THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL V, No 3 Feb 28, 2001 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS QUESTION GRAVITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Mel Acheson PARADIGM PORTRAITS VIII: COMET TALES . . . . . . . . . . . .Amy Acheson THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM Part 2 . . .Don Scott EROS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< QUESTION GRAVITY by Mel Acheson It's generally assumed gravity is a fact. It's not. It's a theory, invented by Newton and barely three centuries old. It's generally assumed gravity is a universal law. It's not. The prominences on the sun don't obey it. Neptune scoffs at it. The stars repudiate it. Galaxies ignore it. Its jurisdiction is pretty much limited to Newton's falling apple at the surface of the Earth. Even there the constant of gravitation refuses to be constant and wiggles around like a plasma in a magnetic field. Newton said, "Gravity steers the universe." Heraclitus said, "The thunderbolt steers the universe." Who're ya gonna believe? Newton knew nothing about electricity. Heraclitus knew nothing about gravity. Newton had seen lightning, and Heraclitus had seen falling apples. But neither thought it was something that needed to be explained. Because he didn't have a theory that enabled him to imagine the possibility, Heraclitus was unable to send a space probe to Mars. What electrical possibility was Newton unable to achieve because he didn't have a theory that enabled him to imagine it? Newton not only didn't explain electricity, his theory of gravity didn't allow him even to perceive it. And to this day astronomers have not been explaining it or even perceiving it. They talk about a "rain" of ions on Europa and a "wind" of charged particles from the sun. But moving charged particles are better known as an electrical current. Except for the surfaces of half a dozen planets and moons, all we see of the universe is electrical: filaments and jets, accelerated and accelerating ions, synchrotron radiation and bremsstrahlung, polarized emissions, magnetic fields, Birkeland braids, Peratt instabilities, inverse linear force relationships, ...and that "wind" and "rain" buffeting the planets accompanied by radio "noise" typical of double layers. The electrical nature of those phenomena goes unperceived for want of a theory that will make it "make sense", that will make it sensible. It's not that a theory doesn't exist. Electrical plasma physics (EPP) has been developing for over a century. It's properties and principles have been discovered and described by such illustrious experimenters as Birkeland, Langmuir, and Alfven. EPP is to be distinguished from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), which also uses the term "plasma". What MHD means by that term is not electrically active assemblages of charged particles but masses of hot air. It's MHD that brought us the meteorological image of the solar system. EPP flips the switch to turn on the light of (electrical) understanding. Unfortunately, EPP is widely ignored. It's not mentioned in standard textbooks. The training of most physicists leaves them unaware that many of the words they use are euphemisms for (and obfuscations of) electrical currents. For people wedded to a mechanistic view of the cosmos, EPP is frightening. Electrically active plasmas behave as though they were alive. They self- organize into complex forms that twist and turn and change states. They're mathematically messy. They're anarchic. But they're conceptually elegant. The theory of gravity is surprised by each new discovery of space probes and space telescopes. Each surprise has to be patched with another ad hoc excuse. EPP accounts for the many surprising features of the cosmos with a single coherent theory. It can often point to a lab demonstration or to a computer simulation--or even to an ancient petroglyph!--that mimics the newly discovered form. What EPP may lack in mathematical elegance is more than made up for in generality. The Age of Gravitational Mechanics has achieved many impressive feats: It's taken people to the Moon. It's sent a robot to Mars. It's put satellites into orbit around Venus and Jupiter and Eros. It's put SOHO into orbit around nothing more than a mathematical point. It's also discovered the data and collected the facts that require a new, larger theory to explain them. So the time has come to question the relevance of the cogs-and-wheels theory of gravity from the gas-light era. It's time to plug in to an electrical cosmos with an electrical theory. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ********************************************************* WANT AD: CATASTROPHISM CD-Rom needs proof-readers: The Catastrophism! CD-Rom is a vast repository of articles and journals on catastrophism and related subjects. The next edition is under preparation, and you can earn a free copy (worth up to £149 or $245) by proof-reading new material. For full details click on "Proof read text" link at http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm Contact: Ian Tresman, Compiler, Catastrophism! CD-Rom Disc 9 Ashdown Drive, Borehamwood, Herts. WD6 4LZ. UK. Fax: 0870 284 8769. Email: ian at knowledge.co.uk Web: http://www.catastrophism.com ********************************************************** PARADIGM PORTRAITS VIII: COMET TALES by Amy Acheson Today, ESO released a photo and article about Hale-Bopp, from the mainstream point of view, of course. I would like to discuss the data from two other points of view, the exploded planet and plasma. First, the ESO release: http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2001/phot-07-01.html DESCRIPTION OF HALE-BOPP TODAY: (from article) "Since the passage four years ago, the comet has been moving away from the Sun and is now located at a distance that corresponds to nearly midway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. However, as the comet's orbit is highly inclined to the main plane in which the major planets move, Hale-Bopp is now far below that plane. It is seen deep in the southern sky, south of the Large Magellanic Cloud in the constellation Dorado (The Goldfish). It can therefore only be observed with telescopes located in the southern hemisphere." THE PUZZLE: (from article) "As it moves away, observations are made from time to time to document the comet's behaviour. The large 'dirty snowball' nucleus of ice and dust (probably about 50 km diameter) continues to be active, despite the very low temperature where it is now. This is quite unusual for a comet and is clearly confirmed on the present photo (PR Photo 07a/01) from the WFI camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at La Silla, obtained a few days ago. The comet was about 1950 million kilometres (13.0 AU) from the Sun (and about 1965 million km from the Earth)." AMY's COMMENTS: The article speaks from the commonly-accepted viewpoint of a comet as a dirty snowball melting in the sun. From this point of view, the tail of the comet is produced by melting, which is dependent on temperature, which in turn is dependent on the distance of the comet from the Sun. They assume that comets are very old, probably left-over scraps of the original accretion disc that haven't yet collided (merged) with a planet. Tom Van Flandern's EPH (exploded planet hypothesis) would define a comet as a cluster of debris leftover from the explosion of a planet or moon. At the distance of the orbit of the original planet, these bits and pieces have separate orbits, but when (if) they are flung farther from their primary (the Sun) than the original distance, their spheres of influence (the distance at which they can hold a satellite) become larger, so that they can capture debris from similar neighboring orbits. So a comet would be a large rubble pile of bodies (down to the size of dust and regolith) with possible orbiting mini-moons. If the eccentric orbit of this clump takes the body within the orbit of the original exploding planet, this sphere of influence (dependent on distance from sun) shrinks until comet's gravity is no longer able to hold the rubble-pile together. The particles fly apart, forming a tail swept away from the Sun. Thus, from the EPH point of view, Hale-Bopp will continue to produce a tail until it passes beyond the distance at which the body that produced it orbited. >From the EPH point of view, the period of orbit is an important factor for a first-time comet such as Hale-Bopp. Its 10,000 year orbit tells us that its origin was different than most first-time comets (which have 3.2 million year orbits), and therefore, we can expect it to behave differently. From this viewpoint, comets were created in discrete batches as the result of specific events in the history of the solar system. >From the plasma viewpoint, the comet is probably a coherent solid body rather than a dirty snowball or a rubble pile, although it may be coated with debris and sediment, like the asteroid Eros. In fact, from the plasma viewpoint, the major difference between a comet and an asteroid is their electric potential. The eccentric orbit of comets is a large factor in creating the change of electrical potential which powers the jet that arc machines the Sun-facing side to produce x-rays, dust tail and ion tail. From the plasma point of view, both the tail and jet of a comet will be activated whenever the comet passes through an electrical environment which is substantially different from the comets' own electrical potential. Since the electrical potential in the solar system increases with decreasing distance to the Sun, this means in general that the closer to the Sun, the stronger the discharge. But this can vary from comet to comet (depending on the comet's charge) and can be subject to flare-ups in response to changing solar electrical activity. From this viewpoint, comets were created in recent electrical machining events involving the stabilization of the solar system after a major re-adjustment. CONCLUSION: Same comet, three different interpretations of the data. Which is correct? The prudent answer is that we don't yet have enough information to confirm any of the above. But my personal opinion is that knowing more than one viewpoint, but reserving judgement (keeping theories on the back burner) will give me a better perspective to evaluate new data coming in. So I look forward to information from future comets, to what Chandra and Hubble uncover about them, and to the Stardust probe as it tried to actually retrieve comet dust and return it to Earth. ~Amy Acheson ********************************************************** THE ELECTRIC SUN & THE HERTZSPUNG-RUSSELL DIAGRAM, Part 2 by Don Scott Red Giants The diffuse group in the upper right hand corner of the HR diagram are stars which are cool (have low values of current density powering them) but are luminous and so must be very large. They are highly luminous only because of their size. These are the red giants. They are not necessarily any older than any other star. White Dwarfs Similarly, the group in the lower left hand corner have very low absolute luminosity but are extremely hot. The ES model simply explains them as being very small stars that are experiencing very high current densities. These are the "white dwarfs." Although most of them are concentrated in the lower-left corner of the diagram, the white dwarf group actually extends thinly across the bottom of the diagram. Thus the name white dwarf is a kind of misnomer. The shape of this thin grouping begins to drop off steeply at its (cooler) right end much as the main sequence does. A professional astronomer has been quoted as saying: "The observed white dwarfs are basically cooling embers. The nuclear fire of the stars burned out billions of years ago. The light emitted comes from the heat remaining from the earlier nuclear burning. By measuring the spectrum of the light, the brightness in various colors, the temperatures of the stars were determined. The two coolest of the white dwarfs studied, PSR J0034-0534 and PSR J1713+0747, are 3400 degrees Kelvin (5600 F), making them the coolest known white dwarfs. For comparison, the surface of the sun measures 5800 degrees Kelvin and the coolest previously known white dwarfs are 4000 degrees Kelvin." But then, why are these relatively cool stars called "white"? One presumes it is only because they seem to be members of the grouping in the HR diagram that was originally given that name. Stars in Globular and Open Clusters Relatively recently, other more distant groups of stars have been plotted on HR axes with quite different results from when the stars near our Sun are plotted. Two examples of this are shown on the web page: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/hr/hr.html. The two different shapes of the HR diagrams given in that web site, one for the globular cluster, M5, and the other for the Perseus "double open cluster" give possible clues to the structure of those star clusters. For example, current density seems to be roughly the same for most of the stars in M5, but their luminosity (size) varies widely. And the largest of these stars seem to have the lowest current density. Are they at the dense center of the cluster and therefore somewhat shielded from the current? Another group of stars in M5 seem to be of a similar size but with high and varying levels of current density. Are they the stars doing the shielding? The HR diagram for the stars in the h and chi Persei double cluster has a markedly different shape from both that of M5 and the one for the stars in our neighborhood. Each of these different HR shapes simply indicates the contrasting properties (size, electrical input levels) of the stars in these groupings. The different shapes of the HR diagrams should not be thought of as being indicative of the ages of those stars or their interior composition or the "evolutionary processes" they are undergoing. It's not that complicated. Blue Stragglers Up until recently no O or B type stars were observed in globular clusters. It was thought that all stars in any given globular cluster were of a similar age. Therefore, it came as a big shock when it was discovered that there were some blue "stragglers" (stars that hadn't "aged properly") in certain clusters. It was said, in awe, that these stars were "rejuvenated stars that glow with the blue light of young stars"! "Stellar evolution" doesn't seem to be working too well in these cases. Another example of "stellar evolution" that is difficult to explain via the H-He fusion reaction is that in recent years, the centers of elliptical galaxies have been found to emit unexpectedly high amounts of blue and ultraviolet light. Elliptical galaxies (and the stars in them) are thought to be quite old. How, then, can there be so many "young" blue stars in them? One mainstream answer is that some dying old stars suddenly decide to burn the Helium they had been previously producing - or we hear (as always) the mantra that perhaps there were "collisions between stars". From the ES point of view, any star can move quickly across the HR diagram if its electrical environment changes. Anyone who has seen the aurora's plasma curtains moving and folding in the polar sky realizes that Birkeland current filaments are not fixed, static, things. They move around. If the galactic Birkeland currents move around, it is likely they will move relative to some stars - either increasing or decreasing the current densities these stars experience. A blue star is just one that is experiencing the full brunt of a strong Birkeland current. "Blue stragglers" aren't stragglers at all. They are just blue. Variable Stars When I was researching topics for this article, Wal Thornhill said to me, "Have a look at variable stars, particularly bursters, where I think you will find the brightness curve is like that of lightning with a sudden rise time and exponential decay. Some stars are regular and others irregular. The irregular ones seem to average the power over the bursts. When they are more frequent, the energy is less per burst. If there is a long latency, the next burst is more powerful. It's the kind of thing you would expect from an electrical circuit when the trigger level is variable and the power input constant. I think many variable stars are actually binaries with some kind of electrical interaction. Long period Miras (A type of variable star) may actually have an object orbiting within the shell of a red giant (as I have proposed for the proto-Saturnian system)" Following Wal's suggestion, I looked at the recent Hubble image of Mira itself, the flagship star of that class of variable stars. Mira's image reveals a huge (plasma?) emission on one side of the star. The official explanation includes the words, "Mira A is a red giant star undergoing dramatic pulsations, causing it to become more than 100 times brighter over the course of a year. S. Mira can extend to over 700 times the size of our Sun, and is only 400 light-years away. The S. photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the true face of Mira. But what are we seeing? The unusual extended feature off the lower left of the star remains somewhat mysterious. Possible explanations include gravitational perturbation and/or heating from Mira's white dwarf star companion." [Italics added.] Mira has a white dwarf companion, just as Wal suggested was likely. So, a much better possible explanation of its pulsating output is that an electrical discharge is taking place between Mira and its companion, much like a relaxation oscillator. It's not really "mysterious" at all. Gamma Ray Bursters If you check the web page http://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast13oct98_1.htm you will see the following description of what constitutes a "gamma ray burster". "October 13, 1998: Cosmic gamma-ray bursts have been called the greatest mystery of modern astronomy. They are powerful blasts of gamma- and X-radiation that come from all parts of the sky, but never from the same direction twice. Space satellites indicate that Earth is illuminated by 2 to 3 bursts every day. What are they? No one is certain. Until recently we didn't even know if they came from the neighborhood of our own solar system or perhaps from as far away as the edge of the universe. The first vital clues began to emerge in 1997 when astronomers detected an optical counterpart to a gamma-ray burst. In February 1997 the BeppoSAX X-ray astronomy satellite pinpointed the position of a burst in Orion to within a few arcminutes. That allowed astronomers to photograph the burst, and what they saw surprised them. They detected a rapidly fading star, probably the aftermath of a gigantic explosion, next to a faint amorphous blob believed to be a very distant galaxy." [Italics added.] Doesn't this sound like fissioning again? An explosion, followed by a rapidly fading star, accompanied by some sort of companion! Might it be that the reason they "never [come] from the same direction twice" is that the creation of the binary pair has relieved the electrical stress (at least for a long enough time that we humans haven't yet seen a recurrence). Pulsars Although pulsars do not occupy a specific place in the HR diagram, it is worth noting that they, too, have characteristics that are most comfortably explained via the ES model. Pulsars are stars that have extremely short periods of variability in their production of EM radiation (both light and radio frequency) . When they were first discovered it was thought that they rotated rapidly. But when the observed rate of "rotation" got up to about once per second for certain pulsars despite their having masses exceeding that of the sun, this official explanation became untenable. Instead, the concept of the "neutron star" was invented. Wal has written at length about how impossible this notion is: "The discovery now of an x-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 (J1808 for short), located in the constellation of Sagittarius, that flashes every 2.5 thousandths of a second (that is 24,000 RPM!) goes way beyond the red-line even for a neutron star. So another ad hoc requirement is added to the already long list - this pulsar must be composed of something even more dense than packed neutrons - strange matter! ...When not associated with protons in a nucleus, neutrons decay into protons and electrons in a few minutes. Atomic nuclei with too many neutrons are unstable. If it were possible to form a neutron star, why should it be stable?" So, some pulsars oscillate with periods in the millisecond range! Their radio pulse characteristics are: the "duty cycle" is typically 5% (i.e., the pulsar flashes much like a lighthouse - the duration of each output pulse is much shorter than the length of time between pulses); some individual pulses are quite variable in intensity; the polarization of the pulse implies the origin is near a magnetic pole. These characteristics are consistent with an electrical arc (lightning) interaction between two closely spaced binary stars. So, I was pleased when I saw the announcement: Hubble Space Telescope Observations Reveal Coolest and Oldest White Dwarf Stars in the Galaxy "Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have detected five optical companion stars orbiting millisecond pulsars. Only two other such systems are known. Three of the companions are among the coolest and oldest white dwarf stars known." [Italics added] The Crab Pulsar The "Crab Nebula" (M1) is a cloud of gas (plasma) that is the remnant of a nova explosion seen by Chinese astronomers. Lying at the center of the nebula is a pulsar - a star called CM Tauri. The frequency of repetition of the pulsar's output is 30 pulses per second. The length of each "flash", however, is approximately 1/1000 sec., one millisecond! The obvious question to ask next is: Is this star a binary pair? No companion is visible from even the largest earthbound telescopes. But, the Hubble orbiting telescope has found a companion, "a small knot of bright emission located only 1500 AU (= 1500 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from the pulsar. This knot has gone undetected up until now because even at the best ground-based resolution it is lost in the glare of the adjacent pulsar. The knot and the pulsar line up with the direction of a jet of X-ray emission. A second discovery is that in the direction opposite the knot, the Crab pulsar is capped by a ring-like ``halo'' of emission tipped at about 20 degrees to our line of sight. In this geometry the polar jet flows right through the center of the halo." Supernova Remnant G11.2-0.3 On August 6, 2000, and October 15, 2000, the orbiting X-ray telescope Chandra discovered a pulsar at the geometric center of the supernova remnant known as G11.2-0.3. Chandra provides very strong evidence that the pulsar was formed in the supernova of 386 AD, which was witnessed by Chinese astronomers. The official description of the image included the words, " The Chandra observations of G11.2-0.3 have also, for the first time, revealed the bizarre appearance of the pulsar wind nebula at the center of the supernova remnant. Its rough cigar- like shape is in contrast to the graceful arcs observed around the Crab and Vela pulsars. However, together with those pulsars, G11.2-0.3 demonstrates that such complicated structures are ubiquitous around young pulsars." Upon examination, the image of the central star reveals that it is at the center of a "cigar shaped" plasma discharge, not a "bizarre wind nebula" (whatever that is). Although no binary companion has (yet) been found, the presence of the observed plasma discharge makes one suspect it is only a matter of time. Each new discovery of a binary pair of stars, one of which is either a variable star or pulsar, at the center of a nova remnant, is one more piece of evidence that Juergens' electric star model and Thornhill's theory of the fissioning of those electric stars are both valid. Electric Star Evolution Mainstream astronomers accept and promote the notion that O type stars are young; they are thought to age due to the nuclear burning up of their Hydrogen fuel. In the ES interpretation, there is no reason to attribute youth to one spectral type over another. We conclude that a star's location on the HR diagram only depends on its size and the electric current density it is presently experiencing. If, for whatever reason, the strength of that current density should change, then the star will change its position on the HR diagram. Perhaps, like FG Sagittae, abruptly. Otherwise, no movement from one place to another is expected. And its age remains indeterminate regardless of its mass or spectral type. This is disquieting in the sense that we see now that our own Sun's future is not as certain as is expected by mainstream astronomy. We cannot predict whether the Birkeland current now powering our Sun will increase or decrease, nor how long it will be before it does so. Summary A fresh look at the HR diagram, unencumbered by the assumption that all stars must be internally powered by the nuclear fusion reaction, reveals an elegant correspondence between this plot and the Electric Sun model proposed by Ralph Juergens. Assuming, as he did, that stars are powered externally by the vast Birkeland currents that exist in the arms of their galaxies, the details in the shape of the HR diagram are exactly what his ES model predicts. The observed actions of variable stars, pulsars, and the high frequency of occurrence of binary pairs of stars are all in concordance with Thornhill's Electrical Universe theory, his stellar fissioning concept, and the Electric Star model as well. So is the otherwise totally inexplicable behavior of FG Sagittae. We eagerly await NASA's next "mysterious discovery" to further strengthen our case. Don Scott ********************************************************** EROS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS by Wal Thornhill The following message is from Reuters: On February 12, the world's first spacecraft will land on an asteroid - Eros, named after the Greek god of love - and stream a series of photographs in nearly real time. That equates to two images a minute, which will be streamed to the Web site www.near.jhuapl.edu At more than 196 million miles from Earth, the asteroid will be the most distant object on which a spacecraft has landed. The event is the grand finale of a one-year orbital mission of Eros, the first of NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) program, whose goal has been to determine Eros' mineralogical make-up and its relationship to comets, meteorites and the origin of the solar system. THE RESULT? The NEAR web site Science Update December 28, 2000 is headlined: MORE MYSTERIES We are planning to devote the last two months of the mission to low altitude observations. What we have seen so far in the low orbits has merely whetted our appetite for more. We went up close to have a better look at the surface than ever before, but we now see things we do not understand, and we need more information. That has been the story of the NEAR mission, and that is why we are going back to low orbit despite the rough ride that the irregular gravity field of Eros will give us. The craters on Eros provide several examples of mysteries that we are working on. Craters are the records of impacts that have largely shaped the surface of Eros, of other asteroids we have seen, and of objects from Mercury to the moons of Neptune. >From the beginning of the mission, we saw two large concavities on Eros, for which we have proposed the names Himeros and Psyche. In the early images Himeros appeared saddle-shaped, and we could not be sure if it was indeed an impact crater, but Psyche displayed from the start the classical bowl shape of an impact crater. Although it was not immediately apparent, Himeros was actually not saddle-shaped at all, but bowl-shaped. Careful mapping of its topography by the NEAR Laser Rangefinder and by the imager shows that as far as Eros' gravity field is concerned, its depth is consistent with impact excavation. Still, if it is an impact crater, it is oddly shaped. Another mystery is that the interior surface of Himeros is relatively smooth and much less heavily cratered than typical areas on Eros, and so it must be relatively young. The same is true for the interior of Psyche. However, the largest impact features on a body are most likely the oldest. Moreover, there is a third global scale depression on Eros that is actually larger than Psyche in diameter. We have proposed to name this third depression Shoemaker Regio, and it too may be an ancient, degraded impact crater or as many as three degraded craters side-by-side. The interior of Shoemaker Regio is young like the interiors of Himeros and Psyche, because it is lightly cratered, but it is also the most boulder-rich area on Eros and very different from the relatively smooth interiors of Himeros and Psyche. What has happened? We do not know. Eros is a body without atmosphere or ocean, without large-scale volcanism (Eros has never melted completely, but some partial melting may have occurred in the past), and without plate tectonics, but it has ongoing geologic activity. What could be sculpting the surface except impacts? Much the same can be said for the Moon, although the Moon did have extensive magmatic activity (releases of lava on a global scale) billions of years ago. On the Moon, the primary process shaping the surface is cratering. In the lunar highlands, for example, we see that the continuing rain of projectiles has produced a state that approaches what we call "equilibrium saturation", where each new impact on the average erases as many pre-existing craters as it makes new ones (each projectile makes a primary crater but can make additional craters if it produces ejecta that fall back to the surface at high speed). In the equilibrium state, we find that the density of craters on the surface obeys a characteristic relation. Namely, if we count craters of a given size range, say from 10 km to 14 km diameter in a certain region on the Moon, and we ask what is the total area covered by craters of this size in this region, we find empirically that about one fifth of the area is covered. The same is roughly true for craters in other size ranges (say from 20 to 28 km), as long as the minimum and maximum diameters of the size range stay in the same ratio, and provided that the craters are not too large. This distribution implies that the total number of craters smaller than some diameter scales roughly as the inverse square of this diameter, up to some maximum size. That is, the total number of craters smaller than 2 km is four times as many as the total number smaller than 4 km, and the number smaller than 1 km is four times as many again. Similar distributions are found on heavily cratered bodies throughout the solar system, although there are deviations from the simple power law that reflect the geologic histories of the individual objects. The crater size distribution records how many projectiles of various sizes hit the Moon, which interests us because the distribution of projectiles that bombarded the Moon must also hit the Earth. Although there are complications - it is not completely straightforward to relate the distribution of craters to that of projectiles - this is why horrific impacts like the one at Chicxulub, which ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, are much less frequent than minor impacts like the one that made Barringer Meteor Crater (and we are thankful). This is also why the largest impact craters on a body, like Psyche or Himeros (if it is one), are likely to be the oldest. Larger impacts occur less frequently, so it is unlikely for a large impact to have occurred very recently. Moreover, large impacts create large volumes of ejecta and produce large seismic disturbances, both of which tend to erase small craters around them (by covering or obliterating them). A very large impact, like Psyche on Eros, may be able to erase small craters globally. Perhaps if Psyche formed after Himeros, it could have 'reset' the surface on Eros by erasing small craters, but then how was the interior of Psyche also reset? In any case, when we saw heavily cratered surfaces on Eros, we were not surprised, and we expected an equilibrium saturation distribution to apply. However, the distribution of craters that we actually see at Eros is very different. An equilibrium saturation distribution would mean that if we are able to see smaller craters, we should find more of them, approximately as the inverse square of the size. This is not true at Eros. We went to low altitudes and looked for smaller craters, but found that craters below about a hundred meters in diameter are markedly depleted. Furthermore, the smaller the size of crater we look for, the fewer we find relative to what we would expect from an equilibrium distribution. So, again we ask, what is happening? Perhaps it will not be us, but some future scientists, who will unravel some of the mysteries we are studying. In any case, we are working hard to understand the surface of Eros. Andrew Cheng NEAR Project Scientist WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: The mysteries about the asteroid Eros begin the moment it is assumed that the history of asteroids is fairly well known. A great deal is made out of the so-called impact cratering record. But the story about the formation of the solar system from a disk of rubble is nothing more than a fable. And like any fable, disbelief must be suspended when a miracle is called upon at the end of each chapter to keep the story alive. We don't have to wait for future scientists to unravel the mysteries of Eros. It is almost 30 years since the publication of an electrical model of the solar system by the brilliant engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona - Ralph Juergens. Following his death in 1979, the Canadian physicist, Earl Milton, continued the work of his good friend. A simple version of the cosmic electricians' story is that most comets, asteroids and meteoroids have a common origin. They are formed from material that has been electrically torn from an existing planet during a close encounter with another planet. The forces that melted, shaped and eroded the surface of an asteroid are those encountered in plasma arc machining. Milton and Juergens independently came to the same conclusion. In 1980, Milton wrote: "Likely the small body of the comet here functions as an undersized anode and evaporates like an electrode in an arc. Over time the cometary nucleus should become cratered and pitted like the surfaces of some of the planets and satellites of the Solar System. When a spacecraft finally achieves a rendezvous with one of the comets scientists are going to be surprised to find a surface pitted like that of the Moon, Mars, or Mercury." The same statement applies to asteroids. The circular craters on Eros with smooth interiors are not due to impacts. The size distribution of craters is dependent solely upon the power of the cosmic lightning being endured by the body during its birth or during a cometary existence. And differences in cratering density have nothing to do with age of the surface. Electrical cratering takes place in a flurry and, as with the sunward side of a comet, may be selective in the areas struck. Groovy Asteroid Images returned by NEAR Shoemaker show that Eros, like a number of other asteroids and asteroid-like moons, has a surface cut by linear troughs called "grooves." Similar features have been identified on asteroids Ida and Gaspra and on Mars' moon Phobos. However, the high-resolution images of Eros allow the origin of its grooves to be investigated in unprecedented detail. Grooves on asteroids are usually explained as evidence of structural faults. In fact, with their population of craterlets they are to be seen wherever electrical arcing has been widespread on a surface. They often form parallel patterns and are caused when powerful electric currents travel along the surface. The filaments of current exhibit long range attraction and short range repulsion, which creates parallel grooves. Eros has such features which have been compared with a wood-grained appearance. The on- channel craters are formed where the intense surface heating creates sufficient charge carriers to be the focus of a short- lived arc. Comets and asteroids are the same bodies, distinguished only by their orbits. Asteroids occasionally show a diffuse cometary appearance and one asteroid, Chiron, was observed in 1988 to become a comet. An asteroid will become a comet if its orbit becomes highly elliptical. Any large object, including a planet, will find a rapidly changing electrical stress as it moves radially with respect to the Sun. The result is the formation of a Langmuir plasma sheath to enclose the charged body's alien electric field. That is what forms and stabilizes the huge comet comas that may have a visible diameter of a hundred thousand kilometres. There is no way that the puny gravitational field of a 10km rock can control that volume. The close up image of the nucleus of comet Halley, snapped by the Giotto spacecraft as it flew by, shows the kind of electrical surface machining that shapes asteroids. The nucleus cratering and presence of x-rays and energetic particles near a comet were all predicted by Milton years before the Halley encounter in 1986. The electrical model of the solar system has implications for the NEAR spacecraft as it attempts to softly crash-land on the asteroid. An electrical discharge between NEAR and Eros may occur even though the spacecraft has had a year to slowly equalize its voltage with that of the asteroid. If that happens, the signal from the spacecraft may disappear before touchdown. Once down, and if still functioning, dust could electrostatically coat the lenses of the cameras. The state of surface material in the form of dust, soil and boulders, will be determined by the asteroids history. It is more likely to have loose surface material if the asteroid has not had a cometary history since its formation. The many boulders on Eros hint that this is so. Small craters on the Moon were seen by the Apollo astronauts to contain glassy deposits at their centers. They are the equivalent of fulgurites formed by lightning in sand. With luck a close up of the small craters may show evidence of glass. The place to look is the enigmatic light colored filamentary deposits which are reminiscent of the light colored rayed-craters on the Moon. Such rays, Juergens showed, are electrical in origin. Near has made a historic landing on Eros. And 69 detailed pictures were taken during the last 5 kilometres descent. The closest was from a height of only 120 metres showing features down to 1 centimetre across. In a press conference on 14 February, Dr Joseph Veverka said, "These spectacular images have started to answer the many questions we had about Eros, but they also revealed new mysteries that we will explore for years to come." One of those mysteries was an area "where the surface appears to have collapsed." They are shown here in the insets above the closest image taken of Eros. The argument of surface collapse is well worn, having been used to describe similarly etched areas of Mars. There it is attributed to subsurface liquid flows. It doesn't work on Mars, so to use it as an explanation on an asteroid is a sign of desperation. The simple answer is that it is electric arc erosion. The left hand close-up image shows the usual sharp, rounded edges and flat floor of spark machining craters. Electric discharge phenomena are scaleable over a huge range so that it is acceptable to compare erosion on a surface under a microscope with landforms on Mars that stretch over hundred's of kilometres. It seems entirely appropriate on Valentine's day that Eros should be showing us his etchings! ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ****************************************************************** PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/products.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm http://www.science-frontiers.com ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. thoth at Whidbey.com New readers are referred to earlier issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the free newsletter page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues.