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by Stephen Smith
August 23, 2011
from
Thunderbolts Website
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Saturn's electrically
charged atmosphere has erupted in spectacular fashion. |
Saturn's powerful
"dragon storm" now circles the planet.
Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Saturn's electrically charged atmosphere has erupted in spectacular
fashion.
Sungrazers are comets that pass close to the Sun in their highly
elliptical orbits. They tend to reaffirm the Electric Universe
opinion about comets: If comets are the result of electrical events
that took place early in the life of the Solar System, then their
several "anomalous" behaviors can be easily explained.
Some comet anomalies include
Hale-Bopp's ion tail and coma when it was far past
Jupiter's orbit, the catastrophic explosion of
Comet Linear when it was over 100
million kilometers from the Sun, the desert-like, cratered
appearance of Comets Borrelly and Tempel 1 (contrary to the "dirty
snowball hypothesis), and
Shoemaker-Levy 9's broken pieces
refusing to expel any water vapor.
The Sun's radial e-field is a dynamic structure, changing in
strength and size depending on the corresponding strength of
electric currents that flow into it. For that reason, it is in a
state of constant flux, requiring just a small trigger for it to
explosively discharge with solar flares or coronal mass ejections
(CME).
Comet NEAT (above image) initiated
a CME eruption that appeared to impact the comet.
Several other sungrazers (above
video) have been associated with violent flares.
When comet 96P/Machholz circled the Sun
its intense charge differential caused a gigantic CME (below
video) to blast out from the Sun for millions of kilometers.
The electrical connection between comets
and the Sun seems certain.
If that is the case, then the electrical
connection between the Sun and its entire family of planets and
moons is certain. Changes in electrical activity affect the
environments of every member in that family.
Saturn could be thought of as a solar system in its own right, with
a family of 31 moons.
It possesses a Langmuir charge sheath (plasmasphere)
that isolates it from the Sun's own charge sheath that, in turn, is
isolating it from the charged interstellar medium.
Many things about Saturn have changed in the 31 years since the two
Voyager spacecraft passed by the giant gas planet. Saturn's
magnetosphere grew by more than a million kilometers and then
contracted, only to begin expanding again. The spokes in Saturn's B
ring disappeared and then reappeared.
The equatorial thunderstorm
(known as the Dragon Storm) that raged continuously broke up, moved
toward the poles, and then erupted again.
The most likely explanation for the storms on Saturn is that they
are equivalent to sunspots. As the Sun changes its behavior over the
course of a 22 year cycle, the electrical output that connects it
with its family of planets varies.
If Saturn's Great White Spots, Dragon Storm, and ring spokes are
driven by the same galactic
Birkeland currents that drive the
Sun, they should get stronger and closer to the equator as the
sunspot cycle oscillates. It appears that that is just what has
happened over the past three decades.
Every so often Saturn breaks out with a
great white spot three times larger
than Earth.
Traditional models of Saturn cannot
explain such a periodic outburst, but an intense lightning discharge
deep in the atmosphere could cause vertical jets similar to
the sprites in
Earth's upper atmosphere.
Its connection to the current flow in the Solar System can explain
the effects that Cassini and other science packages have discovered
on and around Saturn. Perhaps, like the Sun, there are other factors
that link explosive discharges with electrical connectivity.
Since Saturn's environment is highly charged,
could objects traveling through its
vicinity initiate substantial electrical events like sungrazers
do?
Presuming Saturn to be a highly charged
object in a state of dynamic equilibrium,
could a Saturn-grazer start some of
the long-lasting lightning-like disturbances there?
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