THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL III, No. 1 Jan 15, 1999 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS STATE OF THE UNIVERSE: 1999 . . . . . . . . . . . by Mel Acheson MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE: Part I of II By Ev Cochrane MERCURY IN MYTHOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott SUPERFLARES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?. . . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTION CONFIRMED . . . . . by Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- STATE OF THE UNIVERSE: 1999 by Mel Acheson Uniformism is dead. It exhausted itself fighting Velikovsky. The Gould-Eldredge saltationism punctured holes in it. The Alvarez asteroid blew it away. In its vacant territory roam a multitude of catastrophist ideas: Clube and Napier's comet, to mention only one, which, significantly, accepts myths as evidence. And the worms of revisionist theories are digesting the corpse: for example, Prigogine's demonstration of the uncertainty at the heart of dynamics. On the larger, public stage, the image of authority long associated with uniformist theories has faded. Kuhn discovered that science progresses by way of a succession of paradigms. Foucault articulated the pervasiveness of politics which the Velikovsky affair, among others, revealed. And on the smaller stage of evidence, the flood of surprising, difficult-to-explain, or downright anomalous observations in recent decades is carving out a wider and deeper theoretical channel: Arp's quantised quasars and Thornhill's plasma-machined planets, to name only two. The uniformist paradigm has already shifted. A market in paradigms has developed. A multiplicity of meanings, each with its domain of validity, allows a choice of appropriate truths for particular conditions. The uniformist ideal was a Theory of Everything, which, in practice, would have been imposed on everything and on everyone. It has simply been overwhelmed by a huge and complex universe and by the organic connection of scientific truth to the human necessity for many viewpoints. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- MARS ROCKS IN ANCIENT MYTH AND MODERN SCIENCE: Part I of II By Ev Cochrane [ed note: this article was originally printed in AEON: Vol IV No 2, pg 57-73. Footnotes are available there.] On June 28th, 1911, the inhabitants of Nakhla, Egypt, were treated to a spectacular meteor shower. As it turns out, one of these rocks almost certainly came from the planet Mars, nearly 50 million miles away. The difficulty in dislodging a meteorite from the red planet, much less transporting one to Earth, has prompted several noted authorities to doubt their Martian origin. The meteorite's chemical imprint, however, not unlike the DNA- evidence in a murder trial, leaves little doubt about its place of origin. Nor did this rock alone make the journey. To date, ten Martian meteorites have been identified, half of them being observed falls. The recognition that these rocks hail from Mars has been called one of the most important findings of the space age. Meteorites have long aroused interest, being objects of worship in numerous ancient cultures, their heavenly origin no doubt contributing to their numinous appeal. That meteorites were extraterrestrial in nature was certainly known to the skywatchers of Mesopotamia, China, and Greece. At some point, however, this knowledge became lost. Thomas Jefferson, for example, was in the majority in rejecting the possibility that rocks could fall from the sky. Confronted with a report of a meteorite-fall in Connecticut, Jefferson is said to have quipped: "It is easier to believe that Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from heaven." And this was in 1807! Reviewing the history of meteoritics, Dodd commented upon this strange turn of events: "That meteorites came from beyond the Earth is both a very old and a new idea…The ancient Greeks and Chinese also regarded meteorites as objects from the heavens, but this perception, like so much else of value, was lost to Western culture during the long intellectual night that we call the Dark Ages…Although several important meteorite falls were recovered and described during the second half of the eighteenth century, the few men who suggested that they came from beyond the Earth were either ridiculed or ignored." It is not surprising, perhaps, given this history, that disbelief and hostility originally greeted the proposal that meteorites could make their way to Earth from Mars. The idea that meteorites from Mars could impact Earth is not new. Several decades prior to these relatively recent and wholly unexpected developments, Immanuel Velikovsky claimed that rocks from Mars had only recently menaced the Earth. Velikovsky drew this conclusion upon the basis of ancient testimony, which described Mars as participating in spectacular cataclysms involving the Earth and various neighboring bodies. In Worlds in Collision, Velikovsky described the events associated with the near passage of Venus and Mars as follows: "When Mars clashed with Venus, asteroids, meteorites, and gases were torn from [Venus' comet-like tail], and began a semi- independent existence, some following the orbit of Mars, some other paths. These swarms of meteorites with their gaseous appendages were newborn comets; flying in bands and taking various shapes, they made an uncanny impression. Those which followed Mars closely looked like a troop following their leader. They also ran along different orbits, grew quickly from small to giant size, and terrorized the peoples of the earth." Velikovsky's thesis, needless to say, met with nearly unanimous hostility and disbelief among astronomers. A reappraisal of the evidence bearing on the question, however, suggests that Velikovsky deserves great credit for anticipating the Martian origin of certain meteorites. And if the author of Worlds in Collision was on the right track with regards to the spectacular circumstances behind the arrival of these meteorites, their significance for a proper understanding of the evolution of the solar system far surpasses anything imagined by conventional astronomers. In what follows, we will first review the evidence which suggests that these meteorites are actually from Mars. We will then summarize and briefly examine the various theories as to how the rocks came to be expelled from the red planet and make their way to the Earth. Then we will return to Velikovsky's thesis of planetary catastrophism, offering further support for the idea that Mars only recently moved in very close proximity to the Earth, raining forth extraterrestrial debris of one form or another, including fiery bolides. THE SNC-METEORITES The SNC-meteorites take their name from Shergotty, Nakhla and Chassigny, three different but closely related achondritic classes of igneous rock. The basaltic shergottites resemble eucrites in mineralogy and are regarded as the product of volcanic flows (lavas). Their name derives from Shergotty, India, the scene in 1865 of the fall of several meteorites. Included in this class are the following meteorites: Shergotty, Zagami, EET79001, ALH77005, and LEW88516, the latter two bodies being Lherzolites. The nakhlites, on the other hand, are pyroxenites consisting mainly of augite. They received their name from an Egyptian site-El Nakhla el Baharia-where over 40 stones fell in 1911. Included in this class are the following rocks: Nakhla, Lafayette, and Governador Valadares. The lone Chassigny meteorite is a dunite consisting mainly of iron-rich olivine. It fell in France in 1815. The tenth Martian rock, ALH84001, has only recently been identified as Martian in nature. It is a cataclastic, coarse-grained orthopyroxenite and is thought to have properties unique among these bodies. Although visually dissimilar, the three classes of meteorites share numerous features in common. Most of these rocks contain iron-rich silicates and iron oxides, clear evidence that they were created in a rather iron-rich environment. And all of the SNCs show very similar oxygen-isotope compositions, these abundances being distinct from those characteristic of the Earth or Moon. The SNCs are also similar in their relatively young ages. By measuring the decay products of various radioactive isotopes in igneous rocks, it is thought to be possible to determine how long ago the rocks solidifed. Known as the crystallization age, the measures obtained for the Nahklites and Chassigny were on the order of ~1.3 billion years, compared to the 4.4 to 4.6 Gyr typical of meteorites of the igneous variety. This age is unique among all meteorites-the youngest lunar meteorites are > 3.0 Gyr- and clearly marks these particular rocks as anomalous. Inasmuch as it is commonly believed that only planets could retain the high internal temperatures necessary to produce magmas billions of years after accretion, a planet was sought as the parent of these particular meteorites. According to Dodd, these crystallization age analyses have "shown beyond reasonable doubt that all of them [the SNCs] come from the same body, certainly a planet and probably Mars." The SNCs also share high volatile contents. This feature likewise supports the hypothesis that these bodies originated on a large body with a gravitational field great enough to retain volatiles. For various reasons, a body larger than the Moon is believed to be required. Rare earth element analysis can also be brought to bear on the question of the meteorites' place of origin. It indicates the presence of garnet materials in the source region of the shergottites, which suggests a source region pressure of >40 kbars, consistent with the view that the SNC parent body was likely larger than the Moon. Several other characteristics of these rocks are of interest. The individual minerals show some disturbance at ~180 million years in the U-Pb, Rb-Sr, and Ar-Ar clocks. This is thought by some to represent the date of impact which ejected the SNCs from their parent body. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, analysis of the noble gases trapped in some of the shergottites (EETA79001 and ALHA77005) has revealed the clear signature of Mars. According to McSween, "the measured abundances and isotopic compositions of Ar, Kr, Xe, and N are unique among meteorites and closely resemble the composition of the Martian atmosphere analyzed by Viking." Dodd likewise acknowledges the probable Martian character of these noble gases, adding that "the only plausible explanation for this observation is that the meteorite trapped these atmospheric gases during shock melting." In addition to the noble gases, one of the meteorites in question shows traces of nitrogen with an unusual isotopic composition consistent with a Martian origin. Here Pepin and Carr report: "Subsequent laboratory work on EETA 79001 revealed a pronounced enrichment of 15N, consistent with the isotopically heavy nitrogen that distinguishes the atmosphere of Mars from virtually all other volatile reservoirs in the solar system." This last finding was deemed particularly significant by McSween. Several other characteristics of these meteorites are also consistent with a Martian origin. One of the SNCs-Nakhla-shows traces of water, for example (Mars is known to have once had large amounts of water, now apparently gone). Iron-bearing minerals in various shergottites, similarly, are just barely magnetized, implying that the parent body had a weak magnetic field (recent measurements of Mars' magnetic field suggest that it is most probably quite weak). SCENARIOS OF EJECTION AND TRANSPORT If it is generally agreed that the SNCs are indeed from Mars, the means of their ejection off our red neighbor and transport to Earth has been a subject of much speculation and controversy. As noted earlier, leading authorities question whether it is possible for an impact to dislodge appropriate-sized rocks with enough force to overcome the gravity of the planet. Here Wasson offered the following observation: "The key unresolved question is whether an impact could eject >10-m blocks from Mars with velocities in excess of the escape velocity of 5 km times s^-1." McSween, similarly, with reference to the prevailing view that the SNCs originated from Mars, observes that "this particular consensus is not universally held, however, because of the serious (some would say insurmountable) problems in removing rocks of a suitable size from the Martian surface." McSween summarizes the problem as follows: "It has generally been supposed that any smaller fragments that could be ejected from planets by impact mechanisms would have experienced such a high degree of shock that they would be pulverized, melted, or even vaporized. Yet no other natural means of meteoroid ejection seems possible. The energy of rapidly expanding gases during volcanic eruptions is too small to accelerate fragments to planetary escape velocities, and other geologic phenomena are even less capable launching mechanisms." The conventional view is that a meteorite impact released the rocks from Mars millions of years ago. Vickery and Melosh, for example, offered the following opinion: "The dynamically most plausible explanation for the martian origin of the SNC meteorites is that they were ejected from Mars in a single, very large magnitude event ~200 Ma ago." Others, however, have criticized this view. Pointing to various discrepancies in the cosmic ray exposure ages of the respective meteorites [this measure is thought to represent the time spent as small bodies orbiting in space and exposed to cosmic radiation], McSween argues that it is unlikely that such data can be reconciled with a single impact scenario. Shergotty and ALHA 77005, for example, have exposure values of 2.6 million years, while that of EETA 79001 is only 0.5 m.y. The nakhlites and Chassigny, on the other hand, have exposure ages of 11 million years. How are we to explain these findings if the meteorites were all ejected in one impact-event 200 million years ago? Various scenarios have been advanced to account for the exposure- data. One possibility-discussed by Vickery and Melosh-is to assume that the various SNCs were originally part of a much larger body which subsequently became fragmented in space at times corresponding to their cosmic-ray exposure ages. Dissenting from the chronology of Vickery and Melosh, McSween elaborated upon this hypothesis as follows: "[In the most likely scenario] one event at 11 m.y. ago could eject a number of small to moderately sized fragments from various locations around the crater perimeter. The smaller ones immediately recorded cosmic ray exposure, but the larger ones were unaffected until subsequent breakup in space at 2.5 and 0.5 m.y. ago. In this model, ejected fragments would be in the size range of approximately 1-20 m, and the major impact that caused shock metamorphism in the shergottites would not have been the ejection event." More recent attempts to accommodate the data from cosmic ray analyses have held that three different impact events were involved. A. Banin et al., for example, argue as follows: "Using rare gas data for SNC meteorites, Ott (1988) argued that the introduction of the (Martian) atmosphere component by shock must have occurred rather recently and cannot be ascribed to a 180 Myr event. This contradicts the model originally proposed by Nyquist et al. (1979) according to which the SNC meteorites were ejected from the parent body in a single major impact event 180 Myr ago in fragments large enough to be shielded from cosmic-ray exposure since that time. The new evidence suggests that it is more likely that SNC meteorites were ejected from Mars in three considerably smaller impact events at times corresponding to the three groups of cosmic ray exposure ages, i.e., 0.5 Myr ejection of EETA 79001, 2.6 Myr ago ejection of Shergotty, Zagami and ALHA 77005, and 11-Myr ago ejection of the nakhlites and Chassigny (Bogard et al. 1984)." It is noteworthy, however, that this scenario involving three separate events was discarded by Vickery and Melosh in no uncertain terms. Other problems arise from the fact that the various SNCs experienced different degrees of shock. The shergottites, for example, show clear evidence of intense shock, yet the nakhlites and Chassigny do not. This is hardly what would be expected if these rocks were dislodged from Mars as a result of a single major impact. Warren summarized this objection as follows: "The main argument against a Mars-SNC connection has always been that ejection off a planet is expected to entail extremely high shock pressures. Yet these meteorites, which are up to 40 kg in mass, show only low to moderate degrees of shock." According to Dodd, the finding of lightly shocked lunar meteorites in Antarctica alleviates-but does not entirely remove- the objection that meteorites could make their way from Mars to Earth: "The Antarctic finds indicate that recognizable meteoritic material can make its way from the moon to the Earth, but they do not prove that virtually unshocked samples could make a longer trip from a bigger body. The problem of delivering SNC meteorites remains a serious objection to a planetary source for such meteorites." How then did these meteorites come to be ejected and make their way to the Earth? One proposal suggested that oblique impacts- upon ricocheting-could eject large fragments and accelerate them to escape velocity. Another model held that impacts on Mars would vaporize permafrost thereby providing additional acceleration to the ejecting fragments. For various reasons, these models have since been abandoned. H. Melosh, an early critic of the idea that the SNCs could be Martian in origin, offered a model whereby it is possible for planetary impacts to eject a requisite amount of near-surface material without significant shocking through a process known as spallation. This hypothesis has since been supported by various experimental tests and is currently regarded as the most likely explanation for the ejection of the SNCs from Mars. Briefly, it is known that upon meteorite-impact the surface of a planetary body is subject to varying degrees of stress. At the site of the impact, the impacting body would be pulverized and/or vaporized, producing a wave of stress whose force drops off sharply with distance. Rocks close to the site of impact are melted or pulverized. At a certain distance, however, the various shock waves act so as to cancel out each other to some extent. McSween summarizes this phenomenon as follows: "Rocks very near the ground surface experience several kinds of shock waves that partially cancel each other. This area of wave interference offers a shelter from the full force of the shock wave. Calculations indicate that some of this near-surface material will spall off as relatively unshocked fragments and can be accelerated to high speeds." Alas, there are problems with this theory as well. According to the spallation model, the size of the ejecta fragments is directly dependent on the size of the impact and thus on the size of the resulting crater. As we have seen, Melosh himself favored a single impact event at ~180 million years involving an ejection of all SNC bodies in pieces on the order of 6-7 meters, the latter constraint being required in order to account for the shielding from cosmic rays. In order to eject this much rock a fairly large impact is necessary, and thus Melosh sought a crater on the order of 100 km in diameter. Craters of this size, however, are exceedingly rare in areas of recent volcanic activity (datable to ~200 million years). If, on the other hand, one favors the ejection of modestly sized rocks (meter or submeter-sized) from much younger sites (10-12 million years old)-the view currently defended by McSween-the dynamical problems associated with large impacts are diminished, as is the necessity of finding craters 100 km in diameter (one 30 km in diameter would do, although this represents the largest crater known to be included in the "young" terrane of Mars). Here, however, one is presented with a question as to why SNCs resulting from such relatively minor impacts would be over- represented compared with those expected from major impacts observable elsewhere on Mars (i.e., if spallation is directly dependent upon the size of the impact, one would expect SNCs resulting from larger impacts in older terrane to predominate)? Stated another way, if most of the Martian terrane is known to be much older than ~180 million years, and it is known to be the site of the largest impacts, where are the SNCs from those regions? McSween admitted the theoretical difficulty presented by the predominance of younger rocks in a recent review: "It is perplexing that all of the martian geological units from which we have samples are very young…because geological units of these ages constitute only a small portion of the surface of Mars…The problem of having so many young meteorites is especially acute, particularly if multiple impact events are postulated to explain the groupings of cosmic-ray exposure ages. Areas volcanically resurfaced during the Amazonian period (which is thought to encompass rocks of 1.3 Ga and younger) amount to only 16% of the martian surface, and late Amazonian (corresponding to 180-Ma old rocks) volcanic activity constitutes a mere 2%." In short, the currently favored theory as to the origin of the SNCs requires that three (or four) separate impacts somehow managed to strike a mere 16% of the Martian surface, all within a geologically short period of time (some eleven million years). Probability alone would appear to argue against this view. Other problems arise regarding the meteorites' means and time of transport to Earth. For example, if one is to believe the currently prevailing view that three separate impact events are required to explain the rocks' ejection from Mars, one is greeted with the remarkable coincidence that meteorites originating from events millions of years ago-and millions of years apart-managed to descend upon Earth within a period of about a century or so in order to be observed by man. It must be admitted, however, that very little is known about the amount of time required to get the SNCs to the Earth. According to McSween, who cites Wetherill's model, roughly one third of the ejected material would reach Earth within 10 million years. Granted the difficulties of accounting for the ejection and transport of these odd meteorites, Dodd, perhaps, summarized the opinion of many astronomers when he wrote as follows: "Just how these meteorites escaped from Mars remains unclear, but most meteoriticists are now quite sure that they did." Ev Cochrane ---------------------------------------------- MERCURY IN MYTHOLOGY By Dave Talbott Harold Tresman asked: As a non-expert in mythology can somebody tell me the role of Mercury, 'Messenger of the Gods' was in all these events. DAVE TALBOTT replied: For years I tried to find the distinction between "Mercury" as messenger and the "warrior-hero" (Mars) as messenger. I could never find a basis for separating the two. Eventually, I concluded that the effort was misplaced, that there is no distinction between the stories. It's a bit like Sol and Saturn, or Helios and Kronos. They hold the same story and are in fact the same gods. But why is one story or identity attached to two different celestial bodies? It's simply the way symbolism evolved. When the ancient celestial order dissolved, every body seen in the sky was asked to play a role as SYMBOL of what was remembered but no longer present. Our Sun became the natural symbol of the former central luminary, Saturn, thus receiving Saturn's name as well. The Moon took its name from the primeval crescent on Saturn. The star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, took its name from the radiant Venus, the "prototype" of stars visible in the sky before any stars were seen (while the very words for "star" descended from the Venus-goddess as well). All of the constellations received their names from the gods (or attributes of gods) in the former epoch. While Heracles was a Greek name of Mars, it also became the name of a constellation. There was a Bull of Heaven (pillar and crescent) long before the Bull gave its name to the vaguely-defined star group now called Taurus. It was only natural that a little star eventually discovered as a companion to our Sun should be assigned those attributes of the warrior hero relating to the hero's role as tiny companion (messenger, scribe, servant, assistant) to the primeval sun, Saturn. As a general rule, in the progressive elaboration of symbolism, the attributes of the symbolic object will tend to scale down the original story. Aspects of the original story which cannot be meaningfully expressed by the familiar symbolic object will tend to be shed over time. The world mountain was also the "underworld" river and the luminous nether "wind". But once its name was attached to a sacred, commemorative, local mountain, the idea that THAT mountain could be a river or a wind would make no sense. Though the history of the warrior hero included much more than his role as "little companion" to the primeval sun, the unique position of Mercury tended to highlight that role in its relation to our Sun. The planet can be viewed as one of many natural symbols in our world pointing back to attributes of the warrior- hero in the myth-making epoch. ---------------------------------------------- SUPERFLARES By Wal Thornhill The following news item should be of interest. It supports the idea, first proposed by Velikovsky I think, that proto-Saturn as a minor star suffered a brilliant flare-up. [The usual meaningless magnetic model of the cause of a solar flare is invoked in the article: "magnetic fields between a star and a large planet, or another star, can wrap around each other until they snap, erupting in a superflare."] In the Electric Universe model, what we are seeing is simply a violent stellar electrical discharge. It is a normal response of a star (or a gas giant) to a strong gravitational disturbance and/or rapid change in the electrical environment. It is the usual birth notice of a new planet. In proto-Saturn's case, the entry into the solar plasmasphere would have required rapid adjustment to the new electrical environment where the Sun was the main focus of electrical activity. As I have mentioned before, this would have resulted in a massive cometary coma, centred on proto-Saturn. And in the same way that comets have material machined electrically from their nucleus in the form of "jets", so Saturn would have begun spewing matter into space like a spinning garden sprinkler. The article also mentions the expected powerful auroral effects. These too I would expect in the proto-Saturn system. In my opinion the massive flare-up that Velikovsky identified would more than likely have occurred when proto-Saturn encountered the plasmasphere of one of the gas giant planets in the Sun's entourage at the time. Like Dwardu, I think that the simplest and most likely candidate was Jupiter. Such an encounter would allow a cataclysmic charge exchange (superflare) followed by a drastic modification of orbits. If our own Sun had been observed by distant alien scientists when Saturn flared, would they too have attributed the outburst to the Sun because Saturn was too close to the Sun to be distinguished as a separate body? The following report is based on historical records of flare-ups and it has only been possible in the last few years to resolve a few objects the size of hypothesised proto-Saturn, close to a nearby star. If I'm not mistaken, the 9 superflares identified over the past 100 years suggest that the catastrophic recent history of our own planetary system is not unusual. So the complacency of scientists about our situation is based largely on ignorance. Wal Thornhill ............................................................... Superflares Can Zap Planets - Astronomers Puzzle over Other Stars By Kenneth Chang ABCNEWS. com 6 January 1999 AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 6-Why are we confident the sun will burn reliably for a few billion more years? Some sun-like stars have hiccuped, occasionally spewing out a burst of light so bright it would melt ice on the moons of Saturn. "They are very huge flares," says Yale University astronomer Bradley Schaefer. "I'm calling them superflares. You start looking at the underlying star and you find they are really disturbingly similar to our sun." While our sun seems a constant of light, it isn't. Huge magnetic fields pulse out of the surface and darken the regions we call sunspots. Arcs of superhot gas rise off its surface and race into space. There's no evidence that our sun has ever suffered a superflare, and if Schaefer and fellow Yale astronomer Eric Rubenstein are right about what creates them, we have nothing to worry about. Sifting through observations as far back as 1899, Schaefer found nine instances of superflares by sun-like stars. In each case, the star brightened by 10 percent to 1,000 percent for a period lasting about an hour. The smallest of the nine superflares was 100 times larger than the largest flare that's been seen shooting out of our sun. Extremely young stars, fast rotating ones or ones with close- orbiting companion stars can create such outpourings of energy, but in these instances, the stars were run-of-the-mill sun-like, single stars. "Our sun would fit right in," Schaefer says. He and Rubenstein presented their results today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. DELIGHTFUL TO DISASTROUS If the sun ever threw out a superflare, the results on Earth could range from pretty to devastating. The superflare would accelerate protons and other particles speeding toward Earth, brightening the auroras from a near-the-poles sight to one filling the world's night skies. On the downside, "Kiss our satellite fleet goodbye," Schaefer says. The high-speed particles, even from a small superflare, would fry the satellites' electronics. The surge of electricity from the charged particles would also likely blow out electrical power grids around the world. A midsize or large flare would prove deadly. Earth's upper atmosphere would prevent the flare radiation from reaching the ground, but it would trigger reactions that create compounds called nitrous oxides, which in turn would destroy the ozone layer that shields the planet from ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light would kill bacteria and plankton. If bacteria and plankton die, other animals up the food chain begin to die, too. "But," Schaefer says, '`all this isn't going to happen." OUR SUN REMAINS CALM Scientific measurements would have picked up any superflare that occurred in the past century and a half. Historical documents probably would have recorded the fantastic aurora caused by any superflare in the past millennium. And the moons of Saturn aren't covered with vast plains of melted, then refrozen ice. "We see nothing like that," Schaefer says. "Our sun does not have superflares as far as we can tell." According to Rubenstein, here's why: Mercury is not Jupiter. Some binary stars-pairs that revolve around a common center- routinely erupt much like superflares as their magnetic fields get wrapped around each other like rubber bands until they snap. In the superflaring stars, there's no companion star, but there could be a planet. A planet with a magnetic field as strong as Jupiter's or Saturn's in Mercury's orbit could be sufficient. Several of the extrasolar planets discovered in the past few years circle in such star-hugging orbits. The other necessary ingredient is for the star to have a strong magnetic field itself. Two of the superflare stars are known to have fields hundreds of times stronger than our sun's. Fortunately, Mercury is not Jupiter, so there's probably nothing to worry about. ---------------------------------------------- DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT? By Wal Thornhill NASA on Galileo's current mission: "The plasma sheet, which lies along Jupiter's magnetic equator, is an area that exhibits a high concentration of plasma, or ionized gases. This allows relatively strong electrical currents to flow, and creates dynamic interactions between the plasma and Jupiter's magnetic field." Wal Thornhill comments: Pay particular note to the last sentence where the usual suspect, the planet's magnetic field, is held responsible for any electrical effects and we can therefore ignore the possibility that Jupiter may be part of a larger electrical circuit. I would expect that when the results of Galileo's sweep through Jupiter's magnetotail are published we will find that it is not as neat as expected and depicted in the models of planetary magnetotails. They should detect a rapidly varying field as they cut through Birkeland current "ropes" trailing away from the planet in the magnetotail. That can then be added to the plasma ropes detected from Venus and in the tail of a comet as proof of the larger electrical circuitry in space. ---------------------------------------------- ELECTRIC UNIVERSE PREDICTION CONFIRMED by Wal Thornhill Last year in May I was embroiled in a defence of the electric sun model. I wrote: "The problem for the theorists is that, if the photosphere is an anode phenomenon, the boundary conditions defined by the photospheric temperature and apparent radius of the sun is no longer applicable as used in the standard solar model. So, yes, I am suggesting that the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere." The following undated news item supports my argument and, if confirmed, throws yet another huge spanner in the works of the standard solar model. One of the key characteristics of an electric star, first noted by Ralph Juergens in relation to red giants, is that its apparent size is determined by its electrical environment. In fact, it was Ralph who identified the granulation seen in the solar photosphere as "anode tufting". Anode tufting occurs ABOVE an anode surface to effectively increase the surface area of the anode to meet the imposed current load. In other words, "the sun is a different size than that suggested by the photosphere." In the electric sun model, cyclic changes in the electrical stress on the Sun impinging from our arm of the galaxy are responsible for the sunspot cycle. So it is natural to expect that the apparent size of the sun will vary in step to match the changing current load. It is not necessary to look inside the sun for the "enormous" energy involved in such a phenomenon (according to the standard solar model). Wal Thornhill ................................................................ A Baffling New Finding - Sun Shrinks, Then Puffs By Kenneth Chang ABCNEWS.com You're not supposed to look at the sun, so you probably didn't notice. The yellow ball in the sky, that light of our lives, has apparently shrunk. The person who has been looking, through camera images taken at the San Fernando Observatory in California, can't believe his eyes. Since 1991, the sun has apparently shed about 400 miles off its 865,000-mile-wide girth. "I was both happily surprised," says San Fernando astronomer Gary Chapman, "and somewhat dismayed." Examining images taken between May 1986 and August 1997, Chapman plotted the sun's average diameter over that 11-year period. The line squiggles up and down on a yearly basis. That's expected, and has nothing to do with what's happening inside the sun. The Earth's elliptical orbit takes it closer to the sun in January and farther away in July. Closer objects look bigger, so the sun appears slightly bigger in winter. Changing temperatures also expand and contract the telescope itself, making it an unwanted zoom lens and further distorting the data. GETTING BUFFED However, underlying these annual variations was an 11-year-long undulation. The size grew as the sun emerged from its last quiet period, peaking around 1990, then shrunk as its activity mellowed out. "This is not what I was expecting," Chapman told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. last week. "I was hoping for nothing. To me, it's a fly in the ointment." The variation in the sun's size coincides with its sunspot cycle. Magnetic fields within the sun drive an 11-year cycle of sunspots on its surface, first observed three centuries ago. The sun's brightness and number of solar flares also vary, last reaching a minimum in 1996. But most astronomers, including Chapman, believed the sun's size stayed the same. As the sun awakens from its quiet phase, the sunspots and solar flares will return-and, if Chapman's observations are correct, the sun will puff out again. "Very interesting, if true," comments Tim Brown, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. "Gary is a careful guy. I think you have to take the suggestion seriously." Brown tried similar measurements through a different technique a decade ago-and found no change. "The energy involved in increasing the sun's radius by (200 miles) is enormous," Brown says. "It's hard to understand where that would come from." SUN STILL A MYSTERY Brown acknowledges that it's not impossible, "because we don't understand how the sun works as well as we might like to think. But I don't think anyone knows a mechanism by which that can be done." Roger Ulrich, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, reported results a couple of years (sic) that hinted at a change of size similar to what Chapman found. But Ulrich didn't believe the sun was actually changing size. "In my case, all I'm saying is the material is more or less where it was before," Ulrich says, "but it's hotter." And the brighter sun just looked bigger. Chapman says his technique tries to take into account the changes in brightness, and yet the 11-year puffing and slimming cycle remained. The sun remains slim, according to the latest data. But unless something really strange is going on, its diameter will grow as the sun's activity perks up toward its next peak early in the 21st century. "We can't confirm that yet," Chapman says. "Get back to us in a couple of years. One has to be patient in these sort of things. ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE: http://www.kronia.com Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: [Ed note: the SIS Website address has changed to: http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ ] Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.ames.net/aeon/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/velikovskian/ http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/Catastrophism.html http://www.grazian-archive.com/ Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- 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. 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. ---