Electric Saturn

[StefanR]

Flash: NASA's Cassini Sees Lightning on Saturn
"This is the first time we have the visible lightning flash together with the radio data," said Georg Fischer, a radio and plasma wave science team associate based at the Space Research Institute in Graz, Austria. "Now that the radio and visible light data line up, we know for sure we are seeing powerful lightning storms."

The movie and radio data suggest extremely powerful storms with lightning that flashes as brightly as the brightest super-bolts on Earth, according to Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging science subsystem team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "What's interesting is that the storms are as powerful -- or even more powerful -- at Saturn as on Earth," said Ingersoll. "But they occur much less frequently, with usually only one happening on the planet at any given time, though it can last for months."

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-129

[jjohnson]

Great Dog - outstanding image - it was sort of what popped into my mind the first time I read the "sunlight glint on lakes" article, only yours is perfect.

Maybe with the Water Lander mission the ESO will include an MP3 player with a recording of "Michael Row The Boat Ashore". Or just to be safe, maybe they ought to drop a hovercraft. Or a Land Rover. -or a dune buggy....

[MattEU]

sorry for being a bit late following up on this but then again i am always being called retarded and i guess that is why



can the progression of a diocotron instability explain how this hole punch cloud formed and then developed? can it explain some of the circular hole punch clouds? anyone got a clue if it could also explain the "fall streak" part of the holes?


hole punch cloud over malta

this started off as a "normal" hole punch cloud then as it moved out to sea turned into what seemed to be a pentagram.


pentagram shaped hole punch cloud

a circle or hole i could sort of understand in the EU but not the pentagram.

with the idea that the ancients had esoteric knowledge or could see more of the EU stuff than we can today, is this one of the reasons why the pentagram is so special?

[jacmac]

Hello to all,
Today at my work I saw something that reminded me of this topic. I was working with residential cabinets. I had to use a countersink tool to make a V shaped hole in the surface of the cabinet with a hand held electric drill. The surface shape which resulted was a hexagon. My countersink tool is round. This happened very consistently. The cabinet material has a relatively hard and thin surface (melamine) and a much softer interior (coarse particle board). I tried the tool in a solid piece of wood resulting in a round hole at the surface.
Perhaps the soft interior material allowed for a wobble of the otherwise firm tool which was spinning on a vertical axis.
I hope this is helpful in looking at the hexagon of Saturn.
Cheers,
Jack

[amzolt]

I receive email updates from Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader.

Today she directed us to images of Saturn's F-ring and, while doing so, said: "...be amazed at the complexity that is made possible by the simple force of gravity."

Would love to hear some alternative explanations of these images.

[mharratsc]

My guess is that she probably doesn't believe that it's "the simple force of gravity" doing all that, but that she's not about to give up her 'Team Leader' position by coming out and stating that...

Here's a TPOD on Saturn's rings:

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2008/arch08/080306plasmaring.htm

[amzolt]

My guess is that she probably doesn't believe that it's "the simple force of gravity" doing all that, but that she's not about to give up her 'Team Leader' position by coming out and stating that...

Very well could be... She seems an extraordinary lady...

[Lloyd]

* Those images are too big to copy here. But here's an interesting image of the F-ring.

* The next image is from http://www.bigpicture.in/photos-of-saturn-at-equinox.

The moon Prometheus and its nearby disturbance of Saturn’s F ring. Prometheus. The image was taken in visible light at a distance of approximately 950,000 km (590,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

[Lloyd]

* Those images are too big to copy here. But here's an interesting image of the F-ring.

* The next image is from http://www.bigpicture.in/photos-of-saturn-at-equinox.

The moon Prometheus and its nearby disturbance of Saturn’s F ring. Prometheus. The image was taken in visible light at a distance of approximately 950,000 km (590,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

[Sparky]

http://www.physorg.com/news200123247.html

-the auroras and the radio emissions are indeed physically associated,-

[mharratsc]

They were very careful about nomenclature inthat article, and didn't mention anything other than "the processes at work"... heheh.

One of these days the dam is gonna burst on this stuff, and they're going to start actually talking about the electrodynamics of this stuff, mark my words...

[Sparky]

They were very careful about nomenclature inthat article, and didn't mention anything other than "the processes at work"... heheh.

One of these days the dam is gonna burst on this stuff, and they're going to start actually talking about the electrodynamics of this stuff, mark my words...

But the did say,

"It thus takes us a significant step toward solving the mystery of the variable radio period.”

Maybe they will discover something else along the way...

[Birkeland]

Looks like someone has inserted a couple of coins on Leif again over at Watts Up With That?

[jjohnson]

As noted in AAAS Science:

Credit: NASA/ESA/Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester)

Welcome to KSAT, the radio station broadcasting from the poles of Saturn. For years, scientists have been puzzled by the pulsing intensity of radio emissions from the ringed planet. Puzzling, because the scientists couldn't key the pulses to any known phenomenon. The 11-hour intervals approximated but didn't match Saturn's rotation rate, so the planet's magnetic field couldn't be the source. Nor could scientists find any connection between the radio-signal intensity and variations in the solar wind. Now researchers examining 5 years of images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cassini spacecraft, which orbits Saturn and its moons, say they've found a clue. In an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a team reports that the variations in radio signal coincide with the intensity of the planet's auroras. That revelation doesn't solve the mystery, however. So scientists have started looking for the cause of the auroral variations. One prime candidate: particle emissions from Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Anyone having access to the upcoming reference letter on this, or other data from Cassini etc., it might consist of an interesting extension of our earlier discussions on Enceladus and its "plumes" or "geysers" which are actually plasma ejections.

Jim

[Anaconda]

Looks like someone has inserted a couple of coins on Leif again over at Watts Up With That?

Hi Birkeland:

Thank you for linking this Watts Up With That? post.

The physical dynamics of Saturn's aurora is interesting in its own right, but what I also found interesting is the comments section of the post.

A number of plasma dynamic friendly comments were posted, but even more interesting is that towards the end of the comments section, it becomes a duel between a Dr. Leif Svalgaard and another commenter and the debate is about Electric Double Layers and so-called "magnetic reconnection".

The other commenter presents a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers, a couple are explicitly Electric Double Layer papers and several are so-called "magnetic reconnection" papers, which he then compares to each other. The commenter makes a compelling argument that the two processes are actually the same physical event -- the Electric Double Layer physical process which results when two bodies of plasma come into contact with each other.

After reading the thread, I'm struck by the intellectual dishonesty of this Dr. Svalgaard. Svalgaard seems in denial or just doesn't care about "truth for its own sake" (I suspect the latter) regarding the physical similarity of the two sets of papers and is willing to deny some basic principles of plasma physics -- if other goodfaith scientists read the post they would see that Svalgaard is acting duplicitly in a determined fashion to prevent the truth about Electric Double Layers from being more widely known.

Is this what it's come to, a supposedly reputable scientist resorting to intellectual dishonesty to maintain that Electric Double Layers and "magnetic reconnection" are two distinct physical processes?

Hannes Alfven stated that Double Layers are a basic physical process in space plasma dynamics.

Seems, that some so-called scientists (even supposedly plasma physicists) will dishonor themselves to prevent the Electromagnetic Paradigm from gaining traction. But judging from the papers presented, other plasma physicists are coming to the conclusion that Hannes Alfven was right all along about Electric Double Layers (even if they still use the term "magnetic reconnection").

The undeniable establishment that so-called "magnetic reconnection" is actually the Electric Double Layer structure & process is one of the key building blocks for greater acceptence of the Electromagnetic Paradigm.

Prove the wide-spread existence of Electric Double Layers in space plasma dynamics and it gets much harder to deny the rest of the Electromagnetic Paradigm.

I suspect that is exactly the reason this Dr. Svalgaard is willing to dishonor his scientific entegrity...he knows that should the obfiscation of "magnetic reconnection" get discarded and replaced by the transparent Electric Double Layer term and its electromagnetic framework, the walls of ignorance and denial will begin to crumble.

Strange that a scientist would want to enslave the scientific community and the general public in ignorance...or not so strange after you have studied the dynamics of Group Think so prevalent in today's astronomical science community.

But I also take hope from the peer-reviewed, published scientific papers, they are eloquent testimony to the power of empirical observation & measurement.