Layered ejecta craters

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.
Arcmode
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Joined: Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:45 pm

Layered ejecta craters

Unread post by Arcmode » Fri Oct 21, 2022 8:58 pm

Unlike the Moon and Mercury, Mars has thousands of layered ejecta craters, surrounded by lobate ejecta blankets. There are 9945 over 1.5 m diameter and one third of all craters >5km have ejecta.

There are three types - single layer, double layer and multiple layer. Their walls are often terraced. The image below shows the three types.

https://freeimage.host/i/DHxk6F

Note that the multiple ejecta crater is also the most complex.

Geologists know impact does not create that kind of melting so they insist on subsurface volatiles to get the material to flow like mud. Topography of layers is not consistent with ballistic emplacement and layers will flow around objects on the surface, suggesting a ground hugging flow. Radial grooves along the surface of layers originating at the rim are often present, crossing layer boundaries and sometimes extending onto the surrounding terrain.

Various mechanisms have been proposed for the presence of multiple ejecta layers, such as secondary landslides from rim material and multiple varying subsurface layers to provide multiple separate ejecta from a single impact, but these are ad hoc.

Electric discharge machining can account for all characteristics of layered ejecta craters. An arc discharge would readily fluidise the surface. Changes in the magnetic field surrounding an arc discharge can cause the arc to vary in shape, current density, and other characteristics as it impinges on a surface, while continuing to machine it. In the link below a welding arc manipulated by magnets changed shape from cylindrical to elliptical while increasing its current density, achieving greater penetration. This behavior would account for both the terracing with varying depths and the multiple ejecta blankets as the arc pulsed with successive changes in its magnetic field. Each change to the arc’s shape and power would create its own rim with a diameter matching the arc’s, a depth commensurate with its power, and its own ejecta blanket with proportional mobility.

Electric arc shape and weld bead geometry analysis under the electromagnetic constriction and expansion effect
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 21-08064-5

The image below is of a double ejecta crater just east of Echus Chaos. Note the very circular outer rim and the more elliptical inner rim with a deeper pit.

https://freeimage.host/i/DHxRp4

Radial surface disturbances are an observed result of plasma discharge in the laboratory. The cause is potentially electro-aeolian, caused by the ionic wind associated with electric discharge that can drag neutral matter along with it. This plasma behaviour could account for the radial grooves found on ejecta layers, if the wind associated with the discharge flowed over the surface of the layers while they were fluid and flowing, creating grooves as it drew some of the material of the layer with it. It would also account for the grooves crossing multiple ejecta blankets and beyond, as it would be in operation throughout the cratering and ejecta layering process and its effect would not be limited to the layers themselves.

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