Are you implying there is not data to support this? ;o] Sure some of it's anecdotal, but you can certainly connect the dots easily enough...jjohnson wrote:It would be useful to find that there are data which support evidence of there being electric currents incident upon the moon which cause the hot spots, and which create the fields which discharge surface or near-surface materials into space.
"Dear Michio..."
(Electrically Charged Particles Found in Enceladus' Plumes)
http://www.universetoday.com/2009/04/21 ... us-plumes/
The CAPS instrument is designed to detect charged gas (plasma), but its measurements in the plume revealed tiny ice grains whose signatures could only be present if they were electrically charged.
They claim the charging of dust grains MAY have something to do with triboelectric charging as grains "bump together" coming out of the purported geysers. Purely speculative, of course.The particles have both positive and negative electrical charges, and the mix of the charges varied as the Cassini spacecraft crossed the plume.
That is to say, the plumes are CHARGE SEPARATED. Interesting, since according to pseudo-skeptics, charges should be "instantly neutralized" or something close to it. Curious then that the plumes don't follow said trend and appear to REMAIN charge separated. And what do separated charges mean? Electric fields. Perhaps of low intensity... Depends on just how dense the plumes are and the degree of "charge separation," I'd guess?“What are particularly fascinating are the bursts of dust that CAPS detects when Cassini passes through the individual jets in the plume” says Jones. “Each jet is split according to charge though”, adds Arridge, “Negative grains are on one side, and positive ones on the other”.
Enceladus' "cometary plumes" composition might also arise similarly to that of comets through similar action, if one considers the Electric Comet Model to be the proper model for the production of cometary comas, jets and tails.
(Cassini 'tastes' organic brew at Saturn’s geyser moon)
http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Cassini-Huygen ... 3EF_0.html
"A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet," said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
They're, of course, quick to disbelieve their own observations and wave them away because, how could a moon act like a comet? In the Standard Model, it would seem there's just no way. So, for now, comets remain "dirty snowballs" / "icy dirtballs" and Enceladus has "geysers" in their eyes... Never the twain shall meet."Enceladus is by no means a comet. Comets have tails and orbit the sun, and Enceladus's activity is powered by internal heat while comet activity is powered by sunlight. Enceladus's brew is like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas," said Waite.
Of course, one COULD make a certain anecdotal case for the EU interpretation of things by looking at the behavior of the Io-Jupiter interaction, which I tend to think might offer us an 'in' to what's going on with the Enceladus-Saturn interaction.
At Io, they already KNOW there's a current flowing between Io and Jupiter (they call it a "flux tube"; a nice inert, non-threatening name, no?)
(The Io "Dynamo")
http://www.phy6.org/earthmag/wio.htm
(Jupiter's Io Generates Power and Noise, But No Magnetic Field)[Voyager 1's] magnetometer very clearly detected the signature of a current of about a million amperes.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=6849
As [Galileo] flew near Io's poles in August and October [2001?], the density of charged particles
it was passing through suddenly increased about tenfold when the spacecraft crossed the path of a magnetic-field connection between Io and Jupiter, reported Dr. Donald Gurnett of the University of Iowa, Iowa City.
"You hear a whistling sound from Jupiter's radio emissions, then, just when you go over the pole, you hear a tremendous roar that starts abruptly, then stops abruptly," Gurnett said. "It's like the noise from a huge electrical power generator." Io actually generates as much wattage as about 1,000 nuclear power plants.
The region of increased density is where electrons and ions come up from Io's tenuous atmosphere and follow a "flux tube" where field lines from Jupiter's strong magnetic field intersect Io. In a 1999 flyby of Io, Galileo had provided some indication of the higher density over the moon's poles. This year's two Io flybys were the first to show that those denser areas coincide with the magnetic-field flux tube, Gurnett said.
But, *IS* that the mechanism for current production? Or is it a byproduct of the currents, as might be inferred from the Dessler / Peratt paper.Galileo detected electrical currents flowing along magnetic field lines above two areas of volcanic activity on Io, Kivelson said. Material shot high from eruptions is apparently affecting conductivity more than 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) above the surface.
"If this is the mechanism that's producing the currents, it may help us in the search for active plumes," she said.
So, it seems that there are electric currents measured directly over the regions they're calling "volcanoes" as well as an "acoustic roar" (which they indicate implies Io's generating wattage like a son of a gun) over the pole of Io where "electrons and ions come up from Io's tenuous atmosphere and follow a 'flux tube' where field lines from Jupiter's magnetic field intersect Io." Sounds distinctly like "field-aligned" currents (AKA, Birkeland currents), no?
Wikipedia sums it up well:
(Electric Power -- Circuits)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power#Circuits
Take it as you will.The term wattage is used colloquially to mean "electric power in watts."
(New, Unexpected Spots Found on Jupiter)
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/03/18 ... n-jupiter/
The researchers propose that a beam of electrons is being transferred from one hemisphere to another, causing the fainter spots.
So, Io's perhaps caught up in an electron beam between one and the other hemisphere of Jupiter... AND it's roaring like 1000 electric generators above the pole. AND electric currents have been detected over the so-called "volcanoes" (Dessler / Peratt liken them to a plasma focus or "plasma gun").The image below illustrates the different mechanisms creating the auroral spots. The large torus around Jupiter is the plume of sulfur created by Io. The blue line between Io and Jupiter is where it is connected by the ionized sulfur, drawn in and funneled by Jupiter's magnetosphere. The red lines illustrate the possible electron beams connecting the poles, which create the newly-discovered spots.
[image]
Is it quite possible that something similar is happening with an Enceladus-Saturn interaction? Might that also explain the anomalous / unexpected heat signature at the pole of Enceladus?
(Enceladus Temperature Map)
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... 06432.html
They of course attributed it to "internal heat," however they justified that to themselves. It's not "warm" by any standard. But the pole is about 10 Kelvin warmer then the rest of the surface and 15 Kelvin warmer than pre-existing models predicted.This image shows the surprise that startled Cassini scientists on the composite infrared spectrometer team when they got their first look at the infrared (heat) radiation from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
There is a dramatic warm spot centered on the pole...
Is it possible that joule heating or some other process is warming the pole slightly?
Recent flybys of Cassini have continued to narrow down the regions that are "hot" spots.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/image ... ageId=3861
http://www.universetoday.com/2010/02/23 ... enceladus/
Is the hot spotty nature of the heat signatures evidence of "geysers" and "tidal heating" or of Thornhill's suggestion that St. Elmo's Fire / corona discharges are the likely culprits for the increased temperatures?A new map that combines heat data with visible-light images shows a 40-kilometer (25-mile) segment of the longest tiger stripe, known as Baghdad Sulcus. The map illustrates the correlation, at the highest resolution yet seen, between the geologically youthful surface fractures and the anomalously warm temperatures that have been recorded in the south polar region. The broad swaths of heat previously detected by the infrared spectrometer appear to be confined to a narrow, intense region no more than a kilometer (half a mile) wide along the fracture.
In these measurements, peak temperatures along Baghdad Sulcus exceed 180 Kelvin ( – 92 C, -135 F), and may be higher than 200 Kelvin (- 73 C, -100 F). These warm temperatures probably result from heating of the fracture flanks by the warm, upwelling water vapor that propels the ice-particle jets seen by Cassini's cameras. Cassini scientists will be testing this idea by investigating how well the hot spots correspond with the jet sources.
(Enceladus, comets and electric moons)
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=h103sydx
The crucial discovery is the “completely unexpected surprise” of the similarity of the chemistry of the jets of comets and Enceladus. It should not have been a surprise. The jets of both are an electric discharge phenomenon, heating the surface. The matter in the jets is coming from the surface and not the interior.
(Enceladus' Cometary Plumes)it is characteristic of cathode jets to erode the sharp edges of a crater. It is also characteristic of a corona discharge to form jets spaced roughly equally ... It may be possible to confirm equal spacing of some of the jets on Enceladus. Higher resolution images of that moon should show a similar pattern of hot spots along the “tiger stripes” where the enhanced heat output is detected. Meanwhile, Io is a living laboratory of the electric discharge machining of planetary surfaces.
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=xcafwdgn
it seems that Enceladus is connected to Saturn’s circuitry. There is no need to postulate special and unlikely conditions inside Enceladus to explain its plumes. Like Io, Triton, and Europa in the past, Enceladus is undergoing electric discharge activity on its surface too. The tiny moon is geologically “cold and inactive” because internal geological forces are not driving the plumes. The energy of the plumes is being supplied externally by electricity.
Guess it all depends on which explanation you find most likely... Cold moon with some mysterious internal heat reservoir that finds its way out at the poles or an explanation involving currents inflowing at the poles (like we pretty much already know they do at Io) and doing a bit of electrical discharge machining of the surface...Electric discharge machining of planetary surfaces is the most powerful sculpting force in Nature.
Personally I think the answer is pretty obvious. But, perhaps harder for some to accept...
Best,
~Michael Gmirkin