Posted on 02/13/2004 10:00:23 AM PST by cogitator
I've reduced the size of this to display nicely on FR: click it for the smallest of three versions. For larger versions (desktop suitable), go to the linked article.
You have to visually force the caldera to be a depression, not a bump, but it's a great image.
Frickin' huge.
For metricphobes, that's 51 x 41 miles.
Bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
I always wished I could, but never got around to it. Back in the early '70s they used to hang glide with big old aluminum contraptions in the hills above Northridge, California. We would ride our bikes up there and ask the poor guys a million questions. I have always been drawn to it, love to watch it, but now that I'm over 40 with several kids I probably never will take up the sport.
Volcanic eruption
In 1997 Galileo caught Pillan in the process of erupting. The explosionblanketed an area 400 kilometers (250 miles) in diameter with ash as seenin the series of three color images at the bottom. These images show thechanges that have occurred at Pillan over the last three years (previous release). Pillan isthe new dark spot in middle color frame and the big, red ringseen in all three images is formed by the plume from the nearby volcanoPele. Galileo's camera and near-infrared mapping spectrometer measured thetemperatures of the lavas during the eruption and found that they werehotter than any known eruption on Earth in the last two billion years.
Electric Universe article:
Two Spacecraft Watch An Arc Welder on Io
March 29, 2001
MEDIA RELATIONS
OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Original Caption Released with Image: Two tall volcanic plumes and the rings of red material they have deposited onto surrounding surface areas appear in images taken of Jupiter's moon Io by NASA's Galileo and Cassini spacecraft in late December 2000 and early January 2001.
A plume near Io's equator comes from the volcano Pele. It has been active for at least four years, and has been far larger than any other plume seen on Io, until now. The other, nearer to Io's north pole, is a Pele-sized plume that had never been seen before, a fresh eruption from the Tvashtar Catena volcanic area.
The observations were made during joint studies of the Jupiter system while Cassini was passing Jupiter on its way to Saturn. The two craft offered complementary advantages for observing Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Galileo passed closer to Io for higher-resolution images, and Cassini acquired images at ultraviolet wavelengths, better for detecting active volcanic plumes.
The Cassini ultraviolet images, upper right, reveal two gigantic, actively erupting plumes of gas and dust. Near the equator, just the top of Pele's plume is visible where it projects into sunlight. None of it would be illuminated if it were less than 240 kilometers (150 miles) high.These images indicate a total height for Pele of 390 kilometers (242 miles). The Cassini image at far right shows a bright spot over Pele's vent. Although the Pele hot spot has a high temperature, silicate lava cannot be hot enough to explain a bright spot in the ultraviolet, so the origin of this bright spot is a mystery, but it may indicate that Pele was unusually active.
Comment:
In the Holoscience news report of 22 December 1999, NASA's Xmas Coloring Book, an alternative explanation was offered: "The Galileo camera was looking at a number of arc-lights in the form of cathode spots." It is definitely unusual activity for a volcano to produce UV light. However an electric arc is a copious source of UV light. This is further confirmation of the electrical sculpting of Io's surface. What we are witnessing are not volcanos but planetary surface sculpting by cosmic electric arcs. It is a process that has left characteristic circular craters and fretted terrain on all solid bodies in the solar system. It calls into question everything we think we know about the history of the solar system.
The NASA report continues...
Also visible is a plume near Io's north pole. Although 15 active plumes over Io's equatorial regions have been detected in hundreds of images from NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, this is the first image ever acquired of an active plume over a polar region of Io.The plume projects about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) over the limb, the edge of the globe. If it were erupting from a point on the limb, it would be only slightly larger than a typical Ionian plume, but the image does not reveal whether the source is actually at the limb or beyond it, out of view.
A distinctive feature in Galileo images since 1997 has been a giant red ring of Pele plume deposits about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) in diameter. The Pele ring is seen again in one of the new Galileo images, lower left. When the new Galileo images were returned this month, scientists were astonished to see a second giant red ring on Io, centered around Tvashtar Catena at 63 degrees north latitude. (To see a comparison from before the ring was deposited, see PIA-01604 or PIA-02309.) Tvashtar was the site of an active curtain of high-temperature silicate lava imaged by Galileo in November 1999 and February 2000 (image PIA-02584). The new ring shows that Tvashtar must be the vent for the north polar plume imaged by Cassini from the other side of Io! This means the plume is actually about 385 kilometers (239 miles) high, just like Pele. The uncertainty in estimating the height is about 30 kilometers (19 miles), so the plume could be anywhere from 355 to 415 kilometers (221 to 259 miles) high.
Comment:
The ring of deposits does not make any sense whatever for a volcanic outburst. However, the shape and size of the plumes and the trajectory of the particles to form a ring have been explained by plasma physicists in terms of an electrical discharge. The result is rather like that of a giant natural mass spectrograph.
The NASA report continues...
If this new plume deposit is just one millimeter (four one-hundredths of an inch) thick, then the eruption produced more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington.
NASA recently approved a third extension of the Galileo mission, including a pass over Io's north pole in August 2001. The spacecraft's trajectory will pass directly over Tvashtar at an altitude of 200 kilometers (124 miles). Will Galileo fly through an active plume? That depends on whether this eruption is long-lived, like Pele, or brief, and it also depends on how high the plume is next August. Two Pele-sized plumes are inferred to have erupted in 1979 during the four months between Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flybys, as indicated by new Pele-sized rings in Voyager 2 images. Those eruptions, both from high-latitude locations, were shorter-lived than Pele, but their actual durations are unknown. Before its August flyby, Galileo will get another more-distant look at Tvashtar in May.
It has been said that Io is the heartbeat of the jovian magnetosphere. The two giant plumes evidenced in these images may have had significant effects on the types, density and distribution of neutral and charged particles in the Jupiter system during the joint observations of the system by Galileo and Cassini from November 2000 to March 2001.
also... 
"The biggest mystery about Io's volcanoes is why they're so hot," says Bill Smythe, a co-investigator on JPL's NIMS team. "At 1800 K, the vents are about 1/3 the temperature of the surface of the sun!"
Wal Thornhill comment:
I predict that when seen close up the temperature of those hot spots will approach that of the Sun as they are both electric arcs. (Electric arcs create intensely hot spots.)
Radio Bursts From Io
Some of Jupiter's decametric radiation, with wavelengths longer than 3 meters (10 feet), appears to be related to the Jovian satellite Io. As Io passes through Jupiter's magnetic field, it becomes electrically charged, negative on one side and positive on the other. This can produce a potential of 400,000 volts accross the satellite.
When Io reaches certain positions, an electric current of 5 million amps may flow between Jupiter's ionosphere and Io, which would produce the tremendous radio bursts.
My comment:
Io is being Electrically machined by Jupiter at present.
As mentioned in the articles...the heat in the plasma discharges erupting from Io rival the Suns temp.
Mars carrys scars of Electric interface...anode/cathode.
The domes and collapsed cauldera on Mars are now seen on Io.
For more articles on Io..Mars..visit Electric Universe.
THE ELECTRIC SERPENT
Under the heading "Here be serpents" in The Economist for 8 March 1997, p. 102, appeared the following article:
"NEAR the centre of the Milky way lurks something at least as weird as dark matter, but definitely visible. Through their radio telescopes, astronomers can see a bright strand, 150 light years long and a couple wide; and kinked in two places. They call it the Snake. Since its discovery in 1991 by Andrew Gray at the University of Svdney. the Snake has been a puzzle. Other "threads", as they are known, have been found inside the Galactic Centre Lobe, a barrel-shaped region of space where the interstellar gas is slightly more rarefied than outside it. Among the many exotic theories of their genesis is that they are loops of magnetism-perhaps blown like smoke rings off newly forming black holes-which bounced off the inside wall of the Lobe. But the Snake, being outside the Lobe, defies this explanation. Other theories, which did not depend on the Lobe, seemed capable of explaining smooth filaments, but not kinked ones. Gregory Benford, of the University of California, Irvine, who proposed a competing theory before the Snake was found, has just updated it, and thinks it can account for these anomalies.
** His idea is that the Snake is an electrical discharge, like a vast lightning bolt-so vast that it just hangs in space, instead of disappearing as earthly lightning does. **
Its source is a giant electrical dynamo. When something that conducts electricity sweeps through a magnetic field, a current starts to flow through it (this is the basis of a dynamo). Gas clouds in the middle of the galaxy are, everyone agrees, partly ionised radiation flying through has battered electrons off some of the atoms in the gas. Because electrons are what carry electricity, the clouds should therefore be electrical conductors. Dr Benford reckons some of them could have built up an electric current as they moved through the strong magnetic field that pervades the centre of the galaxy. Once this had happened, the current could gradually have extruded itself from one of the denser areas of cloud, and followed it as it drifted through space-hanging on, in Dr Benford's words, like a lamprey.
** However, this current itself twists around and around as it flows through the magnetic field, the way a torrent of water twists up a fire-fighter's hosepipe. That explains the kinks. Dr Benford reckons the Snake is actually something like a corkscrew shape seen side-on. **
Such knowledge may not be entirely esoteric. Dr Benford thinks a better understanding of the Snake could give clues about how to handle similar (if smaller) structures on earth. That is something nuclear fusion researchers would love to do. To achieve their goal, they need to learn how to control ionised gases similar to those thought to compose the Snake. But the Benford theory has not kicked its rivals down yet. Don Melrose, also at Sydney, points out that the gas in the middle of the galaxv might already be so strongly ionised, and thus such a good electrical conductor, that current would leak away rather than build up into a concentration like the Snake. Dr Morose also thinks that some of the other theories, though they have shortcomings, do not rule out filaments with kinks. If Dr Benford's theory is right, though, it also predicts that the Snake is slowly expiring. The radio signals that make it show up come from electrons flowing in it as they spiral through the galactic magnetic field. But this uses up energy, so the Snake is slowly glowing itself to death. Perhaps only its eventual disappearance will settle the debate." [** emphasis added **]
[Wal Thornhill Comments]:
Two items stand out:
1. The filamentary nature of "the snake".
2. The corkscrew shape.
I suppose the third thing that stands out for me is the evident lack of understanding of galactic discharges on the part of astronomers. Such a structure is expected on the basis of the plasma cosmology presented in Eric Lerner's book "The Big Bang Never Happened" - but I'll bet you won't see mention of that in any of the scientific journals.
Electric Galaxies
For more than 10 years plasma physicists have had an electrical model of galaxies. It works with real-world physics. The model is able to successfully account for the observed shapes and dynamics of galaxies without recourse to invisible dark matter and central black holes. It explains simply the powerful electric jets seen issuing along the spin axis from the cores of active galaxies. Recent results from mapping the magnetic field of a spiral galaxy confirm the electric model.
On the other hand, cosmologists cannot explain why spiral shapes are so common and they have only ad-hoc explanations for galactic magnetic fields. More recently, inter-galactic magnetic fields have been discovered which is the final straw to break the camel's back. Incredible gravitational models involving invisible "black holes" have had to be invented in a desperate attempt to explain how the attractive force of gravity can result in matter being ejected in a narrow jet at relativistic speeds.
Why do we accept such science fiction as fact when an Electric Universe predicts spiral shapes, magnetic fields and jets? The cosmic magnetic fields simply delineate the electric currents that create, move and light the galaxies.
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