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 Credit: Voyager Project, JPL, NASA |
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Sep 09, 2004 How could the moons of Uranus be distributed in such circular, evenly spaced orbits around Uranus' equator when Uranus' equator is so glaringly out-of-sync with the rest of the solar system? The same electric forces that give birth to planets and moons are also responsible for circularizing their orbits. A previous picture of the day (Aug 19th) discussed the oddity of the moons of Uranus. How could they be distributed in such circular, evenly spaced orbits around Uranus' equator when Uranus' equator is so glaringly out-of-sync with the rest of the solar system? A closer look by Voyager 2 at the inner moon, Miranda, only added to the enigma. [Photo above, taken by Voyager 2 in 1986, at a distance of 31,000 km (19000 mi.)] Miranda appears battered and beaten. It has cliffs (bottom right) three times as high as the Grand Canyon and grids of parallel and perpendicular grooves that create the famous rectangle called the "chevron" (center.) There are valleys that cut through mountain ranges as if the mountains weren't there. Parts of Miranda are heavily cratered and other parts have very few craters. The first speculations of astronomers to explain the mystery of this moon's surface features were that the whole moon had been torn apart as many as five times, then reassembled with some of its surface inside-out. But how could Miranda have suffered such a tempestuous past and remain in such a circular orbit? Later, they found a simpler speculation: The icy moon must have melted in places, erasing craters and creating the cliffs and gashes. But what could melt a moon on the frigid edges of the solar system? The Electric Universe has different speculations. The same electric forces that give birth to planets and moons are also responsible for circularizing their orbits. These forces create the regularly spaced "Bode's Law" distribution. The side effect of the electric adjustments --electrical discharges--produces surface scarring and faulting. The discharges produce ridges and grooves. They produce craters in some areas and not in others, so there is no need to hypothesize a later event that erased the craters on some parts of this tiny moon. It's possible that all of the scarring we see happened in the single event of Miranda's birth. Or there may have been multiple scarring episodes. Today, with only one quick flyby from which to draw information, our curiosity has been aroused, but not satisfied. There are so many questions to ask. It will be good to go back and take a closer look, with experiments designed to explore both the standard and the Electric Universe interpretations. |
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