Mystery of Mars Polar Spirals

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By Wal Thornhill March 30,

2004

Before each revolution, all the pegs seemed square and all the holes round. In each case,
it was not until it was realized that one had to discard the whole frame of reference and
seek another that answers came in a flood. ..It is not our methods nor our observations
that have been wrong, but our whole attitude.
J. Tuzo Wilson

There is an attitude in geology, a legacy of James Hutton in the 1780s and later the lawyer, Sir Charles Lyell,
which says the present is the key to the past. It is a complacent mantra of uniformity that allows trivial forces
such as surface erosion to be extrapolated back over stupefying time spans to give the illusion that geologists
understand the processes that have shaped the Earth. This attitude is now being applied to Mars. It resulted last
week in a claim to have solved the mystery of the spiral patterns at that planets poles. The real mystery is why
anyone considers a simple computer model that produces spiral patterns solves the many puzzling details of the
Martian polar caps. Furthermore the claim comes too late. The explanation was outlined last August on this
website (see below).

The geologists uniformitarian creed has become anachronistic. As soon as they accepted that the Earth has
suffered global catastrophes in the dim past the attitude should have changed to THE PRESENT IS NOT THE
KEY TO THE PAST. Instead it has been business as usual. After all, geology becomes very rickety when that
central support is taken away. So the computer model mentioned above extrapolates a slow process back in
time over millions of years. The result is trivial because no one is going to be able to verify it and it is easy to
falsify.

It will be the unusual, one of a kind event that upsets such complacency. And some of the strangest reports come
down from antiquity. Given the extremely short time we have been making modern scientific observations, it
seems plain good sense to make use of human experience of the natural world as far into the past as we can.
Such an investigation must be forensic in style and not restricted to geology or astronomy. It should rely on
observation over theory. When that has been done we can perhaps have more confidence in theories about the
Earth and other planets.

In December 2003, one of the most important scientific papers ever published appeared in IEEE
TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 31, NO.6. It is titled Characteristics for the Occurrence of a
High-Current, Z-Pinch Aurora as Recorded in Antiquity, by Anthony L. Peratt, Fellow, IEEE.

You may be forgiven if you missed it. Hidden behind the usual unexciting
academic title is a bombshell for science. It provides definitive evidence
for the electrical nature of the Earth and the solar system. But the
biggest surprise for geologists and astronomers is that modern prehistoric
humans witnessed in the heavens a cosmic scale electrical discharge
involving the Earth. How can we be so certain? The author is an authority on
the behavior of the most powerful electrical discharges unleashed by man.
Such discharges develop instabilities (the kind of thing that has defied all
attempts at producing hot fusion power). Plasma physicists know them as
Peratt instabilities. The importance of these Peratt instabilities for our
Anthony Peratt
forensic investigation is that they evolve through extremely complex and
distinctive shapes. Globally, prehistoric man preserved those forms on rock in
the form of petroglyphs, like still frames from a movie. The petroglyphs show a highly unusual event a cosmic
electrical catastrophe. And because the instabilities are three dimensional, it is possible to determine their

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location in the sky through the perspective depicted. The discharge was polar, hence the aurora in the title.

Abstract: The discovery that objects from the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age carry patterns
associated with high-current Z-pinches provides a possible insight into the origin and meaning of
these ancient symbols produced by man. This paper directly compares the graphical and
radiation data from high-current Z-pinches to these patterns. The paper focuses primarily, but not
exclusively, on petroglyphs. It is found that a great many archaic petroglyphs can be classified
according to plasma stability and instability data. As the same morphological types are found
worldwide, the comparisons suggest the occurrence of an intense aurora, as might be produced if
the solar wind had increased between one and two orders of magnitude, millennia ago.

Peratt uses carbon dating and a recent plasma extraction dating method by Rowe and Steelman for pictographs
to estimate that the intense auroras occurred within a time period of 10,000 BC2,000 BC.

Peratts paper has ramifications far beyond plasma physics, but because it does not support the attitude adopted
by other specialist fields, I predict we will not see it featured in Nature or Science anytime soon. The author
sidesteps the highly contentious question about the origin of the intense auroral current by attributing it to the
solar wind. But an increase in solar electrical activity by several orders of magnitude would be accompanied by
an increase in solar radiation of the same order. The Earth and its prehistoric artists would have been char-
grilled! The serious researcher must search for a more realistic explanation of global events.

It is known, but not widely reported, that gravity acting alone can only produce a chaotic solar system. The solar
system cannot be a Newtonian clockwork. But the question of what stabilizes planetary orbits has not been
asked. Meanwhile, for those who understand the ancient mythic theme of planetary gods hurling thunderbolts,
we now have rock-solid human evidence that gargantuan cosmic electric discharges have occurred
prehistorically between the Earth and another planet. And it is this hidden electrical nature of planets and the
solar system that ensures its stability. It is hidden because plasma in space is capable of electrical shielding,
provided two bodies remain far enough apart. The electric shields are given the misleading name of
magnetospheres because they trap the planets magnetic field inside too. In extremis the electric force
prevents impacts between planets, but the price is high. Interplanetary thunderbolts cause terrible
electrical damage in the form of cratering; huge canyons like Valles Marineris; and raised lightning
blisters like Olympus Mons. Mars is a battle-scarred planet as befits the ancient god of war.

With this additional background, my statement, in Mysterious Mars (August 2003) gains firm support.

Mars was also depicted by the ancients as sitting within a glowing tornadic column for a
period. That would explain the huge swirling erosion patterns at both of the Martian poles. It also
means that the polar caps are only about 10,000 years old and probably still accommodating to
Mars new environment. The puzzling difference between the northern and southern
hemispheres of Mars is explained simply if the north pole was the cathode in the tornadic
electrical exchange. Material would then have been removed from the northern hemisphere to
give the low, flat and relatively uncratered terrain found there.

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The south pole played an anode role and would have suffered deposition. It sits on top of a high altitude dome
and tends to have equator-facing scarps instead of canyons. The south polar deposit (SPD) is delicately layered.
An unexpected finding was abundant small pits close to the bounding scarp of the SPD. Some have been neatly
overlaid by the SPD. There is no sign that the bounding scarp has moved like a glacier or weathered to fill the
pits. The abundant circumpolar pits in the south lack the raised rims expected of impacts. They exhibit the
alignments of so-called secondary crater chains. There are no such things. All linear arrangements of craters
are the result of an arc moving across a surface. Both the pits beneath and the delicate layering are the kinds of
things we should expect if the SPD was electrically deposited.

The SPD is quite distinct from the circum-polar sand and layered deposit at the north pole. The difference
between the two polar caps is very important. Bruce Murray of Caltech wrote:

The increasing recognition of differences between the two caps has progressively made a
straightforward global alternation in aeolian deposition of suspended sediment between the two
poles (driven by obliquity and eccentricity changes) a less likely explanation, though it once
seemed so appealing. However a new paradigm has not yet emerged to explain the rapidly
growing body of information.
(Icarus 154, 80-97 (2001))

The differences between the north and south poles on Mars make a single geological explanation for them both
unworkable.

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The north pole of Mars sits on top of a dome that is almost 3km
above the surrounding surface but is still 2km below the
average elevation at the equator. A colossal amount of material
has been machined from the northern hemisphere. In effect,
the polar cap is the central peak of a hemispheric-sized crater.
The enigmatic grooves and chasma in the polar caps are a
natural consequence of travelling arcs. They have been carved
up to a kilometre deep into the polar caps. Their marked
difference in size is explained by differences in the power of
the arc. Their tendency to a spiral form is due to the rotating
Birkeland currents that form the arc. There are other examples
of a spiral or corkscrew effect in craters on Mars and the Moon.
Unconformities have been noted in the exposed layering of the
north polar deposit (NPD). That discounts the idea that it was
formed like a layer cake by cyclic deposition due to some
unspecified climatic oscillation effect. It is a remnant of
exposed subsurface rock like that found as peaks in the
centers of most large craters. The NPD has been described as resembling cottage cheese, with a flat pitted and
etched surface. As I showed in the earlier news item, such pitting and etching is characteristic of a cathode
surface.

As an example of the possibilities of this interdisciplinary pattern matching approach, here are three images:

This is a "heteromac" type plasma discharge instability. Heteromacs can include filamentary, cellular,
and bubble-like clusters.

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 These are Scandinavian petroglyphs of
the "ship of heaven." You can also find
examples in North America and
elsewhere, even away from any water.

Here, numerous layers are seen in the south polar region. The pattern has no geological
explanation but it matches closely the heteromac instability pattern.

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For more information see the introductory draft of the forthcoming book
THUNDERBOLTS OF THE GODS.

This recent news report is offered for the reader to judge who has solved the mystery.

Mystery of Marss giant icy spirals solved

18:33 26 March 04
NewScientist.com news service

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 The model (below) produces the right spacing and the
right curvature (Images: Jon Pelletier/Mars Global
Surveyor)

Giant, icy spirals found uniquely on Marss polar caps are the result of the red planets peculiar
combination of temperature, tilt, and thin atmosphere, suggests a new computer model. The
concentric whorls, hundreds of kilometres long, were first spotted by NASAs Viking spacecraft in
1976, but scientists did not know how they formed.

Now, Jon Pelletier, a geomorphologist at the University of Arizona, US, has developed a
surprisingly simple model that reproduces the spiral shapes nearly perfectly. They had the right
spacing, the right curvature and the right relationship to one another, he says. These things have
always been a puzzle, says John Murray, a Mars geologist at the UKs Open University. Previous
theories involving wind and shifting ice caps dont really explain the spiral pattern, he says, but
explanation provided by Pelletiers model seems the most likely.

Freeze and thaw

The average annual temperature at the martian poles is a frosty -40 degrees Celsius, but for a
few days every summer, the temperature rises enough for ice to vaporise. Pelletiers model
ignores wind and shifting ice, focusing instead only on how sunlight heats and vaporises small
cracks in the ice. Because Mars is tilted on its axis, the sunlight falls mostly on one side of the
crack, vaporising the ice. Some of this water vapour then refreezes on the shaded side of the
cracks. But the overall effect is the cracks widen and deepen over time and crucially migrate
towards the pole, merging with one another as they go.

In his model, the cracks began as randomly distributed points that lengthened into individual
spirals and a jumble of shapes. Over a simulated five million years the same amount of time
estimated for the real spirals to form on Mars they merged into one giant spiral. The spiral arms
appear to move about one kilometre per million years. I wanted to show the model self-
organises, Pelletier told New Scientist. I put in something completely random and got out a
system similar to what we see today.

Thin atmosphere

While the underlying physical reasons why the spirals form remain unclear, one factor that is
likely to be important is the fact that temperatures decrease steadily to their lowest point at the
poles, meaning less ice vaporises there. Another factor, says Pelletier, is the cracks want to line
up along the equator they get the most solar radiation when facing that way.

And no spirals might form at all, if it was not for Marss thin atmosphere. Very little heat gets
transferred around the planet via air currents, meaning the localised melting on one side of each
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 crack in the polar ice is the dominant mechanism. Pelletier got the idea for his model when he
saw the spiral shape of a slime mould in a biology book.

Maggie McKee

Details of the computer simulations are in the April issue of the journal Geology.
The simulations do not include wind, which some previous studies had suggested might contribute to the spirals.

Visiting the authors website at the University of Arizona Department of Geosciences we are told that Landforms
on Earths surface are sculpted by flowing water in the form of rivers and glaciers and by the wind and windborne
particles and the focus of the group is currently in computational modelling and analysis of digital topographic
data.

In an ELECTRIC UNIVERSE these simplistic assumptions are hopelessly inadequate. So the computer
modelling that is based upon them will be misleading or trivial. It is disturbing to see geologists adopting the
physicists fad of computer modelling. Science is becoming a virtual reality computer game.

Wal Thornhill

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