Edge-on image of Saturn's F-ring. Credit: NASA/JPL Cassini-Huygens mission.
Posted on 11/13/2007 11:02:21 AM PST by Swordmaker
Nov 12, 2007
Kinks in Saturn's Rings
Braids and twists in the rings of Saturn suggest activity in addition to gravitational attraction. Could electricity be one of the formative agents?Saturn's F-ring was discovered by Pioneer 11 during its 1979 flyby of the giant planet. When the Voyager 1 space probe passed by Saturn in November of 1980, it returned stunning pictures of Saturn's rings that were completely unanticipated. Two of the most intriguing discoveries were the "spokes" seen drifting above the ring plane and the twisted and interlaced structure of the F-ring.
Voyager 2's higher resolution camera found five separate strands in a region with no braiding and one small section where the F-ring was twisted. Additional polarized light images of the brightest F-ring filaments proved them to be subdivided into at least ten smaller strands. The twists in the ring are theorized to be gravitational perturbations caused by one of two "shepherd moons," Prometheus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission placed an observation platform in orbit around Saturn, designed to last until mid-2008. Several images of the F-ring seem to indicate a helical structure that twists around a central cylinder, rather than a braid. There are what look like three toroidal shapes visible in the image at the top of the page, with the tips of many others visible along the strand. In the center of the three helical filaments is a bright, rotating tube that shows where the forces have become concentrated.
In previous Thunderbolts Picture of the Day articles about the plasmasphere around Saturn, it was noted that planets and moons do not exist in an electrically neutral environment. Saturn, in particular, has a family of moons that exhibit electric discharge machining on a vast scale, as well as features within its atmosphere that could be characterized as lightning discharges. Its aurora are an intense radio-emitter and the planet is surrounded by a torus of plasma that emits x-rays and extreme ultra-violet light. Saturn seems to display many aspects that are predicted by the Electric Universe theory, including the shape of its rings.
Bodies immersed in plasma aren't isolated, they are connected by circuits. Most of the time they are not in equilibrium because they are in unstable conditions. The majority of them are moving across the plasma filaments that exist in the solar system and in the plasmaspheres around planets. Currents in plasma contract into filaments (which are really sheets of double-layers folded into tubes) and the force between filaments is linear, so the electromagnetic fields created by the filaments are the most powerful long-range attractor in the universe.
In 1913, Kristian Birkeland conducted his now-famous experiment where a small, magnetized iron globe was placed in a vacuum and used as the cathode in electric discharges. As he wrote about Saturn's rings: "It seems almost incredible that such a ring of cosmic dust should be able to exist for ever, so to speak, without other governing forces than gravitation..."
Plasma physics experimenter, author and theorist Wal Thornhill wrote in agreement with Birkeland's work:
"As shown in [Birkeland's] laboratory experiments, the inflowing [conventionally] electric current forms a plasma donut where the electrical energy is stored. It is that energy that drives the winds and lightning on Saturn...In fact, Saturn has two plasmoids. One is outside the rings, the other inside the rings. Discharges to Saturn must cross the rings."
Rather than relying on the gravity-only model of the solar system and its insistence that Saturn's rings can only be created, held and shaped by the activity of "shepherd moons" and angular momentum, we should look to a force that is orders of magnitude more powerful: electricity.
It’s interesting. We don’t think much about electric and magnetic fields these days. There are many experiments one can do and the results are usually surprising. Even 150 years ago we knew essentially nothing about these things and every experiment was enlightening. The avid experimenter would have a collection of different kinds of magnets as well as copper wire, iron filings, AC generators, and bicycle wheels as a minimum. Electromagnetics involves a fair level of math competency for the theoretical stuff and it ends up in Einstein’s Relativity and some abstruse algebras. But, there is no substitute for lab bench experiment. Also, a turntable might come in handy. Tesla and Faraday are still nearly incomprehensible to most and that is what they did so they could visualize what is really happening: it’s not intuitive.
Now, consider two of these, with opposite flows... they form a double spiral, similar to the DNA spiral... basically forming a circuit.
RightWhale, would you like to join my Electric Universe Ping list? I'd be glad to have you. You seem to have an open mind.
Sure. Might be interesting. My mind is not exactly open but extremely skeptical. But, skeptical of the mainstream theories as well as alternatives. Cartan would approve if it might mean somebody looking at spinors.
I came to my skepticism because I tracked things in accepted science back looking for the foundation and found nothing there. Too often accepted science is based on assumptions that have been long disproved but no one has bothered to adjust the currently accepted knowledge.
One example I love to point out to people is in archaeology, where the accepted Egyptian Pharonic timeline is based on three "known" pinnacles... and at least one of them has been totally disproved.
Egyptologists and historians have used Egyptian history to question the events as related in the old Testament of the Bible and to even deny that they happened, because they find no parallels in the known Egyptian histories. They cannot find Joseph, a Semitic Vizier of Egypt. They cannot find the plagues. They cannot fine Moses (*the name Moses likely was actually Ra-Moses... a form of Ramses, a prince of Egypt*). They cannot find the Exodus. Ergo, the historians and Egyptologists conclude, they didn't happen. Those people and events are myth.
Egyptology is in conflict with Biblical history because Champollion, Napoleon's Egyptologist and creator of the "science" of Egyptology, thought that Moses, the most important figure in the Old Testament had to have interacted with the most important of the known Pharoahs... Ramses II, Ramses the Great. That would only be fitting... greatest to greatest.
After all, Champollion reasoned, the Hebrew slaves were building the storage cities of "Ramasses"... that must be related to Ramses.. it was spelled almost the same in Egyptian Hieroglyphics.
However, he ignored the fact that there are at least 16 Pharoahs who were called Ramses... but even that name was wrong. It appears that a Pharoah from about 300 years earlier is a much more suitable candidate for being the Pharoah of Exodus: Thutmoses IV, also called Shisha, who was also a great builder Pharoah. He also ignored the little fact that Ramses II's wall of military conquests includes the conquest of Jerusalem... a city founded AFTER the exodus.
To this day, Champollion's making of Ramses II the Pharoah of the Exodus a pillar of the Egyptian time line, has continued... and all other middle Eastern archaeology is derived from that timeline.
It is no wonder that Egyptologists using the Ramses II pinnacle could not find anything in Egyptian history that coincided with Biblical history... they were literally looking in the right place but in the wrong time... and they STILL DO. It is like looking for George Washington in today's US and deciding he is a myth because they don't find him fighting in Iraq along side George Bush.
Realigning the Egyptian timeline to the earlier date finds Egyptian history with a 90% correlation to the events in the Bible... compared to a less than 7% correlation with Ramses II as the pharoah of the Exodus.
Thus any conclusion based on the erroneous timeline is also erroneous.
Dogma (and politics) drives modern science to a large degree... especially in those "sciences" that are not laboratory bench oriented.
Geological dating is also an interesting house of cards based on assumptions that may or may not be true...
These discoveries and several others have made me skeptical of the currently accepted "facts" of science and make me look deeper... where I often find nothing.
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