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Credit: NSSDC Image Catalog
Official Caption: “Magellan radar image of lava channels north of Ovda Regio, Venus.
This image shows the Lo Shen Valles, a system of channels and large collapsed
source areas. This frame is about 75 km across and north is up”

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Feb 05, 2005
Electrical Scars of Venus

The channels and depressions on Venus, depicted in the photograph above, could easily be mistaken for an aerial view of Mars. Yet on Mars, these features are attributed to water. It could be a picture of Io, where the channels and depressions are being formed before our eyes. But on Io the channels and depressions are said to be caused by “volcanoes”.

The official caption suggests that the sinuous rilles or channels on the furnace-like surface of Venus are caused by lava. But no flows of lava are evident. The channels begin out of nowhere and end in steep-walled and flat-floored depressions. The floors of the broad channels at lower left show transverse patterns, much like the so-called “sand dunes” in similar channels on Mars.

Other celestial bodies, of diverse sizes and environments, also exhibit such sinuous channels. Our bone-dry Moon has them. Asteroids have them. Mars’ tiny moon Phobos has them. Rather than propose different explanations for virtually identical formations, the Electric Universe  offers a unified theory, based on the demonstrable behavior of plasma discharge. In an earlier phase of solar system history, one having no analogy in the settled order of the present solar system, planets and moons were dominated by the electric force. The surfaces of all bodies in the solar system were configured primarily by electrical arcing in episodes of catastrophic instability.  Today these events are no longer occurring (apart from such subtle discharge forms as Io’s “volcanoes” or the “dust devils” on Mars). Thus, today’s stable solar system easily deceives us into thinking that nothing has changed in billions of years.

Lo Shen Valles on Venus is a field of electrically etched sinuous rilles and flat-floored depressions. The flat-floored depressions were etched by cathode arcs, which ate away the walls, giving them a steep, scalloped appearance. Cosmic lightning, tearing across the surface, excavated the sinuous channels. The circular alcove at their head is where the strike touched ground. Blast and corona effects caused the transverse markings in the channels. On close examination the sinuosity, variation in cross-section and defiance of gravity, make the official explanations not just unlikely, but physically impossible.

The fact that electric model of rille formation predicted similar surface features on Venus’ is no small matter either. For in the final analysis, it is the predictive ability of a hypothesis that determines its viability.

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