“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.” Richard Feynman
The Electric Universe
The Book
The book Electric Universe by David Talbot
and Wallace Thornhill can be ordered here.
PC vis-à-vis EU
The Electric Universe is a variant of Plasma Cosmology,
and it is necessary to differentiate between the two.
While they share more similarities than differences,
it should be noted that EU ideas tend to go a step further
than the generally more conservative approach of Plasma
Cosmology.
While both viewpoints permit many ideas previously
excluded by Big Bang Cosmology, The Electric Universe
looks at the bigger picture, and promotes more radical
ideas about the role of electricity in the universe,
from ancient mythology to the mind-body connection.
Both PC and EU proponents acknowledge the fact that
space is NOT electrically neutral, a fact largely denied
in conventional astronomy.
"The cosmic theatre has outgrown
the Newtonian stage, and we need a larger setting to
understand the broader cosmic drama. Instead of a vision
of isolated bodies turning gear-like in a vacuum, we
need a vision of electrical circuits embedded in a conducting
medium whose components drive each other and may be
in resonance. We have left the familiar world of solids,
liquids and gasses. We have entered a world of plasma,
where the rules are different and more complex. We now
live in an Electric Universe."
Predictions
of the Electric Universe. A remarkable
track record.
"It
is the Thunderbolt that steers the universe."
Heraclitus, ca. 500BC
A Brief History of The Electric Universe
The term 'Electric Universe' has
been used before, but never in the same broad, holistic
sense. Australian Physicist, Wal Thornhill, is regarded
as the founder of this Electric Universe. In July 2013 he was awarded the prestigious Sagnac award for lifetime achievement at the 20th annual conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance.
Previously, Charles Bruce used
the term in 1960 in: "An All-Electric Universe".
Electrical Review, 162, pp. 1070-1075, 23 Dec. 1960.
Also, in 1901, in another context,
George Woodward Warder said:
"There is no loss
of energy, as well as no loss of atoms, in this vast
Electric Universe. The nebular hypothesis and gravitation
explain nothing."
As The Electric Universe grows ever more
popular we are likely to see the terms bandied around
more loosely. Let's hope the true pioneers
receive the credit they deserve. See the Way Forward.
Debunking the debunkers
As interest in the Electric Universe continues to grow, some individuals calling themselves 'debunkers' seem hell bent on attacking and misrepresenting it, and are quick to resort to ad hominems. What do they have to fear? In one recent YouTube video, a certain detractor dismissed all interested parties as a "gullible corner of the internet". Contrary to this unfounded generalisation, Quantcast provided the following analysis of Thunderbolts.info visitors not so long back. A comparison was made with Badastronomy.com run by Dr Phil Plait, and Universe Today, the most popular mainstream astronomy web sites and forums at the time. Thunderbolts also out ranked Scientific American and Space.com. This is not to say that non-academics are any less intelligent but, well, you get the picture...
An interesting and balanced analysis from a mainstream source. All too often the idea of gravity being of EM origin is dismissed out of hand. Because electromagnetism can be shielded and gravity can't, it is generally assumed that the two forces must be irreconcilable. Such a view is clearly too simplistic, however. This article is therefore strongly recommended.
"However, astronomers have little to celebrate
in 2009. They have usurped the role of the church and
cast out a modern-day Galileo!"
Wal Thornhill refers to Halton Arp as the modern-day
Gallileo in an attack on the supposed year of astronomy,
2009.
"I always felt that science as the domain of people from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities — and not for mere mortals — was a very bad idea." Benoit Mandelbrot
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." Richard Feynman
Electric Stars
Are stars powered from within, or does the power come
from elsewhere? This was the question asked by Sir Arthur
Eddington in the 1920s. He settled for the former, and
this laid the foundation for current mainstream models.
Ralph Juergens asked the question again in the 1970s,
and opted for the latter. According to Juergens, stars
shine because they are connected to electric circuitry
within galaxies. An electric star's brightness thus
depends on the power of the electric current feeding
it, not on the amount of nuclear fuel available to burn.
Stars thus behave as anodes in a galactic glow
discharge. The many surface phenomena that can be seen
on the Sun — hot corona, sunspots, prominences, flares,
et al — can all be explained by an electric Sun, but
are more difficult to understand from a nuclear point
of view. Nuclear reactions take place on the surface,
not in the core, perhaps explaining why neutrino numbers
vary with sunspot cycles, and these reactions are almost
certainly produced in the same way that we produce them
in the lab — by accelerating particles in an electric
field.
Stars, galaxies, nebulae, and planets are all affected
by electric currents in the plasma through which they
move. If the appearance of a star is determined largely
by its electrical environment, it follows that it can
change relatively quickly!
"The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the
sun's energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the
solar interior is contradicted by nearly every
observable aspect of the sun." Ralph E. Juergens (1980)
It should be noted that the Electric Star model is incomplete and lacking in many respects, but then so is much in consensus science. Also, we have a lot to learn about electromagnetism and it's many complex behaviours.
/
"What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean." Isaac Newton
This paper from 2017 by Jamal S. Shrair of Budapest University also explores the possibility of an external power supply for our local star. pdf link
"The external energy supply to the sun is overwhelmingly obvious even before space probes (Voyagers and IBEX) have detected it. The sunspot cycle, the surface temperature, the reverse temperature gradient and the existence of the corona in itself, are some of the outstanding evidence that point to the external energy supply that disagreements (or in direct contradictions) with the concepts of the Standard Solar Model (SSM)."
Walter Gekelman, quoted below, is a professor of plasma physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and an elected fellow of the American Physical Society. He has developed and constructed numerous meter-long devices to study fundamental plasma processes under laboratory conditions, the largest of which is the Large Plasma Device.
"Magnetic flux ropes are due to helical currents and form a dense carpet of arches on the surface of the sun. Occasionally, one tears loose as a coronal mass ejection and its rope structure is detected by satellites close to the earth. Current sheets can tear into filaments, and these are nothing other than flux ropes. Ropes are not static; they exert mutual electromagnetic (JxB) forces causing them to twist about each other and merge." Walter Gekelman
The Safire Project (2018 update)
This unique and independently funded project is producing some startling and remarkable results. According to the web site https://safireproject.com/
The SAFIRE reactor generates energy densities analogous to the Sun's ... in a laboratory on Earth
A number of the Sun's surface features, from anode tufting to its temperature variations and stable double layers, have been reproduced in the laboratory. It has made major discoveries that contemporary science cannot explain at this time! The Safire Plasma Engine is the only one of its kind on the planet. The implications are far reaching, and progress is regularly reported at EU conferences.
The philosophy that electricity plays a leading role in the universe is the driving force. Two things define Safire: this unique premise combined with a powerful methodology.
Progress Report
"We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress."
Richard P. Feynman
Aureon Energy / Safire Project (2021 update)
The Safire Project has already made remarkable progress, including the transmutation of elements! Aureon.ca is now the web site for this revolutionary project. From the web site:
SAFIRE can create, control, contain, sustain, and repeat-at-will any number of plasma regimes. No other technology in the world can do this.
Seven years of empirical testing has resulted in a unique patented stable spherical "SAFIRE" plasma reactor. AUREON ENERGY LTD. will commercialize the SAFIRE technology into three key markets:
> clean energy production
> heating
> remediation of nuclear waste
Each market in itself represents a trillion dollar industry over the next ten years. AUREON ENERGY is currently engaging investors to commercialize the technology.
Binary Stars
There is a problem
with binary stars. To begin with, why are there so many
of them? In the plasma lab, of course, currents tend to
run in braided pairs, but conventional astronomy has a
more tricky problem explaining this doubleness.
Sirius, the nearest and brightest star, has a partner,
Sirius B, a tiny white-dwarf. The trouble is, when we
look at Sirius B through Chandra, an X-ray telescope,
it appears much brighter. How could this be?
Astronomers try to explain this in terms of gravity,
claiming that particles fall into Sirius B so fast that
the collisions emit X-rays. But charged particles don't
care about gravity, so the real answer is probably more
simple. Nature abhors inefficiency, so she uses electric
currents to produce X-rays, just as the medical profession
does.
The paradigm is shifting, slowly but surely. Check
out this paper.
From the paper: "We propose a model
for stellar binary systems consisting of a magnetic
and a non-magnetic white-dwarf pair which is powered
principally by electrical energy..."
(Alfvén's seminal book, Cosmical Electrodynamics,
is credited.)
"There
are those who think that few discoveries remain to be
made. Others think that we have only just begun."
Anon
Sun spot 'mysteries'
In January 2005
our Sun produced a few more surprises. On 20th Jan, in
particular, it produced a coronal mass ejection (CME)
that achieved velocities incomparably greater than anything
astronomers had seen before. It normally takes more than
24 hours for the charged particles of a solar outburst
to reach the Earth, but this CME achieved it in just thirty
minutes. Earth (some 96 million miles from the Sun) was
immersed in what NASA scientists called 'the most intense
proton storm in decades'. Proton storms get their name
from the 'rain' of positively charged particles that can
hit the Earth.
"Any
student of physics who has heard of electric charge
and electric fields knows that the easiest way to get
electrically charged particles to accelerate is to apply
an electric field to them." Don Scott
A NASA headline article concluded, "How they were accelerated,
however, remains a mystery". From a plasma perspective,
of course, this phenomenon is less mysterious. Retired professor of electrical engineering, Donald
Scott, was not impressed and did not mince his words, above.
Saturn's Hot
Poles
In a recent
press release, NASA scientists admitted their surprise
at finding a hot north pole on Saturn. The northern latitudes
have been hidden from the sun since 1995, and yet the
temperatures are equivalent to those at the south pole,
which also surprised initially. According to Glenn Orton,
one of the scientists monitoring the infrared spectrometer
onboard the Cassini spacecraft:
"We had speculated that the south pole hot spot
was connected to the southern, sunlit conditions. Since
the north pole has been deprived of sunlight since the
arrival of winter in 1995, we didn't expect to find
a similar feature there.
“The hot spots are the result of air moving polewards
and being compressed as it descends over the poles into
the depths of Saturn. The driving forces behind the
motion, and indeed the global motion of Saturn's atmosphere,
still need to be understood."
In an Electric Universe, of course, there is a simple
explanation
Comets
Comets are little more than dirty snowballs according
to conventional astronomy. Recent findings, however,
challenge this assumption.
In 2000, as comet Linear (named after the telescope
that discovered it) approached perihelion, strange things
began to happen. It brightened by more than 50% in less
than fours hours, and threw off large quantities of
'dust', much more than was expected from ice and other
volatiles. Then, to cap it all, the Chandra telescope
discovered that the 'dirty snowball' was emitting X-rays!
NASA cited a befuddled process called 'charge exchange
reaction', which it claimed was first proposed in 1997.
As a matter of fact, however, the electric comet theory
has been around for more than a century, and it received
clarity from Ralph Juergens in the early 1970s. He proposed
the Electric Sun model, with the corollary that cometary
comas and tails are produced by an electrical exchange
between the sun and a comet. The Electric Comet video from Thunderbolts can be viewed here.
Rock and Roll
The ancients believed stones falling from the sky originated
from beyond our planet. This was regarded as superstitious
nonsense by the scientific community up until the 1800s,
and martian meteorites were not officially confirmed
until the late 20th century. The expression 'Modern
Science catches up with Ancient Knowledge' is much reviled
by the scientific community, but it seems appropriate
here.
Such stones are sometimes called thunderstones as they
have been associated with thunder and lightning. This
is of particular interest to EU theorists, who note
that electrical phenomena frequently accompany stone
or meteor falls. See the witness diagram from 1751,
right.
The light shows pose unanswered questions. Many witnesses
describe electrical crackling and brightness equivalent
to a full moon! Comas are also visible in the picture
of the famous Peekskill meteor, right, from October,
1992. One witness stated: "When I saw it, it was
still in one piece. It was an electric lime green with
tendril-like extensions. It did not look like it was
burning up so much as undergoing an electrical interaction."
These features are consistent with Electric Universe
ideas. First we might expect to see a glow discharge
which, as it approachs 'arc-mode' intensity, begins
to ablate material in addition to velocity-driven air
friction.
From the paper: "Anomalous sounds
from large meteor fireballs, anomalous because they
are audible simultaneously with the sighting, have been
a matter for debate for over two centuries..."
Plasma Tubes
The YouTube Geointeresting Podcast, Episode 5, below, is a fascinating interview with Cleo Loi, the undergraduate who discovered 'plasma tubes' in the ionosphere circa 2016.
Her supervisor tasked her with understanding the noise of the radio telescope study of distant pulsar signals, the story goes. Cleo noticed patterns in the data, then proceeded (apparently for the first time in history) to use a parallax test available to a cluster telescope in order to determine the location (altitude) of the phenomenon. She's essentially invented the terrestrial study of the ionosphere by radio telescopes.
Cleo recounts her navigation through dismissal by her supervisors and experts in the field. Another Senior Professor is in on the interview, and seems slightly defensive. The situation serves as a reminder of Alfvén's interdisciplinary warning.
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.” Richard Feynman
The Russian Meteor
Another 'Shock to the system', and no impact site on earth! An EU perspective on this remarkably well documented event.