- Already the Cassini probe of Saturn's realm has returned
startling details about the gas giant and its largest moon Titan. These
are not the worlds that NASA scientists expected.
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- On October 15, 1997, NASA launched the Cassini spacecraft
toward the planet Saturn, perhaps the most enchanting body in the solar
system. Almost seven years later, on July 1, 2004, the spacecraft entered
an orbit around the gas giant.
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- Scientists had expressed hope that the 3.7 billion dollar
Cassini spacecraft would solve longstanding mysteries. But NASA spokesmen
had expressed similar hopes for the Galileo mission to Jupiter several
years earlier, and if that experience is any indication of what to expect,
surprising new mysteries will arise as old mysteries deepen in Cassini's
extended visit to Saturn.
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- The mysteries have accumulated for a reason. A large
community of astronomers, astrophysicists and planetary geologists still
work under the spell of traditional theoretical models, formulated prior
to the discovery of the electric force in the heavens. These theorists
draw upon traditional "gravity-only" models when they speculate
on how stars and planets are formed. But while these models can get our
probes to their destination, they have neither predicted nor explained
the findings. Rather, from the moment of arrival, our space probes have
recorded the unexpected.
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- A new cosmology, based on the work of leading plasma
scientists in the twentieth century, offers a different view of the universe,
including our own little enclave in the Milky Way. In this view, it is
electricity that dominates the formative history of galaxies, stars, and
planets.
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- In the "electric universe," stars can be created
within a dusty plasma by the well-studied electromagnetic "pinch effect,"
a characteristic feature of cosmic electric discharges. Stars shine thereafter
as electric glow discharges. Electrical star formation may also involve
catastrophic instabilities, including fissioning, when a part of the star's
core may be expelled, giving birth to a binary or multiple star partner
or a close-orbiting gas giant planet. Gas giants may later repeat the process
on a smaller scale, expelling core material at intervals to form rings
and satellites. According to this model, satellites that escape the parent
to orbit the primary star become the rocky planets. Smaller debris from
the electrical transactions become asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
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- Obviously this electrical model is very different from
the present gravitational models. It has biological and evolutionary overtones.
Planets are born at intervals, and adjustments must be made for the new
arrivals. Some leave home and others remain. The ages and histories of
the family members will all be different. Astronomers who are bound by
conventional assumptions expected to find a simple gradation in the properties
of planets and moons-all in relation to distance from the center of gravity.
Nothing remotely answering to that prediction was ever discovered.
- Proponents of the electric universe are attentive to
historical and forensic evidence. They have reconstructed a story of stupendous
electrical events in the sky of our ancestors. By following the evidence
wherever it might lead, they concluded that the solar system itself was
unstable in earlier times. Planets once followed much different paths than
they do today, giving rise to violent electrical arcing between planets
and moons.
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- According to the authors of this reconstruction, the
catastrophic transition to the present order of the solar system was witnessed
by the sky-worshippers of antiquity. From this new vantage point, it is
possible not only to hear the messages of ancient witnesses clearly, but
also to compare these messages with plasma laboratory experiments and with
new data from space. A convergence of evidence enables the cosmic electricians
to predict the direction of discovery, including many surprises to conventional
theorists as Cassini sends its data back to earth.
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- Like the Sun, Saturn radiates X-rays strongly from near
its equator, though X-rays of such intensity were not expected from Saturn.
Saturn's X-ray spectrum is like the Sun's, and this fact led scientists
to suggest, improbably, that the X-rays from the Sun were being reflected
by Saturn's atmosphere. (Why, then, doesn't Jupiter reflect X-rays equatorially?
Its X-rays come from polar auroral discharges, not from a "reflection").
The hasty "explanation" requires that Saturn reflect X-rays 50-times
more efficiently than the Moon!
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- By comparing historical evidence with data on recently
discovered unusually-low-luminosity stars, Wallace Thornhill (www.holoscience.com)
has suggested that Saturn was formerly an independent brown dwarf star.
He predicts that Saturn will continue to perplex astronomers with stellar
characteristics. Saturn's X-rays are concentrated, like the Sun's, at low
latitudes. Voyager 2 also found an immense, hot doughnut of plasma encircling
Saturn that is believed to be the hottest place in the solar system, 300
times hotter than the solar corona! Saturn's atmosphere appears to rotate
faster at the equator than at high latitudes - just like the Sun's. More
similarities will emerge, Thornhill predicts.
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- In January, Cassini is due to relay information from
the Huygens probe as it descends to the surface of Saturn's largest moon,
Titan. Under the electric hypothesis Titan was likely born by electrical
expulsion from the proto-Saturnian brown dwarf. So it should be found to
have features in common with Venus, the planet that shows the most abundant
signs of geologically recent ejection. Already it is known that Titan has
the heaviest atmosphere after its sister, Venus.
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- Astronomers observe a continuous loss of methane from
Titan's atmosphere. Assuming a conventionally long geologic history of
the planets, they've also supposed that Titan's atmosphere is in equilibrium.
So they thought that a global ocean of methane would be found, continually
replenishing the observed losses. The electric view postulates no such
ocean, just remnant methane from recent ejection events in Saturn's domain.
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- Cosmic discharges are a copious source of neutrons and
are responsible for the production of heavy isotopes and short-lived radioisotopes
(elements altered by a change in the number of neutrons in their nucleus).
Thus, the abundance of the heavy isotope, nitrogen-15, in Titan's atmosphere
is probably due to electric discharge effects. Not surprisingly, Titan's
atmosphere reveals a whiff of the Venusian atmosphere, with carbon dioxide
and nitrogen as major constituents. Nor should we be surprised that the
same elements appear in Mars' thin atmosphere too.
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- Like Venus, surface temperatures are globally uniform
on Titan within a few degrees, a good indicator of recent electrical heating.
Conventional astronomers, who posit a "greenhouse effect" to
explain Venus's temperature, now do the same for Titan. But the electric
hypothesis challenges the entire idea of a Venus "greenhouse,"
attributing the high temperatures to that planet's recent electrical origin.
The same explanation likely applies to Titan. Like Venus, Titan seems not
to have a magnetic field and yet it has a distinct magnetotail (also like
Venus). Titan's electrical plasma interactions may therefore be compared
to those of Venus. Indeed, Titan shines on the dayside in ultraviolet light
too brightly to be explained by excitation from solar radiation.
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- Titan's surface features should also be compared to those
of Venus. Scientists tell us that Titan seems to have been "resurfaced"
because there is no evidence of the expected primordial cratering. The
same thing was said about Venus! Also a radar return from Titan was "of
a type that we would expect to get back from Venus." In the electrical
hypothesis, the similarity would be expected--a heavy atmosphere tends
to cause filamentation of cosmic electrical scars instead of large craters.
Such scars encircle Venus's equator in the form of rilles and spider-web-like
formations called "arachnoids."
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- We may expect similar features on Titan. In the first
close-up image of Titan's surface by Cassini a "Venusian-type"
dome was tentatively identified. We can also expect many flat-bottomed
valleys bordered by steep cliffs with scalloped edges-a common signature
of high-energy surface machining by electricity. And while planetary scientists
puzzle over the absence of craters, we predict that, as higher resolution
images of the surface are returned, many regions will reveal channels formed
of overlapping smaller craters and parallel grooves that can be expected
of discharge streamers raking across the surface.
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- Then there is the peculiarity of Saturn's third largest
moon, Iapetus. It sports a hemispheric difference as puzzling as that of
Mars. Its leading face in its orbit is "as dark as a freshly-tarred
street, and the trailing hemisphere and poles almost as bright as snow."
It shows an abundance of craters typical of electric discharge, implying
exchanges of cosmic thunderbolts with another body. The dark, reddish deposit
on the leading face will probably be found to have components similar to
the soils of Mars or Venus.
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- See other predictions, registered from December 27 to
31, 2004, at-
- www.thunderbolts.info Click on "Picture of the
Day" or "Archive".
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- See 25 "Electrifying Saturn" 08 August 2004
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=42gyu28p and
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- "Titan puzzles scientists" November 2004 http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=bh5fj7ap
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