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OF THE MOON AND MARS part I The Origins Of The Lunar Sinuous Rilles
Ralph E. Juergens
According to Velikovsky's collation of ancient historical
accounts, the most recent period of turmoil in the solar
system ended less than 2700 years ago (1). Territorial
disputes that continued for nearly a full century brought
Venus, Mars, the earth, and the moon into repeated
conflicts, scarring all of them to varying degrees. And
since all this happened so very recently in geologic time,
most of these battle scars should still be prominent and
fresh-looking.
But what kind of surface markings might be distinctively
attributable to close encounters between planets?
Religious, historical, and literary texts describing the
battles of the planetary gods are fraught with references
to cosmic lightnings and thunderbolts. The implication,
emphasized by Velikovsky in numerous writings, is
that electric discharges took place between the
planetary bodies during their close approaches.
Furthermore, such discharges were evidently of such
magnitude as to be visible from earth even when they
did not actually terminate on earth. They must therefore
have involved enormous exchanges of energy and have
produced scars of commensurate proportions.
In this and in a sequel article, I intend to suggest that
electrical scars of vast proportions are indeed in
evidence, particularly on the surfaces of Mars and the
moon. I will emphasize that it is just such markings
that constitute the most recent features of these bodies.
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Velikovsky quotes Pliny's description of a cosmic thunderbolt:
"Heavenly fire is spit forth by the planet as crackling charcoal
flies from a burning log" (2). This homely simile seems congruent
with ancient artistic tradition; early Greek sculptors portraying
Zeus, for example, poised him like a quarterback about to launch a
football-shaped thunderbolt (3). The impression gained from both
these lines of evidence is that the thunderbolts thus referred to
and depicted were not luminous streamers akin to atmospheric
lightning, but luminous "objects" of missile-like proportions.
If so, it seems likely that such thunderbolts were of the nature of
the plasmoids described some years ago by Winston Bostick of Stevens
Institute of Technology (4). These objects- "pieces of plasma" with
"unexpected capacity for maintaining their identity"- were fired
from the electrodes of a "plasma gun." |
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They emerged from the gun in doughnut form, then expanded axially to
form long cylinders. When fired into a thin gas, they bent
themselves double and twisted into forms resembling screws. This
suggests, if we are correct in equating plasmoids and cosmic
thunderbolts, that the early Greek sculptors may have detailed the
thunderbolts of Zeus with screw like twists at each end on the basis
of accurate descriptions passed down by their ancestors.
While such plasmoids are created in the laboratory by an electric
discharge at the "muzzle" of a plasma gun, they are not transporters
of electric charge; their plasma consists of essentially equal
numbers of electrons and positive ions. The same could well be true
of a cosmic thunderbolt, and its impact site, though impressive,
might be indistinguishable from an explosion crater produced by the
impact of a meteoroid (5). Thus, finding an explosion crater less
than 3000 years old, though it would upset a number of theories now
current among scientists, would be of little help in solving the
problem we have posed.
What we seek is some fairly unequivocal evidence of electrical
scarring-evidence suggesting that electric charges actually were
exchanged, with one body serving as the cathode ("negative
electrode") and the other as the anode ("positive electrode"). In
such an exchange, the scarring sustained by one body would be
different from that sustained by the other.
But there are four bodies under consideration. Which two make a pair
offering the best prospects for the present inquiry?
Perhaps Homer has passed along a useful clue: The Greeks attributed
the forging of thunderbolts to Hephaistos. Homer further recounts
that Hephaistos forged a net, "fine as gossamer but quite
unbreakable," which he used to entangle his wife, unfaithful
Aphrodite (the moon) and her tempestuous lover, Ares (the planet
Mars), and bind them together long enough for several other gods to
come by and make sport of them (6).
Could this net have been another of Hephaistos' electrical
artifacts?
This question occurred to me one day as I was leafing through a
newly purchased paperback with the rather unexciting title Gaseous
Conductors- Theory and Engineering Applications (7). There on page
189 was a photograph of two spheres with sparks streaming between
them. The photo caption and accompanying text described the
phenomenon as the "formative stages of sphere-gap breakdown . . ."
with "well-defined spark channels being propagated from anode to
cathode. In addition, there is evidence of a glow discharge
throughout the gap." My mind's eye saw Mars and the moon struggling
to part from one another in the skies of the eighth century.
Is it conceivable that Mars and the moon could have been intimately
bound- presumably orbiting one another at close range- by
gravitational and electromagnetic forces and joined by electrical
streamers for so long a period- hours? days?- as to give rise to
Homer's outrageous tale?
More pointedly, could sparks have reached out and bridged empty
space between two planets orbiting at a distance great enough to
spare them gravitational disruption?
I came across an affirmative answer to this last question in Leonard
Loeb's Fundamentals of Electricity and Magnetism (8). Discussing
vacuum sparks, Loeb relates an anecdote to show that, while theory
might suggest that sparks- gas-breakdown phenomena- are impossible
in a vacuum, industrial experience shows them to be not only
possible, but all too frequent and troublesome. He explains that
"somehow the spark must create its own gas." The mechanism involves
the emission of electrons by solids in the presence of strong
electric fields. These electrons, literally "pulled out" of the
solid materials, shoot across the vacuum gap to the anode, where
they liberate gas and ionize it. Positive ions thus formed then
"thread" their way back to the electron source as luminous
streamers. Upon striking the cathode, the ions often fuse its
surface and form a crater at the point of impact. If the electrodes
have not been carefully outgassed in advance, enough gas may be
generated to lead to a general breakdown in the gap, and a power arc
even more destructive to the cathode may be ignited in the gap.
If sparks can thus be produced in laboratory and industrial vacua,
it seems within reason to suppose that the same thing can happen in
the near-vacuum of interplanetary space.
The question remains as to just how Mars and the moon might have
been so long detained as to give rise to the love-affair story.
Clearly there are many factors to be considered: electrostatic,
electromagnetic, and gravitational forces between the two bodies
during approach, congress, and separation; influences of the nearby
earth on both the participants; influences of Venus, which was in
and out of these celestial battles; and whatever effects the sun
itself may have had. But this is a problem outside the boundaries of
the present inquiry.
Electrical Scars on the Moon
The moon, with no atmosphere and therefore no weather to alter its
features, seems the logical place to look first for scars of
electrical origin.
Immediately we face a problem, however. Seeming evidence of violent
electrical activity on the moon is so abundant that we are hard-put
to decide which scars to examine first.
For example, British amateur astronomer Brian J. Ford published a
paper some years ago in which he presented a strong case for the
idea that most of the craters on the moon are marks left by
electrical discharges on a cosmic scale (9). He backed up his
arguments with a report on laboratory experiments in which he had
used spark-machining apparatus to reproduce in miniature such
otherwise-mysterious features of the moon as craters with central
peaks, small craters preferentially perched on the high rims of
larger craters, and craters strung out in long chains.
Then there are the rayed craters which from all appearances are the
freshest craters on the moon. Velikovsky is on record (10) as
believing them to be discharge craters, as distinct from others
without rays- for which he favors a gas- bubble origin (11). But
rayed craters, though relatively few in number among all lunar
craters, are still so abundant as to be confusing (12).
And there is more evidence to be sifted .
Some or all of the lunar remnant magnetism- such a surprise to
science when the first moon rocks were returned to earth, although
it had been urgently predicted by Velikovsky (13)- could be due to
cosmic electrical discharges. It is no secret that terrestrial
lightning strokes to rocky surfaces, while sometimes fusing
materials to form glassy fulgurites, also magnetize surrounding
rocks without melting them.
All these lunar phenomena will bear intense study. For now, however,
I would call the reader's attention to yet another type of scar on
the face of the moon. |
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The meandering Schroter's Valley, and Aristarchus. The large,
bright crater at left is Aristarchus.
Lunar Sinuous Rilles
Lowland areas on the near side of the moon are gouged with peculiar
valleys, or clefts, now widely referred to as rilles. Many such
rilles cut nearly straight lines between points of no apparent
significance and appear to follow crustal faults that pierce high
and low ground alike. Some are gently arcuate, paralleling the
"shores" of lunar maria, as if to suggest that tensile forces
rifting the moon's surface formations were responsible for them.
Others, upon close inspection, are seen to be strings of closely
spaced craters that could be volcanoes, subsidence features, or as
Ford suggests, discharge effects.
To one degree or another, all these lunar rilles seem to have
counterparts in familiar terrestrial features.
But there are still others- the sinuous rilles- that come so
tantalizingly close, yet finally fail to measure up to suggested
similar features on earth, that they have become a subject of great
controversy. I believe that the sinuous rilles may be part of the
evidence we seek- evidence of the Moon-Mars encounters of only a few
thousand years ago.
Sinuous rilles meander across the landscape of the moon for
distances as great as 300 kilometers. Schroeter's Valley, largest
and most conspicuous of these tortuous excavations, has been
recognized since 1788, but for more than a century it was dismissed
as just another "crack" (14). At the turn of the twentieth century,
however, W. H. Pickering announced that, from a favored vantage
point high in the thin air of the Peruvian Andes, he had observed
scores of sinuous rilles on the moon. He described them as "a new
kind of rill" and confidently pronounced them to be "riverbeds"
(15).
Pickering attributed these special characteristics to his
"riverbeds": (i) they "are always wider at one end than at the
other;" (ii) the "wide end always terminates in a pear-shaped
craterlet;" (iii) "their length is composed almost entirely of
curves of very short radius;" and (iv) "one end [ the broader end ]
is nearly always perceptibly higher than the other."
This last characteristic prompted him to remark: "But here we come
to a very marked distinction from terrestrial rivers, for in the
lunar rill the apparent mouth is always higher than the source. What
this means, of course, is that if formed by the action of water, as
seems from their appearance probable the lake flowed into a river,
and not the river into a lake" (I6).
Since few astronomers were disposed to believe that water could flow
on an airless - (and probably waterless) planet like the moon,
Pickering's identification of the sinuous rilles as riverbeds met
with considerable ridicule and helped to earn him a reputation among
his colleagues as something of a crank (17).
In the late 1960's, however, Pickering's idea won the support of
Harold IJrey. Lunar-Orbiter photographs had revealed hundreds of
sinuous rilles, and some of them certainly resembled erosion
channels. But one problem that had always plagued the riverbed
theory, aside from that of providing water on the moon, was that,
with one or two questionable exceptions, the imaginary lunar rivers
had left no delta deposits or other evidence of out wash materials
unloaded at their lower ends. Urey, seizing upon Thomas Gold's
suggestion that the lunar maria might be underlain by a permafrost
layer of "plastic ice" (18), argued that riverbeds carved in ice
would yield detritus consisting mostly of ice, and such material
would wash out at the foot of the stream and melt, evaporate, and
eventually escape into space, leaving no evidence behind (19).
But John A. O'Keefe, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
countered by showing, among other things, that the viscosity of ice
is such that craters more than one kilometer in diameter, blasted in
permafrost, would quickly be destroyed by gravitational action;
similarly, Schroeter's Valley, if cut in ice, "would disappear
within a year, even if the ice were protected from melting by an
overburden of soil" (20). O'Keefe suggested that the missing-delta
problem was best solved by supposing that dense flows of volcanic
ash had carved the sinuous rilles and then had dispersed over the
surface as dust-laden gas clouds- an idea he had published some
years earlier in collaboration with E. W. Adams (21).
Even before that, O'Keefe's Goddard colleague, Winifred S. Cameron,
had proposed that the sinuous rilles were excavated by the lunar
equivalent of a terrestrial nuee ardente- a dense cloud of hot gas
and ash that explodes from the side of a volcano and rolls down the
mountainside, cutting a new valley as it goes (22). In support of
this hypothesis, attention was directed to the known self-cohesive
powers of nuees ardentes and to their demonstrated ability to flow
great distances on extremely gradual slopes. But this theory, too,
failed to account for the material gouged out of sinuous-rille
channels.
In spite of O'Keefe's arguments based on the impermanence of
features carved in permafrost, the idea of ice on the moon persisted
right up to the time of the first Apollo landing in July 1969.
Lunar-Orbiter revelations that Schroeter's Valley and another nearby
rille, Rima Prinz 1, contain secondary meandering channels in their
bottoms inspired Richard E. Lingenfelter, Stanton J. Peale, and
Gerald Schubert of the University of California, Los Angeles, to
propose an elaboration of Urey's hypothesis (23). The abstract of
their report summarizes their main arguments: "Mature meanders in
lunar sinuous rills strongly suggests [sic] that the rills are
features of surface erosion by water. Such erosion could occur under
a pressurizing ice cover in the absence of a lunar atmosphere.
Water, outgassed from the lunar interior and trapped beneath a layer
of permafrost, could be released by a meteoritic impact and overflow
the crater to form an ice- covered river. A sinuous rill could be
eroded in about 100 years."
The UCLA authors also argued that, since rilles are typically of
great width relative to the equilibrium thickness of the required
ice blanket, "we would not expect the ice to restrict the river's
course or hinder the development of meanders...." Furthermore,
"because there is no abrupt change in gradient at the end of the
rills, we would expect deposition of the stream load to be
relatively thin and to cover a larger area."
J. E. M. Adler and J. W. Salisbury of Air Force Cambridge Research
Laboratories, "intrigued by the novel suggestion by Lingenfelter et
al...." undertook to model the process in a vacuum chamber. They
found that in their vacuum tests ice formed, and "water continued to
flow under the ice... but it did not necessarily flow downhill.
Instead, it percolated through the soil following the greatest
pressure gradient, breaking through to the surface first in one
place and then in another." Eventually the entire test area became
covered with ice. But after this ice was sublimed away, they found
that, "although there had been some downslope movement of the
soil... no stream channels were ever developed" (24).
Colorado State University Professors S. A. Schumm (geology) and D.
B. Simons (civil engineering) attacked the riverbed hypothesis on
the grounds that "it is our opinion, based on experience with
terrestrial rivers, that the differences between lunar channels and
terrestrial rivers are significant." They emphasized a number of
specific points:
-Rima Prinz I, instead of continuing river- fashion, down a slope it
has been following, makes a 90-degree bend and proceeds on a course
"parallel to regional contours."
-Rima Prinz II crosses a ridge that should have turned it aside,
were it being cut by flowing water.
-The sinuous rille in the bottom of Schroeter's Valley passes
through the valley wall and at least two ridges before it tails out
and disappears.
-"The 'pseudo-meanders' associated with the lunar channels do not
resemble the meander pattern of terrestrial rivers."
Schumm and Simons then argued that "the emission of gas along
fractures, which control the courses of channels near Prinz Crater
and in Schroeter's Valley, would have formed chains of circular and
elongate craters, which upon coalescence could have become the lunar
channels" (25).
Schumm followed this up with some experiments of his own. Forcing
air through holes and slots in the top of a duct buried under a
mixture of dust and sand, he claimed to have simulated such lunar
features as explosion craters, crater chains, and sinuous rilles;
this, he said, leaves "little doubt that some crater chains, crater
clusters, and sinuous rilles are the result of endogenic processes
and probably are the result of fluidization of lunar regolith [soil]
by gases venting from fractures in the lunar crust" (26).
After it had been decided by NASA that Hadley Rille (Rima Hadley) at
the base of the Apennine Mountains would be visited by the Apollo 15
astronauts, Ronald Greeley of Ames Research Center undertook a
detailed analysis of the Orbiter photographs of that region. He
concluded that Hadley Rille is a collapsed lava tube (27). |
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Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountain area.
By that time (1971), astronauts had already completed several trips
to the moon and back, and it was well-established that no layer of
permafrost existed near the lunar surface. Therefore Greeley could
insist that the absence of out wash deposits disposed of the riverbed
theory, at least with respect to Hadley Rille. To clinch the
argument, he emphasized these points:
-"The rille narrows 'downstream,' rather than widens as is normal
for rivers."
-"The rille is discontinuous, a situation not possible for fluvial
channels, but quite common in lava tubes and channels."
-"The average mare regolith thickness [is]... much less than the
several hundred meters required by water erosion of short duration."
-"Hadley Rille is situated on the crest of a topographic high... It
is unlikely that any erosive agent, whether ash or water, could have
cut a channel along the top of a ridge" (28).
Greeley then suggested that a lava stream could produce a ridge and
a channel simultaneously by overflowing its banks to form levees. He
conceded that outgassing processes, such as those proposed by
Schumm, could also produce lateral levees, but he cited as
practically insurmountable the difficulty of imagining a crustal
fracture as sinuous as Hadley Rille.
To round out the lava-tube hypothesis, Greeley suggested that the
(then-apparent) discontinuities in Hadley Rille are bridges -
remnants of the lava-tube roof not yet broken down by meteoritic
bombardment.
Earlier, G. P. Kuiper, R. G. Strom, and R. S. LePoole had reported
that sinuous rilles tend to have leveed banks and bridges along
their courses, and on this basis had suggested that the rilles might
be lava-drainage channels (29). But Schubert, Lingenfelter, and
Peale had rejected the idea for these reasons:
-Terrestrial lava tubes and channels do not exhibit meanders,
goosenecks, central meander channels, or the lengths of lunar
sinuous rilles.
-"The distinguishing features of terrestrial lava channels, namely
discontinuities (bridges) and raised rims, are not found in the
lunar sinuous rilles, contrary to the earth-based observations of
Kuiper et al" (30).
The Apollo 15 mission to the moon closed the door on several of
these theories, although this was not emphasized in the preliminary
report of the Apollo Lunar Geology Investigation Team (31).
Photographs taken from lunar orbit by Astronaut Alfred M. Worden
showed conclusively that Hadley Rille is not discontinuous; what had
been mistaken in the Orbiter photo-mosaics for breaks in the channel
are actually "shallow septa," or low ridges, between "coalescing
elongate bowls."
The mission established that "subtle raised rims are locally present
along the rille," and that rim-height and mare- elevation
differences from one side of the rille to the other occur at sharp
bends in the channel. The latter point was taken as a possible
indication that lava flowing in the channel might have over- topped
the rim at such bends (32).
But the bends referred to, though "sharp" in relation to other bends
in the Hadley Rille channel, are in no way of such short radius as
to cause flowing water to top the banks, much less sluggish lava. A
crude scaling of the photograph indicates that the sharpest bend in
Hadley Rille has a radius of the order of half a kilometer.
Orbiter and Apollo photographs of Hadley Rille fail to show anything
at its lower end that could be convincingly described as an out wash
deposit, either of waterborne materials or of lava. Yet, by
Greeley's estimate, the volume of the rille is 2.8 x 10'¡ cubic
meters- a significant quantity of material to be accounted for (33).
The only such accounting attempted by the same author, however, is
found in a speculation that "multiple surges of lava from the vent,
or possibly multiple eruptions over a long period of time resulted
in overflow of lava from the main channel through distributary
channels and tubes... to build a topographic high along the rille
axis" (34). Greeley offers no suggestion as to how a valley 400
meters deep might have emptied itself completely by overflowing.
Terrestrial lava tubes form within active lava flows, and they
represent hollows left behind in cooling, already-viscous lava when
hotter, less-viscous material in the core of the stream continues to
flow on ahead. The stratification observed and photographed in the
walls of Hadley Rille by the Apollo 15 astronauts in no way fits the
idea that the rille formed as a lava tube (35); "there is no obvious
way that lava could cut cleanly through an entire series of layers
[rock formations]" (36).
In 1970 University of Pittsburgh scientists Bruce Hapke and Benn
Greenspan, using Lunar-Orbiter photographs, counted craters in the
vicinities of four sinuous rilles and announced some significant
findings that were largely ignored (37).
The general assumption is that the more heavily cratered a lunar
surface is, the older it must be, having been subjected to
meteoritic infall for a longer time than a less-heavily cratered
area nearby. A sinuous rille cut into a mare surface is obviously
younger than the mare. But Hapke and Greenspan found that in three
out of four cases, crater densities were significantly greater on
the floors of the rilles than on adjacent mare surfaces. In the
fourth case, densities were greater on the surrounding mare, but the
region "appears to have been heavily cratered by secondary ejecta
from Aristarchus," one of the freshest-looking craters on the moon.
Hapke and Greenspan interpreted their findings as an indication that
at least some of the rille-floor craters are not impact craters, and
indeed must have something to do with the formation of the rille.
They concluded that their results argue "against those hypotheses
for the origin of sinuous rilles by simple down-cutting by a moving
fluid."
All fluid-erosion theorists from Pickering on down have chosen to
ignore a matter first emphasized by Pickering himself and
reemphasized by Greeley: The "apparent mouth" of the "stream" is on
high ground, and the narrowest part of the channel is on lower
ground. The situation should be exactly reversed. As an erosion
channel lengthens, more and more spoil must be carried by the
eroding fluid, and the channel must grow wider to accommodate the
load.
Electrical-Breakdown Channels
Perhaps the mistaken assumption in all this is that the flow
responsible for sinuous rilles on the moon was in response to
gravity. Is it entirely beyond reason to ask whether some sort of
reversed, or "uphill," flow might have been involved?
We are looking for evidence of recent electrical disturbances on the
moon- disturbances that might be dated to the dalliance of the Moon
with Mars only a few thousand years ago. So let us be forthright and
frame the inquiry in appropriate terms.
To set the stage, let us assume, without too much amplification
here, that the following conditions would prevail during a Mars-Moon
encounter:
-Before the encounter, both Mars and the moon would be more or less
in electrical equilibrium with the local interplanetary plasma.
Their surface potentials, if not precisely equal, would be similar.
But Mars, being almost twice the size of the moon, would have to
carry roughly twice the negative charge of the moon to have the same
surface potential.
-Elsewhere (38) I have attempted to explain why electrical forces
between planets would probably not come into play until the bodies
approached so closely that their space-charge sheaths made contact.
The moon and Mars, at least in our day, appear to have sheaths of
such limited dimensions that it is difficult to imagine an
electrical exchange under any condition short of direct, bodily
collision. So it seems that we must suppose both of them to have
been inside the earth's sheath- the extensive magneto tail of our
planet- at the moment when the hypothetical charge exchange was
initiated. (This also puts the action in its early phases in the
night sky, an ideal placement for observation by peoples on earth.)
-Considerable difficulty arises when we try to imagine precisely
what might take place between three electrified bodies in such close
proximity. For now, I suggest that we consider the moon and Mars to
have been sufficiently far from the earth during this incident that
the earth's influence can be neglected in a preliminary analysis.
-In anticipation of various lines of evidence to be brought out in
what follows, I beg the reader's indulgence in permitting me to
postulate yet another condition: Mars, although it enters the fray
with greater net negative charge than the moon, suffers a drastic
redistribution of discharges as the encounter develops, so that when
discharging is initiated, a limited area on the surface of Mars
actually assumes the anode role. How this might come about is a
matter I intend to discuss after the evidence has been presented.
We have already noted a condition to be fulfilled in igniting a
discharge in vacuum: the electric field between anode and cathode
must build to an intensity great enough to "pull" electrons from the
cathode by sheer force. This is difficult enough when the cathode is
made of metal; tearing electrons from non-conducting lunar crustal
materials and in numbers sufficient to trigger an interplanetary
discharge must involve birth throes of considerable violence.
On the moon, then, as Mars approaches, we may visualize an external
electric field that is intensified here and there by local surface
elevations. (For the present, we consider only phenomena taking
place on the relatively flat maria, or lowland regions of the moon.)
Electrons in local rock formations strain at their bonds and attempt
to move toward one or another point of field concentration, but they
are prevented from doing so because of their bonds. As a result, a
radial electric field is set up around each center of intense
stress.
To simplify matters, consider what follows in just one such
locality. The radial field beckons equally in all directions,
insofar as topography and lunar materials are alike in all
directions. But no electron-flow of any consequence can start until,
at some point or some few points, electrical breakdown is initiated
(39).
As Mars continues to approach, the field intensifies- globally and
locally. Finally, some small underground area of weakness succumbs
to the electrical stress, and breakdown starts. Instantly, all hell
breaks loose:
-Everywhere else the radial ground field weakens as lines of force
concentrate at the outer tip of the breakdown zone.
-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.
-Heat generated by the breakdown process liberates gases and
generates plasmas that blast upward through overlying formations and
excavate a vast trench. The exploding trench, propagating as fast
as the underground breakdown channel, tears hundreds of kilometers
across the lunar surface at lightning speed.
-The initial surge of electrons, upon reaching the local high point
where the breakdown started, blasts out a large, irregular crater as it
surfaces and launches itself into space in response to the external
field.
-Electrons from more distant parts of the breakdown channel find the
external field at various points along the developing explosion
channel stronger than that directed along their underground path,
and they blast upward short of the main terminus, creating
on-channel craters at numerous points.
This, of course, is all conjecture. But it can be argued that an
underground breakdown channel, if not too deep to begin with, should
show the salient features of a lunar sinuous rille: (i) a sinuous
course, trending generally uphill toward a local high point, but
straying occasionally along topographic contour lines and even
plowing through an intermediate ridge or two on occasion; (ii) a
narrowing toward the down slope end; (iii) gently levied banks, due
to some upthrusting of adjacent strata as well as to a concentration
of ejecta on the trench rims; (iv) a lack of "outwash" deposits
beyond the downhill end; (v) occasional or even coalescing on-line
craters; and (vi) a prominent explosion crater or irregular basin at
the higher end.
And this type of sinuous rille is not unknown on earth:
Peter E. Viemeister points out that lightning has been known to dig
"a furrow-like trench" and even leave "a strange trail of holes in
the ground" (40). |
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An "Earth rille." This trench was blasted out of a baseball
diamond by a lightning bolt. (UPI)
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."
This photo shows a zigzag excavation roughly 18 inches across and
about 6 inches or so deep. The debris from the explosion is spread
to both sides of the trench, perhaps six feet each way, and it is so
thinly deposited that blades of infield grass can be seen poking
through it. Vaguely visible is a marking in the trench bottom that
suggests that the hottest part of the current channel meandered even
more than the gross outlines of the trench itself.
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).
Back on the moon, we find further evidence that similar forces were
at work, at least in the creation of Hadley Rille. The Apollo 15
astronauts noticed that some of the rock formations exposed at the
edge of the rille "slope gently away from the rille, which suggests
that the strata dip outward a few degrees" (42). This, of course,
helps to account for Greeley's observation that Hadley Rille appears
to ride the crest of a ridge. But the dipping strata are not lava
deposits from an overflowing lava tube; they are, instead,
stratified mare formations. Their inclinations at the rim of the
rille suggest that they got that way in an explosion throwing
material up and out of the rille.
And a bit of a case can, perhaps, be made for the
electrical-eruption hypothesis on the grounds that rilles of
apparently similar ages do not intersect one another. The strong
charges transiently assembled in rilles by the breakdown mechanism
could be expected to make them repel one another. The magnetic
fields of the coursing currents, on the other hand, could be
expected to align adjacent streams and pull them together.
There seems to be a hint of such attraction-repulsion effects having
played a role in steering the rilles near Prinz- Crater. Rima Prinz
Il starts out on a course that, were it continued, would cross that
of Rima Prinz I. Before that can happen, however, Rima Prinz II
makes a sharp right turn, as viewed in the downhill direction. In
the meantime, perhaps itself influenced by another rille reaching
out from the direction of Aristarchus, Rima Prinz I makes a similar
right turn of its own. The two keep their distance, but Rima Prinz
II, perhaps further influenced by another, smaller rille to its
right, is forced to traverse a ridge of high ground.
These effects, of course, presuppose that all the rilles involved
are simultaneously in the act of propagation. And whether such
territorial give and take is real or imaginary, it is only of
tangential interest to the basic hypothesis of rille formation.
Rilles of different ages might well intersect one another's paths.
Lunar Orbiter 4's High-Resolution Frame 137 shows an area northeast
of Gassendi Crater- an area particularly prone to rille-formation.
Schubert, Lingenfelter, and Peale reproduce this frame and claim
that it shows a confluence of two rilles (43). In my opinion,
however, it shows not a confluence of rilles, but a crossing of a
later rille over the line of an earlier one. At the point of
crossing, and for some distance each way from that point, the older
rille is indistinct, although not indistinguishable, as if it has
been partially submerged under a blanket of lateral ejecta from the
rille that crosses it. |
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TABLE 1: Competence of Various Sinuous Rille Theories
Rille Char. Proposed Rille Origin Theory
erosion erosion formed by formed by electric
via water gas cloud gas blow lava tube eruption
wider at high end C C O B A
channel sinuous A C O C A
upper end crater B B O B A
ends at diff. elev. A A O A A
no out wash dep. C-X C-X B C-X A
no chan. bridges A A O B-C A
chan. cratering O O A O A
trav. high ground X X B X B
stray fr. surf. dip C-X C-X B C-X B
on ridge crest X X A B A
strata exposure B B A C-X A-B
strata upturned X X A X A
rille clustering C C B-C B-C A-B
rille crossing C-X C-X A-O C-X B
2nd rille in bottom B C C C B
SYMBOLS: A. Predictable on basis of theory;
B. Permissible in terms of theory;
C. Permissible, but difficult to explain;
O. Apparently irrelevant in terms of theory;
X. evidence precludes theory.
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Table I summarizes the known characteristics of lunar sinuous rilles
and indicates what I believe to be the competence of all the recent
theories offered to explain them. Admittedly, a measure of
subjectivity is involved in any such attempt to rate rival theories.
Nevertheless, I suggest that the evidence against erosion theories
is overwhelming. The gaseous-outburst theory of Schumm fares
better, but it suffers from irrelevance at a number of critical
points. To my mind, the electrical-eruption theory offers logical
answers to each of the mysteries that have plagued the other
theories.
Green Glass from Hadley Rille
An electric current flowing through an underground breakdown channel
on a waterless planet like the moon would necessarily be flowing in
molten rock. The breakdown mechanism is dielectric breakdown, and
more specifically, thermal breakdown, the peculiarities of which are
discussed in some detail by Whitehead (44). I mention this here
only to establish that, in order to flow, the electric current must
first melt the rock. And as a consequence of this, one would expect
evidence of such melting to be present in the ejecta blanket spread
over the rille surroundings.
Apollo 15 was the only lunar-landing mission in the Apollo series to
collect soil specimens from a rille region. The report of the Apollo
15 Preliminary Examination Team is in one place most intriguing (45):
"The particle types in the Apollo 15 soils are similar to those in
the soils from the previous missions in most respects. The major
difference is the presence of green glass spheres... different from
any glass component previously observed in lunar soils [emphasis
added- R.E.J]. They are remarkably homogeneous and non vesicular and
are identical to the green glass found in sample 15426..." Sample
15426, "an unusual green material" from the rim of Hadley Rille, is
a breccia "consisting of more than 50 percent green glass occurring
as spheres and fragments of spheres..."
Could these green glass spheres be derived from an underground
stratum melted by breakdown currents that produced Hadley Rille?
Laboratory analysis of the Apollo 15 green glass produced
puzzlement, and the perplexity increased when the crew of Apollo 17
brought back some strange black glass.
It was brought out at the Fourth Lunar Science Conference in Houston
(March 1973) that "both the Apollo 15 and 17 glasses have markedly
similar features that are distinct from other lunar glasses. These
include:... pits formed while the glass was hot and soft...
different from micro meteoroid pits in hard glass that are typically
larger and always produce a spalling or shattering [and] splashes on
the glass host sphere of material of the same composition, as if the
partly molten glass pieces in a flying cloud were colliding."
Experiments conducted on the Apollo 17 glass indicated that "cooling
rates of faster than 1,OOOF/sec. were necessary to form the glass.
Such cooling rates are virtually impossible in volcanic eruptions...
but are expected in meteorite impacts." But in the same conference
it was noted that "impact glasses tend to be non uniform, since they
are a product of an explosive process that mixes a diverse group of
surface and subsurface rocks" (46).
If the uniform, clear green glass from the Apollo 15 site derived
from a single, rather homogeneous formation melted in situ by
dielectric breakdown, its uniformity and non vesicular structure
would be no mystery. It might be instructive to determine the
relative breakdown strengths of various lunar rocks and to
investigate the possibilities of duplicating the green glass by
subjecting a few Apollo 15 rock samples to dielectric breakdown.
Aristarchus
Schubert, Lingenfelter, and Peale have prepared a map showing the
distribution of lunar sinuous rilles (47). They remark: "The
nonrandom distribution of the sinuous rilles is immediately obvious.
The rilles are clearly associated with the mare material and are
conspicuously absent from the highlands. The tendency of the rilles
to occur in groups is also evident."
This tendency to occur in groups is something of an understatement.
What strikes me about this map is the dense concentration of sinuous
rilles in the neighborhood of the crater Aristarchus. Dots marking
rille locations in this region frequently overlap, making it
difficult to count them. A quick count nevertheless indicates that
more than 40 of these features are within 300 kilometers of
Aristarchus, and upwards of 70 are within 500 kilometers. |
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Distribution of sinuous rilles based on the Lunar Orbiter 4
high-resolution photo- graphs. (After Schubert, Lingenfelter
and Peale, "The Morphology, Distribution, and Origin of
Lunar Sinuous Rilles," Reviews of Geophysics and Space
Physics, vol. 8, no. 1, February, 1970, p. 207.)
The crater Aristarchus has become well-known as the center of a
small area on the moon that occasionally emits visible light (48).
In 1967 Barbara Middlehurst of the University of Arizona's Lunar and
Planetary Laboratory published "An Analysis of Lunar Events"- color
changes, glows, and other signs of lunar "activity"- reported over
the last four centuries (49). Of some 400 such events, she noted
that "the most active region is certainly around the crater
Aristarchus, the neighboring Schroeter's Valley and the Cobrahead
[the "pear-shaped crater" at the upper end of Schroeter's Valley]."
The Aristarchus region has also been identified by gamma-ray
spectrometers flown in lunar orbit during the Apollo 15 and 16
missions as one of three localities on the moon showing enhanced
radioactivity (50). Even more compelling is the finding of Apollo 1
5's alpha-particle spectrometer, "designed to detect alpha particles
from radon decay and to locate regions with unusual activity on the
moon": "The region containing the highest count rate is
approximately centered on the crater Aristarchus but also includes
Schroeter's Valley and nearby regions" (51).
The authors who reported the alpha- particle results, Paul
Gorenstein and Paul Bjorkholm, both of American Science and
Engineering, point out that "the excess 222Rn at Aristarchus is at
least a factor of 4 higher than the lunar average"; "the size of the
Aristarchus feature that can be seen above the background [count] is
at most 150 km in extent"; and, since the Apollo 15 gamma-ray
spectrometer indicated at most a 5 O- percent increase in uranium
concentration in this region, relative to adjoining areas, "the
increase of 222Rn activity in the region of Aristarchus must be
caused primarily by a local increase in the rate of [radon-gas]
emanation." Their report concludes: ". . . it is not unreasonable to
conjecture that the observed radon emanation from Aristarchus... is
associated with the same internal processes that will on occasion
emit volatiles in sufficient quantity to produce observable optical
events."
All this seems to suggest that something happened quite recently at
Aristarchus, at least on a geologic time scale. Could it be that
this crater- actually the brightest spot on the face of the moon
today- was created by a discharge from Mars in the eighth century,
B.C.?
Earlier, we speculated that electrons responding to local ground
fields might have assembled at a number of points on the lunar
cathode simultaneously. It is quite conceivable, then, that
breakdown would occur at many of these locations at practically the
same instant, and that the initial surge of electrons headed for
Mars would be a complex of individual streams.
Would it be likely, in such a set of circumstances, that the
resulting main stroke discharge (to borrow a term from the
nomenclature of lightning phenomena), or discharges, would be
limited to one, or a very few, streamer channels?
Presumably we would have to suppose that some merging of electron
streams would take place during the passage to Mars, and indeed
close to the surface of the moon, so that all electrons from a
single cluster of rilles traveled a single fairly well-defined path
to the surface of Mars. H. Raether, one of the first investigators
to concentrate on and finally understand the streamer mechanism, or
Kanalaufbau, tells us that the German term was chosen "to
characterize the fact that the primary avalanche [of electrons from
the cathode ] transforms directly into the channel which is later
the spark channel" (52). So, without some merging of electron
streams leaving the moon, the main "stroke" could be expected to
consist of as many channels as there were rilles yielding primary
electrons. ~
It is also pertinent to ask whether the motions of the two planets,
particularly differential rotational motion between the opposing
faces of Mars and the moon, might distort discharge channels and
displace their termini appreciably. The speed of propagation of
avalanching electrons is of the order of 10' cm/sec (53). And the
return streamer travels (propagates) at a speed of about 10~ cm/sec
(54).
We can only guess how far apart Mars and the moon may have been
during the consummation of their love affair. Something less than
several thousands of kilometers might have brought gravitational
disruption to one or both of them. So let us suppose that they
approached to within, say, 5,000 kilometers, or 5 x 10(2)
centimeters, before breakdown occurred on the moon. From the figures
given above, it is apparent that the Kanalaufbau mechanism then
could have bridged the gap between the two planets within
approximately one minute after the onset of rille eruption.
It follows that relative motions between the opposing planetary
surfaces could have only negligible effect on streamer- touchdown
points.
The clustering of lunar sinuous rilles on the map prepared by the
University of California scientists is hardly so well defined as one
might wish. Even the concentration of points near Aristarchus is
splotchy, and isolated points are scattered over nearly all mare
surfaces on the near side of the moon. Less spectacular
concentrations than that about Aristarchus might be associated with
the rayed craters Eratosthenes, Eudoxus, Aristillus, etc., many of
which are larger than Aristarchus. But the concentration of sinuous
rilles in the neighborhood of Aristarchus is so impressive that we
are almost compelled to focus attention on that area, particularly
since other lines of evidence seem to converge there, too.
On the evidence that the Aristarchus region suffered the most rille
eruptions of any such concentrated area on the moon, and supposing
that in a rough sort of way rille numbers can be correlated with
numbers of electrons contributed to the establishment of discharge
channels between Mars and the moon, we seem justified in theorizing
that this same region would receive the hardest blow from a main
stroke. And the crater Aristarchus must be the result of that blow.
A clear implication of such a chain of deduction is that Aristarchus
was not in existence when the local sinuous rilles were formed; that
it is younger- if only by a matter of a minute or so- than the
eruption features surrounding it.
To check this out, let us reexamine photographs of the area.
The mapping camera aboard the Apollo 15 command module obtained a
superb shot of this complex terrain (55). The view, from the north,
shows Schroeter's Valley originating on a rise that is clearly older
than both Aristarchus and nearby Herodotus, since both craters cut
into the flanks of the rise. Herodotus, in turn, is older than
Aristarchus (56). Small rilles are fairly numerous in the scene,
but any of them that approaches written ..about 80 or so kilometers
of Aristarchus seems to have its outlines softened, as if material
ejected from that crater had partly buried it. No rille in the area
originates on high ground or traverses high ground that can be
identified as an elevation produced in the Aristarchus event.
The same conclusions can be drawn from Lunar Orbiter 4's
High-Resolution Frame 150-1 (57).
How Old Is Aristarchus?
To date, no mission to the moon, manned or unmanned, has returned
lunar samples from the Aristarchus region. We may anticipate,
however, that when and if such samples are secured, they will be
pronounced to be three or four billion years old. Accepted dating
techniques based on radioactive decay will be applied, and that will
be that. It will be concluded, therefore, that the Aristarchus
explosion took place, not three, but millions of millennia ago.
Velikovsky (58) has already offered a number of valid reasons why
such dating methods should be suspect: (i) "uncorrected"
potassium-argon ages of lunar materials make some of them older than
the inferred age of the universe itself; (ii) lunar materials are
strikingly deficient in certain volatile elements, a fact which
casts strong doubt on the credibility of uranium-lead, thorium-lead,
and rubidium- strontium age determinations; and (iii) no account is
taken of the possible effects of electrical discharges on lunar
materials.
And Velikovsky pointedly asks: "When we measure the age of the
universe, why do we assume that at creation the heavy elements like
uranium predominated and not the simplest ones, hydrogen and helium?
It is philosophically simpler to assume that all started- if there
ever was a start- with the most elementary elements. A catastrophic
event or many such events were necessary to build uranium from
hydrogen. Although the radioactive clock cannot be disturbed by
heating or hitting, it can be disturbed by discharges of
interplanetary potentials
..."
The cosmologist will, of course, reply: "We do assume that the heavy
elements have been built from the lighter ones starting with
hydrogen; it starts in stars like the sun, and the ultimate creation
of the heaviest elements takes place in supernova explosions." But
Velikovsky's point- and it's a good one- is that no theorist stops
to consider the atomic- fusion possibilities of the electric
discharge; the uranium-lead ratios found in the rocky materials of
the universe may just as easily reflect a partial conversion of lead
to uranium as a decay of uranium to lead. But of course the
stumbling block here is the continuing resistance of theorists to
the idea that electrical discharges have taken place, or ever could
take place, on a cosmic scale.
I, for one, would predict with some confidence that, once the
curtains of thermonuclear theory are drawn aside, electrical
engineers will quickly discover that the controlled-fusion reactions
they have been seeking in vain for a quarter of a century have
actually been within their grasp for at least twice that long- that
a relatively small throughput of electrical energy will release the
pent-up power of matter on a scale far beyond the most fanciful
prediction of the late 1940's.)
In view of the credibility gulf surrounding the entire premise of
radioactive dating and the attendant assumptions that deny the moon
any kind of history for the last three billion years, it seems
reasonable to look to other kinds of evidence in an effort to
determine the age of the crater Aristarchus. And of these other
kinds of evidence, we have already noted the appearance, the
stratigraphic relationships, the intense radioactivity, and the
luminous emissions from this site. Everything that is known about
this crater argues in favor of its youth.
It would be an exercise in futility at this time to attempt to pin
down the exact moment when Aristarchus first appeared as a scar on
the face of the moon. Perhaps future generations will develop both
the curiosity and the means to attack this problem and will finally
be able to assure us that this crater was or was not born in the
eighth century.
*Note added in proof: Loeb (Electrical
Coronas, Berkeley, Univ. of California
Press, 1965, p. 69) refers to "Raether's
proof of convergent avalanches initiating
breakdown streamers." This appears to be at
least partial confirmation of the surmise
expressed here. |
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Part II |
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