It has now
been more than thirty years since the Apollo missions produced
voluminous and compelling images of the lunar surface, and it is
clear that theory has not kept pace with the unanswered questions.
To make our
point, we have emphasized the most prominent lunar features,
sufficiently documented photographically to place certain details
beyond doubt. We considered the most famous lunar crater
Tycho.
We considered the moon’s most prominent crater,
Aristarchus.
We also looked at the spectacular
Schroeter’s Valley,
a “sinuous rille” with many lesser counterparts lying on the lunar
maria.
Another channel that gained much attention during the Apollo missions is
Hadley Rille (pictured above), explored by the Apollo 15 astronauts
in 1971. The channel winds across some 125 kilometers (75 miles) of
lunar maria. It is almost 400 meters deep (1300 feet, or one
quarter mile) in places, and almost 1500 meters (one mile) wide at
its widest point. Planetary scientists often say that it was formed
by molten lava, and they draw comparisons to lava channels in
Hawaii. But the differences between the two are so profound as to
render such comparisons meaningless.
Many have
suggested that Hadley is a “collapsed lava tube”, something much
different from an empty surface channel of lava. As flowing lava
cools, it will begin to develop a crust, and eventually a stationary
“roof” may form over it. A lava tube has the advantage that it
enables lava to retain its heat as it flows underground, thereby
covering greater distance and collecting less debris from surface
cooling. The flowing lava can produce relatively continuous and
smooth walls, while a surface channel of lava, because it is
continually creating its own obstructions by cooling, with
subsequent overflow, will typically meander chaotically across its
own debris field. Hadley does not show this appearance at all.
(Compare the lava rivers
here and
here.
On Earth we
know that the collapse of lava tube roofs is not uncommon, and the
area collapsed will be a rubble-filled depression. When the European
Space Agency’s Smart 1 spacecraft took an image of Hadley, the
popular science website Universe Today
reported that Hadley
is “probably a collapsed lava tube”.
But no lava
tube on Earth comes close to such dimensions, and that is only the
beginning of the problem. The rubble left from a
collapsed lava
roof is impossible to miss. And we’ve seen enough of Hadley in
high resolution to categorically exclude the lava tube
interpretation. As shown by the close-up of a section of Hadley
above (right), there is no rubble, no
collapsed roof. Hadley is an empty, sharply-cut channel. Whatever
once lay within the cavernous depths of Hadley is no longer there.
In recent
years some theorists have drifted back toward the idea of flowing
rivers of lava on the lunar surface. But rivers of lava do not
produce a narrow secondary rille constituted from a stream of
craters along the length of the larger rille (e.g., Schroeter’s
Valley). Over comparatively short distances and times, rivers of
lava produce obstructing cooled material and overflow their banks to
produce layers of oozing material that freezes in place and whose
source is obvious. They repeatedly change course, and undercut the
surface along the walls of new pathways, leaving in their wake a
vivid display of their erratic behavior. (See pictures noted above).
Hadley reveals no such behavior, retaining consistent width over
great distances, with parallel sides, while lava rivers show just
the reverse. Hadley reveals no explicit overflow or outflow. It is
just an empty channel that, enigmatically, grows more narrow as it
meanders across a relatively flat valley floor.
Significantly, well-qualified specialists acknowledged the
definitive failure of the common theory more than thirty-five years
ago. In 1970, University of Pittsburgh scientists Bruce Hapke and
Benn Greenspan, based on Lunar-Orbiter photographs showing strings
of craters along the floors of lunar rilles, acknowledged that such
craters could not all be impact craters and must have
something to do with the formation of the rilles. The direct
evidence thus contradicts “those hypotheses for the origin of
sinuous rilles by simple down-cutting by a moving fluid." (Report
published in EOS Transactions, American Geophysical Union (51), 1970
One
explanation of Hadley and other lunar rilles has yet to be
considered by planetary scientists. It is the one explanation that
does not produce contradictions, or conflict in any way with what we
see on the moon. Engineer Ralph Juergens, who
investigated a new approach to sinuous rilles, suggested in 1974
that they are the effects of “electrical discharge”. Juergens’ work,
in turn, helped to inspire the lifelong explorations of today’s
leading electrical theorist, Wallace Thornhill, who has taken the
investigation into new areas of research opened up by more recent
explorations of our planetary neighbors.
Juergens
undertook a dispassionate and meticulous comparison of explanations
offered for sinuous rilles. He identified the logical tests and
found that prior theories discussed by planetary scientists failed.
And most failed on grounds that rationally exclude the
proposed explanation. (We have placed Juergens comparative chart
here.
Juergens knew that an electric discharge of the magnitude implied
would require an approaching charged body—and not a just a small
rock but another planet or moon. “The electric field between anode
and cathode [positively and negatively charged bodies] must build to
an intensity great enough to "pull" electrons from the cathode by
sheer force, … tearing electrons from non-conducting lunar crustal
materials and in numbers sufficient to trigger an interplanetary
discharge”.
The
events as he envisioned them would begin with an electrical
breakdown comparable to that of an exploding capacitor, as electrons
begin to dissociate from their atoms to become the vehicles of an
ensuing discharge. The breakdown point will be a region of maximum
stress, most likely a local prominence.
“In a
flash, the tiny breakdown point becomes a breakdown path propagating
itself outward from the starting point, turning this way and that as
the intense field at its tip probes for weaknesses in the rock
strata”. Breakdown generates heat and explosively expanding plasma
beneath the surface. In much the same manner that a powerful
lightning strike can excavate a trench, the breakdown channel “tears
hundreds of kilometers across the lunar surface at lightning speed”.
Then,
as the onrushing electrons reach the local high point the resulting
electric surge blasts out a large crater. At virtually the same
time, more distant electrons along the breakdown path, encountering
an electric field stronger than that of the underground path, “blast
upward short of the main terminus, creating secondary on-channel
craters at numerous points.
Juergens hypothesis was based on secure knowledge of the behavior of
electric arcs. The
fundamental mechanics can and have been verified in the laboratory.
(See, for example, the path of the electric arc shown
here,
with a secondary rille or crater-stream running down the main
channel).
The
hypothesis can also be systematically weighed against the present
library of data on the lunar surface, including the profusion of
glassy spheres in Hadley Rille, and the anomalous presence of
remanent magnetism. And here nothing will prove more compelling than
the essential link of rille-producing activity to crater-producing
activity—the very consideration that marked the failure of the
lava-channel and collapsed-lava-tube hypotheses.
Coming March 20:
Stardust Shatters Comet Theory (2)
Coming March 21: A Partnership of Craters and Rilles
__________________________________________________________________________
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