Xaturn

X-ray image of Saturn

An X-ray image of Saturn and its rings. Credit: NASA/U. Hamburg/J.Ness et al

 

Nov 30, 2015

Both Saturn’s body and its rings are so electrically active that they shine in X-ray light.

“Saturn is more like the Sun than the Earth.”
— Wal Thornhill

Almost everyone knows that one should not look directly into the flame of an arc welder, since the plasma at the tip is so hot that it emits extreme ultraviolet light, which can damage the retina. Whenever X-rays are used to look inside the body, sensitive areas are shielded because the wavelengths are so energetic that they can ionize soft tissues, possibly destroying them.

It seems that a visit to Saturn might require one to don not only a spacesuit, but one able to withstand fairly hard radiation.

The plasmasphere of Saturn is an electrical environment, causing everything from dark-mode plasma discharges, to gigantic lighting bolts that flash across the ring plane. When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft got close enough to finally start observing Saturn, planetary scientists were shocked to discover lightning of immense power, up to a million times more powerful than anything on Earth.

However, the 90 megawatts of X-rays coming from the planet were not attributed to its electrical nature. Instead, Saturn’s atmosphere is said to reflect X-rays from the Sun, although the science team admitted when the discovery was made that the intensity of the “reflections” was “surprising.” The reason it was so surprising is that they ignored the fact that planets with magnetic fields can capture ionized particles to form a giant electrified magnetosphere.

In the past, NASA scientists reported that Enceladus, a small moon that orbits within Saturn’s ring plane, causes Saturn’s magnetosphere to bend. According to the report, the effect is due to a flow of electric charge that occurs when particles from Enceladus interact with the magnetosphere of Saturn. A demonstrable electrical effect is occurring between Saturn and Enceladus.

Once conventional science sees the question in electrical terms, the many puzzles with which they are confronted will become clear. The “electric Sun” is what drives the energetic phenomena on Saturn, as well as on its moon Enceladus and the other planets.

Saturn emits more energy than it receives: 2.3 times more, so it is being powered by another source. It is also probable that the interior of the planet has its own heat. There is good evidence that Saturn once existed as an independent body from the Sun. As such, it would have received more energy in the recent past, its power source having since been usurped by the Sun.

Jupiter is similar to Saturn, discharging more energy than it receives from the Sun, although Saturn’s output is greater. One speculation is that super-cooled helium fell out of the atmosphere during Saturn’s formation. The resulting kinetic energy might have warmed up the core. However, the evidence suggests that Saturn was once of greater stature, but has subsequently been dethroned.

According to ancient legends, Saturn occupied a position of prominence in the sky. It was not the tiny pinprick of light that can be seen on dark nights. Rather, it was worshipped as the central luminary, the all-powerful Sun. If that was the case, then its current position in the Solar System is far removed from what it was.

Without going into details that are elaborated elsewhere, that disturbance and rearrangement of planets means that Saturn is the way it is not because of how it was conventionally formed, but because it is closer to being a star than it is to being a planet. Indeed, as our ancestors tell us, it was a star.

Stephen Smith

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