Mars - Craters

[CTJG 1986]

I made a post there recently that isn't approved yet, nor do I think it will be since while I remained as objective as possible I made the mistake of mentioning EU theory by name twice...

But anyways, since my post was in direct response to you Shelgeyr I'll just copy and paste it here as well.

@Shelgeyr – I was wondering when someone would mention EDM actions being involved and while I don’t disagree I have to ask a rather obvious question –

Could these crater formations be the combined effect of EDM and an impact?

Under EU theory electrical discharge events could occur when a small meteor or other foreign object carrying a different charge potential enters the electrical atmosphere of a larger body, although such a discharge would likely ‘blast away’ most of that incoming object it is entirely possible that if large enough to start with at least some portion of the object would survive the discharge and continue on to impact the surface.

The object causes the discharge that produces the first crater/scar via EDM and then the remains of that object impact the center of the EDM crater/scar afterwards causing the ‘bullseye’ effect.

I know I have seen many meteors here on Earth produce what seem like electrical discharge effects as they approach the surface(typically in the form of a bright flash often accompanied by power or internet disruptions in the area), it doesn’t seem to be a far stretch to assume that a meteor would act similarly on Mars.

Of course it could be solely the result of an impact or multiple impacts or solely the result of multiple electrical discharges originating at those locations, but to me it seems far simpler and more logical to say it’s both.

But now I’m probably going to piss off both conventional and EU theorists, lol.

Possible??

[Shelgeyr]

CTJG 1986, you ask a pretty good question, to which I'm going to have to give the deeply unsatisfying answer of "I don't know". Let me speculate, while stressing that I know that speculation isn't science.

I would think that it is highly unlikely to be a combination of both impact and EDM, and here's why: between fragmentation and deflection, I'd expect that the last place a surviving fragment would likely hit the ground would be "on course" for dead center of the discharge scar. Add to that the likelyhood that any incoming charged body would probably be on a ballistic path following one of the near-infinite options other than plumb vertical, and my expectations are that anything discharging so massively (it is a big mark after all) and was falling towards the planet would A) more likely carve out a discharge path rather than a "simple" multi-ring crater, and B) any surviving fragments would then likely overshoot their EDM calling cards and impact further downrange.

The above bit about ballistic flight paths might be moot, of course, if the impactor was falling reasonably straight down, but you've still got to deal with possible explosive fragmentation and/or deflection.

Could it be possible? Yeah, I guess so. I'm no expert (although I sometimes try to sound like one), so while I don't think it can be completely ruled out, given the paucity of evidence at hand, let me restate that I still think the combination of an EDM "big ring" punctuated by a subsequent impactor-created bullseye (the impactor being what's left of the discharging body of course) is highly unlikely.

But take heart - I can't back that opinion up with "Science". You may well be right. It would not be the first time I was wrong, not by a long shot.

[nick c]

hi web,

But I still can't quite see how EDM can be invoked for both excavational and depositonal features, ie lichtenberg mlouintains and valley structures, as well as for both central mounds and central dents in craters? Doesn't survive the cut of the razor for me.

EDM is an industrial process used for the removal of material. The formation of geologic features on planets and moons by the electrical removal of material is given the name EDM by the EU only as an analogue to better understand the process of crater formation. Some EU proponents prefer the term "electrical excavation."
{Depending on the circumstances, it is possible for material to be electrically deposited; often in layers, through (drawing an analogy to another industrial process) electrodeposition.}

Much of the material that is excavated from craters would be lifted into space, some of it falling back on one or the other of the celestial bodies involved or escaping entirely, and becoming a piece of cosmic debris...comet, asteroid, meteroid, dust, etc.

EDM is not being invoked as "forming" the central peaks in craters by deposition, rather the path of the excavating birkeland currents describing a wide circle, leaving the center (of the donut) fully or partially untouched. If the circle is tighter than there will be no central peak, as it too would have been excavated.

If the rotating currents do not touch at the central axis, they will leave a “peak” of undisturbed material. A sudden change in current or in current density, due to pinching forces in the arc or to the influx of charge-carrying debris, may cause the arc to “shrink” to a smaller diameter, leaving a terrace around the wall. Because the arc is maintained for an appreciable time by a continuous electrical current, melting of surface materials may be extensive.

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/ ... llseye.htm

So bascically, the central peak is an unexcavated portion of the geography that existed before the occurrence of the crater forming incident.
How does the bulls eye crater form?

If the arcs that machined the large craters persisted until they pinched down into a very small diameter, or if a second return stroke followed the ionized path left by the first and persisted long enough, the central peaks (if they were not already machined away) would have been “drilled down,” perhaps even to a depth below the original craters’ floors. Such an event would not be the norm, but several “bull’s-eye craters” in a particular area would not be surprising.

I think that the "EDM" theory for crater formation holds rather well when held to the razor's edge.
The problem with EDM crater formation is that we do not observe this process taking place (at a scale necessary to produce the observed craters with dimensions of many kilometers) today. But then again, that is not really a problem once the assumption of uniformitarianism is discarded and replaced with some form of planetary catastrophism.
see:
http://www.plasmacosmology.net/scars.html

Nick

[CTJG 1986]

CTJG 1986, you ask a pretty good question, to which I'm going to have to give the deeply unsatisfying answer of "I don't know". Let me speculate, while stressing that I know that speculation isn't science.

I would think that it is highly unlikely to be a combination of both impact and EDM, and here's why: between fragmentation and deflection, I'd expect that the last place a surviving fragment would likely hit the ground would be "on course" for dead center of the discharge scar. Add to that the likelyhood that any incoming charged body would probably be on a ballistic path following one of the near-infinite options other than plumb vertical, and my expectations are that anything discharging so massively (it is a big mark after all) and was falling towards the planet would A) more likely carve out a discharge path rather than a "simple" multi-ring crater, and B) any surviving fragments would then likely overshoot their EDM calling cards and impact further downrange.

The above bit about ballistic flight paths might be moot, of course, if the impactor was falling reasonably straight down, but you've still got to deal with possible explosive fragmentation and/or deflection.

Could it be possible? Yeah, I guess so. I'm no expert (although I sometimes try to sound like one), so while I don't think it can be completely ruled out, given the paucity of evidence at hand, let me restate that I still think the combination of an EDM "big ring" punctuated by a subsequent impactor-created bullseye (the impactor being what's left of the discharging body of course) is highly unlikely.

But take heart - I can't back that opinion up with "Science". You may well be right. It would not be the first time I was wrong, not by a long shot.

I agree that such a sequence of events is quite improbable as if they were common then we'd see a lot more of these 'bullseye' formations than we actually do. I'm not interested so much in what the chances that it could happen are but simply if it would be possible under any particular circumstances.

The way I see it there are a large number of variables involved in the interactions between a planetary body and a meteorite, from simple composition, density and mass(conventional mass or EU mass) of the meteorite, the level of electrical charge of the meteorite, the level of charge of the planetary body in the interaction zone, velocity of the meteorite entering the atmosphere, composition of the atmosphere that is being entered and the trajectory of the meteorite entering the atmosphere.

I'm sure there are more potential variables involved as well those are the just ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I'm working on trying to put together a detailed theory of the processes that would take place to allow for such a discharge and impact event to occur but I am no expert either so it may take me a little(long) while to put together, and even then it probably wouldn't withstand a detailed scientific analysis in any way... but then many commonly accepted theories in the mainstream community wouldn't/don't either, lol.

For now I'm simply curious if those with greater detailed knowledge of discharge events think it could be possible at all.

"Yeah, I guess so" or 'I can't rule it out' is good enough for me in this case at this point in time. I'd love to get some discussion going on the matter and see what some of the unhindered minds here can come up with.

EDIT: The most obvious basic hypothesis from my view would likely be that the discharge occurred at a very low altitude potentially just milliseconds before the impact, though again I'm still working on how exactly that might be possible.

[Shelgeyr]

webolife, I think nickc answered this better than I can, but I wanted to add that in terms of forces pulling upwards on the ground, I can imagine a difference between "pull", resulting in a raised area without the benefit of deposition, and "pull very very hard", in which case the ground breaks free and goes its merry way sailing off through the sky, resulting in excavation. Still my preferred explanation for the Matterhorn (it is shrapnel which landed there), as well as for the origins of several seas.

[Shelgeyr]

I've just realized that I'd be seriously remiss if I didn't point out one of my pet obsessions as being a good candidate for possibly being one of the larger "Bull's-Eye" craters on Earth. Of course it is obvious in this example that it is not a true "crater" per se, but could certainly be considered a partial one, especially from an EU/EDM perspective, which is very much my point.

The center of the bulls-eye I'm talking about is - of course - Lake Tuz in Turkey.

"Of course!" you're probably shouting to yourself at the moment, "Jeez, Shelgeyr, everybody knows that! You can figure that out just walking down the street for crying out loud! Thanks for pointing out the obvious!" Well, if you'll kindly settle down for a moment, I'll remind you that pointing out the obvious is one of the things I personally excel at - a talent honed through years of devoted practice.

The "rings", partial or otherwise, encompass the Eastern Mediterranean Sea coupled with the Black Sea, and arguably extend at least as far as the Southern border of the Sahara desert, in spirals that I suspect you are tired of hearing about. Nonetheless, since it is an obsession of mine (which, if you'll remember, I've already pointed out, i.e. you were warned!) I figured I'd try to incorporate it into this thread since the bulls-eye itself (the salt lake) seems to be - at least to me - obvious.

Cheers!

[jjohnson]

@CTJG 1986 — Your response post to Shelgeyr's EDM comment did make it into print, in case you haven't checked recently.

[Lloyd]

SHATTERCONES IN CRATERS
* Speaking of craters, I thought I'd bring up shattercones, since most may not realize that they provide a possible clue of electrical formation of craters.
* In the former Mummified Dinosaurs thread at http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/v ... =90#p19703, someone asked: "Could concretions, and other fossils, be expected to have trace magnetism?" And I replied [on April 14, 2009].

* That seems very possible. It may be dependent on the concretions etc having traces of iron or other substances that can retain magnetism. I read a few months back that shattercones in supposed meteor impact sites often have remanent magnetism, [which I suspected was] apparently due to the megalightning that actually forms them. So the same seems possible with concretions etc. I theorized that, since lightning travels at extremely high velocity, much faster than the speed of sound, which means that thunder is the same as a sonic boom, which is a shock wave, when lightning strikes the ground, there will be sonic booms moving for some distance in the ground, following the lightning. And that may be how the shattercones are formed.

* In my Geodes thread at http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/v ... 595#p24169, I said the following.

* I was pleased to note that the article with today's TPOD [Jul 25, 2009] mentioned that electric arcs, i.e. lightning, can produce shattercones that are found at impact sites such as the above crater. Since lightning travels at extremely supersonic speeds, it's natural that, when it strikes the ground, its matter [plasma is matter] will impact the ground at tremendous speed and be able to form those shattercones. Some have been found to be magnetized, which is a giveaway that the cause is electrical, rather than mechanical.

* I also discussed this a bit in my EU Geology thread at http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/v ... f=4&t=1531.
* This forum has a lot of excellent info scattered all around. It would be great to have a way to organize it sensibly. For a bit more on shattercones on this site, see http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=site%3At ... eab02d18af - which is a google search for site:thunderbolts.info shattercone.

[Total Science]

http://www.physorg.com/news202115501.html

(PhysOrg.com) -- Orcus Patera is an enigmatic elliptical depression near Mars's equator, in the eastern hemisphere of the planet. Located between the volcanoes of Elysium Mons and Olympus Mons, its formation remains a mystery.

Often overlooked, this well-defined depression extends approximately 380 km by 140 km in a NNE-SSW direction. It has a rim that rises up to 1800 m above the surrounding plains, while the floor of the depression lies 400-600 m below the surroundings.

The term ‘patera’ is used for deep, complex or irregularly shaped volcanic craters such as the Hadriaca Patera and Tyrrhena Patera at the north-eastern margin of the Hellas impact basin. However, despite its name and the fact that it is positioned near volcanoes, the actual origin of Orcus Patera remains unclear.

Aside from volcanism, there are a number of other possible origins. Orcus Patera may be a large and originally round impact crater, subsequently deformed by compressional forces. Alternatively, it could have formed after the erosion of aligned impact craters. However, the most likely explanation is that it was made in an oblique impact, when a small body struck the surface at a very shallow angle, perhaps less than five degrees from the horizontal.

The existence of tectonic forces at Orcus Patera is evident from the presence of the numerous ‘graben’, rift-valley-like structures that cut across its rim. Up to 2.5 km wide, these graben are oriented roughly east-west and are only visible on the rim and the nearby surroundings.

Within the Orcus Patera depression itself, the large graben are not visible, probably having been covered by later deposits. But smaller graben are present, indicating that several tectonic events have occurred in this region and also suggesting that multiple episodes of deposition have taken place.

The occurrence of ‘wrinkle ridges’ within the depression proves that not only extensional forces, as would be needed to create graben, but also compressive forces shaped this region. The dark shapes near the centre of the depression were probably formed by wind-driven processes, where dark material excavated by small impact events in the depression has been redistributed.

However, the presence of graben and wrinkle-ridges has no bearing on the origin of Orcus Patera, as both can be found all over Mars. The true origin of Orcus Patera remains an enigma.

Really?

[MyndsEye]

Tired of trying to explain how EDM did it...

Switching to "Chuck Norris did it"

naw... hehe

but! also note the hexagonal shape of the surrounding craters.. mars has much better hexagonal craters than the moon imo.

[bdw000]

Some better pics of orcus patera crater here:

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMDV9BO3DG_index_0.html

The high res pic is awesome:

http://download.esa.int/images/marsexpr ... era_H1.jpg

I especially like all the rilles in this photo.

[mharratsc]

Wicked! Thanks for posting that hi res image, bdw!

[GaryN]

A beauty, complete with some rim 'craters'.



Large image:
http://www.uahirise.org/images/wallpape ... 2_2270.jpg

[starbiter]

Hello Gary: Please help me find the Rim Craters. Of course i see dunes covering most every thing, similar to the Namib Desert.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UT ... 54324&z=13

Hope you can see the ridges. Zooming in and out helps.

michael

[Lloyd]

You can plainly see small craters on the rim, esp. around the bottom of the image.