Modern geology underwent a profound transformation during the 1960s and 1970s with the widespread acceptance of plate tectonics. According to this theory, the Earth's lithosphere is divided into a number of large moving plates. Their motion is generally attributed to processes within the mantle, including convection, slab pull and ridge push. Interactions between the plates produce three principal types of boundary: divergent boundaries, convergent boundaries and transform faults.

Many familiar geological features — including elongated mountain ranges, volcanoes and earthquake zones — are therefore interpreted as consequences of plate movement. Within this framework, most large-scale geological change is thought to occur gradually over millions or billions of years, punctuated by occasional earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other sudden events. Immense spans of time consequently play a central role in conventional interpretations of the geological record.

Wikipedia's Geological time scale (GTS): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_time

Catastrophism, by contrast, proposes that many major geological changes occurred rapidly rather than gradually. Some catastrophists argue that a number of these events may even have taken place within human history and found expression in the myths and traditions passed down by our ancestors. In the Electric Universe interpretation, some of these upheavals may have involved large-scale electrical disturbances. See the catastrophism and mythology sections of this web site.

The purpose of this page is not to suggest that every geological formation has an electrical origin, nor to dismiss plate tectonics, erosion or volcanism where they provide convincing explanations. It is to examine whether some features of the Earth's surface may be more readily understood as the products of sudden, energetic and possibly electrical processes than through gradual geological change alone.

Some formations appear difficult to reconcile with slow erosion, ordinary volcanism or tectonic movement without introducing assumptions about vanished conditions, immense timescales or processes that cannot now be observed directly. This raises a reasonable question: are conventional explanations always derived from the evidence, or is the evidence sometimes interpreted within a framework whose conclusions have already been assumed?

The following sections consider geological formations that may warrant a fresh examination. The argument is not that conventional geology explains nothing, but that it may not explain everything.

"There is no longer any need to hide in the consensus."
Andrew Hall

Geologist Robert Schoch is perhaps best known for his work on the Sphinx, which he believes is considerably older than the date generally accepted by Egyptologists and may extend back towards the end of the last Ice Age. His interpretation challenges the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt and has consequently attracted considerable criticism.

Schoch's conclusions are based principally on the weathering and erosion visible on the body and enclosure of the Sphinx. He argues that these features are more consistent with prolonged exposure to heavy rainfall than with wind and sand erosion alone. Since the region has not experienced such a climate during the traditionally accepted period of the Sphinx's construction, he proposes that the monument, or at least its original form, may be substantially older.

Schoch has also spoken at an Electric Universe conference. He recognises that a great deal of ancient rock art may record plasma phenomena witnessed in the skies by our ancestors. He has discussed these matters with plasma physicists Anthony Peratt and CJ Ransom, who is mentioned below, as well as the comparative mythologist Rens van der Sluijs.

In this fascinating YouTube interview with Mind the Shift, Schoch covers a wide range of subjects in a clear and concise manner. At around 36 minutes, he discusses traditions according to which the Sphinx was struck by a thunderbolt in antiquity.

Schoch also accepts that the Sun is less stable than is often assumed and that major solar events may pose a greater risk than generally recognised. Ancient cultures appear to have been more conscious of this possibility. As Schoch explains, the important question is not merely whether people are interested in lost civilizations, but what events may have devastated them.

Another Carrington event — the last major example occurred in September 1859 — could wreak havoc on modern civilization, particularly given our dependence on electricity, satellites, communications networks and other vulnerable technologies.

One of the central assumptions of modern geology is that ancient myths and traditions have little or no value as historical evidence. Catastrophism takes a different view. If our ancestors witnessed extraordinary natural events, it is reasonable to ask whether those experiences became embedded in religious texts, oral traditions, monuments and works of art. Such accounts should not be accepted uncritically, but neither should they be dismissed simply because they employ symbolic language.

Many ancient cultures independently described fire from the sky, thunderbolts, darkness, floods and dramatic changes in the heavens. The remarkable consistency of these traditions has led some researchers to suggest that they preserve memories of real catastrophes rather than purely fictional stories.

"If our ancestors could predict eclipses, track the movement of celestial bodies, build pyramids (could we build them today to the same degree of accuracy?), and develop most of modern math, perhaps we should listen when they describe what they saw in the sky."
Michael Steinbacher

"Perhaps the Hebrews described it best. They were a literate people, so we should probably listen to what they had to say. They seem to have the most accurate descriptions of these things."
Michael Steinbacher

Billy Yelverton, among others, has reproduced a number of geological-looking formations by electrical means in the laboratory, albeit on a much smaller scale. This is significant because plasma and electrical-discharge phenomena can exhibit similar forms over a wide range of scales.

The experiments produce craters, channels, branching patterns, raised rims and other features that bear a striking resemblance to formations observed on planets and moons. They therefore offer a physical mechanism that can be tested and repeated rather than inferred solely from features left behind in the distant past.

It is often said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Laboratory reproduction does not by itself prove that planetary landscapes were formed electrically, but it demonstrates that electrical discharges are capable of producing many of the relevant forms. The results are consistent and reproducible — a foundational requirement of experimental science.

Of particular interest is the difficulty of reproducing some crater forms by ordinary impact experiments, whereas electrical machining can generate circular craters, flat floors, terracing, central peaks and crater chains under controlled conditions.

This does not settle the question, but it provides a serious alternative that deserves to be evaluated on its experimental merits.

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education." Bertrand Russell

Volcanic activity is frequently invoked to explain spectacular geological formations around the world. In many cases, however, the volcano responsible is no longer visible. Vast lava fields, calderas, mesas and layers of volcanic material are sometimes attributed to eruptions far larger than anything witnessed in recorded history, while the original volcanic structure has supposedly eroded, collapsed or otherwise disappeared.

This does not mean that the proposed volcano never existed, but it can make the explanation difficult to test. Where the presumed source is absent, the volcanic interpretation may depend heavily upon the composition and appearance of the surrounding rock rather than upon an identifiable eruption centre.

"I would like to start a charity for missing volcanoes."
Michael Steinbacher

There is also the possibility that volcanism itself has an electrical component. Telluric currents — electrical currents flowing through the Earth — are known to exist, although their behaviour deep below the surface is difficult to measure. Volcanic eruptions are frequently accompanied by dramatic electrical storms, lightning and charged ash plumes.

This does not demonstrate that electrical forces initiate eruptions, but it suggests that the electrical environment of a volcano may be more than a secondary curiosity. The relationship between seismic activity, rock stress, charge separation and atmospheric discharge deserves closer examination.

Dating can introduce further uncertainty. Rocks are generally dated by radiometric methods, while surrounding organic material may be dated separately. These methods depend upon assumptions about initial conditions, contamination and whether the system remained closed. Samples producing unexpected results are often interpreted as contaminated or disturbed. Sometimes that judgement is justified, but it also means that anomalous dates can be excluded from the chronology they might otherwise call into question.

This paper examines what its authors regard as the limitations of a predominantly thermally driven model of the Earth. It outlines an alternative solid-plastic-planet model in which expansion may have occurred and electromagnetic forces play a significant role. The paper is technical but approachable. External link: https://www.scientificexploration.org/

Whether or not one accepts the model in full, the paper raises broader questions about the conductivity of rocks, the generation of electrical currents within the Earth and the assumptions used when interpreting geophysical measurements.

Introduction: F. T. Freund, in his paper Rocks that Crack and Spark and Glow: Strange Pre-Earthquake Phenomena (JSE, 17, 37–71), very successfully showed how erroneous results in rock conductivity measurements become part of mainstream science. We think this is a side effect of a wider problem; mainstream science progressively turns into an ideological system of belief in theories, and as such, it tends to ignore the implications of logic and observations when these contradict their predicated mental abstractions.

The Younger Dryas was a period of abrupt climatic cooling that began approximately 12,900 years ago, as the last Ice Age was drawing to a close. Temperatures in parts of the Northern Hemisphere fell sharply, ecosystems were disrupted and many large animal species disappeared around the same broad period.

The cause remains debated. Proposed explanations include changes in ocean circulation, the sudden release of glacial meltwater, volcanic activity and one or more encounters with fragments of a comet or asteroid. The last of these is generally known as the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.

The following peer-reviewed paper, published online on March 13, 2019, examines evidence from Patagonia in southern Chile. Its authors report a sedimentary layer containing material they interpret as evidence of cosmic impact, widespread burning, climatic disruption and megafaunal extinction.

The paper argues for an impact scenario. Within a broader catastrophist interpretation, however, the evidence may also be relevant to the possibility of an exceptionally disturbed celestial environment at the end of the Ice Age. Ancient myths describing fire, floods, darkness and upheaval should not be treated as scientific measurements, but their recurrence across cultures makes them worthy of comparison with the physical record.

Some Electric Universe and Velikovskian interpretations associate these traditions with a former disturbance involving Venus. This remains highly speculative and is not the conclusion of the paper cited here. Nevertheless, it illustrates the wider question considered throughout this page: whether the end of the Ice Age was a gradual transition or a period marked by sudden and catastrophic events. See the mythology and catastrophism pages of this web site for further discussion of the proposed role of Venus in myth and legend.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38089-y
http://www.unchartedx.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/s41598-018-38089-y-marked-up.pdf

From the paper: "Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic-impact triggering of biomass burning, climate change, and megafaunal extinctions at 12.8 ka."

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPOlomFhehQ

Could the Grand Canyon preserve evidence of a gigantic electrical discharge — a thunderbolt on a scale far beyond anything witnessed today? The suggestion initially sounds extraordinary, particularly when considered within a geological framework based primarily upon tectonic uplift followed by prolonged river erosion. Yet the canyon contains features that have prompted continuing debate even within conventional geology.

The Colorado River presently crosses the elevated Colorado Plateau, creating the impression that it cut through rising ground rather than simply following the lowest available route. Various explanations have been proposed, including antecedent drainage, stream capture, uplift occurring around an established river and the breaching of ancient lakes. The continuing discussion shows that the canyon's development is not reducible to the simple image of a river gradually cutting down through stationary rock.

There is also the question of the immense volume of material removed. Estimates run into trillions of cubic yards of rock, yet the distribution and ultimate destination of all this material remain subjects of reconstruction. The relatively modest sediment accumulation at the modern mouth of the Colorado cannot represent the whole history of excavation, so conventional accounts require earlier drainage systems, offshore transport, erosion and recycling of sediment over immense periods.

The canyon cuts through layers of varying hardness and, in places, follows routes that appear less direct than might be expected from ordinary surface flow. Tributaries frequently join at sharp angles, side canyons branch in complex patterns and isolated buttes and mesas rise abruptly from the surrounding terrain.

These features do not prove an electrical origin. Water, uplift, faulting, collapse and erosion have plainly played important roles. The question is whether they account for the entire form of the canyon, or whether some larger and more energetic event helped to establish its principal structure.

Electrical-discharge experiments produce branching channels, steep walls, flat floors, terracing, scalloped edges, isolated remnants and material displaced away from the excavated channel. From above, large lightning scars can also display fractal branching patterns resembling drainage networks. Critics are correct that visual similarity alone is insufficient, but the comparison becomes more interesting when morphology, material removal and laboratory reproduction are considered together.

The electrical interpretation therefore need not claim that every visible feature was created in a single instant or that subsequent erosion played no part. It proposes that the broad excavation may have begun catastrophically, with water, weathering and rockfall modifying the landscape afterwards.

Native American traditions also preserve memories of destruction by thunderbolts, fire and flood. Such accounts cannot be treated as literal geological reports, but neither should they be dismissed without consideration. According to the Lakota nation:

"The Creator sang the song of destruction and sent down fierce Thunderbirds to wage a great battle against the other humans and giant animals. They fought for a very long time because the evil humans and animals had become very powerful. Finally, at the height of the battle the Thunderbirds suddenly threw down their most powerful Thunderbolts all at once. The fiery blast shook the entire world, toppling mountain ranges and setting forests and prairies ablaze. The flames leapt up to the sky in all directions, sparing only a few people at the highest peaks. It was so hot that the world's lakes boiled up and dried before their eyes. Even the rocks burned red hot and the giant animals and evil people burned up where they stood. A great flood followed and when the survivors went out they found the bleached bones of the giant animals in mud and rock all over the world."

Whether this tradition records a specific event, a symbolic account or memories accumulated over generations cannot now be known. It does, however, remind us that lightning and electrical forces occupied a central place in ancient descriptions of terrestrial catastrophe.

The Great Unconformity raises more questions than answers. In the Grand Canyon, rock layers separated by hundreds of millions of years lie directly against one another, while the intervening geological record is absent.

"In 1869 geologists noted missing layer of rock in the Grand Canyon. Samples showed a layer dating back 540 million years, and directly below it, a layer that was dated to 1 billion years ago. What happened in-between? ... The researchers suggest that the large erosion event was the development of what has been termed "Snowball Earth" a period when the entire planet was completely covered with ice. They believe that as the ice receded, it took a whole layer of the crust with it, dumping it into the sea. If that was the case, logic suggests, testing the seafloor should show a large layer of rock from that time period. But no such layer has been found..."

The accepted explanation invokes immense erosion over vast spans of time, possibly associated with a period of widespread glaciation known as Snowball Earth. Yet the apparent absence of a corresponding volume of displaced material remains difficult to account for. The missing strata therefore represent not merely a gap in the rocks, but a gap in our understanding of the processes that removed them.

Phys.org link: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-crust-layer-blamed-snowball-earth.html

In mythology, Medusa — sometimes associated in catastrophist interpretations with Venus — is said to have petrified her victims. In this context, petrification means more than simply frightening someone. The victims were said to have been turned literally to stone.

Peter Mungo Jupp, an Australian archaeologist, has argued that powerful electrical discharges may be capable of producing the rapid mineralisation or petrification of organisms. This suggestion is particularly interesting because fossilisation is generally assumed to require long periods, although some forms of mineral replacement and preservation can occur much more rapidly when conditions are favourable.

Within the catastrophist interpretation, Venus may have played a central role in disturbances affecting the Earth. Whether or not that particular identification is accepted, the wider question remains: were at least some fossils formed during sudden, highly energetic events rather than through slow and undisturbed burial over thousands or millions of years?

Peter Mungo Jupp on instant fossilization.

The images below compare formations produced by laboratory plasma discharges with geological features observed on planets and moons. Similarities of appearance alone do not establish a common cause, but repeated similarities in structure, geometry and material displacement deserve serious attention.

Electrical machining produces circular craters, concentric rings, cellular patterns, branching channels, sharp-edged depressions, dune-like ridges and isolated towers. Many of these forms closely resemble geological features that are otherwise attributed to a variety of unrelated mechanisms.

Well, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck... See also EDM.

Conventional explanations tend to treat these resemblances as superficial coincidences. Any single comparison might reasonably be dismissed on those grounds. The difficulty is that the same families of forms recur again and again: craters within craters, radial and concentric patterns, sharply defined channels, terracing, cellular structures and displaced material.

The argument for an electrical interpretation does not rest on one photograph. It rests on the cumulative comparison between repeatable laboratory results and corresponding features in the geological record. Where the same morphology can be reproduced experimentally through electrical discharge, that mechanism should at least be considered alongside impact, erosion, volcanism and tectonic processes.

"Let us not forget, conventional wisdom usually owes at least as much to convention as to wisdom." David D.

Erratics are boulders whose composition differs from the bedrock upon which they rest. Many have been transported over considerable distances, and some are enormous. The conventional explanation is that they were carried by glaciers and deposited when the ice melted.

Glacial transport undoubtedly explains many examples. Yet some erratics occupy positions that appear difficult to reconcile with known ice movement, while others seem to have crossed valleys, climbed slopes or travelled far beyond an obvious source.

Tsunamis, ice rafting and catastrophic flooding have also been proposed. These may account for some cases, but the size, elevation and distribution of certain boulders continue to raise questions.

The electrical interpretation proposes that exceptionally powerful discharges may have fractured, lifted and displaced rock over great distances. This possibility is difficult to assess directly, but it offers a different way of approaching boulders that appear to have been torn from their original setting and scattered across the landscape.

Conventional geology and glaciology interpret the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica as slow-moving archives of deep time, formed through the gradual accumulation and compression of snowfall over hundreds of thousands of years.

Recent laboratory research into so-called electrofreezing, however, has shown that strong electric fields can influence the organisation and crystallisation of water into ice under surprisingly moderate conditions. Ice formation may therefore involve more than cooling alone; electrical fields can affect nucleation, crystal alignment and the rate at which freezing begins.

This does not demonstrate that the polar ice sheets were formed electrically. It does, however, raise the possibility that intense electromagnetic conditions could have influenced the structure and rate of ice formation during periods of planetary disturbance.

Some researchers have therefore suggested that abrupt crystal alignments, unusual boundaries and other structures within deep polar ice may preserve evidence of past electromagnetic events. Whether these features require such an explanation remains open to investigation, but the experimental evidence shows that electrical conditions should not automatically be excluded from models of ice formation.

See also the catastrophism page.

Read more: Velikovsky: Not The End Of The World — Electromagnetic Formation of Pre-Holocene Ice

Most conventional models of the Earth are framed primarily in thermal and mechanical terms: heat flow, mantle convection, slab pull, ridge push and the gradual deformation of the crust. In this picture, the planet's internal engine is driven chiefly by residual heat and radioactive decay.

The paper linked below examines what its authors regard as the limitations of a strictly heat-driven model and develops an alternative picture of a solid–plastic Earth that may be electrically stressed, possibly expanding, and influenced by electromagnetic forces.

The proposed model is unconventional, and its conclusions should be judged on their evidence rather than accepted as a complete replacement for plate tectonics. Nevertheless, it raises important questions concerning rock conductivity, telluric currents, crustal deformation, plate motion and the source of energy released during earthquakes.

The paper is technical but unusually approachable. Its broader value lies in asking whether the Earth can be understood adequately as a closed thermal machine, or whether electrical interaction also plays a significant role in its geological behaviour.

Read the paper.
Journal home: scientificexploration.org

Unusual lights in the sky have long been reported before, during and after earthquakes. Once widely dismissed as folklore, such observations are now increasingly discussed as genuine physical phenomena, although their precise cause remains uncertain.

Several celestial sightings were reported above Lincolnshire in the days before the earthquake whose epicentre was near Market Rasen on February 27, 2008. This raises the possibility that some witnesses saw what have come to be known as earthquake lights.

Proposed explanations generally involve electromagnetic effects produced when rocks are placed under severe stress. Charge may be released or separated within the crust and subsequently discharged through the ground or atmosphere. From an Electric Universe perspective, such activity is not an incidental detail but evidence that electrical processes accompany geological stress.

Electromagnetic disturbances may also contribute to reports of animals behaving unusually before earthquakes. Such behaviour has been reported often enough to warrant investigation. Animals may be responding to changes in electric fields, magnetic fields, ground currents, airborne ions or other environmental signals that humans do not readily perceive.

None of this provides a reliable method of earthquake prediction, but it does suggest that the electrical dimension of seismic activity may be more important than traditional mechanical models have generally allowed.

Earthquakes are normally described as mechanical events: stress gradually accumulates in the crust until rock fractures and fault blocks suddenly slip. That process undoubtedly occurs. Yet it does not readily explain the wide range of electrical, electromagnetic, atmospheric and ionospheric disturbances reported before some major earthquakes.

Physicist Friedemann T. Freund, formerly of San Jose State University and NASA Ames Research Center, drew attention to this problem in his paper, Rocks That Crackle and Sparkle and Glow: Strange Pre-Earthquake Phenomena. Freund wrote:

"Many strange phenomena precede large earthquakes. Some of them have been reported for centuries, even millennia. The list is long and diverse: bulging of the Earth's surface, changing well water levels, ground-hugging fog, low frequency electromagnetic emission, earthquake lights from ridges and mountaintops, magnetic field anomalies up to 0.5% of the Earth's dipole field, temperature anomalies by several degrees over wide areas as seen in satellite images, changes in the plasma density of the ionosphere, and strange animal behavior. Because it seems nearly impossible to imagine that such diverse phenomena could have a common physical cause, there is great confusion and even greater controversy."

Taken separately, these observations may seem unrelated. Taken together, however, they point towards a process capable of linking stressed rock, electric currents, the atmosphere and the ionosphere.

The central difficulty has been explaining how substantial currents could arise within material generally regarded as an electrical insulator. Freund described the impasse:

"Based on the reported laboratory results of electrical measurements, no mechanism seemed to exist that could account for the generation of those large currents in the Earth's crust, which are needed to explain the strong EM signals and magnetic anomalies that have been documented before some earthquakes. Unfortunately, when a set of observations cannot be explained within the framework of existing knowledge, the tendency is not to believe the observation. Therefore, a general malaise has taken root in the geophysical community when it comes to the many reported non-seismic and non-geodesic pre-earthquake phenomena. There seems to be no bona fide physical process by which electric currents of sufficient magnitude could be generated in crustal rocks."

Freund's experiments suggested that the missing mechanism may lie within the rocks themselves. Under sufficient mechanical stress, certain defects in the crystal structure can release mobile electronic charge carriers known as positive holes, or p-holes. These can propagate through otherwise insulating rock, allowing stressed regions of the crust to behave more like semiconductor material.

In effect, stressed rock can become electrically active.

As these charge carriers migrate towards the surface, they may produce a range of secondary effects. Surface ionisation could contribute to unusual fog formation and changes in atmospheric conductivity. Intense local electric fields could produce corona discharges and earthquake lights. The recombination of charges at the surface may generate infrared emissions, while larger currents could create magnetic and electromagnetic anomalies. Coupling between the ground, atmosphere and ionosphere could also help explain changes in ionospheric plasma density observed before some earthquakes.

This does not establish that every reported precursor is genuine, nor that earthquakes can yet be reliably predicted from electrical signals. It does, however, provide a plausible physical connection between phenomena that conventional seismology has often treated as separate or doubtful.

Freund also commented on the institutional difficulty of presenting evidence that falls outside established assumptions:

"The peer review system often creates near-insurmountable hurdles against the publication of data that seems contrary to long-held beliefs."

The positive-hole mechanism appears simple once recognised, but it required geophysics to cross into semiconductor physics, an area outside the conventional training of many earthquake specialists. Freund observed:

"Once fully told and understood, the story (of p-holes) is basically so simple, that many mainstream geoscientists are left to wonder why it's taken so long for them to be discovered. If they are so ubiquitous, as they appear to be, why did p-holes go unnoticed for over a hundred years?"

From Earthquake Lights to Electric Earthquakes

Freund's work does not claim that earthquakes are merely underground lightning strikes. His model is primarily concerned with how tectonic stress activates charge carriers and produces detectable pre-earthquake signals. Nevertheless, it opens the door to a broader question.

If stressed crustal rock can generate and conduct powerful electric currents, might electricity play more than a secondary role?

The Earth does not exist in electrical isolation. Its surface, atmosphere, ionosphere and surrounding plasma environment form a coupled system. Changes in the solar wind and the wider Sun-Earth electrical environment can disturb the ionosphere and geomagnetic field. If a region of already stressed crust has become electrically conductive, an externally induced change in electrical conditions might conceivably provide the final trigger for breakdown or rupture.

Within an Electric Universe interpretation, the lithosphere and ionosphere may be regarded as parts of a larger electrical circuit. Charge separation develops across the atmosphere, while currents flow through both the atmosphere and the Earth. Stressed fault zones could act as temporary conductive pathways within that circuit. A sudden electrical discharge might then accompany, or possibly help initiate, the mechanical failure of the rock.

This remains a hypothesis, not an established explanation of earthquakes. Claims that seismic waves are simply "underground thunder", or that most earthquake energy comes from stored electrical charge, go considerably beyond Freund's demonstrated experimental findings. Even so, the existence of stress-activated charge carriers means that the electrical dimension of earthquakes can no longer be dismissed merely on the grounds that rock is an insulator.

The important point is not that conventional fault mechanics must be discarded, but that the mechanical account may be incomplete. Stress, fracture, electric currents, atmospheric ionisation and ionospheric disturbances may be different expressions of one interconnected process.

If so, studying the electrical behaviour of stressed rock may eventually contribute not only to a deeper understanding of earthquakes, but also to the long-sought possibility of recognising when a fault is approaching failure.