The Electric Earth

[Lloyd]

* I'm wondering if the hollow center could be reached by tunneling and what the temperature might be and whether it could be habitable. The Kola Peninsula 7-mile deep borehole was stopped in 1994 because the rock at that depth was plastic enough to close up the hole. The temperature was measured to be 205 C, or about 400 F. The temperature in the hollow core surely must be at least that hot, so it's likely not habitable. But, if Mars has a hollow core, maybe it's cool enough to be habitable. Or maybe our moon or one of the other large moons is. But tunneling through hundreds or thousands of miles of rock might be a challenge.

[simple simon]

~Mr amsterdam said "where does the input energy for the earth's coil come from"

forgive me if this is a bit ignorant but if the "solar wind" is a stream of moving electrically charged particles, then isn't that the definition of an electric current?

And if it is an electric current then won't there be a magnetic field associated with it?

and if you put a conductor (like an iron core, or currents of water vapour, or a charged ion layer insulated from the ground, or other) in the way of a moving magnetic field then won't electrical power be induced into the conductor from the current.

Apologies again if this falls at an elementary hurdle, but surely the electrical power in the 'current' that is the 'solar wind' must be mind-boggling

[MrAmsterdam]

~Mr amsterdam said "where does the input energy for the earth's coil come from"

forgive me if this is a bit ignorant but if the "solar wind" is a stream of moving electrically charged particles, then isn't that the definition of an electric current?

And if it is an electric current then won't there be a magnetic field associated with it?

and if you put a conductor (like an iron core, or currents of water vapour, or a charged ion layer insulated from the ground, or other) in the way of a moving magnetic field then won't electrical power be induced into the conductor from the current.

Apologies again if this falls at an elementary hurdle, but surely the electrical power in the 'current' that is the 'solar wind' must be mind-boggling

You mean this?

Giant space tornadoes drive the northern lights

http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=8181

Indeed mind-boggling

[Kapriel]

It's fairly speculative at the moment, but I would like to introduce the following concept for consideration and to request opinions from all of you who might be interested:

As has been noted here in the past, there are serious problems with plate tectonic theory. I don't want to list them all in this post, but an excellent summary of some of these issues has been written by David Pratt, and can be found here:http://davidpratt.info/tecto.htm

I have some ideas for an EU-related model that explains the formation of the continents and activity along those so-called plate boundaries. It has nothing to do with an expanding earth, by the way, I should say that up front.

Simply put, the edges of the so-called plates where mountain ranges appear might be regions where material has been contracted, or drawn together (like a muscle), beneath the surface. It has been noted that parallel to areas of uplift (mountains etc), trenches or deep valleys also appear. For example, the Basin and Range complex of North America is believed to have been a series of fault-blocks created by the repeated stretching or spreading apart of the ground, leaving the blocks to drop down into the breaches. In other words, the mountain chains that run alongside these basins are simply the areas where material has been drawn-together, and the basins are the regions where the material was drawn from, or the landscape has been stretched to accommodate this 'gathering together" of material.

A "gathering" of material might also explain how granite forms underground, and why it intrudes nearly everything it touches. Granite, contrary to popular belief, is not actually a "basement" rock. Granite houses most of all the mineral wealth of the world, much of which is gathered into veins, plutons, and shields. Granite might possibly be the only source for radioactive materials. What kind of force could make that possible? Certainly not plate tectonics.

So while no tectonic plates need be inferred here, a mechanism for gathering and stretching needs to be identified. I can't help but think that the EU theory holds the answer to this, as it does for most current scientific mysteries. In Peratt's papers I've seen diagrams of the shape the plasma-sock takes are it surrounds the earth, and it tends to twist to the east as it approaches the south pole. The continental shapes also follow this trend.

Though tracing electricity through the ground has so-far proven impossible to do (telluric currents, almost impossible to find, are a great example of this failure), I think an electric potential resides within the rock, connected to the plasma sphere of the Earth, and which gathers stored strength until the day a circuit can be completed. At this point, the current overwhelms the circuit and the breakers are tripped, forcing faults to break open, or to slide against one another. It's not the way charge is stored that interests me, per se, as Fruend has illuminated that already for us, but the way the pathways for this charge are laid out, and maintained through the millions of years of Earth's existence, in practically perfect fidelity. Those pathways are dictated by the electrical relationships between the Earth itself and those in the solar system, which is why they seldom change.

In other words, the gathering/stretching of the land is not a randomly located phenomenon. It only happens in places where it has happened before. Actually, that's not quite true: it happens parallel/adjacent to places where it happened before. This mechanism, whatever it might be, "scoots itself over" periodically, and then continues as before. It's possible that in keeping with the "faults as circuit breakers" model, these regions of activity lie adjacent to one another because the breakers, once tripped, cannot be reused-- and so close, parallel pathways are set up next to the old. "Workarounds", as it were.

A few major adjustments have happened, three I can think of in particular, which might have been directly tied to changes in the plasma polar column, as well. I don't think I will go into the details of that here, unless asked, as it's rather hard to explain.

However, as mentioned before, long lines of batholiths form up right next to long lines of volcanoes, for instance, but not directly beneath. Coastlines formed parallel to these. Does this sound like random crashing together of drifting continents? The idea of randomly drifting continents is so absurd to me, I can't believe others have any faith in it. Crushing plates together cannot produce mountains that lie far inland, while leaving the continental shelves in tact. There are too many problems with that theory to list, but some are pertinent to this post so I should probably touch on them here.

Continental plates (if they exist) do not move in synchronicity with their edges. These edges are the active zones, while the remaining areas are relatively motionless. For me, this indicates that there are not plates at all, per se, but rather lines of activity which are thought to outline plates but which in reality outline the pathways of electricity throughout the crust, as the crust is acted upon by changes in the Earth's electrical environment (such as the passage of a comet, or the number and intensity of sun-spots).

Also, volcanic and earthquake activity are very shallow phenomena. Below a certain depth (I think it's around 700 km, the furthest limit of deep-focus quakes) this activity cannot be measured. Progressive change over the years along island-arcs, from basaltic lavas to more granitic lavas, coupled with the absence of granitic eruptions outside of continental masses, leads me to believe that shallow crustal re-melting accounts for lavas that come to the surface in volcanic eruptions, and that neither deep magma chambers nor conduits through to the mantle have anything to do with it. (note: Mt St Helens in Washington State,USA is a good example: the original volcanic chain was an island arc made of the usual basalt lavas. Later this region was raised up and became dry ground. Erosion, deposition of sediments, chemical and metamorphic alterations etc. created a supply of differentiated materials that would later become rhyolites and dacites when re-melted and erupted as the current Mt St Helens. These two volcano chains lie closely adjacent to one another, at times over-lapping, and part of what was tossed out by Mt St Helens in recent years can be directly traced to the older basalt of the island arc chain. Anyone who has visited the Ape Cave lava tubes, just south of MSH, will be able to see these ancient basaltic flows.)

Another point in favor of shallow activity comes from the San Andreas fault system. The surface of the ground doesn't move (until the quake starts), but at a certain depth, the motion between layers is quite rapid and continuous. Earthquake ruptures force the surface to catch up with what is going on underground. The difference between the two is measured as "strain". Whether electrical currents cause these events, or are a by-product of this strain, I really can't say. But electrical currents are definitely involved, at the end.

The mantle cannot conduct electricity. Perhaps this is why most of the electrical events (earthquakes and volcanic eruptions) are of shallow origin.

I'd like to know what others think of this theory. Either for or against, it's all good.

[Lloyd]

* You may recall my views from the thread, Breakthrough on How the Continents Divided at http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... =10&t=1462. I think Shock Dynamics, with help from EU additions, answers all of the questions well. The site for it is http://newgeology.us.
* The mountain ranges throughout the world seem to show plenty of evidence of folding, overthrusting etc, surely due to horizontal compression. Instead of a slow drift of continents, shock dynamics posits a large impact, which I say was electrical, that broke the continents apart and caused them to slide over the plasma moho layer, raising mountains at continental boundaries mainly, from the initial impact shock and from friction when the sliding slowed down enough.
* I don't recall if I mentioned it in that thread or another, but Juergens suggested once that granite rock was initially sedimentary rock that suffered electrical breakdown. I think the continents are mostly granite under the sedimentary rock strata. The latter averages about 2 miles deep, I think, but granite seems to be tens of miles deep in the continents. Granite contains water, whereas I don't think basalt or gabbro do.

[Kapriel]

Hi Lloyd-
Yes I remember that thread, although this is an entirely different theory I am presenting. But thank you for the suggestions.

As for granite: it tends to intrude whatever rock happened to be there first, so in most cases it was something of a late-comer. I've heard the granite-from-sedimentary-rock theory before, too, and it's interesting. However at least with the larger igneous provinces, both granitic types and basaltic types, probably had the same kind of genesis event.

[seasmith]

Fwiw,
considering the ubiquity, variety and depths of the Granites, my favorite theory is that
granite is the metamorphed transitional crust remaining,
after the breakdown of the primal silicon shell, intrusion of the raw pyroclastics and deposition of the sediments.
Granites are still forming and breaking down, as indicated by deep drill samples.

Just an hypothesis of course.
s

[mharratsc]

Kapriel-

I really have no theories myself and I'm no expert, but I find your argument very sound and the presentation is very appealing. I've stated a pet theory of mine that fault lines are nothing but circuit pathways, and that certainly ties in to Wal Thornhill quipping that earthquakes are underground 'thunder' (I cannot remember where I saw him state that).
I've stated before that I do not believe in a 'molten core', and I've stated previously that if you run enough current through any dielectric you will melt it- and that is what I believe volcanic activity to be- discharges between subterranean currents and the atmosphere.

I like where you're going with this!

[MattEU]

Continental plates (if they exist) do not move in synchronicity with their edges. These edges are the active zones, while the remaining areas are relatively motionless. For me, this indicates that there are not plates at all, per se, but rather lines of activity which are thought to outline plates but which in reality outline the pathways of electricity throughout the crust, as the crust is acted upon by changes in the Earth's electrical environment (such as the passage of a comet, or the number and intensity of sun-spots).

thank you Kapriel, i had never thought of it like that. just goes to show how much i got to unlearn. considering i think everything is electric yet i had never thought or read about this idea.

so it would help explain the ring of fire and volcanoes around the world

if the "plates" are in fact electrical pathways then there should be other effects found there. having a look at the worlds ocean gyres and currents they seem to be related. the indian ocean gyre appears to circulate around a triple junction, much like an occluded front. the north atlantic gyre linked to the canary islands.


earths "plates" and ocean gyres

examples of currents that might be related or explained by those pathways are the north atlantic drift and the ones that had always puzzled me, the 2 beside india that go up and down.



now i dont know if this is still the case because its an old diagram but i always found this fascinating, there appears to be a plate boundary with an uncertain boundary.


the reason this diagram has a blacked out area is because i titled it "the Earths slide puzzle" when i used it somewhere else

[seasmith]

Kapriel wrote:

...the way the pathways for this charge are laid out, and maintained through the millions of years of Earth's existence, in practically perfect fidelity. Those pathways are dictated by the electrical relationships between the Earth itself and those in the solar system, which is why they seldom change.

Electrical faults make perfect sense, not the least because electricities are predominately surface-loving phenomena.

Now, might you flesh out your theory with the inclusion of those long pesky mid-oceans ridges/trenches (which don't seem to show much granite) ?

Muy gracias,
s

[seasmith]

?
Condenser / Transformer getting a little depleted ?


Puzzling Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere

"This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," says John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). "It's a Space Age record."
The collapse happened during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009—a fact which comes as little surprise to researchers. The thermosphere always cools and contracts when solar activity is low. In this case, however, the magnitude of the collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.
"Something is going on that we do not understand," says Emmert.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... rmosphere/

[redeye]

If the Earth's atmosphere is actually a plasma sheath wouldn't this contraction be expected in a deep solar minimum? Is there a similar expansion during the Solar maximum?

Cheers!

[Dragoneye]

MattEU, your idea of earth as a transformer is quite intriguing. I've kicked around the idea of the earth functioning solely as a resistor but it failed on too many levels. I've also kicked around the idea of earth as a capacitor and it "seems" to work on many levels.

Your idea of earth as a transformer also seems to work on so many levels. I would offer a suggestion though as it appears the universe has determined the toroidal form to be most efficient for conducting and utilizing it's electricity. Perhaps that true of the transformer idea also.

the forms of earth's magnetic lines would appear to support the toroidal transformer concept. Of course, here is where we venture into the unproven yet again. In order for the earth to be a toroidal transformer it would assume that the center of the earth is hollow like a geode. Any toroidal transformer I have used is hollow in the center and commonly referred to as an air core transformer.

Air core transformers are also quite useful as chokes in that they "exclude" unwanted radiative frequencies. These types of transformers are often used in audio and radio circuits.

Unfortunately, I do not know if a toroidal transformer could explain the weather bands as these move perpendicular to the flow of energy if the earth was a toroidal. However, like you, I am no expert in the field of transformers. There may be some other explanation or perhaps the earth is like some sort of hybrid transformer.

Anyway, welcome! I like your site, and thanks for bringing this intriguing idea here and I'll check back on this thread from time to time to see if there are any further developments.

[jjohnson]

MattEU, what would happen if you add in Earth's two Van Allen belts, which are concentric plasmas circulating equatorially, one being largely electrons and the other positive ions? In a transformer you usually have a primary and a secondary winding. What elements in your present model represent those two windings?

Re: the Earth's iron core — it was inferred to be iron because for a long time iron was the magnetic material, and a magnetic field was measured on the Earth's surface. How do we know it isn't nickel, or cobalt samarium or neodymium or a copper-based semiconductor or something else? We don't, in a word. It is an assumption, or possibly an inference. We can neither prove nor disprove it as that area is not accessible to assay using present technology, so I guess it could be said to be a belief of many if not most mainstream scientists and and every kid who's had fifth grade science. Science is not based on belief systems, remember. Call it what it is.

Lest we forget; lest we forget! (Kipling).

Jim

[Kapriel]

Thanks very much for the replies.

Seasmith: I like that theory, too, though "metamorphosed" might be the wrong word. Studies have been done in recent years to test that hypothesis, but in the places where you'd expect to find gradations of metamorphic facies (moving, for instance, from the closest point of contact towards the furthest point), those expectations were not met. The claims made by one research group, in particular, and which led to the formation of that theory I think it was back in the 70's, have more recently been reviewed and found to be inaccurate in that respect.

Granite plutons are interesting because of the uniform distribution of minerals, almost as though they'd been mixed in solution before becoming rock, and that's exactly what we'd expect from an igneous rock that was melted at depth and cooled slowly over time. But there are other aspects that seem to discount that possibility. For instance, there are difficulties with idea that a uniform magma chamber lying beneath the continental crust can give up such a diversity of granite types through the process of fractional crystallization. Unless the idea of a fluid mantle is given up in favor of smaller pockets of mantle material (which would mean giving up the whole floating-plates concept), this doesn't work.The trouble is that the granite plutons are just so huge, traversing entire continents. Small-scale magma chambers can't account for the long chains of flood-ignimbrites and buried granite plutons. Some researchers have even suggested a moving mantle stream that changes in chemistry as it travels, because they have no other way to account for this. This is one very good reason to think that the actual melting occurs very shallowly, and does not originate in the mantle at all.

It's a fine mystery, also, when you think that in order to go from sandstone to granite (say for instance through metamorphic processes) you'd have to stop first and insert some radioactive elements, some gold and other precious or heavy metals, and so on. Interesting how quartzite, a metamorphic rock, is found alongside gold veins in Colorado, and is used as an indicator for gold-miners. So you have metamorphic rock lying in nice neat lines totally encased in igneous rock (granite), and parallel to gold veins.

I do believe granite to be igneous, though not in the traditional way. And I don't believe that the Earth, currently, is capable of making granite. If electrical charge melts sedimentary rock and transforms it into granite beneath the surface, then we no longer have the capability of doing that. Electrically we don't have the power anymore, and if we did I don't think we could say it was concentrated at the same depths it once was. Granite is not the oldest rock on earth, but it's much older than many other kinds of rock, such as flood basalts that can be found overlying or intruding granite in many places. I have been playing with the idea that the depth of melting is related to the era in which the rock was formed. As MattEU mentions in his website, the Earth is many-layered, and each layer conducts differently.

I think certain circumstances lead up to charge being concentrated at different levels, both in the Earth itself and in its various atmospheres. If Earth were a comet entering the sun's sphere of influence from deep space, for example, it's corona would grow and contract depending on the distance from the sun (as it seeks to regulate the amount of charge it takes in). This kind of simple fluctuation in electrical capacitance might explain why granite is a shallow-melt igneous rock, and basalt a deeper one (i.e. originating in deep rifts or from mantle plumes).

Also, there is the element of water in granite---lots of sea-water. Basalts don't usually incorporate much water, though you'd think they would, especially those forming up currently along the oceanic ridges. Basaltic lavas do appear to come from nice deep magma. But granite, I believe, is a marker from a more electrical era in Earth's past. And if this is the case, then granite should look like a palm-print from that era. Whatever electrical influences there might have been, should have left a trail tracing the pathway of that influence that should be as recognizable as a snail-trail across a rock.

Finally I would mention the radioactive element distribution in granites. Radioactive elements have been found as a result of explosive events (Tunguska, nuclear-bomb detonation sites, and related laboratory experiments). Some scientists have suggested transmutation of elements occurs as a result of high-energy impacts (if you'd like this reference, let me know). I think we're dealing with something high-energy, like a shock wave, but at the same time something that isn't quite at the surface, and is fairly long-lived.