A MYSTERY GLOWS ON SATURN

[BridgeTheGap]

Scientists say the northern lights on Saturn are unlike anything they've ever seen, on Earth or elsewhere in the solar system. Infrared imagery from the Cassini orbiter, released today to accompany research published in the journal Nature, only adds to the mystery at the top of the ringed planet.

Saturn's north pole is already home to a bizarre six-sided cyclone that planetary scientists haven't yet figured out. That observation marked the first time a hexagon had been seen in atmospheric patterns. The northern auroral displays, monitored by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, also go against the conventional wisdom.

On Earth and Jupiter, for instance, astronomers are used to seeing auroral arcs or rings of light - which glow when energetic particles stream along a planet's magnetic field and interact with the atmosphere. The auroras on Earth, also known as the northern or southern lights, are sparked by the solar wind. Jupiter's main auroral ring is powered by the planet's own magnetic processes.

Saturn's main auroral ring, like Earth's, is caused by the solar wind. But the newly observed infrared displays go all over the place.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," the University of Leicester's Tom Stallard, lead author of the Nature paper, said today in a NASA news release. "It's not just a ring of aurorae like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This one covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurorae predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright one here is a fantastic surprise."

The Hubble Space Telescope has observed Saturn's ultraviolet aurora before, but the widespread infrared aurora wasn't seen because the region where it appears was hidden from Hubble's sight. Cassini, which has been circling Saturn and its satellites for more than four years, has had a much better view of the polar region.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/12/1671310.aspx

[beam me up scottie]

1. Wow.

Saturn's northern aurora glows bluish-green in this color-coded infrared image.
The planet's polar cloud patterns are shown in shades of red. Scientists say
that the areas of auroral activity close to the pole shouldn't be there.

[grannie4peace]

3. ditto!!!!!!!!

[knitter4democracy]

8. We've seen that shape elsewhere in nature but not like that.

It looks exactly like a knitting pattern I saw, actually, but that pattern was based on forms in nature. Fascinating!

[eowyn_of_rohan]

2. Fascinating!

Here is another cool picture
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14166-new-type-of-aurora-spotted-on-saturn.html

[mopinko]

4. take my tax money please.

give me more of this. fuck the bomb and bullet makers.

[BridgeTheGap]

5. Amen! n.t

[Wednesdays]

9. Republicans would never go for something like this

unless it helped them figure out a way to drill for more oil.

[BridgeTheGap]

12. No, they won't go for it. They'll have to be sent there!!! n.t

[goclark]

6. Wow! What implications could that have for us ?

Can we send Traitor Joe up there with Palin and McCain and Bush to check it out? Can they stay there?

Can we store all the DIEBOLD machines up there?

Just kidding -- can this make the entire world a better place?

[Peace Patriot]

7. Power grid for the civilization on Enceladus, or Titan?

There are some cool tables/graphics of Saturn's sixty moons at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn

[14thColony]

10. Strange indeed

And the hexagonal polar vortex is also unexplainable with current models. All other known polar vortexes, to include the other gas giants, are all circular as would be expected.

[byronius]

11. Very, very cool.

[gulfcoastliberal]

13. Seems like more & more evidence points to electric universe cosmology being correct.

Why else do comets, supposedly balls of ice, emit powerful x-rays? Because their tails are an electrical arc effect. Why else did Haileys comet grow hugely out by Neptune last time round - way far from the suns' heat. Same with comet Holmes a couple of years ago. As it wastraveling away from the sun by Mars, it grew a shell & streamers making it larger than the sun! It became the largest object in our solar system for a while. Meanwhile, the mainstream cosmologists keep coming up with more and more preposterous, unprovable theories to explain things, like dark energy, dark matter, etc. Recently it's been observed that new stars form right next to a "black hole" - should be impossible. I think black holes do not exist and mainstream cosmology is in need of a serious overhaul.

www.thunderbolts.info for more on this

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. LOL

How come chemtrails mysteriously radiate from airports? The electric universe!

How come my papers never get accepted? The electric universe!

How come my bottles of pills are always full? The electric universe!

[gulfcoastliberal]

15. LOL!

Nice red herrings.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. My red herrings are just as red and herringish as your red herring.

[gulfcoastliberal]

17. At least I'm no pseudoskeptic. I'm sure in your youth you called for Gallileo's excommunication.

Ignoring the evidence cannot lead to any kind of honest discussion.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. No, you're a pseudoscientist.

The thing is- Galileo used to make fun of scientifically illiterate simpletons.

[gulfcoastliberal]

19. Whatever - you refuse to address the evidence, instead you hurl insults like a simpleton. Ta-ta.

nt

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

20. There is as much evidence for the "electric universe"

... as their is for chemtrails, bigfoot, and the ghost that haunts Lincoln's bedroom.

[laconicsax]

22. It looks like you didn't read any other points of the Electric Universe

http://www.holoscience.com/

Big Bang? Never happened, the universe is not expanding, red shift is just an illusion created by the electric universe.
Nuclear Fusion in stars? Nope, stars are made of lightning.
Rocky planets? Discarded cores from dwarf stars and gas giants.
Craters? Lightning bolts did it.
Lightning in the atmosphere? Comes from outer space.
Gravity? Newton couldn't have been more wrong, it's an electrostatic force. (Does that allow for the 'expanding earth' theory?)

So using the same rigorous method that produced those gems, we can deduce that:
-Chemtrails are a result of this planet being the discarded core of a gas giant that took some of the gas with it.
-Bigfoot is an illusion created by the electric universe, probably having to do with lightning bolts.
-The ghost that haunts Lincoln's bedroom comes from outer space.

Check and mate!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. "The ghost that haunts Lincoln's bedroom comes from outer space."

Well DUH!

The deely-boppers proved that!

[TZ]

23. So Stephen Hawking is wrong huh?

So who do I believe when it comes to cosmology. Proven genius scientist or random poster on the internet.....:think:

[Random_Australian]

24. Ok, that was pretty funny. "Why else do comets, supposedly balls of ice, emit powerful X-rays?"

I googled 'comets X-rays' and clicked on the first link.

http://superwinds.blogspot.com/2007/11/comets-x-rays-and-pumpkins.html

Which went through some of the previous ideas before noting who finally worked it out.

I quote:

************

The real explanation for the cometary X-ray emission turned out to be charge exchange with the Solar wind. The material in the Solar wind is highly ionized, while the material out-gassed from the comet is largely neutral. A highly ionized ion interacts with a neutral atom, basically stealing one or more electron from the neutral atom. The formerly neutral atom is now ionized, and is left in an excited state. This excited state decays to a ground state by the emission of one or more photons. Dennis Bodewits PhD thesis "Cometary X-rays : solar wind charge exchange in cometary atmospheres" (2007, The University of Groningen) deals with many aspects of X-ray emission from comets, and is available chapter by chapter in PDF form.

************ (With a link to the article he is talking about: http://dissertations.ub.rug.nl/faculties/science/2007/d.bodewits/ )



I was going to put a smart-arse comment here, but I don't really need to. First, you didn't predict that anything should be on saturn. Then, your site didn't really propose anything that could account for cometary X-rays. (see below). Finally, the 'stumper' question you started with was easily answered.

And you can't get much more defeated than that.

Now, out of the science forum with you, pseudoscientist!

Ok, I need to justify my statement about them having no valid explanation for cometary X-rays.

I use this passage, from the middle of their argument. http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040824comet-xrays.htm

"The Sun's radial electric field is weak but constant with distance in interplanetary space. In a constant radial electric field, the voltage decreases linearly with distance. A comet on an elongated orbit spends most of its time far from the Sun and acquires a charge in balance with the voltage at that distance. "

Well, that must be a pretty fucking amazing field, because the the last time I looked, the total flux over an enclosed area was equal to the total charge inside (times a constant to balance units, of course).

Which means as you increase the area, the amount of flux per area goes down and thus the electric field goes down.

Which means the suns electric field cannot be constant with distance. That site is full of crap.

I can keep going if you really want, but I have exams to study for.

[TZ]

25. Thank you!

I figured you would have fun with this one..you have a good nose for bs....(I'm a bit disappointed you didn't put in the "smart-arse" remark though...)
Good luck on your exams btw....:hi:

[laconicsax]

21. It looks infected.

[Tesha]

27. The hexagonal polar cyclone has already been explained.

It holds the Ringums on the Gasgi!

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070408



Tesha

[BridgeTheGap]

28. I knew there had to be an explanation! n.t