It appears that Mr. V. Wall has buggered off!

Since we observe electrical discharges as a catastrophic breakdown of the dielectric resistance of a material, there can be none such across a vacuum, since there’s nothing to break down.

Plus, it’s kinda hard to SEE electrical discharges between planets when that light emission comes from the ionization of a material that doesn’t exist.

GAry 7

To answer your question, this is from Wikipedia — Properties of water:

Forms of water
Like many substances, water can take numerous forms that are broadly categorized by phase of matter. The liquid phase is the most common among water’s phases and is the form that’s generally denoted by the word “water”. The solid phase of water is known as ice and commonly takes the structure of hard, amalgamated crystals, such as ice cubes, or loosely accumulated granular crystals, like snow. [...] The gaseous phase of water is known as water vapor (or steam), and is characterized by water assuming the configuration of a transparent cloud. The fourth state of water, that of a supercritical fluid, is much less common than the other three and only rarely occurs in nature. [...] Since water only becomes supercritical under extreme temperatures or pressures, it almost never occurs naturally. One example of naturally occurring supercritical water is in the hottest parts of deep water hydrothermal vents, in which water is heated to the critical temperature by scalding volcanic plumes and achieves the critical pressure because of the crushing weight of the ocean at the extreme depths at which the vents are located.

[...]

It was electrical attraction and repulsion. Earthlings of a few thousand years ago recorded vast amounts of electrical activity between the planets. Modern scientists ignore electrical effects, even while watching lightning bolts in dust devils, because they never learned much about the subject.

From Dictionary.com — LIE¹:

—noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.

2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture.

3. an inaccurate or false statement.

4. the charge or accusation of lying.

—verb (used without object)
5. to speak falsely or utter untruth knowingly, as with intent to deceive.

6. to express what is false; convey a false impression.

[...]

Is there a scientific reasoning here that I am not aware of??

To all others, I do apologise for feeding the troll, but I’m really curious.

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=48.348634,-113.787632&spn=0.005476,0.02105&t=h&z=16

The sand composition does make this possibility problematic. However even sand can develop a crust.

This is according to Dictionary.com:

—Usage note

LAY and LIE are often confused. LAY is most commonly a transitive verb and takes an object. Its forms are regular. If “place” or “put” can be substituted in a sentence, a form of LAY is called for: Lay the folders on the desk; The mason is laying brick; She laid the baby in the crib. LAY also has many intransitive senses, among them “to lay eggs” (The hens have stopped laying), and it forms many phrasal verbs, such as LAY OFF “to dismiss (from employment)” or “to stop annoying or teasing” and LAY OVER “to make a stop”.

LIE, with the overall senses “to be in a horizontal position, recline” and “to rest, remain, be situated, etc.”, is intransitive and takes no object. Its forms are irregular; its past tense form is identical with the present tense or infinitive form of LAY: Lie down, children; Abandoned cars were lying along the road; The dog lay in the shade and watched the kittens play; The folders have lain on the desk since yesterday.

In all but the most careful, formal speech, forms of LAY are commonly heard in senses normally associated with LIE. In edited written English such uses of LAY are rare and are usually considered nonstandard: Lay down, children; The dog laid in the shade; Abandoned cars were laying along the road; The folders have laid on the desk since yesterday.

So, according to the above Usage note, it is rare and considered nonstandard to use “laying” instead of “lying” — i.e., it is over formal.

And too all who mentioned it:gravity & vacuum would both affect the fluidity and repose angle of the sand, as would it’s chemistry which determains the crystal structure of the sand, causing it’s grain size, roughness and any electric properties. If for instance the sand is composed of highly piazo electric crystals (common on earth), the wind blowing over a super dry dune could cause all kinds of unguessable effects. Leavitating sand for one. Ok I guessed.

I wonder how the relative gravity difference would affect these experiments? Shouldn’t THAT result then be dependent upon the resistance to sliding vs the lubricant quality of the sublimating CO2?

Gary 7

Maybe the furrows are laying there. Horny bastards.