Aug 14, 2019
Is planet nine among them?
NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft on January 19, 2006 on a mission to explore the outer Solar System, including Pluto, Charon and many Kuiper Belt Objects.
On July 14, 2015 New Horizons flew by Pluto at a distance of 9656 kilometers. Although it has been four years since the encounter with Pluto, its geology continues to pose “mysteries” and “processes that have yet to be understood.” Complex chains of craters and melted pits extend outward from terraced depressions. Flat bottoms and vertical sidewalls are signs of electric discharge machining. Indeed, the indications are that electrically active phenomena sculpted Pluto’s surface.
There is little electrical connection between Pluto and the Sun because Pluto has no magnetosphere, so no shield between it and solar wind ions. Similar to other rocky planet-sized bodies, it sports a long tail composed of heavier, ionized atmospheric gases―primarily methane, with a “thin” magnetopause. The so-called “Plutopause” is the boundary region between solar plasma and Pluto’s feeble electromagnetic field, so its equipotential surface is small.
Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet in the same category as Mars, for example. Instead, it is now called a dwarf planet, similar to Kuiper Belt Objects like Eris and Sedna. The Kuiper Belt theory is the creation of astronomer Kenneth Edgeworth from Ireland and also separately by American astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Sometimes known as “trans-Neptunian Objects”, the first KBO was discovered in 1992.
Eris is the largest KBO, approximately 5% larger than Pluto, and is located 1.4 trillion kilometers from the Sun. Eris has its own small moon called Dysnomia. Quaoar is about 6 billion kilometers from the Sun and revolves in the region of the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto’s orbit. Quaoar is the third largest KBO, half the size of Pluto and about as large as Pluto’s moon Charon. The fourth largest KBO yet discovered is Varuna, about 40% as large as Pluto.
Sedna was discovered in an orbit that is much farther out than the grouping that includes Eris, Quaoar and Varuna. Sedna is large, about as big as Pluto, but it reaches more than 1 trillion kilometers from the Sun in an eccentric orbit, making it too far away to technically be considered a KBO. The theory has yet to accommodate Sedna.
An interesting characteristic of the various dwarf planets is that they are colorful. One such object, Snow White, contrary to its name, is reddish in color. Pluto is brownish-yellow, while Eris is green.
In a plasma cosmogony hypothesis, the stars are formed when cosmic Birkeland currents twist around one another, creating z-pinch regions that compress the plasma into a solid. Laboratory experiments have shown that such compression zones are the most likely candidates for star formation and not collapsing nebulae. When stars are born, they are probably under extreme electrical stress. In that case, they will split into two or more daughter stars, thereby equalizing their electrical potential.
Electric Universe advocate, Wal Thornhill wrote:
“The fission process is repeated in further electrical disturbances by flaring red dwarfs and gas giant planets ejecting rocky and icy planets, moons, comets, asteroids and meteorites. Planetary systems may also be acquired over time by electrical capture of independent interstellar bodies such as dim brown dwarf stars. That seems the best explanation for our ‘fruit salad’ of a solar system.”
Stephen Smith
The Thunderbolts Picture of the Day is generously supported by the Mainwaring Archive Foundation.
