Slashdot Mirror

[Concerning the polar "hot spot" on Saturn]: "Its compactness is due to the electromagnetic pinch effect where it [electric current] enters Saturn's atmosphere. The hot spot's behavior should be variable, like that on Venus, and correlated with the appearance of Saturn's ring spokes, which are a visible manifestation of a heightened equatorial discharge in that part of Saturn's Faraday motor circuit." [Saturn's Strange Hot Spot Explained http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=1xz2g6 tn ]

That sounds like this New Scientist article:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/m g19225831.700

The same guy also talks about ball lightning due to neutrinos here:

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=88edua 1k

This story is very typical of space stories these days. You get some speculation from some scientists about what they expect that they should be seeing, tenuously based upon some weak observational data. A public release is put together and the news story gains steam because it invokes some concept that tickles the imagination of the public (gigantic black holes and stars, for instance). Then, when better observations come in and suggest that maybe we shouldn't be so sure of our prior speculation, there is little effort to correct the record.

It was interesting to observe that this (probable) garbage made it onto Slashdot, whereas the Stardust mission results (with actual data) did not. It seems that the space news cycle is caught in a competition to make the most outlandish claim possible in order to get the attention of the public these days. Investigating anomalies within the current paradigms has taken a backseat to wild speculation. There's little interest anymore in questioning the early assumptions that got us to this point in the first place:

Our conviction in stellar birth by way of gravitational collapse survives observations of R Corona Australis, which is generating enigmatic x-rays and 100 million degree F temperatures at a very early stage of the supposed collapse (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050 304starbirth.htm).

Our conviction in our theories about supernovae survived observations of Supernova 1987A (see pictures at http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0601 24solar3.htm), which defied traditional theories about supernovae in nearly every single respect. Even though plasma physics tells us that we can understand the structure we see in those images down to the number of beads in the smaller ring, we continue to ignore those explanations because they involve electricity in space.

Our conviction in the theory of black holes was not dampened at all by the associated problems with generating the observed quasar jet 3C273 (http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9kpgc 4td), which extends 100,000 light years -- even though the lifetime of the X-ray producing particles is only about 100 years.

And then there's the Stardust mission -- which when combined with the results of the Deep Impact mission indicate quite clearly that our early assumptions about comets were quite wrong. Scientists are now apparently trying to invent scenarios for how it could be that comets would contain exotic meteorite particles as well as particles that have clearly been formed under intense heat. Perhaps they should consider that these initial speculations were wrong in the first place. I doubt we'll see any such sanity though. More likely, we'll see additional new speculations to support the earlier unsupported speculations.

There increasingly seems to be far less glory these days in doing the homework that we'll be graded on and far more interest in fantasizing about multi-dimensional space and gigantic black holes.

There have been two competing theories of how emissions arise from the particles -- the "Inverse-Compton" theory proposing that the emissions occur when jet particles scatter cosmic microwave background photons, and the "Synchrotron Radiation" theory postulating a separate population of extremely energetic electrons or protons that cause the high-energy emission.

According to the researchers, while the lifetime of the X-ray producing particles is only about 100 years, the data indicate that the visibly brightest part of the jet has a length of about 100,000 light years. Since there would be insufficient time for the particles to shoot out from the black hole at close to the speed of light and then release their energy as radiation as far out as they are seen, the particles have to be accelerated locally, where they produce their emission.

"The new observations show that the flow structure of this jet is more complicated than had been assumed previously," Jester explains. "That the present evidence favors the synchrotron model deepens the mystery of how jets produce the ultra-energetic particles that radiate at X-ray wavelengths."
"Our results call for a radical rethink of the physics of relativistic jets that black holes drive," said Uchiyama.

There have been additional observations that have violated the theory of black holes that I believe are discussed in that article.

There is no need for black holes in EU Theory and they were never adopted by EU Theorists to my knowledge. According to them, the black hole is the result of dividing by zero: it is the end result of modeling a very strong force (pinching Birkeland currents) with a weak one (gravity). In order to compensate for the weakness of gravity, it is necessary to involve an infinite amount of mass.

I first met you because of a comment about global warming and you may have noticed I pay scant attention to the details of your theories. However I am genuinely curious, exactly what is it that makes you think you are right and just about every scientist on the planet is wrong about everything from gravity to glaciers?

I believe that we should not necessarily be constraining our interpretations of our observations by any cosmology because that presumes that we have more confidence in our cosmology than we have come to expect in other sciences. We should be studying phenomenon objectively on a case-by-case basis, and that typically means at least considering the simplest explanation for each observation. Things like neutron stars, for instance, are far easier to explain in terms of sparking.

I'm very disappointed in how people like Halton Arp and Immanuel Velikovsky have been treated in the past. I'm still in the process of learning about those incidents, but I'm getting the general sense (from this forum and from my readings) that there is a strong need for conformity in physics today. But when I look at history, I see that the brightest minds were the most unusual people who certainly did *not* conform. I don't believe that all good things come from experts in their own domains. There is a long history of people interjecting themse

Yeah, I agree. But I don't think you can conclude that this might account for all of the electrical evidence we're seeing because at least some of the craters we're seeing involve plasma flows at right angles from the ground to the object (or its plasma trail). And contrary to atmospheric scientists, astrophysicists, NASA *and* meteorologists, this can happen in the upper atmosphere too if the conditions are right. According to EU Theory, electrical storm activity is not a *function* of weather. It drives weather and is itself a function of Earth's electrical interaction with outer space. Intense storm clouds are nothing more than a conductive pathway for a leaky capacitor. This is why we cannot always accurately predict the weather -- because there is a galactic input to the weather system. This would also explain why planets far away from the Sun can still have very active weather systems.

The existence of upper atmosphere lightning is a very important point because few people realize that when the Space Shuttle Columbia was brought down, an amateur photographer was lucky enough to snap a picture of the shuttle's plasma trail at the very moment that the malfunction occurred. In this picture, you can clearly make out a bolt of lightning that connects up with the trail and then follows the trail in the direction of the Shuttle. This subject is covered at the holoscience site ( http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y42 4y) and the actual image is available here: http://www.weatherwars.info/index.php?news_id=30&s tart=0&category_id=&parent_id=0&arcyear=&arcmonth=

Pilots see upper atmosphere lightning all the time, but if the weather system is some sort of self-contained system that ignores all electrical input from outer space, then this stuff should not really exist. It rocks the foundations of the notion that bodies in space are neutrally charged.

NASA disputed the image on the basis that upper-atmosphere should not exist, but also because they did not pick up any sonic recordings of lightning from their ground sensors. Well, this is kind of silly because if they refuse to believe that it even exists, then how would they even know what sonic footprint to look for on the tapes? It might not even be in the audio range for those recorders. Certainly, the air is a different density up there.

When I think of astronauts landing on Mars to locate the "water", I have a similar image in my mind of them traveling all that way only to be zapped by electricity instead. It may very well turn out that Mars is far too electrical to safely sustain a base. At least, if we're going to send anybody there, I highly recommend that they all be both electrical engineers and doctors.

A while ago I was reading a similar post on slashdot about dark matter, energy etc. One gentleman calld it all bs and pointed out a link to a website http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=knb8hx 39&keywords=darkenergy#dest which I decided to follow for the heck of it that basically had conventional eletromagnetic explanations for absolutely every mystery in astrophyics. Apparently the whole dark energy fiasco in astrophysics arises only because astronomers don't study the physics surrounding plasma and electricity enough to recognise the kind of events that are really happening in space. I think the idea is enticing. So in short this could be more evidence that really dark energy is a misinterpretation of real physics or data from redshifts and so on that is a systemic error, always leading to the same result

Are these cranks possibly related to the Electric Universe brigade. I detect a similar level of wackiness and some common themes.

Seriously though, I read Slashdot to keep abreast of new technology news, not to read pseudo-scientific babble. I think the editors need to tighten up the quality control.

...with the Electric Universe theory?

The news is almost certainly at http://www.holoscience.com/, which is currently Slashdotted in spite of there being no link. Electric Universe proponents are generally considered to be crackpots by the wider astronomy community, but who knows - they may be on to something.

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=re6qxn z1 Site seems to be down or really slow right now.

Since the submitter didn't bother including one, and the editor didn't do any better, here's one:

http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=re6qxn z1

It's already running so slow it's useless. What I managed to get screams crackpot:

24 August 2005
Supernova 1987A Decoded

13 July 2005
Comet Tempel 1's Electrifying Impact

03 July 2005
The Deep Impact of Comet Theory

26 March 2005
The Dragon Storm

08 February 2005
Columbia downed by Megalightning

05 February 2005
Saturn's Strange Hot Spot Explained

30 January 2005
Titan - A Rosetta Stone for early Earth?

25 December 2004
Megalightning at Saturn

25 November 2004
Titan puzzles scientists

27 October 2004
The True State of the Universe

Supernova 1987A Decoded

Yep.

Another good one is where the Electric Universe explains that dinosaurs died out because the force of gravity abruptly multiplied. Better yet it ALSO says that the lower gravity may have helped in the building of ancient giant monuments like Stonehenge. Another good one is the Electric Universe explaining that "stellar electric discharges manufacture all of the heavy elements seen in their spectra" and that "nuclear energy is not the source of their radiance". It goes on to explain that the best place to look for extraterrestrial life is *inside* Red Dwarf stars, where "life-giving molecules, including water, will mist down through an atmosphere drawn from their parent star".

If anyone wants to dig up and post more such whoppers I suggest browsing through this Electric Universe links page. I only read the SETI link but I'd sure the rest of them house a vertiable a treasure trove of comedy.

-

Yep.

Another good one is where the Electric Universe explains that dinosaurs died out because the force of gravity abruptly multiplied. Better yet it ALSO says that the lower gravity may have helped in the building of ancient giant monuments like Stonehenge. Another good one is the Electric Universe explaining that "stellar electric discharges manufacture all of the heavy elements seen in their spectra" and that "nuclear energy is not the source of their radiance". It goes on to explain that the best place to look for extraterrestrial life is *inside* Red Dwarf stars, where "life-giving molecules, including water, will mist down through an atmosphere drawn from their parent star".

If anyone wants to dig up and post more such whoppers I suggest browsing through this Electric Universe links page. I only read the SETI link but I'd sure the rest of them house a vertiable a treasure trove of comedy.

-

There's a theory about influence of electricity in universe. Here are few links that might help you. http://www.electric-cosmos.org/links.htm/
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3 aj/
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/elec_fields.html /

The effects will be great, no doubt. Too bad the science behind most of what they'll say is bunk.

Or so they say.

There is also a theory that does not require any other matter or energy to account for the structure of the universe. The Electric Universe This is build on the work of Halton Arp who believes the is an error in our use of redshift to determine the distance of objects and likewise their age, and the work of plasma physicists who have their own theory about things

This article contains so much flawed logic, it boggles the mind. First, [t]he latest find is a gas giant and orbits a Sun-like star 293 light-years away. Though how this relates to a 100 light year sphere around earth confuses me. Second, with about 300 billion stars in our galaxy, there could be about 30 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way alone. While the 300 billion stars is correct, a vast majority of them are on the galatic disk or in the galatic core, where the gravity of the densely packed stars would prevent planet formation according to any currently held theory, except maybe Electric Universe. Lastly, most of the exo-solar planets that have been found so far are multiple Jupiter-sized and orbiting so close to the star that it doesn't resemble our solar system, the only one we really know about, making any inferences about the existence of other planets useless and pointless. While 100 exo-solar plants found is a cheer for modern astronomy and a good sign for the likelyhood of ETs, this article uses poor logic to make a bang from a whimper

http://www.holoscience.com

``Can these dedicated heros reach 1,000 trillion watts and reach high yield fusion?''

I think that a better question is if they can keep the plant from self-destructing every ~100 years or so

Actually, there may be a much easier way. There are many more pages on this out there. Did anyone else notice the solar wind stopping for two days last March? (-: