mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ 
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================

THOTH
A Catastrophics Newsletter

VOL IV, No 9
May 31, 2000

EDITOR:  Amy Acheson
PUBLISHER:  Michael Armstrong
LIST MANAGER:  Brian Stewart

CONTENTS
I DON'T BELIEVE THIS! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .by Mel Acheson
THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS: an intro . . . . by Dave Talbott
PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV: COSMIC JETS. . . by Amy Acheson
IO'S WANDERING PLUMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .by Wal Thornhill
So NEAR, yet so far from UNDERSTANDING . . by Wal Thornhill
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I DON'T BELIEVE THIS!
By Mel Acheson

How can I believe something as outrageous as the Electric Saturn
Super Model?  That shish kebab of overcharged planets goes against
everything I thought I knew.  It contradicts the millions of years
of gradual development that produced the array of species and the
stack of rock layers I discovered in grade-school textbooks.  It
violates the laws of motion and of gravity I was taught in high
school.  It flouts the differential equations describing the real
world I learned in college.  How can I believe an idea that's so
certainly absurd?

The short answer is:  I don't.

Beyond that, I have to explain something about belief.  The word
is commonly used in two opposite ways:  In one way, it indicates
uncertainty, provisionality, guessing on the basis of inadequate
information ("I believe the plane will arrive on time").  In the
second way, it indicates a deliberate certainty, the acceptance of
an idea regardless of information ("I believe in God, the Father,
Almighty ...").  The second way is an act of will that rejects
doubt.  But the first way can also be viewed as an act of will, an
act that embraces doubt.  In what follows, I'll use 'belief' only
in the second sense.

Back in the '60s I became fascinated with such questions as "What
is knowing?" and "How do I know what I think I know?"  (I was
warned, apparently correctly, that dabbling in philosophy would
ruin me as a scientist.)  The usual context of discussions of
these questions was an expectation of, even a craving for,
certainty.  Kierkegaard insisted on a "leap of faith".
Wittgenstein made a desperate commitment to "somewhere I must
begin with not doubting".  The founding elements of knowledge,
those fundamentals the certainty of which justifies all subsequent
knowledge, were matters of belief.  Science and religion were thus
anchored to the same foundation.

But I gravitated to Camus:  In an absurd world, he asked, is it
possible to live without hope?  In The Rebel, he reviewed the
intellectual climate of the age: the proposals and policies
certain to transform men into supermen or gods or proletarian
heroes, which instead transformed men into murderers.  "Revolution
without honor ... preferring an abstract concept of man to a man
of flesh and blood ... raises up the grimacing cohorts of petty
rebels, embryo slaves all of them, who end by offering themselves
for sale ....  It is no longer either revolution or rebellion but
rancor, malice, and tyranny."  He concluded that to be men we must
refuse to be gods.  We must will ourselves to be human.  Insofar
as belief is an act of will, so is refusing to believe.

The craving for certainty begins by assembling incorrigible
elements into a foundation.  The edifice of knowledge can then be
erected on that certain base.  But there are no incorrigible
elements.  We have only bits and pieces of information.  Most of
the information we need (to be certain of a theory) is beyond the
capacity of our five senses--even with technological enhancements-
-to sense it.  And most of what we could be able to sense is too
difficult or too costly to obtain.  Data is not given but must be
sought out, extracted, refined.  Theories are based on the small
quantities of information that lie readily at hand and that appear
familiar in the light of past experience.  Furthermore, we don't
sense information directly:  Our senses generate metaphors of
pieces of the objective world, and those metaphors and pieces push
and pull on each other.

Peter Bernstein writes (in _Against the Gods:  The Remarkable
Story of Risk_):  "And the bother is that we never have all the
information we would like.  Nature has established patterns, but
only for the most part.  Theory, which abstracts from nature, is
kinder:  We either have the information we need or else we have no
need for information."

Considering the uncertainties inherent in information, it's
tempting to retreat to theory, to leap to a belief, to seize
certainty with an act of will.  But this returns us to Camus and
to "preferring an abstract concept ... [to] flesh and blood".
Possession of certainty may justify knowledge, but it also
justifies disdain for other visions.  Ultimately, it justifies
"rancor, malice, and tyranny" and clamors for the burning of books
and heretics.  To be human, we must refuse to be gods.

The refusal of certainty is the abandonment of the foundation for
knowledge.  It's the abandonment of the metaphor of building and
of incorrigible elements.  It's to begin instead with the
uncertain, inchoate, and dynamic whole of knowledge and to hold
everything open to criticism.  "For criticism only appears as an
_alternative_ to justification after the two notions are
separated."  W.W. Bartley elaborates on this in "Theories of
Rationality" in _Evolutionary Epistemology_:  "This approach may
produce in one who is unaccustomed to it an uncomfortable feeling
of floating, of having no firm foundation.  That would be
appropriate:  for it is floating; it _is_ doing without a
foundation."

Bernstein again:  "Under conditions of uncertainty, the choice is
not between rejecting a hypothesis and accepting it, but between
reject and not-reject.  You can decide that the probability that
you are wrong is so small that you should not reject the
hypothesis.  You can decide that the probability that you are
wrong is so large that you _should_ reject the hypothesis.  But
with any probability short of zero that you are wrong--certainty
rather than uncertainty--you cannot _accept_ a hypothesis."

This is similar to the situation in which juries deliberate.
Their verdicts are limited to 'guilty' or 'not guilty'.  Innocence
is a matter beyond the ability of deliberation to determine.  And
in science, this deliberation convicts currently accepted theories
as being fundamentally religious and not scientific.  For were
they truly scientific they would be 'currently-not-rejected'
theories.

Bernstein notes that "in a dynamic world, there is no single
answer under conditions of uncertainty.  The mathematician A.F.M.
Smith has summed it up well:  'Any approach to scientific
inference which seeks to legitimize _an_ answer in response to
complex uncertainty is, for me, a totalitarian parody of a would-
be rational learning process.'"  What my opening question is
really asking is:  How can I take the Electric Saturn Super Model
seriously?  Why waste time on something that's clearly impossible?
I take it seriously precisely _because_ I don't believe it--and
because, for the same reasons, I don't believe currently accepted
theories.  One earmark of that "totalitarian parody" into which
modern science has degenerated is the use of that word
'impossible':  To be certain that the possibility is zero, you
must be certain that another theory is 100%.  Lacking that
information, the certainty can only be gained by willing it, by
believing it, by refusing to take anything else seriously.  If you
live your life only at the extremes of possibility, at 0% or 100%,
you effectively rule out learning anything more.

For me, one of the greatest joys of being human is learning.  I
would not be happy as a god.

Mel Acheson
thoth at whidbey.com
***************************************************

THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS
By Dave Talbott

[Ed. note: This article is taken from the introduction to the book
collaboration in progress by Dave Talbott and Wal Thornhill.]

"It is the thunderbolt that steers the universe!"

These are the words of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, living in
the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.  To our ears today, the words
are quite meaningless and easy to dismiss along with a thousand
other "superstitions" of the ancient world.  But in truth they
point to an archaic teaching which, were it comprehended in our
time, would overturn modern cosmology and transform our
understanding of the human past.

Cross-cultural analysis will show that the mythic thunderbolt held
a most prominent place in the imagination of all early
civilizations.  But this awesome weapon of the gods is only
indirectly connected to the "lightning" familiar to us today.
Typically, the ancient stories describe the gods hurling their
weapon not against humanity, but against each other, thereby
throwing the heavens into turmoil.  Universally, the thunderbolt
is a symbol of cosmic upheaval - events powerful enough to re-
arrange the heavens and change the course of human history.  That,
at least, is the way the ancient poets and historians remember it.
The flaming weapon is most familiar to us in the images of the
Greek Zeus (Jupiter), who hurls his bolt across the sky.  It is
this fiery weapon which proves decisive in the god's
confrontations with such chaos powers as the dragon Typhon or the
rebel Enceladus.

The god Yahweh, in Hebrew accounts, brandishes his lightning bolt
against Rahab or Leviathan, the dragon of the deep, as the whole
world trembles. Similarly, it is with lighting that the Babylonian
Marduk blasts the dragon Tiamat, whose attack threatened to
destroy creation.

As we trace such images back to their earliest sources, we find
that the feared thunderbolt really has nothing to do with local
storms or regional events. When the world falls out of control, a
sovereign god employs the weapon on behalf of "order" or renewal
of the world after devastating catastrophe. When we examine the
accounts systematically and in their specific details we see how
clearly they exclude the popular interpretations given in our own
time.

As the ancient chroniclers tell it, even the gods themselves are
"scarred" or "wounded" by blasts of lightning.  Lightning streaks
along the world axis, presenting the form of a luminous pillar in
the sky.  Repeatedly, we find popular warrior-gods taking the form
of the lightning-weapon, while numerous mother goddesses are
"impregnated" by the same fiery bolt.  Or the lightning-weapon is
hurled as a spiraling sphere trailing fire.  Among numerous
ancient cultures we find thunderbolts appearing as symmetrically
arranged "arrows" launched toward the four quarters of the
heavens, represented pictographically by a cross of light.

Everything about the mythic lightning bolt is enigmatic, as if
utterly divorced from natural experience.  And yet the symbolism
consistently points back to archetypal forms and events.  Why was
lightning, in the first astronomies, wielded by gods who are
identified as planets?  Why was the fiery bolt itself often
presented with a twisted or corkscrew form?  And how do we account
for the famous "sulfurous stench" said to accompany the lightning-
stroke?  Or the universal claim that meteorites or stones
("thunderstones") fell with the lightning of the gods?

A modern reader is easily desensitized to such "make believe."
Were not all early races the victims of ignorance and wild
imagination?  All too frequently we grow so accustomed to the
fantastic aspects of their accounts that we lose interest in the
details.  Or worse, we fail to notice the recurring patterns, the
most vital keys to discovery.  The thunderbolt will illustrate the
extent of this dilemma while carrying us well beyond the
particular symbol.  As we intend to demonstrate, the patterns of
ancient memory are simply too powerful, too detailed, and too
consistent to be explained in the usual way.

UNSTABLE SOLAR SYSTEM
Much of the emphasis of this book will be on the dynamic and
unpredictable roles of planets and moons, when they moved through
highly active electrical fields. Planetary motions observed today
are not a reliable guide to solar system history.  But it seems
that over many centuries observational science came increasingly
under the spell of a predictable and uneventful planetary
arrangement, and now certain questions are rarely if ever asked.
How stable is the solar system?  Have the planets always moved on
their present courses?

For many years, a principle called uniformitarianism has ruled the
sciences.  The principle says that evolutionary processes
occurring in the past can be deduced from processes observed now.
It is assumed, for example, that by noting uniform natural
processes today, an observer can deduce how long it took the crust
of the earth to shift and mountains to rise, for wind and water
erosion to occur, and for lava flows and regional floods to sculpt
the Earth's unique surface features.

With the arrival of the space age, the same principles were
applied to the natural events shaping the surfaces of planets and
moons.  As our probes sent back vivid images of planetary surfaces
and the surfaces of the remote moons of Jupiter and Saturn,
geologists drew primarily on a count of craters to "date" the
surfaces.  They simply projected theoretical impact rates
backwards across great spans of time, and the results were the
presumed "dates" for different surfaces, typically ranging from
millions to billions of years.

Such suppositions as these have guided data analyses throughout
the space age. But are these suppositions really justified?
Suffice it to say, if their assumption of uniformity is incorrect,
planetary scientists have directed many billions of dollars toward
asking the wrong questions.

>From the nineteenth century onward, the uniformity principle
remained unchallenged. Undoubtedly that underlying supposition
constrained the thinking of historians as they began to explore
the world of our early ancestors and to offer translations of
previously unknown ancient texts.

Antiquarians--ethnologists, archaeologists, and students of the
archaic languages--assumed without question that the celestial
forms celebrated in the great "sky religions" answer to the Sun
and Moon and other bodies as they appear in our sky today.  But
what would happen to our understanding of the myth-making age if
we set this supposition aside just long enough to ask the
question:  What were the sky-worshippers seeing in the heavens
when they invoked the prodigious forms of the gods?  And what did
they mean by the gods' awe-inspiring weapons of fire and stone?

IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY

We would be remiss if we failed to make clear that both authors of
this volume were independently inspired by the work of Immanuel
Velikovsky, one of the most innovative and controversial theorists
of the 20th century. In 1950, Velikovsky's bestseller, Worlds in
Collision, presented evidence for global catastrophes in
historical times.  He wrote that only a few thousand years ago
planets moved on erratic courses and more than once the Earth
itself was disturbed by errant planets.  These upheavals,
according to Velikovsky, were memorialized around the world in
myth, art, ritual, language, and architecture.

Three principles were paramount in Velikovsky's hypothesis:

1. Unstable motions and near-collisions of planets have produced
large-scale terrestrial catastrophes on the earth.

2. Ancient cultures preserved massive records of these
catastrophes.

3. Taken as a whole, historical records suggest a vital role of
electricity:  In catastrophic episodes, great bolts of lightning
passed between planets.

Velikovsky's approach was interdisciplinary.   He used the
insights of a professional psychoanalyst and the methods of a
trained historian to investigate the astronomical, mythical, and
religious traditions of diverse cultures. He discerned deeply
rooted themes which others had failed to see.  These cultural
records told the story of traumatic events, apparently experienced
on a global scale.  Using a comparative method, he pieced together
a coherent story.

In support of his reconstruction he found physical evidence from
geology, paleontology, and archeology. He also formulated a series
of predictions-consistent with his hypothesis, but unexpected by
previous theories.  He predicted that the planet Jupiter would
emit radio signals; that the planet Venus would be much hotter
than astronomers expected; and that craters on the moon would
reveal remanent magnetism and radioactive hot spots.  Velikovsky's
ability to anticipate scientific discovery produced a surprising
statement from the renowned geologist Harry Hess (in an open
letter to Velikovsky in 1963):

"Some of these predictions were said to be impossible when you
made them. All of them were predicted long before proof that they
were correct came to hand. Conversely I do not know of any
specific prediction you made that has since been proven to be
false. I suspect the merit lies in that you have a good basic
background in the natural sciences and you are quite uninhibited
by the prejudices and probability taboos which confine the
thinking of most of us."

For ourselves, the authors of this work believe that Velikovsky
was incorrect on many details of his reconstruction.  But his
place among the great pioneers of science will be secure if he was
merely correct on the underlying tenets of his work:  an unstable
solar system in geologically recent times; close encounters of
planets marked by interplanetary electrical discharges;
catastrophic disturbances of the Earth; and human witnesses to
these events; all with the most profound effects on human
imagination and on the collective activity of early civilizations.

In the 50 years since Worlds in Collision was published, the
viewpoint of orthodox science has changed dramatically, leading
some to say that the only mistake Velikovsky made was presenting
his theory at the wrong historical time.  Over the intervening
decades various innovators began to investigate catastrophic
possibilities previously ignored.

One of the milestones in this trend was the hypothesis of Leo and
Walter Alvarez, claiming dinosaur extinction by asteroidal impact.
While the initial response of official science was ridicule, over
time the hypothesis began to gain general acceptance within the
scientific community.  Soon thereafter, the respected biologist
Stephen Jay Gould acknowledged the occasional catastrophe in a
theory of "punctuated equilibrium."   And the British astronomers
Victor Clube and William Napier opened the door even further by
postulating cometary or asteroidal disasters so recent as to have
inspired vivid human stories (myths) of these events.

Then several other astronomers, astrophysicists, and geologists
added support to such speculations. Among these theorists are the
eminent astronomers Fred Hoyle and Tom Van Flandern.  According to
the latter theorist, an "exploding planet" devastated the surfaces
of Mars and other bodies in the solar system, perhaps leaving its
scars on human imagination as well.

And now, a half century after Worlds in Collision, a few well-
accredited catastrophists, including dendrochronologist Mike
Baillie, are beginning to admit a debt to Velikovsky, usually with
the disclaimer that of course he was wrong about unstable planets
being involved in these events. This general assessment of
Velikovsky is shared openly by the popular science and science
fiction writer, Jerry Pournelle, on his website
<http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/moremusings.htm>:

"Taken as a whole, Velikovsky's specific hypotheses are, in my
judgment, quite beyond belief.  On the other hand, his general
hypothesis, that there were astronomical terrors in the Bronze Age
and memories of them have come down to us in myths and legends,
has always seemed to me to be well worth taking seriously and is
in fact very probably true."

We want to make it clear at the outset that the authors of this
upcoming book stand with Velikovsky--if not on all the details of
his reconstruction, then certainly on the general principles.
When it comes to solar system stability we believe that Velikovsky
was fundamentally correct, though it is certainly understandable
that many intelligent writers find the errant planets of Worlds in
Collision "quite beyond belief."

Indeed, belief itself may be the greatest obstacle to objective
investigation on this subject, given the inertia of prior
assumptions. The very idea that wandering planets could quickly
settle into their present highly uniform and predictable orbits is
simply too much to countenance under accepted principles of
Newtonian gravity and energy conservation.

But in fact, the issue can be resolved dispassionately. The belief
in uniform planetary motions over millions of years, though
understandable, is just a belief.  Placed within a wider field of
evidence--a field ranging across the global testimony of ancient
cultures and into a vast library of space age data--the very
foundations of the belief will collapse.

Newton developed the concept of gravitation in 1666, eight decades
before Franklin flew his kite and more than two centuries before
Maxwell wrote his famous equations.  Astronomy developed in the
gaslight era before electricity was known.

In this volume we intend to show that something is missing from
the standard treatments of planetary history and celestial
dynamics.  That missing component is electricity.

Dave Talbott
*****************************************************

PARADIGM PORTRAITS IV:
COSMIC JETS
By Amy Acheson

This webpage from Merlin was part of my research for the
videotaping session in Portland.  The website includes wonderful
pictures, plus the comments listed below. How long will they say
things like 'Jets contain a mixture of charged particles and
magnetic fields,' before they realize that they are describing
electrical currents in space?  Black holes are not needed here.
Plasma can do the job better.
~Amy

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/merlin/about/layman/jet.html

>From the website:
How this energy is generated, and how it is transported, is a key
problem in astrophysics, but most theorists agree that only a
massive black hole can provide enough energy to power these
objects. In simple terms, a black hole is a region of space in
which the gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can
escape from it.

To power a quasar, a black hole would need to contain a mass a
billion times that of the Sun. Material falling into the hole is
heated to extremely high temperatures, emitting x-rays that can be
detected by telescopes on board satellites. This release of
gravitational energy can be more than ten times as efficient as
nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun and the hydrogen
bomb.

By means not yet understood, some of this energy escapes from the
nucleus along the jets and energizes the lobes. Jets contain a
mixture of charged particles and magnetic fields, which together
produce powerful radio emission ideally suited for study with
MERLIN. The physics is undoubtedly complex, and the continuing
study of radio jets will be a major task for MERLIN in the 1990s.

PARADIGM PORTRAITS
By Amy Acheson
Amy Acheson
******************************************************

IO'S WANDERING PLUMES
By Wal Thornhill

Here is a very interesting report from NASA that shows how
dismally earthly models fail when applied to Io's surface.

Back on the 29th October last year I wrote on my web-site about
the closest ever picture of Io: "As expected in an Electric
Universe, chains of circular craters show that an electric
discharge has moved across the surface of Io. Such crater chains
are characteristically found on cathode surfaces as the arc jumps
from the neat, circular crater it has just burnt to the nearest
high point - often the rim of the same crater." This statement was
repeated in another item about the Prometheus "volcano" on 7th
November.

The "migrating plumes" of this report are the moving cathode jets.
They are not seen on Earth.

As for determining the internal chemistry of Io from the surface
sulfur deposits, this is another blind alley entered from the
assumption that what are being looked at are volcanoes. The sulfur
is being created at the point where the arc impinges on the
surface. Each sulfur atom is formed by "fritting" two atoms of
oxygen in the powerful electric field of the arc. The most likely
source of oxygen is water ice, found also on the other Galilean
satellites of Jupiter, particularly Europa. And it is on Europa
that reddish coloration is found alongside the largest furrows
(they are not cracks in the ice).

None of the usual geological principles are much use in
interpreting the features seen on Jupiter's moons. For that
matter, it remains to be seen whether they apply on Earth.

"Seeing Red" seems a popular headline these days!?

Wal Thornhill
__________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                              May 18, 2000

WANDERING PLUMES, SEEING RED, AND SLIP-SLIDING AWAY ON IO

Detailed analysis of Jupiter's moon Io reveals a colorful,
active world full of surprises, according to five reports
published in the May 19 issue of Science, and based on new results
from NASA's Galileo spacecraft and Hubble Space Telescope.

The reports describe giant, erupting plumes migrating with
lava flows, red and green deposits that change as unstable sulfur
compounds condense from huge plumes, and mountains that may split
and slide sideways for hundreds of kilometers, or miles.

Galileo observations of Prometheus reveal a volcanic field
similar to Hawaii's volcanoes, but more active and much larger.
Prometheus features an 80-kilometer (50-mile) tall plume of gas
and particles erupting from near the end of the lava flows, like
where Hawaiian flows enter the ocean. This is Io's most
consistently active plume. Its size and shape have remained
constant since at least 1979, but the plume location wandered
about 85 kilometers (53 miles) to the west between 1979 and 1996.

"The main vent of the volcano didn't move, but the plume
did," said Dr. Rosaly Lopes-Gautier of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of one of the reports.

"This type of behavior has never been seen on Earth," said
Dr. Susan Kieffer of Kieffer Science Consulting, Inc., Ontario,
Canada, lead author of a Science report. Kieffer and her
colleagues suggest that the Prometheus plume is fed when a
"snowfield" of sulfur dioxide and/or sulfur vaporizes under the
lava flow and material erupts through a rootless conduit in the
flow.

Scientists had speculated that bright red material on Io
came from unstable forms of sulfur condensing from sulfur gas. By
combining Galileo and Hubble Space Telescope results, scientists
have learned more about the role of sulfur in Io's volcanoes.
While Galileo carried out the first of three recent Io flybys in
October 1999, Hubble scanned Io with its ultraviolet spectrograph
to measure the composition of gases escaping from volcanoes.
Hubble detected a surprise -- a 350-kilometer (220-mile) high
cloud of gaseous sulfur in the plume ejected by the volcano Pele.
The sulfur gas is a specific type, with sulfur atoms joined in
pairs, that had never before been seen on Io; it is stable only at
the very high temperatures found in the throats of Io's volcanoes.
When these molecules fall onto Io's frigid surface (about -160
Celsius or -250 Fahrenheit) away from the volcanoes, they probably
recombine into larger molecules with three or four sulfur atoms.
The latter types of sulfur are red, so the Hubble results explain
the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) wide, red debris ring around Pele.

"These Hubble findings should help scientists understand
the chemistry of Io's interior," said Dr. John Spencer of Lowell
Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., lead author of two of the Science
papers.

Galileo has found many other smaller, red patches near
Io's active volcanoes, where this sulfur conversion process
probably also occurs. The red deposits are found near calderas or
shield volcanoes where lava first reaches the surface, often
distant from plumes like Prometheus where lava flows apparently
vaporize surface materials.

The composition of bright green materials on Io has been
puzzling. In some places, it appears that when red material is
deposited onto fresh lava flows, especially on caldera floors, it
transforms into green material. It is possible that the surfaces
are still warm, which accelerates the transformation of the red
types of sulfur and the sublimation of sulfur dioxide. Eventually
both red and green materials acquire the pale yellow color that is
characteristic of ordinary yellow sulfur, made of rings of eight
sulfur atoms.

Although Io is the most volcanically active body in the
solar system, the mountains (up to 16 kilometers or 10 miles high)
are not volcanoes. They have no volcanic vents or flows; instead,
they appear to be giant tilted blocks of crust. Giant depressions
on Io are thought to be calderas formed by collapse over empty
magma chambers. Unlike Earth's calderas, many Io depressions have
very straight margins, sharp corners, and are located next to
mountains. In new images of the Hi'iaka Patera depression and
adjacent mountains, it looks as though two mountain blocks have
split and slid apart by 145 kilometers (90 miles), forming a pull-
apart basin like California's Death Valley or Salton Sea. This is
surprising because such large-scale lateral movements on Earth are
caused by plate tectonics, but there are no indications of a
similar process on Io.

"We consider it more likely that lateral movements may be
driven by deep 'mantle plumes' of rising hot rock masses within
Io," said Dr. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson,
lead author of one of the papers.

New images are available at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov .
*****************************************************

So NEAR, yet so far from UNDERSTANDING
By Wal Thornhill

On Valentine's Day, 2000, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
(NEAR) spacecraft [went] 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.

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 arriving on
Earth. And the electric arc mechanism explains simply the strange
flash heating of chondrules and other minerals 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.

Sinuous rilles are not collapsed lava tubes. Since electrical
cratering is a slower process than sudden 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 asteroids. In
such cases, astronomers introduce another ad-hoc assumption the
asteroid is porous, containing up 60% free space. But that raises
the question of how, in 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 meteorites. The
process of electrical cratering will 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.

~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/html/sales.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

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.
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.

---
You are currently subscribed to kroniatalk as: mikamar at e-z.net
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-kroniatalk-36515E at telelists.com