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RECENT NEWS

Click To view enlargements of some images in this news item 

13 February 2000

So NEAR, and yet so far from UNDERSTANDING 

On Valentine's Day, 2000, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR)
spacecraft is is due, on its second attempt, to go into orbit around
asteroid 433 Eros. It will be the first spacecraft to orbit an
asteroid. NEAR will examine the odd-shaped rock, about twice the size
of Manhattan Island, for about a year.

What do we expect to learn from this adventure? Astronomers agree that
it is a chance to examine material left over from the formation of the
solar system. Maybe they are pieces of a failed planet? In any case,
the usual mantra is invoked: it will help us understand the origin of
the solar system. Yet images returned from close fly-bys of asteroids
together with Hubble Space Telescope images of the large asteroid,
Vesta, have already provided more puzzles than answers. That situation
will continue while we remain so far from understanding what we are
looking at. The accepted model for the origin of the solar system is a
modern "fairy story", in the words of one noted astronomer, requiring
ad hoc miracles to occur on every page in order to arrive at a happy
ending.

The biggest puzzle concerns the amazingly large craters on most of the
asteroids. They create severe problems for the impact theory of
accretion but astronomers have no alternative mechanism to offer. In
an article in Science of 19 December 1997, titled "New View of
Asteroids", Erik Asphaug writes:

"Last June, NEAR flew by the main belt asteroid 233 Mathilde ...
Although the resolution was 50 times as coarse as expected at Eros,
the images of Mathilde reveal some surprises and provoke an overdue
reevaluation of asteroid geophysics. Mathilde has survived blow after
blow with almost farcical impunity, accommodating five great craters
with diameters from 3/4 to 5/4 the asteroids mean radius, and none
leaving any hint of global devastation. Given that one of these great
craters was last to form, preexisting craters ought to bear major
scars of seismic degradation, which they do not. Furthermore,
asteroids Gaspra and Ida (encountered by Galileo en-route to Jupiter)
and the small satellite Phobos all exhibit fracture grooves related to
impact, yet fracture grooves are absent on the larger, more battered
Mathilde. .....

Consider the third largest asteroid, 4 Vesta, a basalt-covered
volcanic body 530 km in diameter that resembles the Moon as much as it
does Mathilde or Toutatis. Recent views (36 km per pixel) by the
Hubble Space Telescope show a 460 km crater, with raised rim and
central peak, covering the entire southern hemisphere - an impact scar
surpassing (in relative diameter, but not relative depth) the great
chasms of Mathilde.

Such craters greatly challenge our understanding of impact processes
on asteroids, and on planets in general; evidently, our science must
adapt. The study of asteroids is therefore particularly exciting, as
small planets provide the fulcrum for the growth of planetology, and
for an evolution of geophysics in general. Complex and poorly
understood solar system processes - such as impact cratering,
accretion and catastrophic disruption, the evolution of volcanic
structures, and the triggering of differentiation - may reveal
themselves only in a study across the gamut of planets, from the least
significant house-sized rock to the most stately terrestrial world.
Like clockwork miniatures, asteroids demonstrate primary principles
governing planetary evolution at an accessible scale, and thousands
await discovery and exploration in near-Earth space alone."

In the Electric Universe model, moons, asteroids, comets and meteors
are created in electrical discharges between planetary bodies. They
are ripped from a planet's surface by electrical forces that easily
overwhelm the weak gravitational force. The most well-known, albeit
unrecognized, arc scar from a recent planetary encounter is seen on
Mars in the form of the colossal Valles Marineris canyons.

[valles_marineris.jpg] Two million cubic kilometers of rock was
excavated by the arc and hurled into space. Some fell back to form the
strewn fields of boulders seen by every Mars lander. Some remained in
orbit to become the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos.

(It is just possible that there is more rubble in orbit about Mars
that has been the cause of inexplicable failures of spacecraft on
arrival there). The rest formed meteors and a belt of asteroids. This
model simply explains why many meteorites contain minerals whose
crystals show that they must have formed inside a planet. It explains
the origin of the Martian meteorites that are still arriving on Earth.
And the electric arc mechanism explains simply the strange
flash-heating of chondrules and other minerals found in meteorites.
So, if EROS' parent was Mars it may show similarities to Martian
rocks.

The most compelling evidence of their electrical birth is that all
asteroids imaged to date bear scars in the diagnostic form of circular
electric arc cratering. One large crater on asteroid Vesta has an
untouched central peak. Impacts do not form circular craters with
sharp rims - they "splatter". They don't form central peaks. Small
secondary craters appear preferentially on the raised rims of earlier
craters while the reverse is never seen - which also rules out an
impact origin. 

Crater-filled grooves, seen clearly on Phobos have nothing to do with
impact fracturing and are merely small sinuous rilles created by
surface lightning streaking toward the main arc.

[hyginus_rille.jpg] Sinuous rilles are not collapsed lava tubes. Since
electrical cratering is a slower process than sudden impacts and does
not involve mechanical shock to the same extent, there is little
disturbance of pre-existing craters - as seen dramatically on
Mathilde.

It is worth noting the odd low apparent density of many asteroids. In
such cases, astronomers introduce another ad-hoc assumption that the
asteroid is porous, containing up to 60% free space. But that raises
the question of how, in their model, such an object could sustain any
sizeable impact without shattering. In contrast, the Electric

Universe model expects that a low level of charge on the surface of an
object will lower its measured gravitational influence. For example,
comets display non-Newtonian behaviour simply because they are visibly
discharging and changing their state of electric charge. So a low
density may be due to the electrical state of an asteroid rather than
any porosity. In that case, the surface minerals will have a higher
density, as measured on Earth, than the gravity of the asteroid would
lead us to believe. Certainly, the asteroids do not give the
appearance of being a "rubble pile". If asteroids maintained their
integrity under the intense electrical forces that removed them from a
planet they must have considerable mechanical strength.

Having been "born" in a cataclysm created by a powerful electric
discharge there may be strong remanent magnetism in any susceptible
minerals on an asteroid. Strong magnetic remanence has been inferred
on the asteroid Gaspra, equaling the Earth's field strength, and it is
a distinguishing feature of most meteorites. The process of electrical
cratering will generate regions of anomalously strong patterns of
magnetism. In addition, nuclear processes are to be expected. So
nucleosynthesis, transmutation of elements and the formation of
isotopes and radionuclides will have had an effect on the surface of
asteroids similar to that seen in meteorites where odd isotopes occur
from short-lived heavy parent radio-nuclides and others do not match
those found in the solar wind.

In order to advance we require much more than that "our science must
adapt" or that understanding of these processes will come about from
"an evolution of geophysics". It will require nothing less than a
revolution in science before understanding is possible. That
revolution begins with discarding the fairy tales about the formation
of the solar system and returning to the laboratory to study the
effects of electric discharges on model planetary surfaces. However
that might be difficult for those who believe unshakably in their
childhood stories and for many of the modern "virtual reality"
computer generation.

Image Credit: Crater laboratory image by Robert Dunlap.

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