NASA 'UNTETHERED SATELLITE,' TRAILING 12-MILE TETHER NOW INTENSELY GLOWING "...LIKE A NEON SIGN," SPACE RESEARCH GROUP SAYS "EACH NEW SURPRISE — AFTER BIZARRE ACCIDENT IN SPACE" -- ONLY ADDS CONFIRMATION TO OUR MODEL" ---------- And this 12 mile wire is acting like a direct short between two layers of this vast, highly electrified plasma space environment'... which exists about 200 miles above the surface of the planet, where the shuttle and satellite are currently orbiting.
OK, now you guys have enough pieces on the table to build a model. I still don't agree, but it's worth laying out anyway:
The fair weather field, through the ionosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, and troposphere is 100 V/m.
The bolide disintegrated at an altitude of about 23.3 km, which is in the stratosphere. From there up to the ionosphere is roughly 300 km.
300 km * 100 V/m = 30 MV
The plasma in the coma of the bolide reduced the resistance of the air. We don't know by how much, but let's just assume that it was sufficient for the 100 V/m to be above the breakdown voltage, enabling a discharge.
The absence of a visible lightning-like discharge through the coma is explained by the fact that it was shielded from us by the visible particles in the coma.
If a discharge occurred, it would have dropped the resistance down to nothing, meaning that the entire voltage in that 300 km would have been exposed to the ground.
The contention is that the potential then arced the rest of the way through the atmosphere (i.e., the last 23.3 km).
The bolide just happened to be at the leading edge of the plasma trail, and was disintegrated by pulsed electric fields in the discharge as it propagated down to the ground.
The problems that I have with this are:
30 MV isn't enough to arc through 23.3 km of air. The potential between the anvil of a thunderstorm and the ground can exceed 100 MV without a discharge occurring.
There weren't any eye-witness reports, or photographs, of a bolide-to-ground lightning strike. (This isn't a huge problem, since it's possible that the strike was obscured by the disintegration of the bolide.)
Nothing on the ground was blown up by the proposed lightning. (It might have struck in the woods somewhere?)
Lightning has never blown up any rocks, ever.
In numerous video captures of bolides, a bolide-to-ground discharge has never been observed.
No one observed a red sprite at the upper end of the channel. (Perhaps it was there, but was too fleeting?)
Most of this is circumstantial, but I think that the first point is legitimate. It would take a lot more than 30 MV to arc through 23.3 km of air. It is possible that it wouldn't have been an instantaneous arc, but rather, a propagated discharge, like a real lightning strike, which grows by stepped leaders, 100 m at a time. But then the problem is that strikes like that take several seconds to propagate all of the way to the ground, and this increases the chances of being visually observed and/or photographed, which it was not, and has not ever been.
So I still disagree, but it's still worth considering. And I don't believe in the exclusivity principle, where right/wrong is a winner-take-all scenario. The conductivity of the coma needs to be taken into account, even if it isn't the whole story.
kiwi
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Hi Charles
Couple of things here ...
The problems that I have with this are:
30 MV isn't enough to arc through 23.3 km of air. The potential between the anvil of a thunderstorm and the ground can exceed 100 MV without a discharge occurring. There weren't any eye-witness reports, or photographs, of a bolide-to-ground lightning strike. (This isn't a huge problem, since it's possible that the strike was obscured by the disintegration of the bolide.) Nothing on the ground was blown up by the proposed lightning. (It might have struck in the woods somewhere?) Lightning has never blown up any rocks, ever. In numerous video captures of bolides, a bolide-to-ground discharge has never been observed. No one observed a red sprite at the upper end of the channel. (Perhaps it was there, but was too fleeting?)
#4 --------Lightning has never blown up any rocks, ever.---------
And, just as one example of the excavating prowess of electricity, A. W. Grabau cites this occurrence: "In Fetlar, one of the Shetland Islands, a solid mass of rock 105 feet long, 10 feet broad, and in some places more than 4 feet high, was in an instant torn from its bed by lightning and broken into three large and several small fragments... [One fragment], 28 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 5 feet in thickness, was hurled across a high point of rock to a distance of 50 yards. Another broken mass, about 40 feet long, was thrown still farther, but in the same direction, and quite into the sea...." (41).------http://saturniancosmology.org/juergensa.htm
Some quite unusual aspects of the overall dynamic also need inclusion in the "picture" regards the whole enviroment?
-------In 1999 researchers at Stanford University put out the following press release:
"Within roughly a second of a single lightning flash in Texas, electrons can precipitate out of the Earth's radiation belts on to the upper atmosphere above an area spanning Oklahoma to South Dakota, researchers at Stanford have found. Theirs is the first evidence that lightning can have such a far-ranging effect – temporarily changing the composition of the radiation belts and the ionosphere below it within and area of several hundred thousand square miles". [Lighting Up The Van Allen Belts - Stanford - December 6, 1999]-------
Don Scott....
" Given what we now know, it seems likely that electric charge is transferred from the solar plasma to the Van Allen Belts and thence onto the upper atmosphere. The ELVES and Sprites continue the path downward, and the familiar lightning stroke to earth completes the path. All of this in addition to the auroral current path discovered by Birkeland. Therefore, ionised paths, some almost permanently in place and others that come and go, provide a direct link from the Earth's surface to the "Electric Sky" (Scott, The Electric Sky, 2006, p 135).------http://fgservices1947.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/non-solar-energy-sources-for-the-earth-and-weather/
And also from that Saturn/cos link from Jeurgans.. (image inside)
Much more impressive, however, is a photograph reproduced in the National Geographic Magazine for June 1950. The caption of the picture informs us that "Lightning Gouged This 40-foot Trench," and the text further informs us that "three baseball players were killed when a bolt furrowed the infield during a game at Baker, Florida, in 1949... Ground's resistance to current 'blew' the earth like a fuse."
Cheers mate
GaryN
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
#4 --------Lightning has never blown up any rocks, ever.---------
I have to disagree strongly with that statement, and there is lots of evidence in my area that can only be interpreted as lightning strikes, whole outcrops of shattered rock with obvious discharge scarring, pitting, bubbling, discoloration. Lots of evidence too, IMO, for what would have been dark or glow mode sustained heating, with green glass patches on top of hills, and also white, amorphous silica 'icing' patches. Geologists can not explain with any certainty most of the geology around here, but they won't even hear talk of electrical and plasma processes being involved.
"In Fetlar, one of the Shetland Islands, a solid mass of rock 105 feet long, 10 feet broad, and in some places more than 4 feet high, was in an instant torn from its bed by lightning and broken into three large and several small fragments..."
There are many such objects around here, mainly along the sea shore and along the river banks, and lying in the river beds below where they were ejected from higher up. I'm not convinced yet of the saturnian cosmology model, but certainly agree with the catastrophic magnitude of the events described, whatever their origins. Thanks for pointing out that passage kiwi.
justcurious
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
And anyways, why does a meteor have to necessarily cause lightning when it discharges, it can also discharge to the surrounding air (corona glow). And who's to say that all discharges are necessarily visible to the naked eye?
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Hey Kiwi!
CharlesChandler wrote: Lightning has never blown up any rocks, ever.
Juergens wrote: And, just as one example of the excavating prowess of electricity, A. W. Grabau cites this occurrence: "In Fetlar, one of the Shetland Islands, a solid mass of rock 105 feet long, 10 feet broad, and in some places more than 4 feet high, was in an instant torn from its bed by lightning and broken into three large and several small fragments... [One fragment], 28 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 5 feet in thickness, was hurled across a high point of rock to a distance of 50 yards. Another broken mass, about 40 feet long, was thrown still farther, but in the same direction, and quite into the sea...." (41).------http://saturniancosmology.org/juergensa.htm
OK, I stand corrected on that one. (As a sidenote, this is an interesting factoid for my earthquake model, which has electric currents running through microfractures in continental plates, creating explosive effects known as fault ruptures. The model is well-founded already, but it's nice to have surface-level observations as evidence of the same phenomenon.) But I'm still not convinced that an atmospheric discharge made it all of the way to the ground, and thereby could have disintegrated the bolide in the process.
Don Scott wrote: Given what we now know, it seems likely that electric charge is transferred from the solar plasma to the Van Allen Belts and thence onto the upper atmosphere. The ELVES and Sprites continue the path downward, and the familiar lightning stroke to earth completes the path. All of this in addition to the auroral current path discovered by Birkeland. Therefore, ionised paths, some almost permanently in place and others that come and go, provide a direct link from the Earth's surface to the "Electric Sky" (Scott, The Electric Sky, 2006, p 135).------http://fgservices1947.wordpress.com/2008/06/22/non-solar-energy-sources-for-the-earth-and-weather/
What we actually now know is that blue jets and red sprites are indeed closely associated with cloud-to-ground lightning, but the relationship is the other way around from the way Scott has it. The +CG lightning occurs first, elevating dozens of coulombs, in the form of free electrons, up to the anvil of the thunderstorm. The electrons then are drawn further by the electrostatic attraction to the positively charged ionosphere, with little resistance in the thin stratosphere to slow them down. So the prime mover is the +CG lightning. If solar plasma increases the positive charge of the ionosphere, that will help, by increasing the fair weather field above the thunderstorm. But the sequence of events starts in the thunderstorm.
justcurious wrote: And anyways, why does a meteor have to necessarily cause lightning when it discharges, it can also discharge to the surrounding air (corona glow). And who's to say that all discharges are necessarily visible to the naked eye?
How powerful is a discharge that isn't even visible to the naked eye? And is a corona discharge just as powerful (and explosive) as an arc discharge?
Sparky
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
How powerful is a discharge that isn't even visible to the naked eye? And is a corona discharge just as powerful (and explosive) as an arc discharge?
I seem to remember a continual discharge, with One huge flash, and several smaller ones. The "fog" is still a suspect for me.
Electric current, flowing through an object, and grounding omni-directionally would probably flash as a corona and be dispersed over a huge area, ie, the fog.
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Sparky wrote: Electric current, flowing through an object, and grounding omni-directionally would probably flash as a corona and be dispersed over a huge area, ie, the fog.
Ah, but a corona discharge would have been violet, deep blue, or possibly orange, and it would have been faint, and tough to see in daylight, especially if facing more-or-less in the direction of the Sun, as was the case in the Korolev video that we all studied. There is a limit to how much current you can pump through a corona discharge before you actually get some real ohmic heating, which affects the transition to an arc discharge. In daylight, they're tough to see. So the extremely bright, white flashes were definitely arc discharges, because of their intensity, and because of their color. And the "fog" between the bolide and the ground was just an artifact of the camera's inability to handle such a wide range of luminosities. Look at the very beginning of the video — you see the same fog long before the bolide arrives. That's just a sort of lens flare from the sunrise.
justcurious
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Sparky wrote:
How powerful is a discharge that isn't even visible to the naked eye? And is a corona discharge just as powerful (and explosive) as an arc discharge?
I seem to remember a continual discharge, with One huge flash, and several smaller ones. The "fog" is still a suspect for me.
Electric current, flowing through an object, and grounding omni-directionally would probably flash as a corona and be dispersed over a huge area, ie, the fog.
I agree... but the same effect was reproduced (by siggy I believe) showing that digitil cameras refocusing demonstrate the same sort of appearance... looks very very similar...
Sparky
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Well, Charles, you have convinced me. Your scenario of a tumbling bolide, inducing charge separation is the best argument. I don't remember what you said about the flashes, but will check on that again.
CharlesChandler
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Sparky wrote: I don't remember what you said about the flashes, but will check on that again.
I think that the flashes were Coulomb explosions, where the excessive positive charge developed in the bolide weakened the crystal lattice, and introduced electrostatic repulsion, to the point that large volumes of individual ions were liberated. The proposed charge separation mechanism has the bolide surrounded by a cloud of positive charge, with a negative double-layer on the outside. So the charge recombination would have been the ions meeting up with the electrons in the double-layer around the outside. This explains why there was a huge "explosion", and yet the smoke trails don't show any evidence of an explosion — the trails are more or less continuous, with a distinct step-down in size at the point of the largest explosion (i.e., frame #630 in the Korolev video), and then the smaller trails terminate at the point where there was a smaller "explosion" (i.e., frame #673). If the explosion was right at the bolide, the trails would look like something exploded there, not like something was burning as it flew through the air, leaving trails. If the "explosion" was charge recombination at the outer edge of a detached shock front, it wouldn't have made fireworks out of the bolide itself, with a spherical ejecta pattern. So the bolide would have just kept going, burning away for a different set of reasons, and leaving smoke trails as it went. The step-down, from thick trails to thin ones, occurs because of mass loss in the Coulomb explosion, but obviously, the structure of the bolide persisted, as the twin pattern continued. So whatever caused the explosions was distinctly different from whatever caused the smoke trails.
BTW, frames 660~739 do show the distinctive violet color of a corona discharge, but only around the outside of the trails — this doesn't project to the ground. Here's the photogrammetry that I did, to determine where exactly the explosions occurred relative to the beginning, end, and the step-down in the smoke trails.
dahlenaz wrote: I would put these videos up on the web but...
I'll take your word for it. I agree that there wasn't a bolide-to-ground discharge. I think that the flashes and the glowing trails were evidence of ionization and charge recombination having to do just with the bolide's movement through the air (i.e., the so-called "frictional charging", or what others loosely refer to as triboelectrics). The bolide broke up due to the failed covalent bonding, and due to electrostatic repulsion, both of which resulted from the core becoming positively charged (with a negative double-layer around the outside). So EM is still central to an accurate description of the event. But it wasn't EU-style megalightning from the bolide down to the ground.
Charles,, You can now see the first instance were i saw the light-cone artifact form. See the video below,, for one example of that and another anomoly which was seen in a dash cam that has been discussed here... d...z
D Z, and Charles, thank you for your observations, analysis and info. I think I now understand better.
dahlenaz
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
Sparky wrote: D Z, and Charles, thank you for your observations, analysis and info. I think I now understand better. ;)
One other factor to consider,, related to photo artifacts is light reflecting off the ground. I can't say for sure if this would create the skyward glow seen in the videos but we can see that the horizon had a glow before the meteor's glow became the dominant light source rather than the rising sun. Frame 580 shows light balancing, prior to the meteor growing brighter, followed by more skyware illumination,,, which may be partly reflected light..
By frame 660 through 668 we can see how the camera has adjusted to the light,,, and i can't help not wondering if the violet coloration might also be light refraction rather than plasma related.. d...z
...
viscount aero
Re: Feb 15 Meteorite(s) hit Russia - Analysis
dahlenaz wrote:
viscount aero wrote:
Beata-at-home wrote: viscount aero, If you don't mind, please explain your answer. ("Highly unlikely.")
I think they are hiding the evidence, that is why they "can't find" any pieces. Also, why would the Syrian video be banned from Youtube?
They have been finding pieces. And do you mean the meteor was a missile, or it was shot down by a missile? Regardless, I find the missile theory highly far-fetched at best.
Although the event is shorter as the object is smaller and enters at a sharper angle, you can see the same entry pattern with the 3 major points of interest: it descends, brightens, flares up (#1), dims, flares up again (#2)--leaving a fat bulging first part, a pinched area of dimming, then the #2 portion with the remaining bolide (#3) emerging and glowing dimmer compared to the residual plasma trail structure.
Was this shot down, too? I don't think so.
The pinch area that you speak of is very possibly only a lens anomoly and i've obtained a photo to shows how a digital camera (very similar to the dash cam) reacts to overly bright areas before it makes its electronic adjustment. The image below is from a video taken as the camera rotated toward the sun while keeping the ground as a significant part of the photo.. The bright cone didn't diminish until the sun was the domonant subject for the CCD to adjust to, then a large round area was captured.
I don't quite follow when you mention the "pinched" area in reference to my description. The pinched area is a dimmed area, not a flared area (where the CCD in the camera was overwhelmed). If I have misunderstood you then accept my apologies.
---------- And this 12 mile wire is acting like a direct short between two layers of this vast, highly electrified plasma space environment'... which exists about 200 miles above the surface of the planet, where the shuttle and satellite are currently orbiting.
