New Physics Supports Planetary Catastrophism by Wallace Thornhill Wallace Thornhill lives in Canberra, Australia. Discovering Velikovsky before entering Melbourne University, he began his interdisciplinary studies along with a BSc in physics. Alert to those scholars with pieces to the puzzle of planetary catastrophism, his passion is to assemble the 'big picture'. Summary The strongest conventional argument against planetary involvement in prehistoric catastrophes is that a Newtonian system should have some orbits showing evidence of recent encounters. It is argued that the fault in this argument lies in our misunderstanding of the nature of gravity. Evidence is presented that certain planets were much closer to the Earth in prehistory and the nature of that evidence lends support to a new model of gravity. The strongest conventional argument against planetary involvement in prehistoric catastrophes is that, if Venus once moved on an unstable path, we should expect its orbit to still show marked eccentricity - yet its orbital eccentricity is practically zero. What if our understanding of the nature of gravity, that force reputed to create order and stability in the solar system, is wrong? I will argue that this is indeed the case and that a new model of gravity has the capability of rapidly stabilising errant planetary orbits. There is also persuasive evidence that certain planets were much closer to the Earth in prehistory. The nature of that evidence will lend further support to a new model of gravity. Velikovsky, in his preface to Worlds in Collision, wrote: 'If, occasionally, historical evidence does not square with formulated laws, it should be remembered that a law is but a deduction from experience and experiment, and therefore laws must conform with historical facts, not facts with laws' [1]. The question then arises, what constitute historical facts when dealing with the earliest recorded memories of the human race? Velikovsky blazed this particular trail by showing that when world-wide records imply a sequence of causally-related phenomena, that is a powerful argument for their factuality, since the causal connections would not have been known in ancient times. For example, a disturbance in the motion of the Sun across the sky would be expected to be associated with global earthquakes and massive tidal waves. David Talbott, who has extended the use of Velikovsky's technique, has argued that one can be highly confident in a historical reconstruction when a number of unrelated sources, even 'unreliable' mythic sources, provide corroborative evidence of the same highly unusual motifs. Extending the rules of evidence to scientific data, Dr. Thomas Gold has recently argued for a jury system to replace the seriously flawed peer review system for major decisions in science [2]. I am satisfied that Velikovsky and the 'Saturnists' [3] have argued their case strongly enough to place the ball in the scientific court: It is time to re-examine those 'laws' or long-held beliefs that have diverted scientific curiosity away from uncomfortable questions about the safety of our spaceship Earth. We can no longer afford to deny the possibility that global myths and images of the planetary gods may refer to a frighteningly close-up view of the planets within the memory of the human race. However a simple application of Newtonian theory has no means for stabilising erratic orbits over a period of thousands of years. In fact, gravity alone acting between more than two bodies has a tendency toward chaotic motion of the planets rather than stability. On my visit to Princeton in 1979 to see Velikovsky, I raised the problem of gravitational theory for his identification of the recent cometary behaviour of Venus. How could that planet have achieved such a circular orbit in a short time? Velikovsky climbed the stairs to his library and a few moments later came back with a slim volume, Cosmos without Gravitation [4], which he gave to me with the caveat that he did not necessarily agree now with everything he had written there. His thesis was that gravity is a slight electrostatic polarisation effect in matter [5]. This seems reasonable when it is remembered that all matter is composed of charged particles. Even the neutron has a magnetic moment which implies that it is composed of charged sub-particles whose combined charge sums to zero. So it seemed to me that a purely classical approach to gravity might hold the key. In the December 1981 issue of Scientific American a small advertisement appeared for the Classical Physics Institute (CPI), based in New York. I met the principal of the CPI, Ralph Sansbury, while he was visiting London. I believe that Sansbury's reinterpretation of certain crucial experiments in classical physics at the turn of the century [6] will provide a unifying principle that eluded Einstein, unlocking the door to a new physics for the third millennium. Velikovsky wrote, 'A number of facts proved to me that the sun, the earth and other planets, the satellites, and the comets, are charged bodies [7], that the planets and their satellites have changed their orbits repeatedly and radically, and that gravitational attraction or the weight of objects has changed during human history. I thus recognized the fact that not gravitation, but electric attraction and repulsion and electromagnetic circumduction govern the solar system' [8]. I believe it was, in part, this simplistic overstatement that caused some of the hostility toward Velikovsky from professional astronomers. If gravity were due to electrostatic forces between charged bodies there would be many effects expected that we simply don't observe [9]. For instance, electrical shielding effects would noticeably modify the lunar orbit about the Earth. Powerful eddy currents would be induced in planetary surfaces, tending to slow down (or speed up) their rotation until phase-locked with the Sun. Even more critical is the speed of light delay in electromagnetic fields which would have the Earth, for example, always being tugged toward a point in space where the Sun was eight minutes ago. This would cause obvious precession of the Earth's aphelion. We know now that space is filled with a rarefied plasma, which is like a gas in which many of the atoms have lost their electrical neutrality by having an electron or two knocked off. The result is that space is full of practically equal numbers of positive and negative charges, their movement subject to electric and magnetic fields and with a minuscule influence due to radiation pressure and gravity. We also know that a plasma will organise its charged particles to attempt to prevent an electric field from penetrating very far. Consequently, Velikovsky's simple electromagnetic model of the solar system fails because the planets and the Sun are effectively electrically insulated from each other. Is that the end of the story? The notion of being able to explain gravity in electrical terms is very appealing compared to the counter intuitive hyper-dimensional geometric approach of Einstein. Did Einstein perhaps defeat himself in his quest for a unifying theory of electromagnetism and gravity, simply because he divorced gravity from the fundamental nature of matter, its electric charge? It is here that Sansbury provides some crucial insights. His model is simplicity itself but carries enormous implications for our basic understanding of matter and its interactions through the media of electromagnetic radiation and gravity. It introduces a new holistic, subtly connected universe, permitting space to reoccupy the 3 dimensions known to common sense, and without mystically weaving space and time together. Sansbury's new classical model makes two simple assumptions. The first assumption eliminates the familiar paradox or contradiction which has perplexed so many theorists: an electron has structure. It is neither a wave nor a fundamental particle but is made of smaller units of charge (quarks?) orbiting within the classical radius of an electron. It is not surprising that this model has not been pursued earlier, since it requires that Einstein be retired from his uncomfortable pedestal [10]. The sub-units of an electron must orbit at a speed close to 2.5 million light years per second! Obviously, Einstein's ultimate speed limit, c, does not apply in this theory - with interesting consequences for the meaning of c. There is, by the way, some experimental evidence for both electron structure and Sansbury's new model of light which explains quantum effects and discards the present schizophrenic wave/particle model of light. The second assumption is that the electrostatic force between the sub-units of an electron (and between nucleonic quarks, for that matter) must operate at a speed which is practically infinite. With these two simple assumptions, Sansbury has been able to show that: magnetism is a derived transverse form of the electrostatic force from electrons distorted by an electric field; atomic quantum states are due to a balancing of instantaneous electrostatic forces between electron sub-units and quarks in the nucleus such that energy loss in one complete orbit is zero; quantum states arise only in those orbits where this condition is satisfied; 'electromagnetic radiation' is a misnomer and becomes the cumulative result of oscillating instantaneous electrostatic forces at a distance. This removes the incompatibility between Maxwell's equations, which required an ether to sustain the waves, and Einstein's kinematics that discarded the ether. [*!* Image: Figure 1 Sansbury's Experiment Sansbury's Experiment - the shutter remains closed until the light pulse reaches the shutter, when it opens. Yet the detector sees no light!] Sansbury has performed a simple experiment supporting his model of light [see Fig. 1]. A short pulse of laser light was directed at a detector some distance from a laser. A very fast electronic shutter (a 'Pockel cell'), remained closed in front of the detector until the photons or wave front (take your pick) were due to arrive at the speed of light. At that moment the shutter was opened. The detector saw nothing! Sansbury's model predicts this outrageous result. The detector must be exposed to the laser while it is transmitting in order to register the instantaneous electrostatic forces. The speed of light delay in producing a signal by the detector is the delay in response of the atoms in the detector to the cumulative effects of the oscillating instantaneous forces between the sub-units of the electrons in the laser and detector. This suggests that large changes in intensity of the transmitter will give different measured values for c. This is only the beginning and many refinements to the theory may be necessary based upon further experimentation but the basic model is extremely successful and predictive. Gravity and electrostatics Velikovsky and all who have championed the cause of electrogravitics seem to have modelled their view of gravity around bulk charge separation or molecular type electric dipole distortions. Sansbury provides a new model for gravity and inertial mass in terms of the alignment of the tiny electrostatic dipoles created by nucleons distorted in an electrostatic field. The initial electrostatic field may be provided by bulk charge separation and can be sustained or modified by atomic electric dipoles created in bulk matter by a gravitational field. (That is, atomic nuclei are offset within atoms by the force of gravity to create small atomic electric dipoles aligned with the gravitational field.) The resulting weak nuclear electrostatic force is instantaneously transmitted and is not shielded by matter, in other words it is gravity. Of major consequence to the dynamics of our solar system and the Saturnian model outlined by Ev Cochrane in this issue is that the gravitational constant, G, is neither universal nor a constant. In this electrical model of gravity, adding to or subtracting charge from a planet will change the apparent gravity of that body. The evidence has been accumulating for some time that this is so [11]. G is the worst defined of all the physical constants [12, 13]. Even a single laboratory has difficulty in getting the same value twice. Measurements of G made down mines and boreholes [14] and at the tops of towers have differed from expectations to such an extent that a mysterious 'fifth force' was proposed to save appearances [15]. I predict that if measurements were made during a large geomagnetic storm they would be found to differ from values obtained before and after the storm. Electrostatic gravity provides a mechanism for rapidly adjusting planets into non-threatening orbits. Any close approaches where planetary magnetospheres clash will involve the transfer of charge in such a way as to move the planets' orbits apart until the charge transfer is negligible. That is, the orbits will settle where the magnetotail of the inner planet no longer connects to any important degree with an outer planet. In this context, planetary magnetospheres are recognised as Langmuir plasma sheaths surrounding electrically charged planets rather than magnetically contained plasma shock structures in the solar wind. It is of particular interest therefore to note the report last year of the discovery of plasma strings from Venus reaching the Earth's orbit during conjunction [16]. Plasma strings are diagnostic of electric (Birkeland) currents flowing from Venus. However, the most dramatic orbital adjustment will occur when a planet is discharging strongly so that the plasma tail is visible, in other words when it is behaving like a comet. Comets today are noted for their non-Newtonian accelerations. Given the global references to the Venus comet, it is not quite so surprising that it now has a near circular orbit. This new model of gravity supports the purely electrical calculations of Eric Crew [17] who arrived at a time-scale for Venus to spiral into its present circular orbit from the vicinity of Jupiter or Saturn in the order of 100 years. When planets and moons are close enough, a more violent form of charge exchange may occur. It is then that the apocalyptic weapon of the planetary gods is unleashed - the interplanetary thunderbolt. If such events have truly occurred we should find evidence in the surface scars of planets and moons. What do we actually find? The planets provide an embarrassment of riches. Electrical scarring is ubiquitous in the solar system, from tiny meteorites to asteroids, moons and all planets with a solid surface. It becomes evident why the controversy over volcano versus impact to explain cratering ran for so long [18]. Essentially it was because neither could explain the observed cratering in every detail [19]. The scarring caused by electric arcs and powerful lightning is quite distinct from volcanoes and impacts. There are two main types of electrical scar related to whether the object takes the role of cathode or anode in the discharge. In other words, whether it is the more negative or positive target in the interplanetary charge exchange. Cathode scarring is related to 'cold cathode' phenomena, where electrons must be ripped from a surface by an intense electric field. Such scarring is usually characterised by sinuous rilles, where the discharge moves rapidly across a surface, blasting a snaking channel as it follows the field along topographic highs and often creating a chain of circular craters in the process. Geologists have described them as collapsed lava tubes or grabens where gas has vented to create chains of circular craters. These are desperate analogues which do not conform to the observed features. For example, the tiny moon of Mars, Phobos, has such rilles and Venus holds the record with a winding rille 6,800 km long and a steady 2 km wide! Are we to assume geological activity on a 20 km rock or a lava flow over hill and dale for almost 7,000 km? Anode scars result in circular craters which are universally misinterpreted as impact craters. They may also create raised mounds. Arcs striking an anode tend to stick to one point and cause heating sufficient to melt the crater floor. The Apollo astronauts remarked on the glassy floors of small craters (30 to 150 cm wide) on the Moon [20] . The glassification was like that caused sometimes by earthly lightning. Impacts cause very little melting, although the rock may flow under the extreme overpressure of a shock wave and freeze suddenly in a characteristic star-burst pattern, forming a crater with gently sloping walls and radial striations. Star-burst craters were not found by the astronauts. I have not seen any such craters in images of the lunar or Martian surfaces (rayed craters are not starburst patterns of shock-flowed rock - the rays are not even radial to the main crater). This indicates that the mechanical model of impacts generally doesn't apply to large craters. What does form large craters with central peaks? An impact cannot melt rock to form a rebound peak. On Earth the large, buried Sudbury crater in Canada has a stratified central peak. It has not been melted. The answer comes from laboratory experiments which show that circular craters are formed by the natural corkscrew action of an arc. In very large craters this may leave behind a central peak. There are clear examples on the Moon and Mars of corkscrew craters (see cover illustrations) which could not have been formed by impact. Near perfect circularity of cratering with steep, sometimes terraced, walls is a hallmark of electric arc scarring. It is inconceivable that impact cratering would result in only three non-circular craters over 65km in diameter out of 167 such craters on the near side of the Moon [21]. It is also unbelievable that almost all of the craters on the odd-shaped asteroids are neatly circular with no evidence of spalling or irregularity, particularly given that impact velocities in the asteroid belt are expected to be low. Indeed, asteroid Mathilde has suffered 5 massive craters with no evidence of disturbance to earlier craters or the asteroid itself. Also, the asteroid Vesta of 530km diameter has a gigantic circular crater 460km across with a 13km high central peak! The rest of Vesta's surface appears intact. I submit that these observations can only be explained by electrical arc machining. Indeed, all asteroids and the moons of Mars give the appearance of having been baked in a plasma oven at the time of their formation. Conventional models should have them appear splintered and chipped by collisions. [*!* Figure 2. 3D Perspective of European Furrow] The terrestrial planets and moons of our solar system are the 'smoking guns' of recent interplanetary lightning. They are pocked and furrowed with uneroded electrical scars. Those pristine scars are the strongest indicator we have that all such objects had a much closer association in the very recent past. It then becomes easy to understand why the planetary gods dominated human attention and why their apparent battles with cosmic thunderbolts were remembered as the archetypal doomsday. One of the most graphic arguments for the truth of those accounts is the representation in sculptures of Jupiter's thunderbolt as a corkscrew. That is precisely the configuration expected of a plasma discharge in space. Remarkably, there are global stories of one such thunderbolt which struck Mars, causing a scar on his cheek, brow or thigh. I suggest that two million cubic kilometres of rock and soil were electrically machined out of the stupendous Valles Marineris canyon to create that scar. That canyon bears all of the hallmarks of arc machining. That it was visible to the unaided eye indicates how closely the planets moved together at that time. The areological puzzle concerning where all that rock went is solved - most was lofted into space to form asteroids and meteorites. Some of those meteorites still land on Earth today and some fell back to Mars to create the great strewn fields of boulders imaged by all of the Mars landers. The soil on Mars appears to be a 'globally deposited unit'. Fire and brimstone were associated with Jupiter's thunderbolts, so it seems that the high energy of the interplanetary discharges is capable of fusing or 'fritting' two oxygen atoms to produce one sulphur atom. The 'duricrust' on Mars' surface contains an anomalously high level of sulphur. The second moon of Jupiter, Europa, shows global evidence of having the misfortune of repeatedly becoming a secondary electrode in discharges between Jupiter and other bodies. In that circumstance the discharge will flow preferentially across the moon's surface since its frozen salt water oceans are a better conductor than space. The result is groups of parallel furrows where the current snakes across the surface, explosively heating the ice and throwing it to either side to form uniform levées over thousands of kilometres (see Fig. 2). Subsequent electrical scarring events ignore the earlier topography and with changing directions create an incredibly complex surface patterning. The reddish colouration of some of the larger levees may be due, once again, to the electrical fritting of oxygen atoms from Europa's ice to form sulphur. Pursuing the possibility of forming sulphur from oxygen just one step further, Jupiter's moon Io is unique in that it seems to be coated in elemental forms of sulphur to produce a pizza-like appearance. Io is notable for its so-called volcanoes that eject material upwards of 800km into space. It seems to me that they are not volcanoes. For example, the concentration of heat energy required to drive such prodigious jets is a problem. The temperatures measured at the hot spots are second only to the surface of the Sun! Secondly it is highly unlikely that the vents are so perfectly circular, vertically aligned and the jet speed so narrowly confined that they will produce the beautiful circular fallout patterns we see. Thirdly, a 400km high eruption has been witnessed by its glow in the dark of Jupiter's shadow, yet it has no associated volcano and cannot be seen in reflected light. I follow the astronomer, Thomas Gold [22], in proposing that we are witnessing electrical discharges impinging on Io and jetting ions into space. It seems probable that underneath the coating of sulphur, Io has (salty) water like the other Galilean satellites. The continuous electric discharges to Io have over time been converting the oxygen in the water to sulphur and distributing it globally via the ion fountains. It should be mentioned in passing that the electrical ion jets of Io are precisely the same phenomena as the jets from cometary nuclei. The spacecraft Giotto sent back images of plasma arc machining of the nucleus of comet Halley as it was happening. This explains the puzzle that some comets do not seem to have enough water to explain the quantity of dust jetting from the nucleus. Electrical machining does not require such ad hoc mechanisms. Material will be removed indiscriminately, forming circular craters (as seen on Comet Halley), the resulting ions will be accelerated to anomalously high energies and energetic electrons will create the observed but unexpected x-rays. Io will prove to be a valuable laboratory to study electrical scarring of planetary surfaces. Of course, these ideas have a profound impact on our present notions of dating objects in the solar system by crater counting. The strange asymmetry of cratering on many bodies in the solar system can be recognised as resulting mostly from chance electrical encounters with other bodies. The cratering then occurs in swarms over one face of a planet or moon; dating of planetary features based on crater counting and uniformitarian assumptions about the history of the solar system become worthless. In any event, the pristine look of so many craters makes nonsense of theories which would have them exposed for millions of years - and Io cannot have been losing its volatiles for very long. There is an effect which is not considered in any of the current doomsday ballyhoo about Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and their presumed threat to the Earth. That effect is the electrical phenomena associated with the swift approach of an object from space. No artist's rendering or film of dramatic Earth impacts that I have seen includes so much as a single lightning bolt. I suggest that hidden in that paradigmatic oversight is the Earth's built-in defence mechanism against such intruders, and an explanation for the absence of starburst impact craters in the solar system. Long before physical contact can be achieved between two sizable bodies, their electrical imbalance will need to be dealt with. The two bodies will 'feel' the presence of each other as soon as their plasma sheaths touch. In the case of a comet, its plasma sheath can measure a million kilometres across or more. Travelling at 20 kilometres per second, a comet will cover one million kilometres in about 14 hours. So, for something of the order of a day, there will be odd electrical effects evident in weather, geomagnetism, auroras and possibly earthquakes. The orbit of the incoming object will diverge from a strictly Newtonian path and will show a tendency to avoid the Earth. However if it remains on a collision course, the electrical stress will finally build to the point where an electrical discharge will fly between the earth and the intruder with the strong likelihood that the intruder will be disrupted. This seems to have been the case for the return of Bielas comet in 1871 and the strange electrical phenomena of the Chicago fires, where falls of sand were also reported [23, 24]. It may also explain the Tunguska explosion where the bolide seems to have been destroyed before hitting the ground [25]. It is also probable that the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is merely an electrical scar since little meteoritic material has been found at depth in the crater and meteoritic iron has been found scattered over hundreds of kilometres. In my opinion, the weight of evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the Saturnists, based on the coherence of the theory, its vast explanatory and predictive power, and the continual confirmation from data returned from space probes. It seems that only they have had the courage to openly pursue Velikovsky's question to the full extent that he intended: 'have the planets always moved on their present courses?'. That it required courage can be judged by the fact that until now there has been no physical theory to allow for prehistoric planetary excursions [26]. I agree with Ev Cochrane that 'the thesis of Clube and Napier does not explain the ancient testimony, it seems expressly designed to explain it away'. It retains the comfortable certainties of modern astronomy by denying the global references to planets in ancient literature. However, who would trust a celestial mechanics that denies recent planetary wanderings when it also requires 90% of the matter in the universe to be invisible and some form of anti-gravity to explain the reported acceleration of distant galaxies? Notes and References 1. I. Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision, 1950, p. vii. 2. T Gold, 'New Ideas in Science', Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 103-112, 1989 3. By 'Saturnists' I refer to those who have published substantive work on the pivotal role of Saturn in the earliest recollections of the human race: Velikovsky, David Talbott, Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane. 4. I Velikovsky, Cosmos Without Gravitation: Attraction, Repulsion, and Electromagnetic Circumduction in the Solar System, Scripta Academica Hierosolymitana, Simon Velikovsky Foundation, Scientific Report IV, 1946. 5. Actually, Velikovsky credited his daughter, Shulamith, with suggesting the dipole explanation of attraction between atoms and the dipole concept of inertia. 6. R. Sansbury, Geomagnetism as Gravity measured by Magnetic Materials: The Finite or Infinite Speed of Gravity and Light, ICP Inc., 492 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10185, 1994. 7. S-P Sirag, 'Gravitational Magnetism', Nature, Vol. 278, 5 April 1979, p. 535. A charged, rotating planet will generate a dipolar magnetic field. It is noteworthy therefore that an unexpected relationship has been established between the gravity and magnetic field of a star or planet. The new physics suggests a connection. 8. Op. cit. [4]. 9. Leroy Ellenberger in 'Still Facing Many Problems, Part 2' in KRONOS X:3 (1985) argued that the charge on the Earth required to generate the observed geomagnetic field would be of such a magnitude that the electric field at the surface of the Earth would be more than 109 volts/metre, well above the field required for a spark discharge. This consequence is correct only in the simple case of an isolated sphere in a vacuum. The Earth can be represented by the more general situation of two concentric spheres at electric potentials V[1] and V[2], where V[1] represents the potential on the Earth and V[2] is the potential of the interplanetary plasma, measured at the boundary of the Earth's plasma sheath, or magnetosphere. The difference between them will result in the measured electric stress at the Earth's surface (-150 volts/metre) but this tells us nothing directly about the total charge on the Earth, since we don't know V[2]. 10. A Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc., NY, (1982), p. 4. Einstein wrote of his own status: 'The cult of the individual is always, in my view, unjustified. To be sure, nature distributes her gifts unevenly among her children. But there are plenty of the well-endowed, thank God, and I am firmly convinced that most of them live quiet, unobtrusive lives. It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.' 11. 'Gravitational constant is up in the air', New Scientist, 29 April 1995, p. 18: 'Tim Armstrong and Mark Fitzgerald of the Measurement Standards Laboratory of New Zealand in Gracefield placed large masses on either side of a smaller mass hanging on a thread. The small mass tries to twist towards the larger masses, but can be held in place by an electric field. From measurements of the strength of the field needed to hold the small mass still, the New Zealand team came up with a value for G of 6.6659, or 0.1 per cent below the accepted value. For a fundamental constant of nature, that is a major discrepancy'. 12. Continuing doubt on gravitation, 'News and Views', Nature, Vol. 310, 30 Aug. 1984, p. 723 '.. the value of G remains obdurately uncertain to the tune of one part in 105. The consequences include enormous absolute uncertainties in, say, the mass of the Earth'. 13. D Kestenbaum, 'The Legend of BIG G', New Scientist, 17 Jan 1998, p. 40: 'Some theorists ... speculate that gravity may be the loose thread that could start all of physics unravelling'. 14. R. Pool, 'Was Newton Wrong?', Science, Vol. 241, 12 Aug. 1988, p. 789: 'Were saying we appear to have the cleanest evidence to date of something that cannot be explained by Newtonian gravity'. 15. J Boslough, 'Searching for the Secrets of Gravity', National Geographic, May 1989, pp. 563 - 583. 16. 'Planets tail of the unexpected', New Scientist, 31 May 1997, p. 18: 'One of our neighbouring planets can still pack a few surprises, it seems. Using satellite data, an international team of researchers has found that Venus sports a giant, ion-packed tail that stretches almost far enough to tickle the Earth when the two planets are in line with the Sun. I didn't expect to find it, says team member Marcia Neugebauer of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It's a really strong signal, and there's no doubt it's real. ... Neugebauer suspects the tail is 'a lot of little stringy things' like those of some comets, which can have several ion tails. If so, says Neugebauer, the theorists are going to have fun trying to explain why they're as narrow as we saw them. Standard physics says that narrow plasma streams are unstable and should dissipate fast. No one can yet explain how they hold together over tens of millions of kilometres'. 17. E Crew, 'Erratic Events in the Solar System', C&CR, 1988, Vol. X, pp. 43-48, & 56. Crew's model assumed purely electrostatic effects without considering the shielding effects of space plasma. Sansbury's model of gravity allows such a simple model to be used for order of magnitude calculations. 18. D. Hughes, 'Meteorite Incidence Angles', J. British Astronomical Assoc., Vol. 103, No. 3, 1993, p. 123. 'It has been remarked that the majority of astronomers explain the craters on the Moon by volcanic eruptions - that is by an essentially geological process - while a considerable number of geologists are inclined to explain them by the impact of bodies falling upon the Moon - that is, by an essentially astronomical process. This suggests that each group of scientist finds the craters so difficult to explain by processes with which they are professionally familiar that they prefer recourse to a process belonging to another field than their own, with which they are probably imperfectly acquainted and with which they therefore feel freer to take liberties.' [Quoted from WM Davis Biographical Memoirs, Nat. Acad. Sci. Washington memoirs, Vol. 21, 1922, p. 183.] 19. 'Inversion of crater morphometric data to gain insight on the cratering process', Robert R. Herrick and Suzanne N. Lyons, Meteoritics & Planetary Science 33, 131-143 (1998), 'Crater morphometry, the quantitative description of the shape of impact craters, has always played a key role in understanding the cratering process. One of the key arguments used to support the impact origin of lunar craters was that they were morphometrically similar to terrestrial explosion craters (Baldwin, 1949). Complex impact craters, craters with such features as a flat floor, a central peak, and wall terraces, have never been created in common geologic materials in the lab or with large explosions.' [emphasis added] 20. See The Moon and Planets by WR Corliss, p. 104, for references. The report noted, 'The glassy veneer seen in the photos looked much like that acquired by pottery in a glazing oven. ...the Apollo astronauts saw no glassy clumps outside the small craters...Glassy craters were always fresh looking...'. 21. Op. cit. [18], p. 125. 22. T. Gold, 'Electrical Origin of the Outbursts on Io', Science, Vol. 206, 30 Nov. 1979, pp. 1071-2. 23. I. Donnelly, Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, pp. 408 - 423. 24. M. Waskin, Mrs O'Leary's Comet: Cosmic Causes of the Great Chicago Fire, 1985. At the time of the breakup of the nucleus of Bielas comet in 1846, a 'bridge of light' was seen to extend between the two components. This would seem to be the result of a plasma discharge between them. A similar phenomenon was recorded within the Earth's atmosphere at Agram, 1751. (Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Vol. 31, No. 5, Sept. 1996, p. 553. 25. J Baxter & T Atkins, The Fire Came By: The riddle of the great Siberian explosion 1908, (cf. esp. Chap. 8). The disruption of the bolide several kilometres above the ground, the intense radiation (including nuclear) and severe electromagnetic disturbances all argue for its destruction by a catastrophic electrical discharge between the Earth's ionosphere, the bolide and ground. The ionised trail of the bolide created an effective short-circuit between the ionosphere and ground, suddenly unleashing planetary forces that normally drive our weather systems. This natural explanation for the many strange effects and after-effects, which are not expected from a simple impactor, removes the need for speculation about an exploding alien spacecraft and other more fanciful notions. 26. More detail can be found, including video clips of electrical scarring, in the CD-ROM, The Electric Universe, from Holoscience, PO Box 1248, Woden, ACT, Australia 2611. Cost: A$70 + $7.50 p&p (airmail). _________________________________________________________________ \cdrom\pubs\journals\review\v1998n2\11new.htm