Wrinkle ridges
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2022 10:11 am
Hi, I’m new here and I wanted to share some observations I’ve made along EU lines. I’m at uni studying geoscience. For a third year research project a supervisor agreed to my doing a project on Martian geology from an EU point of view. Pretty cool. He agreed, although he had never heard of EU, on the basis of some observations I made of the Martian geomorph that cannot be explained by standard processes.
I was hoping to post some of my observations here on the forum and get some feedback, in case I have misunderstood something or could otherwise benefit from more information, ideas etc. I also have some questions people might be able to answer. The images are a bit rough but I think they get the ideas across.
I’ll start with wrinkle ridges. I didn’t see any tpods or other articles or videos about these, but I haven’t seen everything on this forum or the Thunderbolts site so it might not be anything new.
I tried many times and in different ways to embed images in the post, but it kept saying it couldn't determine the dimensions of the image so I gave up and just used links.
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Wrinkle ridges are long sinuous ridges found on the Moon, Mercury, Mars and other moons and asteroids of the Solar System. See Figure 1. The standard explanation for these ridges is faulting and folding following contraction of the basaltic plains on which they occur. Despite viewing dozens of ridges in high resolutions, no obvious sign of faulting was observed.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDo19a
Figure 1. Wrinkle ridge field. Lunae Planum, Mars.
While they are described as sinuous in the literature, the morphology of these ridges is more accurately described as twisted and helical, morphologically very similar to deep space phenomena and terrestrial arcs composed of interacting filaments of plasma. See Figure 2.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDqb4e
Figure 2. Top – Martian wrinkle ridge. Middle – Laboratory arc discharge. Bottom – Veil Nebula. At every scale the same helically twisted filamentary morphology repeats.
Higher resolution imagery reveals helices within helices and self-similar morphology at varying scales. See Figure 3.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBwFe
Figure 3. Red lines - A smaller helix nested inside a larger one. Gray arrows – The same morphology on an even smaller scale, bound inside, and conforming with, the larger helix formation.
On a larger scale the ridges can be seen to come together and intertwine in the same way that the individual filaments intertwine within the ridges, creating a larger helix and again displaying the fractal expression of whatever agent created the formation. See Figure 4.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBvAx
Figure 4. Ridges come together and intertwine in a similar manner to the intertwining of individual ridge elements, an example of fractal scaling.
Figure 5 shows an example from Mercury in which the twin filaments of the ridge diverge and continue in different directions. This behavior indicates that the ridges are composed of two main filaments that are constructive of material in the space between them as they interact, and when separated continue to form their own ridges continuously without the second filament to form the opposite side.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBrMP
Figure 5. Ridges appear to be constructive of material in the space between them as they interact. Here the two sides separate and continue alone, forming one sided ridges.
This morphology of twisting and intertwining cannot be accounted for by standard geological processes known to be operating on Earth. Rock may sometimes be seen to have been twisted at some point in its formation, but this will not extend for hundreds of kilometers at surface as a distinct formation, be seen as a repeating pattern at varying scales within the formation, or as part of a wider field of interacting, helically twisted formations.
..............................
My question for anyone here who can answer it is: Would Marklund convection be a possible mechanism for these ridges forming, with the material being drawn in by the plasma filaments and then kind of ‘frozen’ in that shape as the current dissipates?
Thanks for reading
I was hoping to post some of my observations here on the forum and get some feedback, in case I have misunderstood something or could otherwise benefit from more information, ideas etc. I also have some questions people might be able to answer. The images are a bit rough but I think they get the ideas across.
I’ll start with wrinkle ridges. I didn’t see any tpods or other articles or videos about these, but I haven’t seen everything on this forum or the Thunderbolts site so it might not be anything new.
I tried many times and in different ways to embed images in the post, but it kept saying it couldn't determine the dimensions of the image so I gave up and just used links.
...................
Wrinkle ridges are long sinuous ridges found on the Moon, Mercury, Mars and other moons and asteroids of the Solar System. See Figure 1. The standard explanation for these ridges is faulting and folding following contraction of the basaltic plains on which they occur. Despite viewing dozens of ridges in high resolutions, no obvious sign of faulting was observed.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDo19a
Figure 1. Wrinkle ridge field. Lunae Planum, Mars.
While they are described as sinuous in the literature, the morphology of these ridges is more accurately described as twisted and helical, morphologically very similar to deep space phenomena and terrestrial arcs composed of interacting filaments of plasma. See Figure 2.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDqb4e
Figure 2. Top – Martian wrinkle ridge. Middle – Laboratory arc discharge. Bottom – Veil Nebula. At every scale the same helically twisted filamentary morphology repeats.
Higher resolution imagery reveals helices within helices and self-similar morphology at varying scales. See Figure 3.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBwFe
Figure 3. Red lines - A smaller helix nested inside a larger one. Gray arrows – The same morphology on an even smaller scale, bound inside, and conforming with, the larger helix formation.
On a larger scale the ridges can be seen to come together and intertwine in the same way that the individual filaments intertwine within the ridges, creating a larger helix and again displaying the fractal expression of whatever agent created the formation. See Figure 4.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBvAx
Figure 4. Ridges come together and intertwine in a similar manner to the intertwining of individual ridge elements, an example of fractal scaling.
Figure 5 shows an example from Mercury in which the twin filaments of the ridge diverge and continue in different directions. This behavior indicates that the ridges are composed of two main filaments that are constructive of material in the space between them as they interact, and when separated continue to form their own ridges continuously without the second filament to form the opposite side.
https://freeimage.host/i/QDBrMP
Figure 5. Ridges appear to be constructive of material in the space between them as they interact. Here the two sides separate and continue alone, forming one sided ridges.
This morphology of twisting and intertwining cannot be accounted for by standard geological processes known to be operating on Earth. Rock may sometimes be seen to have been twisted at some point in its formation, but this will not extend for hundreds of kilometers at surface as a distinct formation, be seen as a repeating pattern at varying scales within the formation, or as part of a wider field of interacting, helically twisted formations.
..............................
My question for anyone here who can answer it is: Would Marklund convection be a possible mechanism for these ridges forming, with the material being drawn in by the plasma filaments and then kind of ‘frozen’ in that shape as the current dissipates?
Thanks for reading