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The official geological
history of the planet Mars
is a confused and murky tale filled with
contradictions and shifting narratives.
Astonishing scientific data
obtained in the last decade
has only deepened the
storytellers' confusion.
At the recent 8th international
conference on Mars,
leading scientists
from around the world
discussed the possible solutions
to the Martian puzzles.
The July 24th edition
of the journal Nature
outlined some of the problems
facing Mars investigators.
"Mars researchers have found it
increasingly hard to explain
how the planet might have stayed
warm and wet in its early history.
"If, billions of years ago,
the Martian atmosphere
had consisted mostly of carbon
dioxide as scientists suspect,
it would not have kept the planet
warm enough for liquid water to exist
for long periods of time."
The scientists are now
speculating that Mars
may have once been similar
to Antarctica today.
But as planetary geologist
James Head summarizes,
"This is completely different than
what we thought about before."
Mars geologist Phil
Christensen also confesses,
"There's a lot of knowledge and
not so much understanding."
We asked Thunderbolts picture of the
day managing editor, Stephen Smith,
for an overview of the Mars' geological
mysteries beginning with the question,
why do planetary scientists' theories about
Mars continue to change so dramatically?
The simple answer is that there are
more instruments orbiting Mars
as well as more Landers
on the surface.
Orbital cameras show them a planet with
structures that look like those found on Earth.
They use theories that were developed
to explain what's found here
and then they transfer those
theories into other environments.
The Phoenix mission for instance,
was sent to Mars in 2007
and landed in the Martian
northern latitudes.
One of the experiments it performed was
to dig several trenches in the regolith
to see what could be discovered a
few inches beneath the surface.
The trenches showed them white chunks of
something that NASA immediately stated
was frozen water ice.
And after several hours the
white chunks disappeared,
which the mission team announced was because
atmospheric pressure is so low on Mars
that the ice sublimed directly into
vapour without leaving any liquid traces.
And that could be what happened.
One problem with the explanation is
that when Phoenix landed on Mars,
it had an electronic probe that was
used to penetrate the sandy soil.
If water was located close to the surface
so that the trenches could dig up ice,
the probe should have
detected an electric current
because the water beneath the surface
would have conducted electricity.
Since the probe didn't
detect an electric current,
it actually returned a
completely null-reading.
It suggests to me that the ice was
actually frozen carbon dioxide.
And indeed, Phoenix expired when it
was buried in almost 9 m of dry ice
which is frozen carbon dioxide,
during the Martian winter.
Also, they detect what
they think is water vapor
outgassing from different
regions on Mars
and personally, what I
think they're seeing
is the same thing that they
think they're seeing on comets.
Many of my Picture Of the Day articles
expand on what Wal Thornhill
has explained about water
supposedly detected around comets.
What happens is that the solar
wind, mostly hydrogen nuclei,
combines with the ionized
oxygen from a comet
and that creates
hydroxyl molecules.
So the same thing happens with Mars,
since Mars has no magnetic field,
it has virtually no resistance to the solar
wind impinging directly on its surface.
And since there's abundant
carbon dioxide on Mars,
that's what comprises
most of its atmosphere.
The same thing occurs
there as on comets.
The solar wind ions combined with ionized
oxygen atoms create hydroxyl compounds.
The energy for that chemistry is provided by the
electrified environment that exists on Mars.
And listeners should familiarize themselves
with Wal's holoscience.com article called
'First Evidence of Comet Ice - What
Does it Mean?', for more information.
On the Martian surface, NASA sees
river channels and other features
that flowing water
supposedly created.
However, as explained in the documentary
film "The Lightning Scarred Planet Mars",
countless of these features defy such
reasoning under close inspection.
The gigantic canyons on Mars, such as
Valles Marineris and Tractus Catena,
exhibit characteristics
that preclude water.
There aren't any deltas, the
bottoms of the canyons are flat
and there's no evidence
that water cut them.
Also the canyons and trenches have steep
cliffs rising vertically from the bottoms
with evidence that fulgurites or
formations created by lightning,
are embedded in
the canyon walls.
In these two cases though, the lightning
must have been thousands of times
more powerful than anything on
Earth or anything seen on Mars.
Another thing to consider is
the so-called water flows
seen on the edges of gullies as
well as the walls of some craters.
And according to Allan Treiman in the
Journal of Geophysical Research,
about as mainstream a scientific
journal as you can get, he said,
"The morphology and distribution of gullies
on Martian slopes have been attributed
to the action of liquid water at the
surface and in the near subsurface.
However, evidence for involvement
of water was circumstantial
and by analogy with Earthly landforms
that are mediated by liquid water.
Here, it is shown that dry
flows of eolian dust or silt
can have all the geological
features observed in the gullies,
and that their spatial
distribution on Mars
is consistent with atmosphere
circulation models.
Many details of this hypothesis
remain to be investigated,
but it is wholly consistent with
earlier inferences and interpretations
of the present-day
Martian environment:
no liquid water, and dominated
by eolian processes."
In other words, what Allan Treiman is
saying is that dry avalanches of dust
as well as wind action, are
responsible for features
that are constantly highlighted in
various publications as water-based.
Mars displays a massive
hemispheric dichotomy
with his southern hemisphere
saturated with craters
and the northern hemisphere excavated up to
6 miles deep with remarkably few craters.
With meteor bombardment,
one would expect
that craters would be randomly
distributed on the surface.
After all, why would meteors
preferentially strike
one face of a planet or
a moon over another.
The northern hemisphere of Mars
with its central uplift region,
could be considered the largest
crater in the solar system.
Since electricity tends to follow
spatial transmission lines
called Birkeland currents that are
wrapped in electromagnetic fields,
if the discharge at the
North Pole of Mars
was the result of an external
electric field or fields
and the electrified object or plasma
phenomenon was aligned with the pole,
then that's where the
arc would make contact.
And since it would have
enveloped the planet
as material was excavated
from the north and ionized,
it would follow the field around the
South Pole and deposit material there
and that indeed is
what is seen on Mars.
Known processes in electrical
engineering and plasma science
could account for much of the
baffling Martian geology.
What are some of the best clues that
electrical laboratory experiments
might provide for planetary
scientists in the future?
Supposing that exogeologists
conduct these experiments
which in my mind is doubtful,
I suggest that they use
high-energy electric discharges
in various configurations
on a variety of materials.
Some experimenters have already done
research using relatively low power
because of the many dangers from high-
frequency, high-amperage electrical devices.
Powerful arcs can generate
extreme ultraviolet light
or even X-rays that are deleterious
of seen without shielding
or welders' goggles
at the very least.
Goggles are no good against X-rays though,
only lead shielding is sufficient.
University labs are
about the only places
where such energetic experiments
might be conducted safely.
I would also suggest
that ferrohydrodynamics
be considered as part
of their repertoire.
Some hobbyists and scientists
are using ferrofluids to
explore the activity of electric
magnetic fields on magnetically
sensitive materials
like nano-particles of iron
suspended in viscous fluids.
Also, how magnetic fields interact
with finely divided iron oxide dust
should be explored since the surface
of Mars is covered with iron oxides
in the form of
hematite and magnetite.
If electrical events on Mars are ever considered
to have taken place in the recent past,
many problems and difficult
explanations might be resolved.
For continuous updates on Space
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