THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL V, No 11 Oct 15, 2001 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE SKETCH OF THAT "E" WORD . . . . . Mel Acheson CELESTIAL CATASTROPHES IN HUMAN PREHISTORY? . . . . .Press Release BINARY STARS: FUSION vs COLLISION . . . . . . . . . . . .Don Scott MARS and the GRAND CANYON . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< BACK-OF-THE-ENVELOPE SKETCH OF THAT "E" WORD by Mel Acheson Epistemology is knowledge about knowledge. Fortunately, it has almost no practical value: If people had to know how they know before they could know something, they'd never know anything. But I've developed a fascination for it (or maybe I just like its potential for puns). There are many views of this; the following is mine. None of it's original with me. I've collected it from various books and conversations. But it's provided me with a kind of grandstand seat overlooking the games of science, which are my other fascination. Knowledge comes in several brands. Or rather the word "knowledge" is used to label several diverse, even contradictory, phenomena. There is intuitive knowledge and religious knowledge or revelation. There is visceral knowledge: activities such as playing a piano or hammering nails that you perform without much conscious direction or possibly without involving your brain. There is animal knowledge: for example, how a paramecium seeks its food. My interest is scientific knowledge. So I need some criterion with which to distinguish scientific knowledge from all the rest. There have been many of proposals for such a criterion; the one I like best is Karl Popper's idea of criticism. All brands of knowledge can be meaningful and useful, but what distinguishes scientific knowledge is that it's subjected to critical examination and testing. Especially important for the criterion of criticism is the idea of falsification. This is because the logical structure of theories only gives certainty of falsity. Verification is always ambiguous: You can never be sure that another theory won't explain things better. But you can be sure that a theory fails to explain something. (In logic, this is called "Modus Tollens" or "denying the consequent". Verification is called "affirming the consequent", and it's a fallacy.) In addition to distinguishing types of knowledge, knowledge can be considered in two aspects: Its generation and its development. I like to call the aspects "production" and "marketing". Or they could be called "creation" and "evolution". (Of course, the distinctions are somewhat arbitrary. They overlap quite a bit and influence each other.) Individuals create knowledge by discovering a new idea or by gaining a new insight or by understanding something differently. In other words, they learn something new. This learning process can be considered to have three aspects: theorizing, observing, and judging (whether it's true). These could also be called speculating, experimenting, and verifying. Or imagining, testing, and falsifying. Once an individual has come up with a new idea and communicated it to someone else, it becomes objective knowledge: a book, a picture, a computer program, a college course, etc. It's beyond the creator's control (assuming it ever was in his control) and can take on a life-or death-of its own. Others can use it in ways the creator never imagined or intended. It can interact with other knowledge. Or it can be forgotten. It becomes part of an epistemic ecosystem, where ideas play a part similar to populations of biological species. The dynamics and development of these species of ideas (the theories and paradigms) can be modeled after the fashion of evolutionary theory. Theories compete. They become widespread or go extinct. They are succeeded by new species, whose niches may be created by the previous species. This evolution of scientific knowledge under the selection pressure of criticism is what we call progress. It's what distinguishes scientific knowledge from the other brands, which generally don't progress. This isn't a rigid distinction: Dogmatic theology, for example, may allow or even encourage criticism of details, but it seldom tolerates questioning the fundamentals of faith. And science must stick to a certain amount of dogmatism in order to develop a theory, else it would waste its energies jumping from one new theory to the next. But if you consider, say, Christianity's arising from Judaism as similar to a paradigm shift in science, then religion has experienced one shift in several thousand years and science has experienced many in a few centuries. The other side of this coin of progress is that scientific knowledge is unstable. It's insecure. The freedom of opportunity rides a see-saw with the fear of risk. Theories are always changing, not only by improving the model but occasionally by replacing the brand. Every theory is provisional. Every idea is open to criticism. This is not a condition that inspires belief in any particular theory. Yet belief in particular theories seems to be the usual condition. Perhaps the craving for security inevitably intrudes. If judged by Popper's criterion, most theories are pseudo-scientific and the sciences are largely pseudo-religious. These are theoretical categories; in practice, I don't know how you could distinguish between a popular scientific theory that everyone takes for granted and a fideistic assumption that no one questions. And in the political competition among theories, the prefix "pseudo-" becomes not a theoretical label but an aspersion. The passions of knowledge are as important as the contents. The fear of uncertainty is amalgamated with the creative tensions of learning: frustration, elation, disappointment and hope. When these passions become attached to particular theories, the distinction between science and the other brands of knowledge becomes confused. Popper's criterion of demarcation needs to be accompanied by a passion for dispassionate criticism. This sketch may be nugatory for the players kicking their theories around. But for spectators such as myself it provides a kind of scorecard with which I can track the game. Now please excuse me: I'm gonna get another epistemic beer. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com www.dragonscience.com ************************************************************ "CELESTIAL CATASTROPHES IN HUMAN PREHISTORY?" Ed note: if any of our readers in the Philadelphia area are able to attend this meeting, could you please tell us about how it goes? -- Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com PRESS RELEASE: "Celestial Catastrophes" Program Oct. 17 From: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Date: 10/12/2001 Contact: Pam Kosty, Public Information Officer PHYSICIST DR. ANTHONY PERATT TO PRESEN NEW FINDINGS THAT LINK ANCIENT ROCK ART, STONEHENGE, TO WORLDWIDE OBSERVATIONS OF UNUSUAL SPACIAL OCCURENCE * * * Scientist to Speak at University of Pennsylvania Museum Program "Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory?" Wednesday, October 17, 6 p.m. Philadelphia, PA-New Mexico physicist Dr. Anthony L. Peratt offers a provocative new theory about the catastrophic "story" that many of the world's petroglyphs, pictographs, rock carvings, rock paintings and even monuments from antiquity may in fact be telling, when he speaks on "Talking Rocks" at Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory?, a special program in the Harrison Auditorium, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Wednesday, October 17, 6 p.m. The public program, which runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and includes discussants from several departments in the University of Pennsylvania and the Museum, is free. A reception with Dr. Peratt and the discussants, running from 7:30 to 8:30, is $20; $15 for Museum members. The number for more information or to pre- register for the reception (through October 15) is 215/898-4890. Basing his findings on new high technology experimental research, Dr. Peratt , Associate Laboratory Directorate, Experimental Programs and Simulation and Computing, Los Alamos National Laboratory, argues that numerous rock art designs, and even the monument Stonehenge, can be linked to the recording of a highly visible outer space event that occurred many millennia ago. Dr. Jeremy Sabloff, the Williams Director, UPM; Dr. Harold Dibble, Deputy Director, UPM; Dr. Robert Giegengack, Chairman, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania; and Dr. Charles Alcock, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Pennsylvania, will respond. Celestial Catastrophes in Human Prehistory? continues an occasional series, co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum, the Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Center for Ancient Studies, on the impact of catastrophic events on human history. Past programs have examined the impact of volcanoes ("Explosive Volcanism," January 17, 2001), asteroids ("Impact Craters in Earth History" May 11, 2000 ) and flooding ("Flooding the Black Sea: Noah and Early Agriculture?" October 14, 1999). The series is made possible through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. A. Bruce Mainwaring. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is dedicated to the study and understanding of human history and diversity. Founded in 1887, the Museum has sent more than 350 archaeological and anthropological expeditions to all the inhabited continents of the world. With an active exhibition schedule and educational programming for children and adults, the Museum offers the public an opportunity to share in the ongoing discovery of humankind's collective heritage. UPM is located at 33rd and Spruce Streets in Philadelphia. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays; closed Mondays, holidays and summer Sundays from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Museum admission donation is $5 adults; $2.50 senior citizens and students with ID; free to Museum members, children under 6, and University of Pennsylvania staff, students and faculty with a PENNcard, and FREE Sundays, through May 19, 2002. Visit the Museum's website at www.upenn.edu/museum or call (215) 898-4000 for general information. ********************************************************** BINARY STARS: FUSION vs COLLISION by Don Scott Today's APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011010.html has yet another ... example of the fantasy world astronomers live in these days. The image is of the central part of the omega Centauri globular cluster. The "explanation" emphasizes the probability of collisions of the stars in that cluster because "stars are packed in 10,000 times more densely than near our Sun." Ok - Some of you may remember the model of our local stellar space that I presented at Laughlin. The scale I used was 1 mile in the model equals one light year in reality. In the model, our Sun is a speck of dust 1/100 inch in diameter and the nearest star to us, proxima Centauri, is almost 5 miles away (and it too is a speck of dust.) That means the local stellar density is approximately one star per 125 LY^3(cubic light years). If, in omega Centauri, the density is 10,000 times as great, the density must be 10,000 stars per 125 LY^3. This is 80 stars per one LY^3. Thus, in my model, we have 80 specks of dust (each one about 1/100 inch in diameter) floating around inside a one cubic mile volume of space. What are the chances of a collision in that situation? The "explanation" goes on to say, "When two stars collide they likely either combine to form one more massive star, or they stick, forming a new binary star system." In my opinion it is highly likely that a massive star is more likely to fission into a binary star system - rather than the reverse. In fact almost half (40%) of all the stars we see are binary pairs - were there THAT many collisions? And also they say, "Close binary stars interact, sometimes emitting ultraviolet or X-ray light when gas falls from one star onto the surface of a compact companion such as a white dwarf or neutron star." Yes, binary pairs do interact - and many companions are white dwarfs. But none are "neutron stars" because the half life of "neutronium" is less than 14 minutes. Don Scott ********************************************************** MARS and the GRAND CANYON by Wal Thornhill Quotes to think about: "The ultimate objective of comparative planetology, it might be said, is something like a vast computer program into which we insert a few input parameters (perhaps the initial mass, composition and angular momentum of a protoplanet and the population of neighboring objects that strike it) and then derive the complete evolution of the planet." Carl Sagan, "The Solar System", Scientific American, September 1975, p. 29. First Law of Computing: Garbage in = garbage out. THE GRAND CANYON Most people would think that experts agree on an explanation for the formation of such a grandiose site as the Grand Canyon. Surprisingly that isn't so. It is an enigma. The latest attempt to figure it out occurred as late as June last year at the Grand Canyon Symposium 2000. The Colorado River is held generally responsible for carving the Canyon. However, even before the Glen Canyon dam stemmed its awesome desert floods, the river seems hopelessly inadequate to have formed such a geological spectacle. The Colorado River flows west from the Rockies and encounters a raised plateau known as the Kaibab Upwarp. Instead of turning away from that barrier it continues through the plateau. How could it do that? The river is much younger than the Kaibab Upwarp so it could not have progressively cut the Canyon even if the land rose very slowly. "In any case, most of the material that was removed from the Canyon seems to be missing, according to a report from the symposium, leaving little evidential support for the original theory that a simple progression of water erosion formed the Canyon we see today. "Since the 1930's and 1940's, geologists have searched for other explanations -- that the Canyon once drained to the south-east (reversing the route of the present-day Little Colorado, then joining the Rio Grande and into the Gulf of Mexico." When problems arose with that explanation too, it was proposed that it once flowed NE along one of the present-day side tributaries such as Cataract Creek. See: http://www.kaibab.org/geology/gc_geol.htm#how and The New York Times, June 6 2000, "Making Sense of Grand Canyon's Puzzles" by Sandra Blakeslee] Now let us consider a 21st century solution to the question of how the Grand Canyon was formed, based not only on Earthly evidence, but also on data returned by space probes and produced by more than a century of experimental and theoretical work in plasma laboratories. The Grand Canyon has often been compared in form, if not size, to the gigantic canyons of Valles Marineris on Mars. Because of these similarities it was initially thought that Valles Marineris was caused by massive water erosion at some earlier, supposedly wetter, epoch in Martian history. That idea has been abandoned because the evidence for water erosion and ponding in Valles Marineris is missing. The presently favored explanation of Valles Marineris is that the surface of Mars has opened up with a giant tectonic rift, rather like the East African rift valley. Rifting is usually accompanied by vulcanism caused by increased heat flow from the interior. Yet major volcanic features are lacking in Valles Marineris. There are also many deep yet short tributary canyons to both of these Canyons, which require a different explanation. The favored one is undercutting by groundwater erosion. Both on both the Earth and Mars the canyons seem to have been cut cleanly into a raised flat surface. There is very little collateral damage to that surface. Is it likely that two different causes could end up creating landforms on two planets that look so similar? At the heart of geology and planetary studies is a reasoning process called abduction. It is a form of logic whose major premise is certain and minor premise is probable. Then let us consider the question of flowing-liquid erosion. The major premise is "all sinuous channels are formed by a flowing liquid" and the minor premise is "Nirgal Vallis on Mars is a sinuous channel." The deduction follows that "Nirgal Vallis was formed by a flowing liquid." However such reasoning can be hopelessly misleading if the major premise is not certain. Mars is a desert planet with no possibility of flowing liquids today nor, it seems, for a long time past. But the huge channels look as if they were carved yesterday. That should be sufficient to doubt the major premise. However lazy logic forces us simply to conclude that there must have been large quantities of liquid water on Mars in the past. That is the present consensus. So typically the missing water has been conveniently consigned out of sight, beneath the Martian surface. The same thing was said of the channels on the Moon before the Apollo missions proved otherwise. Once again this _incurious_ approach has led to huge expenditure on new spacecraft to detect sub-surface ice on Mars. What if the major premise is completely wrong? What if none of the sinuous channels (usually called 'rilles') on Mars, Venus and our Moon, were originally formed by flowing liquids? This is a key question to be answered before we can address the more complex canyons on Mars and here on Earth. Rilles have the same form on all of these bodies, yet no one today seriously suggests that we look for water on the furnace-hot surface of Venus or on the airless Moon. Instead, hot fluid lava has been called upon as the flowing liquid on these bodies. The problem is that the lava had to remain liquid over hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles. So a roof of rock was added, to form lava tubes. But some of those roofs needed to be miles wide! Some rilles on the Moon and on Venus are wider than the longest lava tubes on Earth. And the rock roofs had to collapse later to expose the channels. There is no rubble from collapsed roofs in any of the rilles. The rilles are cleanly chiselled into the surface. The lava is supposed to have flowed billions of years ago on the Moon, and only millions of years ago on Venus. A good example of a lunar rille, photographed in great detail by the Apollo astronauts, is Schröter's Valley. The channel looks brand new. Once again, the liquid that is supposed to have cut the channel is missing - there is no lava outflow. And lava cannot seep into the ground and be hidden as water can. Something is wrong with this picture. The major premise must be wrong. There are many more mysterious features of these channels. Their wider "outflow" end is higher than the narrow "source" end, as if whatever formed them was not responding to gravity. In flagrant breach of that law, some run both uphill and down with no sign of the damage that might be expected if the topographical changes were due to later vertical movement of the terrain. Others cut through mountain ridges as if they were not an obstacle. Unlike rivers, rilles often run in parallel. Some have circular craters along their length, others seem to be formed from a continuous series of pits. Most terminate on a crater. Because of the many craters found in and around them, dating the rilles by crater counting makes them appear older than the surface they cut into. The channels of these rilles are often much more sinuous for their width or the slope of the surface, than would be expected if they had been carved by a liquid. Some have a smaller, more sinuous channel in the floor of the larger channel. Some have flat floors and steep walls. Others have a deep V-shaped cross-section. Tributaries, if any, are often short, end in a circular alcove, and join the main channel at near right angles. To explain these (on worlds with water), recourse is usually made to underground water flows that remove soil and cause collapse and progressive headward erosion of the channel. Many channel floors show transverse markings or small ridges. On Mars they have been described as sand dunes. Many channels have material heaped up on each side to form levees. There are neither catchment areas nor systems of feeder streams sufficient to carve the often-gigantic main channels or tributary streams. The source and sink of the water remains invisible. And the question remains: where did the eroded soil go? A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SOLUTION "The real actors on the stage of the universe are very few, if their adventures are many. The most 'ancient treasure' -in Aristotle's words- that was left to us by our predecessors of the High and Far-off Times was the idea that the gods are really stars, and that there are no others. The forces reside in the starry heavens, and all the stories, characters and adventures narrated by mythology concentrate on the active powers among the stars, who are planets." Giorgio Di Santillana and Hertha von Dechend in _Hamlet's Mill_. "The thundergod is regarded as the most powerful of all the gods of heaven and earth, since the effects of his anger are so terrible and so evident." Christopher Blinkenberg in _The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore_. See http://www.users.qwest.net/~mcochrane/Thundergods/thundergods.html The answer to the riddle of rilles has been available for 30 years! It was provided by an engineer, the late Ralph Juergens, of Flagstaff, Arizona. In a brilliant series of papers that would not be published in a mainstream scientific journal, he showed that flowing liquids are not adequate or even necessary to explain river-like channels on planets and their moons. He showed how the strange features of those channels could be simply scaled down and matched against the kind of damage caused by powerful lightning strikes on Earth. So even if Mars had surface moisture in the past its vast channels were not carved by rushing water. At Baker, Florida, in 1949, lightning struck a baseball field. It furrowed the infield for 40 feet during a baseball game, killing 3 of the players and injuring 50 people. The more sinuous path taken by the lightning forms a smaller trench in the bottom of the main furrow. [National Geographic, June 1950, p. 827.] When we look at the pattern of a lightning scar on Earth we see the features of sinuous rilles in miniature. Electrical phenomena exhibit the same forms from the scale of centimeters to the scale of thousands of kilometers. In fact, it has been shown in high-energy electrical experiments that the same patterns of behavior can be scaled up yet another 100 million times. Because of this, the forms of scars on insulators and semiconductors and/or the surface erosion of spark-machined objects, seen under a microscope, can be used as analogs of electrical scarring of planetary surfaces. Plasma cosmology can do inexpensive controlled experiments on Earth to answer puzzles that have plagued planetologists for decades. Without a shadow of a doubt, Valles Marineris is an electrical arc scar. It bears the hallmarks, writ large on a planet's face. Juergens identified it as such 30 years ago from the early Viking Orbiter spacecraft images. "... to me this entire region resembles nothing so much as an area zapped by a powerful electric arc advancing unsteadily across the surface, occasionally splitting in two, and now and then-weakening, so that its traces narrow and even degrade into lines of disconnected craters. ...I can only wonder: Is it possible that Mars was bled of several million cubic kilometers of soil and rock in a single encounter with another planetary body? Might the Canyonlands of Mars have been created in an event perhaps hinted at by Homer when he wrote: "Athena [Venus) drove the spear straight into his [Ares' (Mars')] belly where the kilt was girded: the point ran in and tore the flesh... [and] Ares roared like a trumpet..." Juergens' explanation requires a dynamic recent history of the solar system, entirely different from the one we have been taught to believe. It highlights an electrical dimension to astrophysics which is nowhere to be found in their textbooks. So it is little wonder that geologists are clueless when confronted with electrical erosion. When planets come close, gargantuan interplanetary lightning results. It is perfectly capable of stripping rock and gases from a planet against the puny force of gravity. It does so leaving characteristic scars. It can explain why some two million cubic kilometers of material is missing from Valles Marineris along with 90% of the atmosphere Mars was expected to have. A subsurface arc through an electrically coherent stratum can explain the peculiar morphology of Valles Marineris. The parallelism of the canyons is due to the long-range magnetic attraction of current filaments and their short-range strong electrostatic repulsion. Particularly significant are the small parallel rilles composed essentially of chains of craters. A traveling underground explosion follows the lightning streamer and cleanly forms the V-shaped tributary canyons. There is no collapse debris associated with undercutting water flow. Similarly, the "V" cross-section is usual for craters formed by underground nuclear explosions. The circular ends of the tributaries, where the explosion began, are precisely of that shape. In comparison, headward erosion by ground water sapping gives a U-shaped cross-section and does not necessarily end in a circular alcove. Note that some of the tributary canyons on the south rim of Valles Marineris cut across one another at near right angles. This might be due to repeated discharges from the same area chasing the main stroke as it travelled along Ius Chasma. No form of water erosion can produce crosscutting channels like that. The fluted appearance of the main canyon walls is probably due to the same travelling explosive action. The walls of Valles Marineris show evidence of widespread sedimentary layering on Mars. But such enormous quantities of sediment must have eroded from somewhere and the fact that any ancient highlands are preserved on Mars is difficult to reconcile with such a source. A second major difficulty is that Valles Marineris is near the top of a bulge 10 km above datum. How are sediments deposited at that altitude? It would require the region first be a deep basin to collect a thick stack of sediments (assuming there was copious fast-running surface water), then be uplifted an incredible 20 km by a mantle plume and voluminous lava intrusions, but with little surface volcanism. How many major premises in geology are wrong? The electrical model provides a far simpler solution never considered before in sedimentation. The material removed electrically from one body in a cosmic discharge is transferred in large part to the other body. That creates widespread surface layering. The airless Moon shows evidence too of extensive layering and it is covered in electrical scars. The arguments for the electrical sculpting of Valles Marineris on Mars apply equally to the Grand Canyon on Earth. These major features on two very different planets look so similar for the simple reason that the same forces created them. Water was not involved in the process. Let us note the similarities. The Grand Canyon is on a high plateau. The tributaries are deeply incised, short, and tend to end in rounded alcoves. The tributary canyons of Ius Chasma are strikingly similar to those of the Grand Canyon. The material excavated from the Grand Canyon seems to be missing. On a watery Earth, the Colorado river simply took advantage of the sinuous channel carved by the subsurface cosmic lightning. The edges of the Grand Canyon are sharp and do not show much erosion into the mile deep valleys. That argues for very recent formation. Geologists cannot decipher the history of the Grand Canyon because their training never envisaged electrical erosion as a result of interplanetary thunderbolts. Nor did it teach that thick strata and anomalous deposits can be dumped from space in hours. Interplanetary electrical forces can raise mountains, twist and overturn strata, dump oceans onto land, preserve shattered flora and fauna in the rocks - all in a geological instant. Since the days of Lyell, early in the nineteenth century, geologists have managed to lull us all into insensibility with vast time spans and piecemeal explanations for each morphological feature of the landscape. The question that should be asked is whether the slow causes they invoke are sufficient to the task they are asked to perform. Fossils do not form under normal circumstances. The sharp outlines of mountains and the tortured strata within them look like still frames from a dramatic action movie. And when it comes to assigning ages, cosmic thunderbolts cause radioactivity, change radioactive decay rates, and add and subtract radioactive elements. So the assumptions underpinning the rickety edifice of geological dating will need re-examination without prejudice. Geologists are between a rock and a hard place because the main claim of geology to being a "hard" science has come from its bold claims to chart the history of the Earth. But it is clear that the chart they have been handed by cosmogonists and the clock bequeathed by the physicists are equally flawed. It is interesting to find that NASA and the SETI Institute have set up a base camp on Devon Island, Nunavut Territory, in the Canadian high arctic, for the scientific study of the Haughton impact crater and its surroundings. The joint study is known as the Haughton Mars project because the unexplored island is considered a Mars analog. Mars analogs are sites on the Earth where geologic features approximate those encountered on Mars. Devon Island has channels described as glacial meltwater networks. Several types of valleys resemble those seen on Mars. The resemblance appears to be more than superficial, as the similarities are often specific and unique. They have been compared to the tributary canyons of Valles Marineris and are claimed as perhaps the clearest evidence for episodes of sustained fluid erosion on Mars by water. However they present many unusual characteristics that cannot be explained by water erosion: 1) the valleys are spaced apart with large undissected areas between valleys, 2) the valleys display open, branching patterns with large undissected areas between branches, 3) branches often have ill-defined sources but mature in width and depth over short distances relative to the size of the network, 4) branches maintain relatively constant width and depth over long distances, 5) branches split and rejoin to form steep-walled islands, 6) branches have V-shaped cross-sections which transition to larger U-shaped troughs with steep walls and flat floors, 7) channels on valley floors are absent or poorly expressed. Their scale also varies over an order of magnitude. Here we have a different explanation from geologists for essentially the same morphological feature. The Devon valley networks are merely interpreted to be glacial meltwater channel networks formerly lying under an ice sheet. Some valleys do have a little ice in them today. However, the arguments for their formation by the action of ice make little sense. It suggests that glacial melting on a cold desert planet formed some Martian valley networks, which is hardly helpful. The strong similarities between the Devon valley networks and the tributaries of Valles Marineris, like that of the Grand Canyon to Valles Marineris, is simply because they were formed by the same process - a cosmic electric discharge. All of the unusual features listed above are expected in the plasma phenomenon of cathode erosion. Even the nearby Haughton crater is to be expected, for the same reason that rilles on other planets and moons are associated with craters and often have more craters than the surrounding landscape. The Haughton crater is simply the scar of a cosmic thunderbolt, like practically every other circular crater in the solar system. So NASA is correct in their choice of analog, but wrong in their attribution of causes. "In light of more than a century's research in the field of plasma cosmology and the 20th century discoveries of the space age, we can confidently propose the celestial thunderbolt as a common cause of the formation of canyons and rilles on rocky planets and moons." See: www.arctic-mars.org/docs/03c.LPSC.pdf There is a geological perspective on planetary scars available at: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/DAAC_DOCS/geomorphology/GEO_10/GEO_CHAPTER_10_TABLE.HT ML where the difficulties facing geologists are often expressed. With the perspective offered here you may begin to form your own opinion. ~Wal Thornhill visit the electric universe at www.holoscience.com **************************************************************