Electric Saturn

[MGmirkin]

I seem to recall mention of the "Dragon Storm" as a diocotron instability...? Don't know whether it's the region or related to the region under discussion? I forget whether it was in a TPOD by the same name or on Holoscience that the diocotron instability was mentioned...

~Michael Gmirkin

[Solar]

Birkeland current filamentation can be seen best in the top quadrants of Saturn's blue auroral ring. The cylindrical auroral beam is subject to vortex formation, known as 'diocotron instabilities.' Historically, vortex structure and vortex interactions in charged particle beams have been known since the turn of the 19th century when Kristian Birkeland first photographed the passage of particle beams through low vacuum in his terrella cathode experiments. Neighbouring vortices are subject to long-range attractive and short-range repulsive forces, which result in a departure of the discharge pattern from a circle to a polygon.

The diocotron instabilities in the inner current cylinder are forcing the cloud pattern to form the distinctive hexagonal shape. The polar hot spot is heated by the Birkeland current discharge in the core of the Z-pinch. - 2008—Year of the Electric Universe

The report does not discuss the complex shape of the dragon storm. But that shape indicates an external origin of electrical power. Similar forms occur in plasma instabilities when an intense beam of electrons strikes a 'witness plate.'

These two images show in cross-section what happens to a beam of electrons that is following an axial magnetic field. The image on the left is due to a 90 kiloamp current striking a carbon witness plate. The other image is due to a 58 microamp current striking a fluorescent screen. So in the laboratory the effect is scaleable over 12 orders of magnitude of beam current! - "The Dragon Storm"

"Saturn Currently Stormy"

[Steve Smith]

The Dragon Storm and the cloud formations in "storm alley" are not the same things. Note that the Dragon crosses the cloud formations without disturbing their common patterns. Saturn's clouds are not plasma phenomena -- although, like all aspects of planetary atmospheres, they have plasma-like characteristics due to charge separation -- they are fluid dynamic phenomena.

Wal doesn't say that all the clouds are electrical displays -- "but that [Dragon Storm] shape indicates an external origin of electrical power."

It is important not to mix (no pun intended) the two concepts. I once asked Tony Peratt if the fluid models could be applied to plasma instabilities and he was insistent that there is no connection.

Also, remember that the periodic oscillation of the Dragon (it "rises and falls" in the atmosphere according to the consensus) most likely indicates a variability in the input current to Saturn.

On Saturn, the cloud bands move in opposite directions, so there is no doubt that they are experiencing the various fluid instabilities that I mentioned before.

Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities:

Clouds on Earth


Clouds on Saturn


Von Karman Vortex Street instabilities:

Clouds on Earth


Clouds on Saturn


Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities:

Clouds on Earth


Clouds on Saturn

[redeye]

I know that the atmosphere shows distinct banding, and they say that the matter in the bands do not all move at the same rate (or even appear to move opposite one another) and I thought perhaps that might be akin to the two charges moving against each other.

I see a correlation between the banding in Jupiter's cloudtops, The rings of Saturn and the [urlhttp://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/images/profile.jpg]thermoclines[/url] which make up the Earth's atmosphere. Obviously these phenomena are on three different planes, but I feel they share defining characteristics. the "counter rotating" aspect of Jupiter's cloud bands seems to be mirrored in Saturn's rings and the interaction between Jupiter's cloud bands is very similar to the manner in which Terrestrial lightning propogates both above and below the tropospheric boundary (there is a higher resolution video of Jupiter's North Pole which shows this interaction more clearly, you can see the lower cloud band "discharge" to the higher band which is immediately followed by another discharge to the band above).

Cheers!

[MattEU]

Scientists have come up with a novel theory to explain the unexplained terrain on one of Saturn's icy moons.

The most striking feature of Iapetus is a bulging ridge, which encircles the moon's equator and reaches an altitude of 20km in places.

A new theory suggests the ridge formed when the moon went from a relatively fast-spinning body to one spinning more slowly.

...

Referring to the ridge on Iapetus, Mr Roberts explained: "It looks like somebody screwed two halves of the moon together and did a very bad job soldering the joint.

...

De-spinning can cause compression along the equator, but it cannot have formed the ridge on Iapetus because this compression is acting in the wrong direction.

However, the computer modelling work carried out at JHUAPL shows that de-spinning also dissipates more heat at the equator than elsewhere.

Mr Roberts suggested that warm, buoyant ice rose to the surface from Iapetus' interior and pushed the brittle surface ice outward, forming a ridge around the equator.

The slowing down of Iapetus' spin is estimated to have taken 100 million years or so, at which point the heating stopped. As the moon cooled down, the ridge was frozen in place.

....

Most moons are thought to have undergone de-spinning. But why this process should have caused a ridge around Iapetus, and not around the equatorial regions of other satellites, remains an open question, Mr Roberts told BBC News.

However, he added, going from 16-hour rotation to 79 days could mean Iapetus presents the most extreme case of de-spinning in the Solar System. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7965332.stm

[Lloyd]

* Iapetus seems to have been explained pretty well on this site 4 years ago at:
http://thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch ... apetus.htm
* At this one on Geodes I made this brief comment:
http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/v ... etus#p5495

- *Iapetus: The distinctive ridge around Saturn’s moon Iapetus bears an eerie similarity to equatorial ridges around concretions on Earth. ...
- *spheres with equatorial ridges

* So electrical forces seem to have formed all such bodies and spinning may not have been needed at all. Nor is water or ice needed.

[StefanR]

"No one could have predicted that the little moon Enceladus would have such an influence on the radio technique that has been used for years to determine the length of the Saturn day," said Dr. Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa, Iowa City. Gurnett is the principal investigator on the radio and plasma wave science experiment onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The radio technique measures the rotation of the planet by taking its radio pulse rate -- the rhythm of natural radio signals from the planet.

Finding out the length of Saturn's day has been a challenge because the gaseous planet has no surface or fixed point to clock its rotation rate. Initially, the approach was to use periodic regular radio signals, as has been done for Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.

However, Saturn's radio period has turned out to be troubling in two ways. It seems to be a pulsed signal rather than a rotating, lighthouse-like beam. Secondly, the period seems to be slowly changing over months to years. The day measured by Cassini is some six minutes longer than the day recorded by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, a change of nearly 1 percent.
[img]http://jpl.nasa.gov/images/cassini/ence ... se.jpg[img]
"One would predict that when the geysers are very active, the particles load down the magnetic field and increase the slippage of the plasma disk, thereby increasing the radio emission period even more. If the geysers are less active, there would be less of a load on the magnetic field, and therefore less slippage of the plasma disk, and a shorter period," said Gurnett.

"The direct link between radio, magnetic field and deep planetary rotation has been taken for granted up to now. Saturn is showing we need to think further," said Michele Dougherty, principal investigator on Cassini's magnetometer instrument, Imperial College London.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-032

[MGmirkin]

Yeah, 'cause when we need radio signals, we just... Rotate a planet...
Kind of like when we need pulsed x-rays we find our local neutron star salesman... "Yes, can I get the new 'Pulsar3000' model?"

Okay, okay, I probably shouldn't get all "appeal to ridicule" here. But, c'mon?

*Frustrated*

~Michael Gmirkin

[rcglinsk]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090602.html

[Anaconda]

From the NASA APOD:

"Analyses of archived Voyager images have led to the conclusions that the transient spokes, which may form and dissipate over a few hours, are composed of electrically charged sheets of small dust-sized particles."

Kristian Birkeland could have told you that a hundred years ago

[mharratsc]

Seems like some real physics is starting to creep into NASA analyses! There is hope for the future after all!

[Total Science]

"When first observed by Voyager, the spoke movements [of Saturn's Rings] seemed to defy gravity and had the scientists very perplexed. Since the spokes rotate at the same rate as Saturn's magnetic field, it is apparent that the electromagnetic forces are also at work." -- Ron Baalke, astrophysicist, 1998

[GaryN]

Poor Phil et al are puzzled, again.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badas ... angry-god/

Moonlet undergoing film deposition sputtering as it traverses one of the ionised rings of Saturn?

And on Titan:

Titan 'impact crater' puzzle. The crater shows 'bays', channels, and surrounding it are dendritic features.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/image ... ageId=3595

Larger image:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA12111.jpg

[Atlas]

He feels his intuition is highly inadequate, so at least he's being sort of honest with himself.

[StevenJay]

Nature, it turns out, has a far greater imagination than any mere human.

Uh, Phil? For one thing, nature and mere humans are one and the same. Additionally, it's not that nature has a far greater imagination, it's just that, well, yours seems to be in stand-by mode.