some time that would be devastating too. Mainstream will say that it must flip quickly otherwise regular huge loss of species would be found in the fossil record. Of course that presumes that the magnetic field does actually flip. So this is a vital subject, to be discussed under the appropriate heading, of course.

Cheers,
Mo

I also suppose that flipping does not necessarily mean that it was not set up by an external current. For example, if a weight hanging on a pendulum swings back and forth, that does not mean that it was set in motion by the external influence of my hand. If the earths magnetic field flips, that does not necessarily mean it was not set up by an external current, and the flipping back and forth is just part of the natural and resonant way it responded as it decays.

[nick c]

Nick, I am not sure if your post is a reply to the question i posted:

No Zane, it was a response to Enemy of Empire's post.

[nick c]

I also suppose that flipping does not necessarily mean that it was not set up by an external current

Velikovsky gives a brief description of the catastrophic process that created the changes in polarity in the geological column. Modern geologists (working within the context of uniformitarian assumptions of observed rates of deposition and radiometric dating) interpret these polarity changes as taking place over time frames of millions of years.

The Reversed Polarity of the Earth

A thunderbolt, on striking a magnet, reverses the poles of the magnet. The terrestrial globe is a huge magnet. A short circuit between it and another celestial body would result in the north and south magnetic poles of the earth exchanging places.

It is possible to detect in the geological records of the earth the orientation of the terrestrial magnetic field in past ages....

from: Worlds In Collision p.114

[moses]

What would cause one lot of sediment to have a different magnetic orientation to another lot. We see the Velikovsky idea above but I will offer another explanation. This involves the catastrophic circumstances occurring when these sediments were formed. These sediments would have flowed into where they are now.

And it seems that there were a few discreet episodes of laminated deposition that formed the geological column. Each episode would have been under extreme electrical conditions, and the magnetic fields that these sediment ended up with would have been due to those electrical conditions, and not due to the Earth's magnetic field at the time.

So the whole story needs to be considered. All we have is theories and thinking and a few facts.
Cheers,
Mo

[nick c]

And it seems that there were a few discreet episodes of laminated deposition that formed the geological column. Each episode would have been under extreme electrical conditions, and the magnetic fields that these sediment ended up with would have been due to those electrical conditions, and not due to the Earth's magnetic field at the time.

It seems that you really have not gotten the full import of what Velikovsky wrote. The geological column is not the result of one event. It is a record of many events/reversals. When the temperature goes below the Curie point the solidified strata will retain a record of the ambient magnetic field. It is presumed that this ambient magnetic field would be the Earth's. That does not exclude the possibility that some levels of (unspecified for the purposes of this discussion) the geological column's remnant magnetic field may have been a record of a much larger magnetic field.

[moses]

Nick, how is "a few discreet episodes of laminated deposition that formed the geological column", one event, as you wrote ? We are basically saying the same thing possibly. But I don't think that the magnetic field flipped.

A thunderbolt hitting Earth might produce a force changing the remanent field of the Earth, with me presuming that the Earth's magnetic field is a remanent field. But surely the thunderbolt will act to turn the whole Earth if it is strong enough to flip the poles. And so I think that the magnetic field did not change much with the North pole somewhere near the arctic. But who knows !

Cheers,
Mo

[nick c]

I think you are making something simple more complicated. Velikovsky is describing an experimental fact, that a magnet hit by an electrical discharge can change it's polarity.
His logic is as follows, that the Earth is a magnet and during it's history it experienced electrical discharges from and to other celestial bodies; some of these exchanges resulted in reversals of polarity. During these catastrophic exchanges areas of the Earth's surface would have been molten and when these areas cooled to below the Curie point the ambient magnetic fields would have been retained in the solidified strata.
This logic applies to any scenario that invokes planetary catastrophes.

[moses]

Nick, you strike a magnet, not held in the one place, by an electrical discharge, it is going to jump all over the place. Similarly expect the Earth to change orientation.

I don't think it is a matter of the surface of the Earth melting, but rather the rocks of the geological column change magnetic orientation through depth and position. The magnetic fields in those rocks were set when those sediments were formed. As for surface melting, the electric current that produced such melting might only have produced partial melting and the magnetic material would then have lined up with the direction of this current and set in place in that direction.

Similarly when measuring magnetic fields around craters or in volcanic deposits, we would not expect the magnetic fields to represent the Earth's, or any other planet's, magnetic field. This stuff is the basis of the mainsteam seeing magnetic flips. We see the results of electric currents.

Cheers,
Mo