© Science Admins

 

Charles, do you want to tackle Mars features, like dendritic ridges, as described at:

 

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/10/27/innovative-experiment-prize/? You could win some pretty good money. I'd be interested in any theory you might come up with to explain them. Since they appear to have similar form to lightning and lichtenberg figures made by electric discharges in acrylic as well as on lawns etc, do you think they were likely formed by lightning on Mars?

 

Craters

 

Since you came up with a good theory of crater formation, and since the dendritic ridges seem to occur on the slopes of canyon walls etc, and since canyons seem to be crater chains, at least sometimes, especially in the case of rilles, do you see any way for meteor impacts to form the huge Mars canyons, and then to leave those dendritic features toward the end of the process, I assume?

 

Here's the video I referred you to last year, The Lightning-Scarred Planet Mars:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_T6__JDeyw. You said at that time that a lot of those features looked plausibly electrically formed, but you didn't seem to have any detailed ideas. Maybe by now you're closer to having enough pieces of the puzzle to figure it out. Do you suppose? Do you think Thornhill's idea of EDM for removing surface material from Mars' northern hemisphere and depositing some of it onto its southern hemisphere is at all plausible? I don't have much confidence in that any more, since you explained why discharges likely would favor space to solid bodies. But, since EDM does occur in the lab, I guess between capacitors, is it possible for planets to act as capacitors or whatever, like that?

 

Over two years ago I had a thread on the TB forum on crater formation. In this post
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4056#p45338
I listed a number of the anomalous features of craters, especially those on the Moon and Mars. Do you think your crater theory can explain all of these anomalies?

 

CRATER ANOMALIES
1- Lack of debris
2- No overlap
3- Minimal disturbance
4- Undisturbed basement
5- Rim craters
6- Rim crater chains
11- Crater lines
7- Tangential rays
8- Concentric rings
9- Terraced walls
12- Steep walls
10- Flat floors13- Circular shape
14- Associated rilles
15- Cratered asteroids & comets

 

Page: 1  2   3 

'13-11-12, 14:12   Lloyd St. Louis area	EDM from Wikipedia Electrical discharge machining Electric discharge machining (EDM), sometimes colloquially also referred to as spark machining, spark eroding, burning, die sinking or wire erosion, is a manufacturing process whereby a desired shape is obtained using electrical discharges (sparks).[1] Material is removed from the workpiece by a series of rapidly recurring current discharges between two electrodes, separated by a dielectric liquid and subject to an electric voltage. One of the electrodes is called the tool-electrode, or simply the 'tool' or 'electrode', while the other is called the workpiece-electrode, or 'workpiece'. When the distance between the two electrodes is reduced, the intensity of the electric field in the volume between the electrodes becomes greater than the strength of the dielectric (at least in some point(s)), which breaks, allowing current to flow between the two electrodes. This phenomenon is the same as the breakdown of a capacitor (condenser) (see also breakdown voltage). As a result, material is removed from both the electrodes. Once the current flow stops (or it is stopped – depending on the type of generator), new liquid dielectric is usually conveyed into the inter-electrode volume enabling the solid particles (debris) to be carried away and the insulating properties of the dielectric to be restored. Adding new liquid dielectric in the inter-electrode volume is commonly referred to as flushing. Also, after a current flow, a difference of potential between the two electrodes is restored to what it was before the breakdown, so that a new liquid dielectric breakdown can occur. ... Material removal mechanism The first serious attempt of providing a physical explanation of the material removal during electric discharge machining is perhaps that of Van Dijck.[17] Van Dijck presented a thermal model together with a computational simulation to explain the phenomena between the electrodes during electric discharge machining. However, as Van Dijck himself admitted in his study, the number of assumptions made to overcome the lack of experimental data at that time was quite significant. Further models of what occurs during electric discharge machining in terms of heat transfer were developed in the late eighties and early nineties, including an investigation at Texas A&M University with the support of AGIE, now Agiecharmilles. It resulted in three scholarly papers: the first presenting a thermal model of material removal on the cathode,[18] the second presenting a thermal model for the erosion occurring on the anode[19] and the third introducing a model describing the plasma channel formed during the passage of the discharge current through the dielectric liquid.[20] Validation of these models is supported by experimental data provided by AGIE. These models give the most authoritative support for the claim that EDM is a thermal process, removing material from the two electrodes because of melting and/or vaporization, along with pressure dynamics established in the spark-gap by the collapsing of the plasma channel. However, for small discharge energies the models are inadequate to explain the experimental data. All these models hinge on a number of assumptions from such disparate research areas as submarine explosions, discharges in gases, and failure of transformers, so it is not surprising that alternative models have been proposed more recently in the literature trying to explain the EDM process. Among these, the model from Singh and Ghosh[21] reconnects the removal of material from the electrode to the presence of an electrical force on the surface of the electrode that could mechanically remove material and create the craters. This would be possible because the material on the surface has altered mechanical properties due to an increased temperature caused by the passage of electric current. The authors' simulations showed how they might explain EDM better than a thermal model (melting and/or evaporation), especially for small discharge energies, which are typically used in μ-EDM and in finishing operations. Given the many available models, it appears that the material removal mechanism in EDM is not yet well understood and that further investigation is necessary to clarify it,[16] especially considering the lack of experimental scientific evidence to build and validate the current EDM models.[16] This explains an increased current research effort in related experimental techniques.[11]
'13-11-12, 14:15   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: EDM from Wikipedia I think Texas A&M University, mentioned in the above Wikipedia article, is where C J Ransom worked, or still works. I don't know if Vemasat is connected with TX A&M. But, maybe he was involved in the studies mentioned above. He might be willing to discuss theory. It looks like the key to EDM is replacing the liquid dielectric often, along with flushing the eroded debris. So a key question seems to be in the theory of planetary scale EDM is there a fluid dielectric that could constantly be replenished that would also flush away debris from the surface? Also, could the debris be deposited at the other electrode in the process of debris removal? So would it be possible for planets to act in that manner, like EDM machinery? Could they maintain enough voltage difference to keep such an EDM process going for maybe hours, long enough to carve out a 2,500 mile-long canyon? Could any planetary gases act as the dielectric medium? Could electrodes have existed at Mars' north and south poles that would erode material off of the northern hemisphere and deposit it on the southern hemisphere?
'13-11-12, 16:36   Charles Chandler Baltimore, MD	Scalloped Trenches on Mars   IMO, "dendritic ridges" are common in nature, and while they can be caused by electrostatic discharges, they can also be caused by a wide variety of other things. Alluvial deposits at the bases of cliffs are "dendritic", but this has nothing to do with EM. So I'm not sure what an experiment that demonstrates them would prove, beyond what has already been done with Lichtenberg figures.   IMO, something that isn't seen so much in nature is the scalloped trenches that we see on Mars. So if they ever want an experiment on that, the following discussion would be relevant.   The problem with an arc between a point source (such as a welder's whip, or a bolide) and a plate (such as the workpiece, or the surface of a planet) is that once struck, the arc is going to wander. The conductivity of the workpiece might be high, but as material is removed, it is vaporized (i.e., converted to plasma). Assuming that you were operating in a vacuum to begin with, the plasma plume presents more resistance than the surrounding vacuum. Thus the arc will prefer another path, until it generates a plume there, causing the arc to wander again. The result is an arc that wanders all over the workpiece. (Note that vacuum arc welding is a little different from normal welding in this respect.)   Since nobody has ever figured out a use for an arc that wanders like that, EDM equipment is designed to prevent it. So the current comes in very short pulses, so that the conditions that cause the wandering disperse. The result is an arc that only goes between the whip and the nearest point on the workpiece.   But what if the arc was allowed to wander? I'm saying that it would carve out a scalloped trench, like the features on Mars. The arc would just continue to wander, until it hit all of the equidistant points, and the combined plume presented too much resistance. Then the arc would move on to an adjacent area, excavating material there. So I'm saying that in each of those "scallops", we can image that the source of the current was at the center of the spherical surface being machined. Imagine the way the arc dances around inside a plasma lamp, because the anode and cathode are equidistant from each other, so the arc doesn't prefer a particular point. Now imagine that something was projecting inward from the outside of the lamp — the arc would prefer that point, until the arc had vaporized it. So the arc will excavate a spherical shape from the workpiece.   If the "whip" is moving, it will excavate a trench, but instead of being perfectly straight, the walls of the trench will be scalloped, due to irregular material removal.   So an EDM machine won't do the job, since it's designed to prevent arc wandering. Rather, this experiment would be easier to do with a welding machine that can put out a continuous supply of current. It would just be using a welding machine like a cutting torch, to do material removal, instead of to melt two materials together.   Note that this would require a custom electrode, that would not deposit any filler into the workpiece as in normal arc welding, and which wouldn't have any flux that helps control the arc. Rather, we want arc welding gone bad — no filler, and no flux!!! :) Then, once we've excavated a bunch of material with the modified arc welder, we can always come back with a torch and some solder, and fill in the hole. :)))) (That's backwards, isn't it?)   Anyway, a thick-guage tungsten electrode could handle a continuous current. A workpiece made of aluminum would melt at a much lower temperature, meaning material removal with less current. The shorter the arc, the less voltage would be required, which would lower the chance of electrode breakdown. So I'm suggesting: tungsten electrode aluminum workpiece small gap move the arc along the workpiece, to get a trench, instead of just one big hole the slower the arc is moved, the more irregular the trench will be the faster the arc is moved, the more consistent the trench will be vary the speed of the arc across the workpiece to get the right amount of scalloping make a simple jig out of wood to control the path of the whip across the workpiece in a way that is reproducible and measurable make the jig curved, so that the whip starts out too far away from the workpiece to strike an arc, and then gets closer, and then moves away, producing a shallow trench at first, and then a deeper one, and finishing with a shallow one, like the trenches on Mars set the welder to constant voltage, not constant current, to get more material removal with a narrower gap use videography with a known frame rate, and a workpiece with a ruler next to it, to get a crude measurement of the rate at which the whip was moved photograph the resulting trench in the workpiece Brant, can you pull this off?   My Great Title
'13-11-13, 17:54   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars Charles, do you think dendritic ridges would be visible in your proposed setup? Or do you mean that it would need to be scaled up? If so, do you have an idea how much it would need to be scaled up? Or would a zoom lens on the camera do the job? How powerful a zoom is likely to be needed? I suppose Brant may have access to such equipment. By the way, it looks like Vallis Marineris is connected to the low terrain of the northern hemisphere. Do you suppose the same kind of event that carved the canyon would also have removed material from that entire hemisphere? Or might it be the result of a large impact that produced a magma lake over that hemisphere? I haven't noticed evidence of impact much though. Topographic map of Valles Marineris with its associated outflow channels and their surroundings, based on MOLA altimetry data
'13-11-13, 18:04   Charles Chandler Baltimore, MD	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars   I was just describing what it might take to get scalloping of the trenches (i.e., variable width/depth trenches, with concentric walls). The scalloping would occur because of the behavior of the discharge at the footpoint of the arc. The dendritic effects of a discharge are due to the behavior of the current moving away from the footpoint. Both characteristics are not necessarily mutually exclusive.   Can we develop an inventory of imagery, so we can look at what we're trying to reproduce? I did a quick search and didn't find what I was looking for. Perhaps you've got the links handy?
'13-11-13, 20:45   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars Where do you want to store the inventory of images? Don't you think this one is pretty good or maybe good enough?
'13-11-13, 20:48   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars This one is from this TPOD: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/061127beholder.htm
'13-11-13, 20:50   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars Another TPOD at: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/061206vmridges.htm
'13-11-13, 20:55   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars I posted a list of dielectic constants for a bunch of substances in the sources section. The values listed are the ratio of the substance's ability to conduct alternating current compared to the ability of a vacuum to do so. Air has a value of one, which I think means air conducts just as well as a vacuum. Ammonia is shown to be worse than a vacuum, the only thing listed that's worse. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding the ratio. I looked that up, because I thought it might help for selecting dielectrics for the experiment.
'13-11-13, 21:10   Lloyd St. Louis area	Re: Dendritic Ridges on Mars The next images are from http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=36371#p36399 * The blue streamers ["tracking"] in the first image below apparently started on the left and hit the surface of the circuit breaker spout on the right, where the closely spaced blue zig-zags are apparently where the spout surface eroded, forming the gouges seen in the second image below. 1. Extensive tracking within a cast resin circuit breaker spout. 2. Partial Discharge activity on cast resin circuit breaker spout.

Page: 1  2   3