Help Us Explain Crater Formation!

[dahlenaz]

With an experiment session under-way for other purposes and my curiosity about
whether there is scalability in what you pointing out in you presentation,
I popped of a few craters with a stationary probe and a resistive material.

The arc remined focused at the center of the feature.. Arc-bursts can be seen
displacing material to the circumference of the features, and in the early stage
of the fast-frame video, some material is displaced before an arc strikes and
that area is fairly large compared to the probe.. ... d..z


There was a slight breeze getting at the experiment and moving dust from right to left.

...

[willendure]

I was scheduled to give a presentation at Phoenix, the title being the subject line of this post, but was unable to attend due to visa problems. This title was submitted before I had finished the paper I was working on and I would have liked to revise it to "A complete refutation of the Alvarez Hypothesis - from an EU perspective". The paper was published on July 1st by New Concepts in Global Tectonics. It's title is "Polygonal crater formation by electrical discharges, Wayne BURN". You can view the paper in pdf form for download at http://www.ncgt.org/nws/4a01717953fb71b ... 8e6914.pdf

So, you may have missed my presentation but you can read the paper on which it was based. I think you may find it a very interesting read. My apologies for any confusion with my username but EoE is my general internet tag which I use everywhere.

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

[scowie]

I recently read a good book that argues against the Alvarez impact hypothesis: The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy by Charles Officer & Jake Page, in case anyone's interested.

[Enemy of Empire]

With an experiment session under-way for other purposes and my curiosity about
whether there is scalability in what you pointing out in you presentation,
I popped of a few craters with a stationary probe and a resistive material.

The arc remined focused at the center of the feature.. Arc-bursts can be seen
displacing material to the circumference of the features, and in the early stage
of the fast-frame video, some material is displaced before an arc strikes and
that area is fairly large compared to the probe.. ... d..z

I've used a grid overlay to draw a polygonal outline around one of your arc-bursts (top left). The white section is the most clearly defined with the red section showing where the rest would be on a perfect isogonal octagon.



You may get a clearer outline if your material was more compact and possibly in a thicker layer. I'm thinking of the Siberian craters I covered in section 3.7. of my paper, where the permafrost preserved the polygonal outline of the lightning bolt.

[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.

[Enemy of Empire]

I recently read a good book that argues against the Alvarez impact hypothesis: The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy by Charles Officer & Jake Page, in case anyone's interested.

I'm interested. I did a quick search and it does seem interesting. Far too often, mainstream science gets away with presenting fairy tales based on conjecture, as scientific theory based on empirical evidence. Thank you for posting this.

[willendure]

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?

[willendure]

A hint of polygon, but not enough to be convincing. Yet. Please keep trying.

[dahlenaz]

http://s358.photobucket.com/user/Wayne_Burn/media/arc-bursts1214%20%20outline_zpsqkph2g9x.jpg.html

A hint of polygon, but not enough to be convincing. Yet. Please keep trying.

I agree that the overlay is not convincing. I see many craters in my experiments,
you can look at many of them as well, and for me to stop looking at other factors,
the case for a polygonal-mechanism -at works from within the discharge
and only electric- is going to require more than modeled overlays .

I can imagine how it might happen, and introduced this geometry to the t-bolts group
long ago by showing numerous BB's in a spherical arrangements starting with
one in the middle and quickly developing hexagonal characterists.
But arcs were not seen to wander and 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.

The when and how questions needs to have experimental demonstration
for their answers to close the book on the possibilities...
Cylindrical current sheets were suggested by Dave Talbott related to alcoves
in trenches and dendritic ridges,, but he never showed them at work in an experiment
or was able to produce the features.
In contrast, dendritic features and alcoves have been created thrugh experiments via
coronal discharge effects,, just as suggested by Wal..

What are we to think about the evidence compared to the visualizations??? d..z

...

[Bomb20]

I am searching in vain for any estimate or computing of distances betweeen celestial bodies during interplanetary thunderbolts in the past!

I know this may depend on many different factors or circumstances and we know way too little about the plasmaspheres around our planets and moons. Nevertheless, more involved or long-time stakeholders of the EU should have some ideas about the distances which can be bridged by plasma discharges in encounters of planets and moons.

Any ideas or suggestions?

[nick c]

Hi Bomb,
I cannot give any distance in miles/km, but from my understanding of Thornhill's writings, the key is that the two planets "see" each other. That is, they encroach upon each other's plasmaspheres and then there will be an electrical discharge between the two and probably a reversal of the magnetic poles.

[Enemy of Empire]

I agree that the overlay is not convincing.

Personally, I would say that it's a pretty far from convincing overlay, but I didn't expect anything better considering the thin layer of apparently loose material you used in your experiment. Unfortunately, unlike yourself, I do not possess or have access to the equipment needed to test my hypothesis on a laboratory scale; so there is nothing I can do to convince you of any part of it.

As I see it, you can either choose - on the basis of one result from a poorly designed experiment - to dismiss my hypothesis completely; or, as a scientist, to take a more investigative approach and see if you can prove/disprove it, on a laboratory scale. I stand by my hypothesis, can you stand by your dismissal? I don't believe there's anything else I can suggest, so I'll leave it with you.

[dahlenaz]

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?

I am glad you bring up this factor of the characteristics of a small zap... Attention to this detail is
important because an electric discharge is much more than the brightness produced by the arc.
From this detail i am persuaded that we need more than an arc-only explanation
for what generates the polygonal characteristics of a crater..
I do not dought that some electrical mechanism is "partly" responsible for these features.
i would expect that, for there to be such a great population of craters formed on celestial bodies,
there must be a multi-faceted process involved, since an arc is the focused-phase of an interactions
and it may deplete charge-differential to an extent that such potential is snuffed-out for a while.

The leader phase of an arc and the intermediate dark-mode tendrils have quite the capability
to form the features we see on these "dust covered bodies"
,,, catch that detail,,, dust covered and loosely held..

Any experiment that does not factor in this detail will most likely miss some of the activity
produced in the process of an electrical interaction...
I do not know the exact cross-sectional profile of the arcs in this experiment with resistive
material but there were other factors involved in how the material ended up as it did.

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

...

[Bomb20]

Dear Nick,

thank you very much for your fast reply!

Indeed, the plasmaspheres must encroach and somehow start arcing.
I try to get an impression if this could happen at distances of 10,000s, 100,000s or even 1,000,000 of kilometers or miles.

In his highly „speculative history“, called „Recovering the Lost World“, Jno Cook claimed:

„The few interactions with Venus (which have been presented as "collisions" by others) occurred at distances of 10,000,000 and 20,000,000 miles. Electrical interactions with Mars occurred at much closer distances, but probably no closer than 40,000 miles.“

I really don´t know where he is taking the numbers from. However, if another big celestial body comes in contact with our Van Allan belts (reaching upt to 40,000 km into space, and including another plasmasphere according to newest findings) I would certainly expext an electrical interaction. I think this could/should also happen already at 65,000 to 90,000 km distance during contact with earth´s so called magnetosphere. However, this is based on todays numbers, situation and knowledge. Maybe other conditions could increase the distance of strikes or spark-overs considerably. Am I right? Any opinions of experimentalists, meteorologists etc.?


About distances Cook wrote, e.g.:

„Mars would have lowered and come to a stop, remaining perhaps a considerable distance from Earth. Mars is half the diameter of Earth, and even if seen at a distance of 20 Earth diameters (160,000 miles) it would have looked twice the diameter of the Moon today. Certainly all of its major features would have been clearly visible, and its satellites. (By comparison, the Moon is 250,000 miles away, and half the diameter of Mars.)“

A distance so low would certainly explain that Sioux (and others) recalled that Mars had a scare (Valles Marineris) if this interpretation of myths is correct. However, if Mars would have been only half the size of today´s moon in the sky then the distance would be 640,000 miles or more than 1,000,000 km. IMHO this distance would be good enough to see Valles Marineris. I don´t think that relevant plasmaspheres would encroach with disastrous results at this distance, beside much bigger tidal waves. Therefore I wonder about the claim that Venus had interactions at 10 or 20 Mio miles with Earth.

What do you think folks?

[willendure]

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.