ZAP! Spacecraft discovers Saturn’s moon Hyperion is charged

[n2doc]

Cassini spacecraft received the equivalent of a 200 volt electric shock from the electrostatically charged surface of Saturn’s moon, Hyperion, confirming that objects in the outer Solar System can have charged surfaces, according to UCL research.


Hyperion

The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, reports that Cassini was briefly magnetically connected to the surface of Hyperion, allowing it to be caught by a beam of electrons coming from the moon’s surface. Static electricity is known to play an important role on Earth’s airless, dusty Moon, but evidence of surface charging on other objects in the Solar System has been elusive until now.

The finding supports predictions that many different bodies including asteroids, moons and the surface of comets may be charged, which has wide-ranging implications, say the team. For example, astronauts may be at risk from strong electrostatic discharges when exploring planetary objects without atmospheres, like Earth’s Moon.

Hyperion is an irregularly shaped outer moon of Saturn, about 133 km wide, with a bizarre, sponge-like appearance owing to its unusually porous interior. The team believe it becomes charged when exposed to UV light from the Sun and plasma, which contains charged particles, in Saturn’s magnetosphere – the invisible, movable bubble generated by the planet’s internal magnetic field.

more
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1014/161014_cassini

[xocet]

1. Cool. Here is the journal article that deals with that event...

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1002/2014GL061127

[oldandhappy]

2. Thank you for the post.

I like learning about stuff!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. I thought Jupiter was the one who threw lightning bolts.

[trusty elf]

4. .......

[url=http://postimage.org/][img][/img][/url]

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. That would be a gas giant all right.

[Sanity Claws]

9. Jupiter is throwing asparagus

Sure beats casting aspersions

[Blue State Bandit]

6. On the properties of charge separation overlooked in modern cosmology.

[D Gary Grady]

7. Questionable fringe stuff

A search for "electric universe theory" will turn up a lot of articles explaining why it isn't taken very seriously. (For just one example, see this page.) Like a lot of fringe science, it's the sort of thing that sounds appealingly revolutionary when you first look into it but unfortunately doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. Even its handful of advocates don't seem to try to publish any papers aimed at a scientific audience, despite the fact that many theoretical physics journals have shown themselves very open to speculative papers far outside the mainstream. Instead they post stuff on line and make some quite nicely done videos like this one aimed at a non-specialist audience.

[Blue State Bandit]

8. So.. how about we take this point by point.

- "Electric universe theorists argue that these neutrinos have never been detected, and those inferred by their effects are about half of what would be produced by a fusion reaction in the sun."

Actually, EU states that Solar Neutrino production is 1/3 of what SM calculations said it should be. SM tries to shoehorn a solution claiming that the missing neutrinos change in transit from detectable, to undetectable flavors. But there are unable to provide any proof of the mechanism involved. Just more conjecture.

First scratch of the surface, we have misquote, and falsehood.

#t=81

- EU states "that the granular structure we see on the sun would not be possible, because convection is impossible due to the conditions there"

He's hanging on a quote from 1972 (before EUT existed), and completely ignores what NASA itself has found; that the "predicted convection", required for the SM to be valid, does not exist. Convection exists, but at 1 percent of SM calculations predicted.

Considering the fact that Ralph Juergens, back then, was 99% right seems to be completely missed by the OP.

"Convection in the Sun is {20-100x} Slower than We Thought"

I'd go on, but it's becoming futile to argue. But I will say this. Anyone with an electrical engineering degree/training will easily recognize and understand the implications if the have an open mind.