Sacajawea Patera, Venus. Credit: NASA/JPL Magellan Mission
Posted on 12/10/2007 12:12:20 PM PST by Swordmaker
Nov 30, 2007
Aphrodite's Blazing Mane
Lightning bolts have "unexpectedly" been discovered arcing through the atmosphere of Venus. Electric Universe advocates predicted such activity long ago.A recent announcement by the European Space Agency (ESA) has called attention to the "surprising" electrical activity taking place on the planet Venus. Electric discharges were detected in the planet's upper atmosphere by the Venus Express orbiter that has been circling the cloud-shrouded orb since April 11, 2006. The discovery was completely unexpected because, until now, the density of the Venusian atmosphere was thought to prevent the formation of lightning bolts.
According to Dr. Donald Gurnett, a physicist at the University of Iowa and a member of the Cassini-Huygens mission team:
"If lightning exists in the Venusian atmosphere, it is either extremely rare, or very different from terrestrial lightning. If terrestrial-like lightning were occurring in the atmosphere of Venus within the region viewed by Cassini, it would have been easily detectable."
The Cassini spacecraft circled Venus on its way to explore the Saturnian system. In order to save fuel, NASA engineers sent Cassini on a trajectory that flew it twice around Venus so that it could receive a "gravity assist" from the planet. During those flybys, Cassini monitored the cloud tops and found no evidence that Earth-like lightning was taking place.
However, the mission specialists did realize that the discharges on Venus could be of a lower frequency than lightning on our planet because radio signals cannot penetrate the ionosphere at frequencies below one megahertz. Therefore, they were unable to make a definitive statement about plasma discharges.
Now, Venus Express has found low-frequency EMR that appears in bursts lasting fractions of a second. Called "whistlers", the bursts are considered a sure sign of electric discharges. A whistler is an extremely low-frequency electro-acoustic wave that is normally generated by lightning. They are called "whistlers" because they demonstrate a characteristically decreasing frequency falloff in detection equipment. In some short-wave radio transmissions, the whistle can be heard while tuning between stations.
With the detection of "whistlers", scientists can now make that definitive statement:
"We consider this to be the first definitive evidence of abundant lightning on Venus," said David Grinspoon from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
In a previous Thunderbolts Picture of the Day, we noted that the optical spectrum of Venus resembles that of a gas discharge tube similar to a neon lamp. Astrophysicists are unable to explain the contradictions that inevitably result when trying to explain the data based on greenhouses and smog, but the electrical explanation covers all the bases. Indeed, the atmospheric composition of Venus seems to require the presence of intense lightning in order to form the sulfurous compounds that are present. No chemistry on Earth or Venus can explain the depth and density of the sulfuric acid clouds and abundant carbon dioxide.
Venus radiates in the infrared with twice the energy it receives from the sun, so there must be a source for that heat. Venus has an extremely weak magnetic field and no magnetosphere but it does possess an ionosphere, so it is an electrically charged body. The ionosphere is prickly with Birkeland currents that carry electricity from the "solar wind" (actually a stream of ions ejected by the sun's electromagnetic field) into the Venusian environment. With so much electrical energy pumping into it, it may be that the planet is constantly charging and discharging with an infrared glow.
Birkeland currents act as transmission lines moving energy from the sun and planets over the entire solar system and ultimately, throughout interstellar space. Venus is not really separate from the sun, but acts as an element in the vast electrical circuit that powers the stars. Plasma discharges in that scenario are not so "unexpected".
In the image at the top of the page, many examples of electric discharge machining can be seen. The crater rim is elongated and clearly shows the marks of multiple rings. There are sinuous rilles in the surrounding terrain much like those on Mars, the Moon, Europa and other celestial bodies. We have theorized many times in these pages that such formations are the result of tremendous lightning bolts that seared them into the surface like a plasma torch.
Because of the observational data and the ideas put forth by such luminaries as Langmuir and Alfven, lightning on Venus was both expected and predicted by Electric Universe theorists.
If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.
Very interesting
Wow.
I’d love to be added to your ping list.
Looks like someone big pressed a button...
All the planets do that. Even earth.
That makes sense now that I think about it. If there is any internal heat at all, it would have to do that or keep rising in temperature.
The question of interest is how the heat is generated. It is only partly explained by the heat of formation of the planet.
Radioactive decay?
That is one suggestion.
http://www.henrythornton.com/article.asp?article_id=3825
In which Henry’s resident geologist begs to differ with Dr Nicholas Gruen about the greenhouse effect on the planet Venus.
By Louis Hissink
In an article published in the Brisbane Courier Mail on 17 Jan, and on this site, Nicholas Gruen wrote of the planet Venus that: “The mother of all greenhouse effects boiled away its oceans. Venus’s greenhouse effect adds nearly 400C to its ambient temperature. Want to smelt some lead? No problem on Venus – rocks glow and lead melts. All because of Venus’s greenhouse effect.”
I am not sure where he got his information from but I have to say it is wrong.
Before the arrival of space probes it was commonly thought that Venus had a climate much like earth’s and was often called our sister planet. There was no runaway greenhouse on Venus then.
Then during the 1950’s a Jewish psychoanalyst, Immanuel Velikosvky, published a controversial book “Worlds in Collision” in which he voiced the courageous opinion that Venus was a recent addition to the solar system and must therefore be extremely hot.
The reception Velikovsky got from mainstream science was hostile to say the least and his treatment by the scientific mafia scandalous but with the passage of time and the opportunity to review his predictions in the light of 50 years of space exploration, it now appears that Velikovsky was correct with this predictions of the properties of our solar system members. In fact as Geophysicist Harry Hess wrote him, all of Velikovsky’s predictions were subsequently verified as correct.
James P. Hogan wrote a book “Killing the Sacred Cow” (KTSC) which reviews some of society’s sacred cows like AIDS, DDT, and Darwinism and to my surprise Velikovsky, where he summarises the extant scientific evidence.
The US space probe Mariner 2 showed that the surface temperature of Venus was 800F and the only scientist who predicted a high temperature, apart from Velikovsky, was Dr. Rupert Wildt, “whose work was on a greenhouse mechanism and not generally accepted”. However the astronomer Carl Sagan decided that it was he himself who thought of this now fashionable idea in 1960 though a careful look at the evidence shows that was not so.
Let me restate this: Sagan invented a Greenhouse effect to counter Velikovsky’s interpretation that Venus was hot because it was extremely young.
However the Greenhouse Effect is principally produced by water vapour not CO2, and from recent work, even Mars with an atmosphere of 95% CO2 can barely manage a slight greenhouse effect, so one must question the existence of a Venusian runaway greenhouse.
In any case a greenhouse effect is quite unable to maintain the huge temperature gradient through Venus’ atmosphere, “especially when it turns out that the heat source is at the bottom, not the top”, KTSC p. 215. The problem is that Venus’s atmosphere is so thick (90 times the surface pressure of earth) that only 20% of the incoming sunlight gets past the cloud tops 40-50 miles above Venus’ surface, the rest being reflected back into space and why Venus is so bright. There is another problem with the Greenhouse gas theory as Hogan quotes British Astronomer V. A. Firschoff in “The Interior Planets” in KTSC p. 251:
“The Greenhouse effect cannot be magnified ad lib. Doubling the (glass) thickness may enhance its thermal insulation, so raising its temperature, but it will cut down the transmitted sunshine, so reducing its heat. The sea is a perfect “greenhouse” of this kind – none of the obscure heat from the bottom can escape into space. But it is not boiling; in fact it is not much above freezing point. Sagan’s deep atmosphere would behave exactly in the same way…..An adiabatic atmosphere of a mass envisaged by Sagan is possible only if it is heated from below. In other words the surface of Venus would have to be kept and a high temperature by external sources”. P 216.
A New Scientist article, “The Mystery of Venus’ Internal Heat”, Nov 13, 1980, in which they report data from the Pioneer Venus Orbiter that showed Venus to be radiating 15% more energy than is received from the SUN (later revised to 20%), or …. “Producing ten thousand times more heat than the earth, apparently impossible according to present theories of planetary formation. Op. Cit P. 217.
As an extremely recent age for Venus is heretical, mainstream science then made the facts fit theory, as detailed by Hogan.
In addition, modelling of a simple Greenhouse effect on Venus suggests that if Venus did have oceans like the earth, then the surface Greenhouse temperature would have had to been 1500K, above the solidus of rocks. Another more recent study is here .
However there is a slight discrepancy of > 100K between greenhouse gas theory and geological evidence , enough to seriously question the reality of the Venusian Greenhouse theory.
The reason Venus radiates so much excess energy is because it is volcanically active, has no craters and has all the appearances of a pristine newly formed planet. This is why it is so hot. Not because of a runaway greenhouse effect.
Rather the geosciences are quietly discovering new facts about the interior of the earth and to quote Bruce Leybourne in the latest New Concepts in Global Tectonics newsletter: “…. I will say that all indications from observational evidence and theoretical basis, most if not all earthquakes are stimulated electrically. Even microseismicity along the ridges is like lightning from below.”
No wonder prediction schemes to date have failed since this is still apparently undiscovered with all the research and money being thrown at earthquake prediction. It’s unbelievable the overall scientific community is still ignorant about this. Bruce Leybourne of St. Louise, USA (Relevant article: Leybourne et al., 2004. Electrical wildfire propagation along geomagnetic anomalies. The 8th World Multi-conference on Systemics. Cybernetics and Informatics. Orland, FL, p. 298-299)
The issue here is that if earthquakes are actually the result of electrical discharges under the crust, as considered by the plasma geophysicists, then we have discovered another enormous source energy and heat that has direct application to the earth’s climate.
CO2 is a mere trifle compared to what is under our feet, an electrically active earth powered by Solar electricity.
On the right is a closeup of the upper left region of Venus' crater Buck. It is a classic example of when the arc is extinguished before it can make a complete circular rotation. The fact that the sinuous rilles are made up of strings of small craters is obvious in this image. There are two straight rills to the left of the crater (as well as the curving ones leading down into it from the top of the photo). Sinuous rilles are one of the typical characteristics of electric arc machining. The standard mainstream explanation for these horseshoe shaped craters is that one side of the crater wall has collapsed.
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Actually, Paris is easy.
Thanks for the link.
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