- Photo Caption: Hadley Rille on
the moon, a long meandering channel, spans some 125 kilometers (75 miles).
On the right, a close-up look at a small section of Hadley.
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- The surface of the moon is replete with
long channels or grooves that continue to create unsolved puzzles and contradictions
for geologists. Every traditional theory, when tested against the photographic
evidence, has failed.
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- It has now been more than thirty years
since the Apollo missions produced voluminous and compelling images of
the lunar surface, and it is clear that theory has not kept pace with the
unanswered questions.
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- To make our point, we have emphasized
the most prominent lunar features, sufficiently documented photographically
to place certain details beyond doubt. We considered the most famous lunar
crater Tycho (Link: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060308crater.htm).
We considered the moon's most prominent crater, Aristarchus (Link: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060310crater.htm).
We also looked at the spectacular Schroeter's Valley, a "sinuous rille"
with many lesser counterparts lying on the lunar maria.
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- Another channel that gained much attention
during the Apollo missions is Hadley Rille (pictured above), explored by
the Apollo 15 astronauts in 1971. The channel winds across some 125 kilometers
(75 miles) of lunar maria. It is almost 400 meters deep (1300 feet, or
one quarter mile) in places, and almost 1500 meters (one mile) wide at
its widest point. Planetary scientists often say that it was formed by
molten lava, and they draw comparisons to lava channels in Hawaii. But
the differences between the two are so profound as to render such comparisons
meaningless.
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- Many have suggested that Hadley is a
"collapsed lava tube", something much different from an empty
surface channel of lava. As flowing lava cools, it will begin to develop
a crust, and eventually a stationary "roof" may form over it.
A lava tube has the advantage that it enables lava to retain its heat as
it flows underground, thereby covering greater distance and collecting
less debris from surface cooling. The flowing lava can produce relatively
continuous and smooth walls, while a surface channel of lava, because it
is continually creating its own obstructions by cooling, with subsequent
overflow, will typically meander chaotically across its own debris field.
Hadley does not show this appearance at all. (Compare the lava rivers here,
Link: http://www.solarviews.com/cap/volc/lavachan.htm and here, Link: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/hawaiivolcanoes/
slidespage
- s/slide_09.html).
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- On Earth we know that the collapse of
lava tube roofs is not uncommon, and the area collapsed will be a rubble-filled
depression. When the European Space Agency's Smart 1 spacecraft took an
image of Hadley, the popular science website Universe Today reported that
Hadley is "probably a collapsed lava tube".
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- But no lava tube on Earth comes close
to such dimensions, and that is only the beginning of the problem. The
rubble left from a collapsed lava roof is impossible to miss. (Link: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/041011lava-tubes.htm)
And we've seen enough of Hadley in high resolution to categorically exclude
the lava tube interpretation. As shown by the close-up of a section of
Hadley above (right), there is no rubble, no collapsed roof. Hadley is
an empty, sharply-cut channel. Whatever once lay within the cavernous depths
of Hadley is no longer there.
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- In recent years some theorists have drifted
back toward the idea of flowing rivers of lava on the lunar surface. But
rivers of lava do not produce a narrow secondary rille constituted from
a stream of craters along the length of the larger rille (e.g., Schroeter's
Valley). Over comparatively short distances and times, rivers of lava produce
obstructing cooled material and overflow their banks to produce layers
of oozing material that freezes in place and whose source is obvious. They
repeatedly change course, and undercut the surface along the walls of new
pathways, leaving in their wake a vivid display of their erratic behavior.
(See pictures noted above). Hadley reveals no such behavior, retaining
consistent width over great distances, with parallel sides, while lava
rivers show just the reverse. Hadley reveals no explicit overflow or outflow.
It is just an empty channel that, enigmatically, grows more narrow as it
meanders across a relatively flat valley floor.
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- Significantly, well-qualified specialists
acknowledged the definitive failure of the common theory more than thirty-five
years ago. In 1970, University of Pittsburgh scientists Bruce Hapke and
Benn Greenspan, based on Lunar-Orbiter photographs showing strings of craters
along the floors of lunar rilles, acknowledged that such craters could
not all be impact craters and must have something to do with the formation
of the rilles. The direct evidence thus contradicts "those hypotheses
for the origin of sinuous rilles by simple down-cutting by a moving fluid."
(Report published in EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union (51),
1970.)
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- One explanation of Hadley and other lunar
rilles has yet to be considered by planetary scientists. It is the one
explanation that does not produce contradictions, or conflict in any way
with what we see on the moon. Engineer Ralph Juergens, who investigated
a new approach to sinuous rilles, suggested in 1974 that they are the effects
of "electrical discharge". Juergens' work, in turn, helped to
inspire the lifelong explorations of today's leading electrical theorist,
Wallace Thornhill, who has taken the investigation into new areas of research
opened up by more recent explorations of our planetary neighbors.
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- Juergens undertook a dispassionate and
meticulous comparison of explanations offered for sinuous rilles. He identified
the logical tests and found that prior theories discussed by planetary
scientists failed. And most failed on grounds that rationally exclude the
proposed explanation. (We have placed Juergens comparative chart here.
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- Juergens knew that an electric discharge
of the magnitude implied would require an approaching charged body -- and
not a just a small rock but another planet or moon. "The electric
field between anode and cathode [positively and negatively charged bodies]
must build to an intensity great enough to "pull" electrons from
the cathode by sheer force, ...tearing electrons from non-conducting lunar
crustal materials and in numbers sufficient to trigger an interplanetary
discharge".
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- The events as he envisioned them would
begin with an electrical breakdown comparable to that of an exploding capacitor,
as electrons begin to dissociate from their atoms to become the vehicles
of an ensuing discharge. The breakdown point will be a region of maximum
stress, most likely a local prominence.
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- "In a flash, the tiny breakdown
point becomes a breakdown path propagating itself outward from the starting
point, turning this way and that as the intense field at its tip probes
for weaknesses in the rock strata". Breakdown generates heat and explosively
expanding plasma beneath the surface. In much the same manner that a powerful
lightning strike can excavate a trench, the breakdown channel "tears
hundreds of kilometers across the lunar surface at lightning speed".
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- Then, as the onrushing electrons reach
the local high point the resulting electric surge blasts out a large crater.
At virtually the same time, more distant electrons along the breakdown
path, encountering an electric field stronger than that of the underground
path, "blast upward short of the main terminus, creating secondary
on-channel craters at numerous points."
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- Juergens hypothesis was based on secure
knowledge of the behavior of electric arcs. The fundamental mechanics can
and have been verified in the laboratory. (See, for example, the path of
the electric arc shown here, with a secondary rille or crater-stream running
down the main channel).
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- The hypothesis can also be systematically
weighed against the present library of data on the lunar surface, including
the profusion of glassy spheres in Hadley Rille, and the anomalous presence
of remanent magnetism. And here nothing will prove more compelling than
the essential link of rille-producing activity to crater-producing activity
-- the very consideration that marked the failure of the lava-channel and
collapsed-lava-tube hypotheses.
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- Photo Credit: NASA
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