Slashdot Mirror
Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion Device Gets Funded
pln2bz writes "Eric Lerner, author of The Big Bang Never Happened, has received $600k in funding, and a promise of phased payments of $10 million if scientific feasibility can be demonstrated to productize Lerner's focus fusion energy production device. Unlike the Tokamak, focus fusion does not require the plasma to be stable, does not produce significant amounts of dangerous radiation, directly injects electrons into the power grid without the need for turbines and would only cost around $300k to manufacture a generator. Lerner's inspiration for the technology is based upon an interpretation for astrophysical Herbig-Haro jets that agrees with the Electric Universe explanation."
Has the electric universe theory made any headway in offering a viable alternative to currently accepted cosmology? Last I heard it was a fringe pseudoscience based mostly on conjecture and magical thinking.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
But if it works, close enough.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Simpson's did it!
This is brilliant. $600k isn't a lot to some people, yet there's a tiny sliver of a chance that the guy is on to something. So he gets funding from a private institution who will be absolutely minted in the very unlikely circumstance that he's right. The odd $600k wouldn't even scratch the surface for more traditional avenues of research where the numbers are into the billions, so there's no real loss either.
Plus, the chances of me getting a backer for my "buttered toast and cat" turbine are much improved. Fantastic.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It's just a bit harder to take it seriously when the HTML title of the page is still set to "New Page 1"
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I thought it said Eric Lehnsherr for a second.
Last I heard, Lerner was after about $2 million. $600k to $700k isn't all that, but rather than sulk, give it your best shot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Congratulations, Mr. Lerner. You've been promoted from crackpot to fraud. Here's your paycheck.
It looks like the tech talk is slashdotted, but if memory serves (and I'm not a physicist, so my understanding is fuzzy at best) the idea is that the device (which has some resemblance to a large spark plug) sits in a chamber of has a large electrical current applied and exploits a sequence of unstable states to produce a small ball of plasma where the fusion takes place. The reaction produces X-rays and a directed stream of charged particles. The X-rays are collected by a sort of multilayer onion-like solar panel that converts them to electricity, and the charged particles also get converted directly to electricity. The device can be relatively simple since there's no need for steam turbines. A steady stream of electricity can be produced by repeating the reaction over and over, and storing the output in big capacitors (and part of the resulting energy is used to initiate the next pulse).
the p+B11 reaction [the one described here] forms 3 He nuclei [p+B11=C12 which splits into 3 He4] all the products are charged opening up an extra route of power generation that isn't solely thermal to electrical conversion however the reaction produces about half the energy per reaction of deuterium/tritium reaction and much higher energies to cause significant fusion.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
*checks name* *checks ignore list*
Yeah, that's what I thought. Uh, by the way, boron's not a commodity you can just extract from "sea salt" in decent amounts, as claimed. Turkey controls the vast majority (over 70%) of the available reserves. It's a serious concern for those of us in legitimate energy research - it makes ammonia borane fuel cells more challenging than we'd like.
What is Slashdot's fascination with this guy? Seems like an article pops up every 3 months. As an undergraduate, I had the pleasure *cough* of working with Mr. Lerner when he came to use our plasma focus to do a p-B11 study for JPL. To get the required diborane gas, a nasty toxin, we had to evaporate decaborane, another nasty toxin. In the end, we had a mess to clean up in our chamber and an academic mess when Mr. Lerner embellished (or flatly misrepresented) the results of the experiment in publication. We had to lobby to get our names off the paper, but there's still a few copies of it floating around out there. Plasma focus technology has been around since the 60s (see the works of Mather and Filipov). They make cute neutron and x-ray sources, but not much more practical for fusion power production than these "bubble fusion" designs. I believe there's still a lot to be learned from the plasma focus, and I'm glad that someone is willing to pay for further research. And if we get p-B11 fusion working, that would be a great step forward too. But I wouldn't give this guy a nickel if his head were on fire, let alone $600,000.
when will these scientists give up and let me ruin the planet.
remember kids, if you stop using oil the terrorists win.
Oh God, are there still people who believe in that?!
Sounds interesting, but I wish they'd named it after something other than a couple of Ford car models. Ford Fusion, Ford Focus, Focus Fusion?
If they'd wanted credibility, they shoulda gone for something like the Yaris Matrix or maybe the Fit Element.
YAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nice very ice extremly good
String theory is just merely unverifiable and untestable mathematical masturbation right now. It once had some very nice theoretical properties, and now appears to have some insanely nasty theoretical disadvantages tagging along too.
By contrast, the accepted competitor to the "electric universe", big bang cosmology, is based on a wide array of observational evidence which is getting stronger and stronger through the years.
Lerner does have one key insight which is fairly intriguing.
Specifically, he has a rebuttal to the otherwise very powerful results of Todd Rider on any non-equilibrium fusion methods---which appear to
Rider's analysis did not include some particularly odd quantum-mechanical effects (very little plasma physics is ever in a QM regime) which Lerner asserts can give his method an "out" and reduce harmful energy losses.
"there is no hard evidence to support the big bang either."
Not sure what you mean by hard evidence, but um.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation seems to work for most people.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
that damned website reads like an advertisement. I'd like to see a serious proposal.
The cosmic microwave background is as you would see from a closed universe with a period of expansion as current big bang theories say, but is also as you would see from an infinite, approximately homogeneous universe.
BTW, you can't use wikipedia for the debate between the big bang and electric cosmogonies because the debate between them is not only carried out on wikipedia itself but is carried out on almost purely religious grounds using information removal instead of competitive analysis of gathered information. If you use wikipedia for this you'll just end up believing the least scientific theory.
Haw haw! Yeah, that science thing sure is dumb!
The tokamak could be considered a cousin to this, it's just a matter of switching around where the current and magnetic fields go.
Tokamaks put the magnetic field around the donut and try to compress the plasma containing the current in the donut tighter, never seemed common sense to me to do it that way... The more you put in it, the more the forces involved would fight each other.
I'm glad to see someone put the magnetic field in the donut, and wrap the plasma around it. You've got the natural pinch point in the hole where fusion should occur, and the more current you dump into the plasma - instead of fighting the magnetic field it should make it stronger. Thus it makes the donut tighter, etc. and should behave as a positive feedback system. At least someone's now giving it a good shot, and it shouldn't hurt to try doing it this way around.
Not sure why it'd need the boron in there... Or is the intent to have that absorb any zoomies caused by fusion so it doesn't turn radioactive?
Also if the thing works to some degree and with enough efficiency, not only could it be a power supply - the DOD might be interested in modifying it into the basis of of a directed energy weapon.
-FL
The biggest selling point of p-B11 is that it's aneutronic. But as any chemist will tell you, there's some amount of everything in everything else. You can't realistically get B11 without a little B10 mixed in, which even in the best of realistic circumstances will spew out enough neutrons to drop a human being in a few minutes. It's a lot cleaner than Deuterium-Tritium but it ain't aneutronic and when people find out, you're going to get the same "not in my backyard" public attitude that is strangling fission energy.
I can't really envision use of this technology in a home or small community without stringent
licensing to curb proliferation, taxation of manufacture, sale, possession and operation thereof
and the mandated remote control and monitoring of the device by the government.
There are also further ramifications to having 5MW or more of electrical power in the hands of an
individual. It could be used as a weapon or it could power improper research. The implications
of this device for our control paradigm get worse and worser as devices like that would see use
in developing countries where the control grid is still loosely meshed. Also it would serve to
empower the projects of rogue elites to defy us.
This is definitely not the kind of development our New World needs to see. This technology runs
counter to all our efforts to build a network of interdependence.
As always when these discussions come up you hear a bunch of "but what if it works, the benefits would be enormous". The problem with this type of logic is of course that it can be applied to ANY claim which promises great returns, no matter how patently absurd it is. Alchemy, perpetual motion, alternative medicine, intelligent design... etc... If you just promise big enough implications for your "science" and make the explanation sound complicated enough that people don't understand it, you will always have some suckers going "Even if there is just a 0.1% chance it works, the benefits will be a quazillion dollars." This is how these crackpots get their supporters, and as usual they will yell they are being suppressed and compare themselves to Galileo, Einstein or Boltzmann when anybody from the "dogmatic scientific establishment" (i.e anybody who actually has a clue about the subject ) points out it is bullshit.
Oh, and slash dot will give them front page publicity.
Before you get all up inz:
1) Fast ignition:
ICF is unlikely to ever deliver excess power after conversion efficiencies. NIF uses ~400 MJ to produce ~40 MJ out. Sign me up!
Fast ignition appears to reduce the required input power by about one order of magnitude. Progress in laser diodes appears to offer another. All of a sudden things look very interesting in the ICF world.
2) Magnetized Target Fusion
ICF has high-density (10 times lead -- consider that it started as hydrogen gas) and super-short confinement times. The problem is getting the density. Magnetic approaches have low density (almost vacuum) and long confinement times. The problem is getting the confinement time.
But what about the middle ground between the two? We already know how to confine for "some" time, and compress things "ok". It turns out there's an extremely interesting area of practical design in that grey area between the two extremes, in the performance area we had 20 years ago. MTF attacks that area in an interesting way.
3) Polywell
Let's give Bussard the props the guy deserves. I don't know if the Polywell is any better positioned for success than focus fusion, and I have funny feelings in my gut about all magnetic approaches, but if this guy says it's going to work I'm willing to cut him a whole lot of slack.
Maury
If this generates alpha particles as its "waste product", might that turn out to be a useful side effect? Don't we need a new source of industrial helium anyhow?
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
(The Antennae Galaxies Found To Be Closer To Us)
http://digg.com/space/The_Antennae_Galaxies_Found_To_Be_Closer_To_Us
(The "Antennae Galaxies" Fall Into Line)
http://digg.com/space/The_Antennae_Galaxies_Fall_Into_Line
Since many characteristics are not observable directly, they are calculated based upon what we CAN see and estimates of the distance.
In the case of the Antennae Galaxies significantly revising down the distance, dropped it out of the "ultra-luminous" and "abnormally large" club and back into the range of "normal luminosity and size" for the type of object it is.
This makes me wonder whether other objects currently labeled as "far away," "super-massive," "ultra-luminous," etc. are in fact closer than their currently estimated distances? If so, then their luminosities, sizes and masses would need downward revision, just like the Antennae Galaxies. Would this resolve the "they're too big for gravity to hold them together" issue? If they're not as big and have less mass, or speeds involved aren't as great as we think?
Just a thought...
~Michael
"The purpose of science is to investigate the unexplained, not to explain the uninvestigated." ~Dr. Stephen Rorke
1) Does this help my cereal stay crunchy in milk?
[ ] Yes!
[X] No!
If Yes, congratulations, you have made a valid contribution to society!
If No, fuck off, this has no bearing on real life. Get a haircut and a job, hippie.
Let's keep this family-friendly, m'kay? No need for useless name-calling.
The original post was simply an announcement of a business partnership like just about any other business partnership announced on Slashdot (aside from the interesting technological and scientific implications, if correct). No need to get the ol' knickers in a twist...
That the poster mentioned controversial buzzwords is really rather irrelevant. Ignore it and move along, if you must.
"Focus Fusion energy is essentially unlimited. The raw materials for hydrogen-boron fuel are exceedingly common. Hydrogen comes from ordinary water and boron from either abundant deposits or from sea-salt. Supplies of boron would be sufficient to maintain overall power consumption ten times the present global level for a billion years."
...
And of course, hydrogen comes naturally out of the water, with no energy consumption
I also need US$ 600k for my research project. It would be for purchasing a pair of sharks. I cannot tell the details in an open forum, but it has something to do with defence. Maybe his plasma jet device could also be used, I have not thought it before yet... So far I stuck with a kind of focused light device... But I've already told too much, I have to finish.
Ever been to a bar with a bunch of frat boys, beer, and ugly women?
Somebody obviously forgot to tag the whatcouldpossiblygowrong on this article
Wow a fusion powered ford focus sounds great! Will there be a retro fit available for existing For Focus owners? Filling up at $4 gallon on gas is a bit of a drag!
will be in sometime around August. They had first plasma on WB7 in February and are currently testing the diagnostic equipment before they start pumping ions. If WB7 proves Bussard's scaling data will you eat crow? :P
I had a conversation with Edward Teller back in '96 or '97 about the feasibility of commercial fusion reactors. He didn't think technology would give us a commercially viable reactor until about 2025. There are too many problems to overcome in the meantime.
And I'll go with the word of a man who actually did something in the area of theoretical physics rather than some person with all sorts of wild claims and who writes ludicrous books like "The Big Bang Never Happened." All he proves is there are suckers born every minute!
Eric
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. - Pugh
It produced plasma stable structures which were then compressed. If was de-funded before it could be proven ( or disproven ).
Disclaimer: I worked on it.
It used to be that slashdot responses were well thought, on topic, and actually discussed the technology in the articles. As time has progressed responses seem to be filled with people (noise) trying to 'out-stupid' each other. Slashdot is now become just another mediocre crap-fest filled with pseudo engineering types with no clue. Hey!, 'Envision' some real science for a change.
See Ya Slashdot. You're now no more useful or informative that facebook.
The Chilean government has put $600,000 toward this project. At the current rate of oil @ $133 per barrel, Chile has to sell 4511.2 barrels of oil to make their money back. Each day Chile produces 15,100 barrels of oil a day. That is 30% of their daily oil earnings to pay for this. I really don't think this is all that much money to throw at an energy project.
...how severely Nikola Tesla would have been shredded herein.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
It is really interesting to know that someone is willing to buy in to Lerner's plan. The rest of plasma physics community world are going to be thrilled by this development. Lately, exciting news concerning discharge based plasma technology are coming rapidly. At Sandia, the refurbised Z machine is up and running, Sandia is teaming up with the Russian to develop some next generation pulse generator using LTD technologies. The Plasma Focus guys in Warsaw are busy in some ICTP Trieste's initiatives on Plasma Focus, even in Singapore and Malaysia, there is a computational symposium on Plasma Focus being held. Not forgetting the Chillean group and also some remnants research groups scattered all over Europe. Definitely, things are not going to be the same. It is also feel good to know that people are looking for alternatives other than the gigantic ITER.
Focus Fusion device? Yeah right. You'll probably use the funding to get your powers back, old friend.
Can we even make 100000 Tesla magnetic fields? I recall the strongest fields achieved being on the order of 100's of Tesla, in which case we've got to gain three orders of magnitude before this becomes feasible.
Eric Lerner is described in Wikipedia as "a popular science writer, independent plasma researcher and an advocate of plasma cosmology" - IOW, not actually a scientist, although he may well be knowledgeable; he has a BA in physics.
However, what really makes me think twice about this is the claim that they achieve fusion without any radioactive by-products, "only harmless Helium gas". How does one produce such a precise result in an environment that is "several billion degrees"? At that temperature the atoms will move about a bit, to say the least, and we are not even talking about pure deuterium; there will be highly energetic collisions all over the place, and a large amount of particle radiation will be produced, as far as I can see, and the reactor casing is bound to become radioactive.
This has all the hallmarks of a bogus project that has succceeded in milking some funding out of some gullible soul - in this case CMEF, a Swedish startup.
Once you get the suspicion that this is yet another bogus project, you begin to see signs all over the place: superficially it looks as if they have got some government grant in the US, that Eric Lerner is a scientist, and that the company is some well-established research-company (a search for "Lawrenceville Plasma Physics" on Wikipedia redirects to the article about "Eric Lerner") - IOW, the announcement is deceptive; if this was real, they wouldn't need to deceive.
And then of course there is the claim that "electrons are injected directly into the powergrid" based on some cosmological phenomenon, that is not yet well understood scientifically. In a Superman comic, perhaps, but not in real life. This is simply a flight of fantasy, unbound by the boring, mundane routine of real scientific research.
Alright, MR. GENIUS, can you tell me where microwave radiation comes from? THAT'S RIGHT, it comes from a MICROWAVE OVEN. And what does a microwave oven run on? You guessed it: 110-volt ELECTRICITY!!!
Score: Electric Universe Theory: 1. Mainstream science: 0.
The organization actually exists, and is a corporation here in Sweden, which means that when founded it had at least ~$17k in capital. Other than that the company doesn't seem to have made any marks in official records here in sweden.
The CEO, Leif Arnold seems to have the habit of lying (easily provable) to discredit conventional fission energy on blogs here and there.
Not terribly credible
Mainline: The information in this post is not correct.
;-)
The correct link to Eric Lerner's company is http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ . The page referred in this post is an old copy of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics' site. Why it landed on http://photoman.bizland.com/ I do not know, and I suspect there is no relationship between those two sites.
Actually CMEF was not able to collect the required USD 600000, only a fraction could be transfered. Eric Lerner is therefore still looking for further investors.
But an unnamed private investor invested USD 200000 for a simulation project. See http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?pr=Investors and http://focusfusion.org/log/index.php/site/article/large_scale_computer_simulation_work_initiated/
But it's nice to see it discussed here again.
Cheers,
Henning
I'm trying really hard to figure out if that was meant to be an intentional parody, or actually intended seriously, and I can't decide which it is.
I think I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt for now, so congratulations on a perfectly pitched piece of parody...
I'm happy to consider the electric universe theory for some behaviours - I don't see a contradiction in admitting some of it makes more sense for a few observed items, but likewise gravity seems a better fit for others.
Any side that degenerates into name-calling and concentrates on the failings of their opponents instead of the benfits of their theory becomes questionable, however.
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / xenogamous.com / transference.org / quantam sufficit ]
Unless he's been at this longer than he claims, he didn't think of it. I find the idea mentioned in the May '79 issue of Physics Today as one of several alternate approaches to fusion.
We on the Fusor Forum, http://www.fusor.net/board/index.php?site=fusor , (and this isn't a clicky as it's low bandwidth and privately funded) think he's got a slim chance, for various reasons. Many of you might appreciate the fact that the real workers on alternate ideas are already doing it, are somewhat successful, and are NOT asking for money, as these tests are relatively cheap to do even for an individual. Focus seems to need things the rest of us who are true believers do not -- cute secretaries, a nice rented lab, all the trappings one gets with external, usually government, funding.
His trick (but not truly his) could work; as a grad student in the late '60s we were getting far higher plasma densities (for other reasons) than he needs with fairly simple gear, in a somewhat different configuration. We used ours as a point source (under a micron) of X-rays for other experiments and got quite good plasma pinches to get there with equipment that would cost well under $100k today, not counting buildings and salaries -- true believers don't need that.
I have my own approach, to which I've dedicated my personal fortune, and am not asking for money or cynicisim -- I have plenty of both already. Initial results of "baby step" tests are promising, and I will know more soon.
The advantage of being totally private and self funded (even though it took a few decades of 70 hr work weeks to raise the dough) are that I can tun on a dime if something either does or does not work as expected. This is very unlike spending long periods coming up with a long term plan, selling it to investors or some government, and being unable to change direction if something just doesn't pan out -- but suggests a new approach.
In normal practice, this means year of delay while coming up with a new long term plan and so on, rinse, repeat, grow older. But a self funded guy can make discoveries that weren't expected, and immediately move to follow his nose. Think Fleming "what's this junk polluting my bacteria cultures" -- he wasn't looking for antibiotics!
I have my own approach that doesn't idiotically spread the energy input into all 6 degrees of freedom, or require containing the snakiest stuff in the know universe -- plasma. You can see some of it (I'm sadly behind in my posting to my own site) at http://www.coultersmithing.com/fusion/fusion1.html
I have a little more bandwidth than the fusor forum...but probably not enough for a slashdotting, my ISP's assurances to the contrary.
Feel free to contact me (info on the site) with any insights -- that's the only thing I can use right at the moment, unless someone wants to show up and twist bolts on the vacuum tank etc.
How bout that for putting your money where your mouth is?
Gah.
I've seen better pictures of Bigfoot. I'm really glad scientists don't produce my pornography. It'd be like watching a scrambled Spice channel at the Holiday Inn.
Not that I do that, or anything.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Thanks; I'm saving this one.
:)
Regards;
If by "observed," you meant "seen by the reflection or emission of visible light," then you'd be correct. By "dark" we mean "stuff that we can't see by reflection or emission of light".
However, dark matter well observed by its gravity.
The point is, it's a completely different category of thing from inflation. Dark matter is an observation looking for a theory-- nobody said "theory predicts that the universe ought to be full of stuff that we won't be able to see, let's look at galactic rotation curves and expansion maps and lensing and test if the theory's right." Instead it was the opposite: "galactic rotation curves and expansion maps and lensing all tell us there's something out there we can't see, let's find a theory that can explain it."
There are alternative possibilities-- MOND is one, for example, although it's beginning to look like lensing observations are ruling that out. But the key point is that dark matter is observation driven (despite being dark), not theory driven.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You do not understand big bang theory. The universe never expanded beyond its event horizon, that is a ludicrous interpretation. There was no event horizon because there was and is no "outside" that the "black hole" is expanding into.
Just because you do not understand modern physics does not mean it is false.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
His theories about the Universe aside, which have no bearing on this project, it's well worth funding people like this, mainly because they think outside of the box.
Check this out. One guy who had a crazy idea in his garage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B8srudAUhE
(using sound waves to extract hydrogen from salt water)
Looks interesting at least, and worth possibly funding to see if anything practical can be done with it.
Often the best ideas come from applying simple technology in ways that aren't usually done. From what I can see, Lerner's design should work. Whether or not it can be made to be economical, though, I doubt it. But it certainly looks to be a lot smaller and more compact, which might lead to some interesting uses where normal power generation isn't feasible(moon base, for instance). If the claim that it has less harmful radiation to deal with is true, or if it rids us of the need for turbines, it would be a big step ahead of the current attempts.(which have cost us billions and still not worked, I might add)
Worth 1/8th the cost of a single M1 Abrams tank? I can think of worse things by far to spend our tax money on.
This seems a bit of a wild card, but the investment seems actually rather small, and if it works the payoff is high.
I don't really have an informed opinion as to how reasonable this is, but consider it as an important test of a non-mainstream theory. As such it seems worth the cost (provided that the report of the results is detailed, honest, and complete). People should report experimental failures as well as successes.
OTOH, it's not my money they're spending...so I can't even claim the right to a report on the results...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Unfortunately I've yet to see a single person dismiss the Electric Universe who was also familiar with it.
And I have yet to see a single person familiar with both the Scott/Thornhill/Talbott EU and even undergraduate-level physics or astronomy not dismiss it outright.
Wallace Thornhill and Don Scott have both reached incorrect answers over the years, through either misinterpretation or simply incompetent application of basic physics. One was even a fairly famous basic mistake made by a fairly famous scientist which was corrected by an even more famous scientist. So 1) they don't know history; 2) they're lousy scientist; 3) they're very fanciful and creative. To address item #3, I quote Huxley: "Many a beautiful theory has been slain by an ugly fact." Plasma cosmologies just don't work well without adjusting the rules/assumptions from stellar to galactic to extragalactic scales.
So how hard have you worked to understand something before dismissing it or forming an opinion of it?
Quite hard, actually. I've followed the machinations of the neo-Velikovskian ("Saturnian") Kronia group for quite some time, and the "Electric Universe" subset in particular. The progenitors of the EU are are poor physicists if they can even be called that. In all their years of advocacy, they have not yet produced anything but hand-waving qualitative non-predictions, defined so broadly as to be unfalsifiable or meaningless.
Skepticism doesn't mean you don't even look into something because you dislike how it sounds or you can't see how the mainstream could be wrong.
Quite so, and that is one reason I keep tabs on "fringe" science; you never know where the next insight will arise, and those guys are creative if nothing else. Another reason I watch, though, is that they poison scientific thought with incorrectness. A real scientist knows to quit and try a different approach when an idea doesn't work, but Thornhill, Scott, and Peratt don't. Neither did Arp or Hoyle, but at least they were competent in their fields and made contributions scientifically. Thornhill and Scott just lower the signal to noise ratio in public discourse because that is the only venue in which incorrect explanations aren't discarded.
"If Arp and others are right and the Big Bang is dead, what does the Cosmic Microwave Background signify?
Thornhill doesn't seem to care which end of that argument he uses to push his point. In "Thunderbolts of the Gods", he tries to claim that the CMB isotropy is an artifact of stars' being "powered" by an effect that also causes the microwave background. He cites Gerrit Verschuur's work, which purports to demonstrate that the CMB anisotropy maps to our local galaxy. So: does Thornhill claim the CMB is too isotropic to be universal, or too anisotropic to be universal? Both! (That TPOD is from around the same time as the book, so he wasn't simply changing his mind based on new evidence or research; he's just unable to reason clearly about cosmology. This is demonstrated copiously and embarrassingly in his mailing list exchanges and newsletters, in addition to his pop-sci books.)
These took me about 30 seconds to find with a Google search for "+electric-universe +cosmic-microwave".
Indeed, too little time to dismiss a wrong idea perpetuated by evasive non-scientists. By far their strongest presence on the web and in print is their own advocacy; they're so wrong that most (but not all) scientists don't even bother to write anything about them. Just as an individual demonstration: do you know why, specifically, Copernicus' heliocentric model provided less accurate predictions that the Ptolemaic model even though it got the big idea right? It would take more than 30 seconds to google your way to that. Do you know specifically why the genetic ideas forced on Soviet biologists are incorrect? Also a task for more than 30 seconds' googling.
If you want to learn more about the
I'd been drinking rather heavily, and got kicked out of my relative's house. After a few days, I ended up calling the police because I was hallucinating rather vividly. I was committed for observation, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and given sedatives. (apparently the only drugs psychiatrists know exist, besides ritalin, are sedatives) The hallucinations went away after about a week or so, when I'd gone through withdrawl and was eating normally. However, no amount of reason would convince anyone involved that I wasn't hearing voices, and much "unpleasentness" occurred with people that supposedly cared for me trying to chemically lombotomize me.
Then, I saw an episode of House, Forever, where heavy alcohol use caused hallucination though vitamin deficiency, pellagra. In pursuit of scientific truth, I got extremely drunk for ~5 days, without eating much of anything. Results: vivid hallucinations. Cure: Vitamin B3, and hallucination go away.
So, remember when that while House is made to be rather riduculous, it's far more accurate in terms of basic medical science than the field of psychiatry ever will be.
(Also, you might be interested in Hopkinds scientists show hallucinogen in mushroom creates universal "mystical" experience.. Johns Hopkins University.)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.