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"It's hard for people to imagine how the atmosphere of Venus would create
lightning," says planetary scientist Larry W. Esposito of the University of
Colorado. Venus, he points out, seems to lack the lightning-generation
system so familiar in terrestrial thunderheads: strong updrafts of
condensing vapor, which provide the particles that can carry opposite
electrical charges and the vertical motions needed to separate them. (The
sudden combination of the separated charges is a stroke of lightning. ) On
Venus, the clouds tend to resemble fog banks, says Esposito. "You don't see
much lightning in fog," he notes.

News of the announcement ...

http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2007/arch07/071130blazingmane.htm

The planet Venus plays a critical role in EU Theory, as ancient cultures record its arrival as a comet-like body. It has been a contention for decades now that Venus is still cooling off from a catastrophic event.

Tim Thompson has spent much time trying to debunk EU Theory. His websites are frequently referenced by people as apparent proof that EU Theory is not true, but Tim Thompson has had a bad week. It's funny how all of these online conversations just fall into a black hole when enough time goes by. As a recap, Wal Thornhill clearly won this debate against Tim Thompson ...

From http://www.kronia.com/thoth/thoth14.txt:

[EDITOR'S NOTE: IN PREVIOUS POSTS WALLACE THORNHILL
HAS CONTENDED THAT THE PLANET VENUS SHOWS SUBSTANTIAL
EVIDENCE OF ELECTRICAL INTERACTION WITH ITS ENVIRONMENT,
A CONDITION SUGGESTING BOTH AN ELECTRICAL IMBALANCE
AND AN UNUSUAL, "COMET"-LIKE HISTORY.]

[Wal Thornhill, continuing his dialogue with Tim Thompson]:
>> The Venera spacecraft found continuous lightning activity from 32km down
>> to about 2km altitude, with discharges as frequent as an amazing 25 per
>> second. The highest recorded rate on Earth is 1.4/sec during a severe
>> blizzard. The Pioneer lander recorded 1000 radio impulses. Thirty-two
>> minutes after landing, Venera 11 detected a very loud (82 decibel) noise
>> which was believed to be thunder. Garry Hunt suggested at the time that:
>> '... the Venusians may well be glowing from the nearly continuous
>> discharges of those frequent lightning strokes'. A 'mysterious glow' was
>> detected coming from the surface at a height of 16km by 2 Pioneer probes
>> as they descended on the night hemisphere. The glow increased on descent
>> and may have been caused by a form of St. Elmo's fire and/or chemical
>> reactions in the atmosphere, close to the surface.

[Tim Thompson:]
>I cannot trace or verify Thornhill's remarks with regards >the Venera
>spacecraft. (PIB -- I assume Mr. Thornhill's original paper for the SIS
>included such references. Perhaps Mr. Thornhill or someone from the
>SIS can get a copy to Mr. Thompson for his perusal.) While the initial
>reports of lightning from Pioneer are easily available [1,2,3], those
>from Venera appear not to be [4,5], as they were published in obscure,
>or difficult to obtain sources. The Pioneer lightning detections were
>based on the observation of whistler mode waves (about 100 Hertz) when
>the orbiter neared periapse. The interpretation of those waves as
>lightning, supported by Scarf et al. [3], continues to be a matter of
>considerable controversy. There are a number of ionospheric processes

People, I can't believe we're making light of this. We could instead ignore or horribly misinterpret conspicuous evidence, fabricate our own, claim the mainstream is oppressing us out of blindness or malice, and delude ourselves by thinking we're applying skepticism and that others are calling their dogmatic beliefs 'skepticism'!

It's obviously caused by chemicals sprayed from passenger aircraft to control the populace!
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/
Everything mysterious is caused by the entrenched, all-powerful government's efforts to control every resident human with chemicals.

It's just another glaring piece of proof that everything in the universe is electromagnetic, including stars, comets, and gravity at least plus probably the other two forces as well.
http://www.kronia.com/
Everything mysterious is explained by the entrenched misunderstanding of fundamental science as non-electrical by mainstream academia.

It's just further evidence of alien presence on Earth!
http://www.ufoevidence.org/
Everything mysterious is caused by aliens meddling with and experimenting on humans on our critically important and conspicuous speck of a world.

Come on people! It's time to listen to your fancy and your fear. Stop being rational and skeptical, but still claim you're just being extra-special skeptical. Remember: the other 6 billion humans are just misguided and backward, but your greater intellect saves you from the panic that would grip their feeble minds if they beheld the awesome truth. You'll show them the light because you're just so benevolent, and only you can gently break through to their child-like worlds of fantasy, superstition, and darkness. Truth seekers unite!

Your notes mean nothing, Venus is not new. It actually has an older crust than the earth.

You are snared in thinking one way, and because of that believe everyone else is snared in thinking one way that is wrong while your own is correct somehow.

Stop this, unless you are simply psychopathic and then I can say nothing to you.

Thanks for a much more thoughtful reply than average for this thread.

Right back at ya.

Sadly I can't give your reply all the time it deserves, because I've chosen to reply to quite a few already, as well as having my original post modded up to Interesting+4 and then back down to hell by angry mods.

For what it's worth, I'd have modded you +1 interesting had I not posted.

Well, that's part of the problem with attempting to falsify evolution. What was once a valid objection becomes invalid because the target moves.

Evolution in particular, or science in general?

Before we knew how much dust was actually on the moon, for example, long-age theory made "lots" the obvious prediction. Now that we know how much dust there is on the moon, we have a post hoc explanation for it in terms of long ages.

First of all, I'm not sure that obvious prediction was "lots". After reading these two pages, it looks like there was just one guy (Pettersson) providing data that implied a large amount of dust. He did so by making a number of bad assumptions, such as the assumption that any nickel in the air must be coming from meteors.

Secondly, your "post hoc explanation" sound bite gives the impression that scientists looked at the amount of dust on the moon and fudged the numbers to make it fit. The actual process involved measuring meteorite impact rates using satellites above earth's atmosphere to avoid earthly contamination, which resulted in an estimate 1000x less than Pettersson's. This estimate was then subjected to an independent cross-check by comparing them to average amounts of meteorite dust found in sedimentary rock, and they agreed.

If you want anti-evolutionists to keep up with all the latest developments, give them funding specifically to find flaws in the latest pro-evolutionary findings.

What's special about the field of evolution that makes the usual scientific process break down? Every other field of science follows the same basic process: researchers present evidence which is then checked for accuracy by their peers. What is it, specifically, about evolution that requires tacking a separate step onto the process of peer review? Why not give that (limited) funding to people who have problems with modern medicine or plasma physics or heliocentricity? Before you answer, note that I don't really see a qualitative difference between most creationists and the arguments presented at these sites (especially the heliocentricity site). Is there a difference, other than the fact that you believe one rather than the other? (I'm crossing my fingers hoping you're not a geocentrist.)

This objection irks me. It seems that the people who accuse Behe of arguing from ignorance provide refutations in the form of arguments from credulity. Behe points out complex systems and says "remove any one piece and the system breaks." His opponents respond, "so it happened some other way." Where does the onus lie?

...

His opponents are already persuaded that "naturally" is the only way anything forms, so they give a just-so story about how it might possibly have happened, and consider the case closed.

Behe is making an extraordinary claim, namely that the evolution of a specific structure (take your pick from his examples) will never, repeat NEVER, be explained in full detail. Furthermore, he's arguing that this (predicted) failure isn't evidence for our collective stupidity. No, instead he jumps to the conclusion that this (again, predicted) fai

It's more to show that even the most eminent and revered are human, and it's reassuring to know these people aren't so far out of touch as to not have a bit of fun now and again.

For example, I went to a lecture by Sir Patrick Moore, at which he was asked questions as to whether he believed the electrical universe theory could be correct. His answer? "I hope not, I owe a crate of whiskey to its originator should that prove to be true...".

Cheers,
Ian

Bit of a headscratcher for you: http://www.kronia.com/library/journals/venair.txt

http://www.electric-universe.de/ (warning: contains flash)

http://www.kronia.com/

...there are more, but those should be enough.

.

I did not mean to suggestion we refrain from thinking about the topics altogether. Instead I suggested, and attempted to illustrate with my comparison to man's attempts at flight, that we fix fundamental flaws in our math before we start applying our formulae. Just like flight was not a frivolous or fruitless pursuit, astrophysics and (maybe) abiogenesis are not, either. I hesitate to call abiogenesis anything but bunk because of the math involved. We need to stop thinking about applying our useless formulae, start thinking about the problems therein, fix them, and then apply them. To address your other concern, namely that I did not provide any new models, I did so intentionally because I realized the mere act of arguing against the methods used in the study was a long task. I will give you a general idea about the other models I to which I alluded. Current science is based upon uniformitarianism, the belief that processes observed today are processes very similar to those in either different parts of the Universe, different times in the Universe, or maybe even both. In other words, Sol is burning much like it was a billion years ago. Unfortunately, there are manifold problems with the uniformitarian model(s), so many that periods of time that fit the model are more anomalous than the anomalies. The other school, which stands in stark contrast to uniformitarianism, is catastrophism. Immanuel Velikovsky was a pioneering astronomer in this field. Most catastophists are spending their time trying to figure out facts and derive models that incorporate those facts. While this was once what astrophysicists and biologists at large attempted, it appears now we have quite a well established doctrine and look for facts to further that doctrine. I have yet to see a school of catastophists attempt to tackle the Universe with a model (it's just too hard to observe), there are several great theories about our Solar System in particular. Try here and here if you are interested. I would give a rundown myself, but I know moderators don't take kindly to rogue astronomy and biology. Kidding. If you need further information, just post again and I'll answer concerns you might raise. As for your last question, btw, I have no innate dislike of abiogenesis of which I know. If life came from nonlife, then it came from nonlife and there isn't room for like or dislike. The math seems irrevocably against the concept, though. I felt its discussion pertinent to /. posters who felt that a little water and some heat was all that is necessary for self-replicating objects. Life is anything but common.

``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? (-: