they spend most of their time doing magnethydrodynamic investigation, for god's sake
A lot of Slashdot forum regulars and even professional astrophysicists do not realize, BTW, that Hannes Alfven, who invented MHD, recused himself from the way it was being applied during his Nobel Physics Acceptance speech. He stated specifically:
I thought that the frozen-in concept was very good from a pedagogical point of view, and indeed it became very popular. In reality, however, it was not a good pedagogical concept but a dangerous 'pseudo-pedagogical concept'. By 'pseudo-pedagogical' I mean a concept which makes you believe that you understand a phenomenon whereas in reality you have drastically misunderstood it.
I realize that you mean well with your posting, but may I recommend that you try a little bit harder to understand what is being said before you actually decide that EU Theory is a magnet for crackpots? We're really just talking about the application of laboratory plasma physics to the interpretation of astrophysical observations. It's not even a very unusual idea. Also, the movement has grown a bit over the past few years. In fact, some of the people on our own forums and on the more private discussion lists have quite significant credentials, and there is an IEEE issue that just came out that presents several papers written about electrical plasmas, some of which are written by EU Theorists. One person has managed to create a formula based upon an aether theory that is compatible with EU Theory that precisely predicts the electron binding energy of every single element within the periodic table. Maybe you're comfortable with dismissing such things, but I personally do not see the mainstream astrophysicists accomplishing anything like that.
So, I would ask that before you try to convince people to avoid investigation of it, perhaps you should consider that we should allow people to develop proofs for EU Theory so that they can be compared against proofs for the Big Bang. After all, it makes sense that we wouldn't be able to compare the two until we've attempted to prove both, right? People around these parts have completely forgotten the important role that heretics play in science. We need discussions in science, even on the big questions, so that we can play devil's advocate with the theories that are being created within the mainstream.
A lightning bolt in space will seem a lot more probable once you observe NASA's impending explanation for their ongoing observations of Enceladus.
Let's be real though: Like most others here, I seriously doubt that you have ever looked into the evidence for electrical space plasmas. I'm betting that you don't even realize that laboratory plasmas are electrical. If you never actually consider something long enough to hear out the evidence for it, then how can you know how improbable it is? Do you know what pseudo-skepticism is?
We've actually witnessed collisions in space. And found evidence on earth for them. We've never seen any evidence for electrical arcs between heavenly bodies that would cause craters.
This sounds a bit pseudo-skeptical to me. Are you aware that many of the images by the impactor in the Deep Impact mission clearly demonstrated numerous points of white-out? Check this out...
Either you believe everything that NASA interprets in its images as word of God, or there is the possibility that those white-outs are electrical arcs.
I've stated it many times before here on these forums -- because people around here tend to not realize it -- but it's worth repeating that Wallace Thornhill was able to predict nearly *all* of the results of the Deep Impact mission on the basis of space plasmas being electrical. In fact, he predicted that a pre-impact flash would be observed. And sure enough, there were two flashes at the time of impact. Nobody was predicting anything like that prior to the impact.
From day one, there have been issues with impact theory. As you may know, Meteor Crater was mined for years and the impacting body was never found within the crater. The Tunguska Crater has had the same problem.
But, the evidence is really quite significant by now that space plasmas can be electrical. In the lab, plasmas change in luminosity and resistance based upon their charge density according to three disjointed curves: the dark mode, the glow mode and the arc mode. If you ask me, the only thing preventing nature from doing the same thing are the mainstream astrophysicists themselves. Our laboratory experience should be relevant to what's happening in space.
Hannes Alfven postulated a theory that was later validated on how charge separation can occur in space (critical ionization velocity). Furthermore, it takes less than 1% of ionization within the lab for a gas to conduct electricity. Electric Universe Theory has nothing to do with exotic theoretical physics. All they're saying is that the plasma phenomenon we observe within the laboratory are relevant to our observations of space. That's it.
Only when an event cannot be explained by any existing model formed from previous observations, will they resort to wild guessing ( see string theory, multiple universe theory, etc).
If you decided to expose yourself to it -- something which few people actually do -- you would come to realize that there is a very legitimate debate to be had here. The problem is that people are satisfied with explaining away evidence which supports electrical space plasmas rather than considering the body of evidence as a whole that supports the notion. This is actually a perfect definition of pseudo-skepticism: applying skepticism in an unfair manner. This might be a legitimate procedure for interpreting observations if the mainstream theories were successfully predicting our observations. The thing is, they aren't. Don't you think that if the mainstream theories are so correct that we shouldn't be seeing so many surprises in our observations by now?
There is certainly a place for theories that propose that Tycho is an impact crater, and it's a very good thing that people are actually proposing simulations in an attempt to explain what we see. The idea that catastrophe plays an important role in our surroundings has increasingly become accepted. But, what do the astrophysical heretics say about Tycho? Only by listening to what they say can we play devil's advocate with this particular simulation...
[...]
The astronomers' consensus today is that the streamers are the trails of material ejected from the crater into narrow paths over extraordinary distances. But the "rays", Juergens noted, have no discernible depth, while material exploding from a Tycho-sized crater "would at least occasionally fall more heavily in one place than in another and build up substantial formations. But no one has ever been able to point out such a ray 'deposit'".
The presence of the narrow rays over such long distances, according to Juergens, is "all-but-impossible to reconcile with ejection origins. Enormous velocities of ejection must be postulated to explain the lengths of the rays, yet the energetic processes responsible for such velocities must be imagined to be focused very precisely to account for the ribbon-thin appearance of the rays". In fact, this challenge has found no answer in more recent scientific exploration. No experimental explosion at any scale has ever produced anything comparable to the well-defined 1500-kilometer "rays" of Tycho.
Even more telling is the fact that the rays are punctuated with numerous small craters. An early explanation was that "some solid material was shot out with the jets and produced 'on-the-way' craters". But such narrow trajectories for secondary impactors are an absurdity under the mechanics of an explosion. And the total volume of ejected material needed to form the secondary craters along Tycho's rays, would amount to some 10,000 cubic kilometers - an amount of material entirely inconsistent with careful measurements indicating that practically all material excavated from Tycho's crater has been deposited in its rim. However, the ray elements, terminating on small craters, are the very markers that today's electrical theorists have cited repeatedly as definitive evidence of an electrical discharge path. As Wallace Thornhill has so often observed, such discharge streamers frequently terminate at a crater. In fact, this is exactly what Gene Shoemaker found when investigating the puzzles of Tycho--"...many small secondary craters, too small to be resolved by telescopes on earth, occur at the near end of each ray element."
When compared to an imagined sphere of the Moon's average radius, the surrounding highland region occupied by Tycho is more than 1200 meters above the "surface" of that sphere. The crater site appears to be at the summit, or very close to the summit, of terrain that trends downward in every direction away from the site for hundreds of kilometers. For the impact theory, this location can only be an accident. But for the electrical theorists, the elevation on which Tycho sits is not accidental. Lightning is attracted to the highest point on a surface. (That is, of course, the principle behind lightning arrestors placed on the pinnacles of tall buildings).
Though astronomers see Tycho's rays as material ejected from the focal point of an impact, a mere glance at this picture is sufficient to make clear that not all of the streamers radiate from a central point. Is this surprising? A mechanical impact has a single focal point and cannot explain these offset rays. Juergens noted that they "diverge from a common point, or common focus, located on or buried beneath the western rim of the crater." The electrical interpretation of Tycho sees the streamers as paths of electrons rushing across the lunar highlands to the highest point, where it launches into space to form the lightning "l
There have been several important points in time within the history of science where the mainstream went wrong. I won't go into all of them here, but there is one in particular that people on Slashdot tend to be just completely clueless on: the interpretation of ancient documents through the context of uniformitarianism produces absolute nonsense. We have a wealth of materials to work with that range from astronomical recordings to mythological stories and even historical accounts, and yet, when documents are translated under the assumption that the Earth has always existed under the same exact conditions, numerous specific problems arise with regards to the contents of these documents. Not only that -- and this is extremely important for you to understand -- but the problems correlate amongst nearly all of the cultures of the world. This has led to the widespread belief that ancient people were idiots who spent a lot of time writing gibberish down for future generations to ridicule them about. Aside from validating stellar explosions and cometary encounters, it has become commonly accepted amongst the whole world, in fact, that there is nothing of any useful astronomical meaning within the writings of people of the past.
What you and many others do not realize though is that it is not that there is no information there. The problem with interpreting those documents is the assumption of uniformitarianism. Once you remove that doctrine from the mind of the interpreters, and allow them to translate the texts as they were written and meant to be read, the message correlates between nearly all of the ancient writers. Dwardu Cardona's "God Star" is the first truly successful attempt at pulling this off, and seeing that it was only published in 2006, you and others can be forgiven for not having heard of it yet. But, what is unmistakable, and beyond any shadow of a doubt at this point in time based upon what he has discovered, is that the universe operates according to a plasma cosmology. Now, I don't for an instant believe that you will believe me, or that you will even ever wonder enough about what is in that book to actually purchase it because I understand the situation better than you understand. I've spent massive amounts of time learning the Slashdot crowd. I'm quite familiar with the way that people here think, and what they consider to be valid and invalid evidence. I also realize that you cannot pick and choose your evidence for how the universe works, or what form it should take. And, it is only by ignoring everything that has been written down by people who witnessed events which directly contradict uniformitarianism and the mainstream astrophysical theories that mainstream astrophysicists and their advocates can claim that their theories are accurate. It is only by ridiculing evidence which does not agree with their own theories that they can continue to convince people to not read about that evidence. Make no mistake about it: there is more than enough evidence within "God Star" alone to indicate to most people that the Big Bang never happened, and that we exist within a static universe. Halton Arp was right. Wallace Thornhill's accurate Deep Impact prediction was no accident. Hannes Alfven's prophetic warning to abandon the concept of frozen-in-place magnetic fields in his Nobel Physics acceptance speech was correct. Velikovsky made mistakes with his timelines, but many of his points about planetary reshuffling and interactions were right on target. In particular, Velikovsky's assertion that Venus is still cooling off from its recent birth was money, 100% correct. To be honest, when you can just go back and look up the eyewitness accounts of the event in excruciating detail, there really is no more doubt anymore that it is true.
It's an interesting situation that you guys have set up for yourselves. You can surely claim that ancient people must have all been crazy in the same ways, and
You don't need to fall back on the electric universe theory to explain lightning
No, then what are Sprites?
The Lorentz force has been long and well established, and lightning is caused by the transport of charged particles by convection. It occurs in a net neutral, electrically closed system, the exact opposite of what EU claims.
Then why do we see it occasionally going into space? Why would lightning be traveling outside of your electrically closed system?
But since you bring up EU once again (and in a much less relevant discussion than previously), the Grand Canyon does not have a delta because it doesn't let out into a static body of water. It ends in...surprise...more river. The Colorado river does terminate in a delta.
You ignore the fact that the Colorado river goes straight through the Kaibab Upwarp. Rivers tend to go around large obstacles rather than cutting through them.
Trying to use EU to explain away erosion and meteor impacts is just plain silly. There is a complete lack of evidence for it, where as the cutting through stratification and the crater formation modelling and hypervelocity impact testing (which perfectly explains your center "spires") are almost immutable support for more ordinary phenoma like water erosion and big rocks hitting things moving really fast.
Are you aware that some of these central spires have been observed to retain their stratigraphy?
And tornadoes are a pressure phenomenon. The fact that there is lightning associated with them doesn't change that.
That's interesting. Peter Thompson's experiment where he created a tornado within a petri dish used no pressure whatsoever...
At some point you're going to have to stop posting crap until you've come up with a consistent theory starting from the bottom up and have some math and observations (like a net current toward the sun of a magnitude capable of supporting the sun's output). If EU is right, or even remotely close to right, it should be possible to come up with this.
There are plenty of reasons for why EU Theorists could be correct. Focusing on just one mathematical item over-simplifies the issue. Numerous observations suggest that electrical plasmas are common in space. You will never realize this so long as you apply pseudo-skepticism to ATM theories, and refuse to actually read what is being said.
Do a search for yourself and save the embarrassment of spewing someone else's literary diarrhea.
I've been "searching" for a year now, and I'm fairly familiar with the debate. Contrary to your own assertion, there is a debate here. Many people will actually be surprised to learn that they cannot even find Electric Universe Theory on wikipedia, thanks to Josh Shroeder (aka ScienceApologist) and others. So, Josh has decided to make the decision for you. I suppose we should thank him. He's graced us with his presence actually recently, and it became extremely clear that he believes that nothing that he has ever read in his astrophysical textbooks can ever be untrue.
For anyone that took the time to read the comment above, this theory is easily dismissed by the fact that electrons flowing TO the sun have NEVER been detected with the explanation from the believers of the electric model being "we're not looking hard enough"
Actually, measuring electron drift is not as simple as you say here. It is far simpler on larger scales though. In fact, we would expect to see pretty much what we do see on larger scales: that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets. The mainstream lacks a meaningful explanation for why this might be occurring.
It's also worth noting that the Ulysses probe has in fact observed a hot mph flow of electrons and protons at the Sun's poles. The mainstream prefers to believe though that it doesn't actually do anything.
Thus, in theory, a gamma photon of such a high energy level could dislodge a neutron or possibly a proton from a nucleus. I would tend to think this sort of natural transmutation would be exceedingly rare, but it's still interesting, because it could impact on the distribution of elements and isotopes on earth.
Welcome to the Electric Universe Theory, btw. Now, just imagine that lightning can extend between space and through the ground to the Earth's core. And imagine that bodies in space can possess and trade electrical charge with the space they travel through, and even, on rare occasions, with each other. This would explain what the magnetosphere is. No mysterious "dynamo" is necessary. The magnetosphere is just a plasma sheath. When two planets approach one another for whatever reason, the size of these lightning bolts can be on the scale of New York City, and this explains why we see some rilles all throughout the solar system that move both up and down with the terrain, in apparent violation of gravity. This would explain why the Colorado River travels right through the Kaibab Upwarp, and why there is no apparent "outflow" or delta associated with the Grand Canyon (the material was excavated into space). We can actually see this process occurring *right now* on Io and the excavated material forms a unique plume shape that precisely mimics the morphology generated by an electrical plasma gun. NASA is about to discover something somewhat similar happening on Enceladus, but the plume has been replaced with something much more similar to a cometary tail. This would also explain the enigmatic Tycho and Aristarchus craters on the Moon, whose apparent debris fields are not debris fields at all, but rather burn scars or excavated material.
If all of this is true, then we should expect to see some validation of these concepts within crater studies. And in fact, this is exactly what we see in many instances. For instance, many craters have terraced edges, which is a rather clear indication that we're seeing twisting Birkeland Currents dig into the ground deeper as they rotate. We also see many craters that have thin spires in their centers, which can also suggest a rotating force that did not rotate enough to excavate the material at the very center. We see these same morphologies on comets and asteroids too. Comets are really just asteroids on elliptical orbits actually. When two plasma spheres come into contact, they will tend to equalize in charge distribution if they have significantly different charges. This can explain why some "impacts" like the Tunguska event leave no trace of an impacting body, and why there were two flashes in the Deep Impact Mission at the time of contact.
Things start to get extremely interesting though once you start to apply EU Theory to tornadoes. Tornadoes are almost certainly charged sheath vortexes. They are electrical plasma phenomenon, and eyewitnesses who have been lucky enough to survive tornadoes explain that the insides of the vortex can flicker with a weak luminosity. One person has even successfully created a micro-tornado within a petri dish using nothing but salt and a voltage difference through it. Tornadoes serve a purpose similar to lightning in that they equalize charge imbalances between the atmosphere and ground like a leaky capacitor. The Van Allen radiation belts act as a sort of toroidal capacitor which circles the planet and acts as the source of many, if not all, of the lightning discharges we see. We can see that they are perturbed when lightning strikes occur, and a global map of lightning strikes demonstrates that they occur more frequently directly beneath the Van Allen radiation belts. In fact, the homopolar motor morphology is the fundamental morphology for planets, stars and galaxies.
Elemental transmutation is in all likelihood more prevalent in the universe and even here on Earth than mainstream scientists currently accept, and probably most of it occurs in highly transient a
Josh Shroeder, aka ScienceApologist, has supposedly agreed to a formalized debate on the www.thunderbolts.info forums, but I do not know when it is scheduled to begin. A less formal debate occurred a few weeks ago, and he delivered a less-than-stellar performance, IMHO. There's not much room in his world view, apparently, for the notion that textbooks can be wrong.
You people are loonier than the creationists. Sorry, but it's true...
Setting aside the obvious ambiguity in your statement (are you calling the SZ effect crazy or my skepticism of it?), have you ever considered that you are doing nothing more than parroting the statements of those around you without actually looking into the arguments? I mean, I've been reading about EU Theory for a full year now and it doesn't even remotely resemble Creationism. In fact, many of the technical Creationist arguments can quite easily be hijacked by the EU Theorists and used to prove that religious themes have a scientific basis. No God is necessary.
I'm guessing that you're speaking specifically to the notion that my conviction in EU Theory is like the conviction of Creationists. If that's the case, I would argue that a better analogy would be the conviction of Big Bang advocates to Creationists because BB advocates will oftentimes ignore evidence that contradicts their theory in favor of highly exotic mathematical explanations. Math can be like a religion too when its postulation is considered to be sufficient to explain something. When there is little consideration to the likelihood that these postulated theories are true, and few attempts to check for internal consistency between all of the theories, then mathematics can be transformed into a tool for creating conviction where evidence is not supportive. Many advocates of the mainstream theories clearly do not even understand the math itself, and yet they will point to the CMB as a basis for their conviction that the mainstream theories are true. A more rational person might allow some room for self-doubt when the proof being offered is so complex and mathematical.
Just to be clear, EU Theorists are in fact arguing that we need to re-examine our astrophysical fundamentals, and allow for common sense to play a bigger role in our interpretations of space observations. Mathematics plays an irreplaceable role in formulating and comparing theories of the universe, but mathematics should never be prioritized over common sense or qualitative arguments. They each play an equal, vital role in understanding our surroundings, and non-mathematical arguments can be just as powerful, if not more powerful, then highly mathematical arguments.
And you know, I think that it's very important that these explanations be available to people for consideration. All of these ideas need to be debated. The problem is that there is a possible electrical plasma explanation as well that, from what I can tell, is not being objectively or rigorously investigated or debated. There is no serious discourse on the idea that our mathematical models for space plasmas might be wrong -- as Hannes Alfven attempted to warn everybody -- in spite of a large volume of evidence that double layers may be more common than is currently accepted within the mainstream. And so, when it is observed that unusually energetic forces are occurring in deep space that our current fluids-oriented plasma models cannot explain, there is rarely a serious investigation into the legitimacy of the models themselves, or how they are being applied. Instead, it is typically postulated that the fluids equations *must* be right and that there *must* be some invisible particles that are causing our observations. Well, a rational person, before postulating the presence of invisible particles, would consider that perhaps they had made a mistake. And the heretical view of the Electric Universe Theory, that everybody here thinks is so preposterously not worth anybody's time, does nothing more bold than this. That's it! They are merely arguing that space plasmas should be modeled as electrical phenomenon that can and do frequently formulate double layers and violate quasi-neutrality, as we observe within the laboratory.
In the lab, as you likely know, plasmas respond to changes in charge density with changes in luminosity and electrical resistance according to three curves: the dark mode curve, the glow curve and the arc mode curve. Within the dark mode, plasmas can continue to conduct electricity and yet, exhibit no luminosity, making them excellent candidates for explaining dark matter. And yet, there is no interest whatsoever amongst the mainstream theorists in investigating this possibility. And even when computer models demonstrate that dark matter tends to be arranged in filamentary structures (!), exactly as plasmas do within the laboratory, they still refuse to consider that dark mode electrical plasmas could in fact be causing what they prefer to believe is dark matter.
It's the lack of meaningful debate that is the problem. In the realm of possible solutions to problems, we should *always* consider the notion that "what we observe is simply true" as a possible candidate. Instead, many times, the simple explanation is sidelined when it threatens the mainstream theories. In this particular case, the idea that the cold spot in the CMB is cold because there is a lack of matter there emitting the EM appears to not be a candidate even though it would be the simplest explanation of the data were it not for the consensus that the CMB is at the "edge".
What arrives here of the CMB most definitely is influenced by the items between us and it.
Clearly, if the CMB is behind galaxies, then it is supposed to cast shadows. My understanding of the problem, actually, is that it has *not* been casting shadows as expected for all galaxies. Luckily, Big Bangers have a lot of tricks in their bag to explain such things. It matters little to the theorists that they might validate these ideas for internal consistency with the rest of their theory. All that really matters, for the most part to them, is that there is some *potential* mathematical explanation for what they see that would allow them to continue to say that their theory is true. When we allow them, though, to so frequently postulate smoke and mirrors to explain enigmatic findings, smoke and mirrors eventually become the norm, and the public begins to accept the idea that common sense does not apply to our observations of space. That's how you end up with ideas like nothingness absorbing light. What's surprising though is why they don't just call this "Tired Light Theory" because that's what it really is, eh?
The gravitational lensing explanation for the Einstein Cross makes for a similar example. There was never any serious effort to validate that theory, and in fact, the quasars continued to brighten over time rather than fading in, then out, as we would expect with a lensing effect. But, people don't care much to validate that these concepts are actually true. It's more important that they be postulated, and then everybody moves on, so that people like Halton Arp can be "proven" to be the heretic that he allegedly is for alleging that what we see are not tricks, but instead, exactly what they appear to be.
Who needs a basic knowledge of the stuff he's talking about, when he's got an Alternate Theory That Shows EINSTIEN Was Wrong.
It's perhaps worth mentioning that even Einstein constantly doubted himself, and when he died, "Worlds in Collision" was left on his desk. Einstein and the big bad Velikovsky were actually good friends. You're aware of all of this, right? Are you aware that Carl Sagan would say anything in public, even if it meant contradicting his own publications, in order to dispute Velikovsky's assertions? Are you aware that the very man who created magnetohydrodynamics, the mathematical models used today to model space plasmas, pleaded with astrophysicists to stop modeling space plasmas as fluids that can instantaneously neutralize charge imbalances and that possess frozen-in-place magnetic fields? In other words, the man who created much of the math that is used today to model the universe as a gravitational system argued that the universe is in fact an electrical system. He was of course completely ignored.
What people tend to ignore is the fact that there is valuable information in the *stories* behind the theories too. The stories, in fact, are absolutely crucial to formulating any meaningful opinion. And in order to get the stories, you have to actually read what the heretics are saying. And this ultimately is where Slashdotters go wrong: they believe that they can understand everything they need to understand by just listening to the people espousing the popular theories. Many people here don't recognize the utility in allowing somebody else who disagrees with the mainstream to play devil's advocate. Without heretics, you have no meaningful discussion of the data and interpretations. All you end up with is a rote memorization of what the popular theories say, rather than a thoughtful treatment of the material that encourages two groups to engage in intellectual battles.
Let me ask you: How successful do you think this approach will be in zeroing in on an ultimate theory of everything? In a real general sense, if we actively suppress meaningful debate and encourage everybody to think the same, how effective will this strategy be?
Ultimately, it is our approach to the problem that will determine our success with it.
They do publish outside of vanity presses, but many papers that should occur sometimes never do. We had one situation where a guy had built a rig out of spare parts and around $100 that precisely duplicated the features of Martian Spiders using a CRT monitor and some fiber glass dust. With just $100, he was able to present a possible explanation for something that at one time was considered a great mystery of the solar system. He presented everything to a journal and he was asked to explain how it might be that planets might store and trade electrical charges. This guy made this rig in his garage. He clearly knows nothing like that. A good case could be made that it is an impossible requirement to be met because it is a contentious subject. The general gist was that electrical terra-forming is not an option for at least that journal -- which is really quite sad because the evidence in support of it is plentiful.
NASA's seeing it on Io right now, and they're about to return more shots of it on Enceladus. We're all eagerly waiting over here to see how they're going to explain roving hot ice geysers with super-hot point sources of heat. It seems like an obvious contradiction to me, and I'm not sure that even they will believe themselves.
To create insurmountable barriers though for publication about the phenomenon seems wacked. This is the kind of crap that those guys have to deal with.
I've seen one argument (found it by Googling) that said, in essence, that the existence of dinosaurs the size of 747s is demonstrable proof that gravity was weaker 65+ million years ago (as predicted by the EU theory). Which is all well and good, until you realize that the largest flying "dinosaur" (actually a pterosaur, not a dinosaur at all, but most people make that mistake) was nowhere near that big. Pterosaurs had a maximum wingspan of about 12 meters, compared to the 747's 60 meter width. So, right there, you can scratch paleontology off the list of fields that EU is consistent with.
Actually, Ted Holden's analysis does indeed merit consideration. You can view it here:
If you can explain why he is wrong in a technical sense, then you would actually be the first. But I recommend waiting. Dwardu Cardona is in the process of giving this subject a comprehensive treatment in his next book (to be released in April of 2008). It is apparently far more complex than can be briefly summarized, but it appears that he has reason to believe that *both* gravity and air density were different in the past. I recommend not under-estimating Dwardu. He's very talented and possesses an amazing wealth of knowledge.
Although it actually proves nothing, it is worth mentioning that researchers currently believe that humans will experience no biological problems down to 1/3rd of the current Earth gravity. I'm not sure what they base this on, actually, but it is an unusual coincidence.
Multi-disciplinary implies that the theory retains some connection with the facts in at least some of the disciplines it spans. Virtually everything I've read on this electric universe nonsense practically screams "crackpot", and I can only guess that the stuff that isn't obviously bullshit would also reek of crackpottery to me if I was proficient in the required fields.
Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that "wild, inaccurate claims" about an electric universe span multiple disciplines, instead of using the word "evidence".
Some people prefer to wait until lots of people believe something before they will jump on board. I suggest that this is in fact the primary force preventing the theory from widespread acceptance at the moment. The technical arguments in favor of electrical space plasmas are in fact quite strong, but you will not realize this until you read what the theory says yourself. Nobody can convince you of these theories. You have to be willing to give them a chance before you can possibly be convinced of anything that is not popular. It is important though that there are people out there that are working on problems like this as there does increasingly appear to be problems with the CMB, and there really is no need to have everybody thinking the same way about the same problem. That's generally not the right way to solve problems.
Do you have a link to a web page that doesn't look like it's trying to sell you something? Something for scientists/engineers rather than lay people?
You can find a list of references at Ian Tresman's Plasma Universe site (http://www.plasma-universe.com/). The wikipedia entry has been censored by ScienceApologist (Josh Schroeder), who believes that it is his right to prevent people from even learning what it states.
I also highly recommend the upcoming IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science:
There are some articles in there by EU Theorists... namely Peratt, van der Sluijs, Thornhill, Don Scott and CJ Ransom. Yes, they *do* publish in peer review journals on occasion.
I am not one of the theorists, and I only offer my advocacy of their theories completely free of charge. To be honest, they don't have the time to deal with Slashdot, and many, if not most, believe that what I do is a complete waste of time.
The EU comments are always about as coherent as the LaRouche guy trying to sell papers on the corner. Is the EU theory some kind of cult for physics nerds or something? I find it bizarre that such an esoteric and ultimately inconsequential theory could create so much allegiance.
Ha! It is quite striking, huh? It's interesting to me that other people do not think anything of this.
The issue is this: everybody assumes that EU Theory is bullshit. Except every once in a while, somebody decides to pick up a copy of "The Electric Sky" and read it. For the space enthusiast that has no vested interest in the mainstream astrophysical theories, there is a very high certainty that this person will be convinced by those arguments in that book, because to be perfectly honest, what those people say makes sense. The real problem is that the traditional views have become so ingrained in our heads and that NASA is such an excellent advocate for those theories that it's hard for most people to take the idea seriously enough to actually be motivated to pay for the book.
If you believe that when the theory of everything is discovered that people will immediately jump out of their computer seats simultaneously and go running out into the streets, then you are in a fantasy land. The real theory of everything is not obvious -- or it would have already been discovered. In fact, if you believe that you've already figured out the theory of everything, more or less, already, then you will be disuaded from looking into possibilities that could bear fruit. In other words, your own confidence can undermine you and cause you to ask the wrong questions in the first place. In order to understand the theory of everything, you have to be willing to give up pre-existing cherished beliefs and open your mind to possibilities that you would have never otherwise suspected. I would argue that a great starting point is the idea that space plasmas are electrical. It's an extremely old debate and the arguments on the heretical side are far more impressive than most people realize. Don't be fooled by the lack of rigorous math. Not all evidence is mathematical, and that stuff *can* be generated over time. There is nothing about EU Theory, in other words, that cannot be made to work. It's merely a choice by mainstream astrophysicists to not try to make it work.
As new technologies allow us to see further into older space, we're always coming across sheit in the sky we can explain.
I presume you mean "can't" explain.
The thing is this: in those sciences for which we cannot generally perform controlled laboratory experiments, the only mechanism we really have for testing theories is their predictive track record. If the mainstream theories are failing in this regard -- and they certainly are -- then there's really no other reason to believe in them.
Wallace Thornhill was able to predict all of the results of the Deep Impact Mission on the basis of EU Theory. One of the things he predicted was that a second pre-impact flash would occur for that mission, and sure enough, there were two flashes recorded. People have yet to stop and think: how could he have gotten that right by chance? What are the real chances that he publicly went on the record and just got lucky?
Well, if you ever come up with something that explains what we see better, then feel free to mention it.
The assertion that mainstream astrophysicists are mis-modeling space plasmas as fluids rather than electrical phenomenon is supported by observations of morphologies in space that correspond with electrical plasmas that we know from laboratory experience; by the very words of the man who invented the math for modeling plasmas, Hannes Alfven; by simulations of spiral galaxies by Anthony Peratt that appear to suggest that electrical plasmas can generate spiral galaxies *without* any dark matter whatsoever; by rilles (canyons) on the nearby rocky planets and moons that oftentimes track or move through the terrain without regard for gravity (the Grand Canyon does just this, in fact); by Wallace Thornhill's accurate prediction of all of the results of the Deep Impact Mission using EU Theory; by a very large volume of testimony that is recorded within ancient astronomical records and historical accounts of the past; by the fossil record, which indicates that the Earth once possessed a uniform temperature over the entire planet, as we see on other planets in our solar system right now; and so many other items that I'm forced to only touch on the major ones.
People have come up with it. It's just that people here on Slashdot spend a lot of time ridiculing the theory, which in turn prevents most people from just picking up a book about it and learning it. Once people finally start reading about it, they will realize that we can explain the universe quite well using forces and particles that we already understand. We don't generally need to invent invisible particles to do the work for us. It's taking quite a while though for people to pick up on all of this.
If you don't believe me, then pick up a copy of "The Electric Sky", which serves as the qualitative basis for the theory. You will be surprised that most, if not all, of the enigmas that plague the mainstream theories actually point to electrical space plasmas.
You know, there are a lot more things out there than just the CMB. We have a whole solar system wrapped around us that is filled with observations that are enigmatic to mainstream theories.
But, I think the bigger picture of what's happening right now is that what we mathematically predicted was a perfect CMB is turning out to have "defects". It was only this past April that NewScientist ran the somewhat heretical article regarding the "axis of evil". (maybe evil for Big Bangers)...
Some believe it is just a figment of overactive imaginations. But evidence is growing that the so-called "axis of evil" - a pattern apparently imprinted on the radiation left behind by the big bang - may be real, posing a threat to standard cosmology.
According to the standard model, the universe is isotropic, or much the same everywhere. However, in 2005, Kate Land and João Magueijo of Imperial College London noticed a curious pattern in the map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) created by NASA's WMAP satellite. It seemed to show that some hot and cold spots in the CMB are not distributed randomly, as expected, but are aligned along what Magueijo dubbed the axis of evil.
This inspired the creation of the GalaxyZoo Project. But as I've noted in the past here and elsewhere, you guys can somewhat be forgiven for not noticing because the story run about Galaxy Zoo on Space.com did not mention anything about the CMB whatsoever -- as if there was no threat.
It's also worth noting, just for the record, that static universe theories were far more accurate in predicting the CMB's actual K value, and yet the textbooks kind of forget to mention this fact, as if it was too inconvenient to be true.
One would have to expect that there would be some resistance to calling the last 100 years or so a giant waste of time by people who spent at least 10% of their lives studying it. But, it's the right time for people to stop adopting a pseudo-skeptical stance within astrophysics, and start applying skepticism to the mainstream models too. If the CMB has come under increasing threat, then we need to take an objective look at it, and start to consider cosmological alternatives. It's what a rational person would do, at least. And a very, very good starting point for everybody would be to start by reading what the heretics are saying. Heretics are useful because they force us to play devil's advocate. The biggest heretics around these parts at least are the Electric Universe Theorists. I've been reading their materials as a layperson for a full year now, and there is nothing wrong with their theories. They currently lack the rigorous application of electrodynamics and plasma physics mathematics, but this is to be expected for a young theory. I believe that Kuhn commented on the difficulty of comparing competing theories: it's hard because you will be presented with evidence of different types, and some of these types of evidence may not be the kinds that you prefer. But, you still must accept whatever evidence you have and get on with it. And what a lot of mainstream'ers would prefer that we not realize is that people could quite easily create this missing mathematics. The funny thing is that few people have really tried. Some entrepreneurial young astrophysicist who is following the news, and who is familiar with the math of electrodynamics and plasmas, will one day realize this and make himself famous by filling the void of mathematics for EU Theory. And don't be alarmed if it all happens quite overnight because much of the material from the time of Alfven is still quite relevant if the Big Bang is not the ultimate answer. The EU Theorists have done quite an excellent job of thinkin
What most people on Slashdot do not realize is that the evidence for EU Theory spans multiple disciplines while simultaneously maintaining internal consistency across completely unrelated fields. It's going to take decades for people to realize and accept this. We are at the very beginning of a transition point.
That said, the impending close-up's of Enceladus could really turn some heads. Enceladus has a cometary tail of sorts, which is enigmatic to NASA because the only mechanism they know of lifting that material up into the atmosphere is ice geysers resulting from tidal heating. The problem is that the tidal heating appears to only be restricted to the southern hemisphere. So, I believe that Cassini is capturing images right about now of this mysterious uplift of material. NASA will quite certainly find that the material is being uplifted along the Tiger Stripe rilles that criss-cross that planet, as a result of electrical machining. The explanation is here:
What's pretty silly, actually, is that if you watch NASA's video of Enceladus' jet, and focus on the shadow line during the animation, you will very clearly observe the jets remain stationary as the planetary features rotate...
It should be very obvious if we're seeing more electrical plasma activity in our solar system because the arc points should be very hot point sources -- unlike any of NASA's preferred theories. My guess is that they will have to advocate the existence of wandering hot ice geysers! People are paying so little attention these days that, to be honest, I suspect they could get away with it.
But what's also really silly about this whole thing is their response to the observation that Enceladus' poles are warmer than its equator. This is not all that unusual within EU Theory, and they've seen it before on other planets and moons where the plasmas are electrically active. There's a lot of strong evidence that something similar used to even be true for Earth -- explaining why we see things like croc bones and ancient coral reefs at nearly all latituides of the Earth for past ages of the Earth. After a while, one would think they would stop being surprised by these sorts of things.
Isn't it also possible that the cold spot in the CMB is actually just related to the void in space, as they are suggesting? I mean, it seems more likely than all of these other things that are being suggested for the relation...
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of Slashdot forum regulars and even professional astrophysicists do not realize, BTW, that Hannes Alfven, who invented MHD, recused himself from the way it was being applied during his Nobel Physics Acceptance speech. He stated specifically:
I realize that you mean well with your posting, but may I recommend that you try a little bit harder to understand what is being said before you actually decide that EU Theory is a magnet for crackpots? We're really just talking about the application of laboratory plasma physics to the interpretation of astrophysical observations. It's not even a very unusual idea. Also, the movement has grown a bit over the past few years. In fact, some of the people on our own forums and on the more private discussion lists have quite significant credentials, and there is an IEEE issue that just came out that presents several papers written about electrical plasmas, some of which are written by EU Theorists. One person has managed to create a formula based upon an aether theory that is compatible with EU Theory that precisely predicts the electron binding energy of every single element within the periodic table. Maybe you're comfortable with dismissing such things, but I personally do not see the mainstream astrophysicists accomplishing anything like that.
So, I would ask that before you try to convince people to avoid investigation of it, perhaps you should consider that we should allow people to develop proofs for EU Theory so that they can be compared against proofs for the Big Bang. After all, it makes sense that we wouldn't be able to compare the two until we've attempted to prove both, right? People around these parts have completely forgotten the important role that heretics play in science. We need discussions in science, even on the big questions, so that we can play devil's advocate with the theories that are being created within the mainstream.
A lightning bolt in space will seem a lot more probable once you observe NASA's impending explanation for their ongoing observations of Enceladus.
Let's be real though: Like most others here, I seriously doubt that you have ever looked into the evidence for electrical space plasmas. I'm betting that you don't even realize that laboratory plasmas are electrical. If you never actually consider something long enough to hear out the evidence for it, then how can you know how improbable it is? Do you know what pseudo-skepticism is?
This sounds a bit pseudo-skeptical to me. Are you aware that many of the images by the impactor in the Deep Impact mission clearly demonstrated numerous points of white-out? Check this out
http://deepimpact.umd.edu/gallery/wipeout.html
Either you believe everything that NASA interprets in its images as word of God, or there is the possibility that those white-outs are electrical arcs.
I've stated it many times before here on these forums -- because people around here tend to not realize it -- but it's worth repeating that Wallace Thornhill was able to predict nearly *all* of the results of the Deep Impact mission on the basis of space plasmas being electrical. In fact, he predicted that a pre-impact flash would be observed. And sure enough, there were two flashes at the time of impact. Nobody was predicting anything like that prior to the impact.
From day one, there have been issues with impact theory. As you may know, Meteor Crater was mined for years and the impacting body was never found within the crater. The Tunguska Crater has had the same problem.
But, the evidence is really quite significant by now that space plasmas can be electrical. In the lab, plasmas change in luminosity and resistance based upon their charge density according to three disjointed curves: the dark mode, the glow mode and the arc mode. If you ask me, the only thing preventing nature from doing the same thing are the mainstream astrophysicists themselves. Our laboratory experience should be relevant to what's happening in space.
Hannes Alfven postulated a theory that was later validated on how charge separation can occur in space (critical ionization velocity). Furthermore, it takes less than 1% of ionization within the lab for a gas to conduct electricity. Electric Universe Theory has nothing to do with exotic theoretical physics. All they're saying is that the plasma phenomenon we observe within the laboratory are relevant to our observations of space. That's it.
If you decided to expose yourself to it -- something which few people actually do -- you would come to realize that there is a very legitimate debate to be had here. The problem is that people are satisfied with explaining away evidence which supports electrical space plasmas rather than considering the body of evidence as a whole that supports the notion. This is actually a perfect definition of pseudo-skepticism: applying skepticism in an unfair manner. This might be a legitimate procedure for interpreting observations if the mainstream theories were successfully predicting our observations. The thing is, they aren't. Don't you think that if the mainstream theories are so correct that we shouldn't be seeing so many surprises in our observations by now?
There have been several important points in time within the history of science where the mainstream went wrong. I won't go into all of them here, but there is one in particular that people on Slashdot tend to be just completely clueless on: the interpretation of ancient documents through the context of uniformitarianism produces absolute nonsense. We have a wealth of materials to work with that range from astronomical recordings to mythological stories and even historical accounts, and yet, when documents are translated under the assumption that the Earth has always existed under the same exact conditions, numerous specific problems arise with regards to the contents of these documents. Not only that -- and this is extremely important for you to understand -- but the problems correlate amongst nearly all of the cultures of the world. This has led to the widespread belief that ancient people were idiots who spent a lot of time writing gibberish down for future generations to ridicule them about. Aside from validating stellar explosions and cometary encounters, it has become commonly accepted amongst the whole world, in fact, that there is nothing of any useful astronomical meaning within the writings of people of the past.
What you and many others do not realize though is that it is not that there is no information there. The problem with interpreting those documents is the assumption of uniformitarianism. Once you remove that doctrine from the mind of the interpreters, and allow them to translate the texts as they were written and meant to be read, the message correlates between nearly all of the ancient writers. Dwardu Cardona's "God Star" is the first truly successful attempt at pulling this off, and seeing that it was only published in 2006, you and others can be forgiven for not having heard of it yet. But, what is unmistakable, and beyond any shadow of a doubt at this point in time based upon what he has discovered, is that the universe operates according to a plasma cosmology. Now, I don't for an instant believe that you will believe me, or that you will even ever wonder enough about what is in that book to actually purchase it because I understand the situation better than you understand. I've spent massive amounts of time learning the Slashdot crowd. I'm quite familiar with the way that people here think, and what they consider to be valid and invalid evidence. I also realize that you cannot pick and choose your evidence for how the universe works, or what form it should take. And, it is only by ignoring everything that has been written down by people who witnessed events which directly contradict uniformitarianism and the mainstream astrophysical theories that mainstream astrophysicists and their advocates can claim that their theories are accurate. It is only by ridiculing evidence which does not agree with their own theories that they can continue to convince people to not read about that evidence. Make no mistake about it: there is more than enough evidence within "God Star" alone to indicate to most people that the Big Bang never happened, and that we exist within a static universe. Halton Arp was right. Wallace Thornhill's accurate Deep Impact prediction was no accident. Hannes Alfven's prophetic warning to abandon the concept of frozen-in-place magnetic fields in his Nobel Physics acceptance speech was correct. Velikovsky made mistakes with his timelines, but many of his points about planetary reshuffling and interactions were right on target. In particular, Velikovsky's assertion that Venus is still cooling off from its recent birth was money, 100% correct. To be honest, when you can just go back and look up the eyewitness accounts of the event in excruciating detail, there really is no more doubt anymore that it is true.
It's an interesting situation that you guys have set up for yourselves. You can surely claim that ancient people must have all been crazy in the same ways, and
No, then what are Sprites?
Then why do we see it occasionally going into space? Why would lightning be traveling outside of your electrically closed system?
You ignore the fact that the Colorado river goes straight through the Kaibab Upwarp. Rivers tend to go around large obstacles rather than cutting through them.
Are you aware that some of these central spires have been observed to retain their stratigraphy?
That's interesting. Peter Thompson's experiment where he created a tornado within a petri dish used no pressure whatsoever
http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/tornado/fusion/Cha
There are plenty of reasons for why EU Theorists could be correct. Focusing on just one mathematical item over-simplifies the issue. Numerous observations suggest that electrical plasmas are common in space. You will never realize this so long as you apply pseudo-skepticism to ATM theories, and refuse to actually read what is being said.
Are you referring to Tim Thompson's critique of The Electric Sun Theory? That's been rebutted
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/Rejoinder.htm
I've been "searching" for a year now, and I'm fairly familiar with the debate. Contrary to your own assertion, there is a debate here. Many people will actually be surprised to learn that they cannot even find Electric Universe Theory on wikipedia, thanks to Josh Shroeder (aka ScienceApologist) and others. So, Josh has decided to make the decision for you. I suppose we should thank him. He's graced us with his presence actually recently, and it became extremely clear that he believes that nothing that he has ever read in his astrophysical textbooks can ever be untrue.
Actually, measuring electron drift is not as simple as you say here. It is far simpler on larger scales though. In fact, we would expect to see pretty much what we do see on larger scales: that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets. The mainstream lacks a meaningful explanation for why this might be occurring.
It's also worth noting that the Ulysses probe has in fact observed a hot mph flow of electrons and protons at the Sun's poles. The mainstream prefers to believe though that it doesn't actually do anything.
Welcome to the Electric Universe Theory, btw. Now, just imagine that lightning can extend between space and through the ground to the Earth's core. And imagine that bodies in space can possess and trade electrical charge with the space they travel through, and even, on rare occasions, with each other. This would explain what the magnetosphere is. No mysterious "dynamo" is necessary. The magnetosphere is just a plasma sheath. When two planets approach one another for whatever reason, the size of these lightning bolts can be on the scale of New York City, and this explains why we see some rilles all throughout the solar system that move both up and down with the terrain, in apparent violation of gravity. This would explain why the Colorado River travels right through the Kaibab Upwarp, and why there is no apparent "outflow" or delta associated with the Grand Canyon (the material was excavated into space). We can actually see this process occurring *right now* on Io and the excavated material forms a unique plume shape that precisely mimics the morphology generated by an electrical plasma gun. NASA is about to discover something somewhat similar happening on Enceladus, but the plume has been replaced with something much more similar to a cometary tail. This would also explain the enigmatic Tycho and Aristarchus craters on the Moon, whose apparent debris fields are not debris fields at all, but rather burn scars or excavated material.
If all of this is true, then we should expect to see some validation of these concepts within crater studies. And in fact, this is exactly what we see in many instances. For instance, many craters have terraced edges, which is a rather clear indication that we're seeing twisting Birkeland Currents dig into the ground deeper as they rotate. We also see many craters that have thin spires in their centers, which can also suggest a rotating force that did not rotate enough to excavate the material at the very center. We see these same morphologies on comets and asteroids too. Comets are really just asteroids on elliptical orbits actually. When two plasma spheres come into contact, they will tend to equalize in charge distribution if they have significantly different charges. This can explain why some "impacts" like the Tunguska event leave no trace of an impacting body, and why there were two flashes in the Deep Impact Mission at the time of contact.
Things start to get extremely interesting though once you start to apply EU Theory to tornadoes. Tornadoes are almost certainly charged sheath vortexes. They are electrical plasma phenomenon, and eyewitnesses who have been lucky enough to survive tornadoes explain that the insides of the vortex can flicker with a weak luminosity. One person has even successfully created a micro-tornado within a petri dish using nothing but salt and a voltage difference through it. Tornadoes serve a purpose similar to lightning in that they equalize charge imbalances between the atmosphere and ground like a leaky capacitor. The Van Allen radiation belts act as a sort of toroidal capacitor which circles the planet and acts as the source of many, if not all, of the lightning discharges we see. We can see that they are perturbed when lightning strikes occur, and a global map of lightning strikes demonstrates that they occur more frequently directly beneath the Van Allen radiation belts. In fact, the homopolar motor morphology is the fundamental morphology for planets, stars and galaxies.
Elemental transmutation is in all likelihood more prevalent in the universe and even here on Earth than mainstream scientists currently accept, and probably most of it occurs in highly transient a
Josh Shroeder, aka ScienceApologist, has supposedly agreed to a formalized debate on the www.thunderbolts.info forums, but I do not know when it is scheduled to begin. A less formal debate occurred a few weeks ago, and he delivered a less-than-stellar performance, IMHO. There's not much room in his world view, apparently, for the notion that textbooks can be wrong.
Setting aside the obvious ambiguity in your statement (are you calling the SZ effect crazy or my skepticism of it?), have you ever considered that you are doing nothing more than parroting the statements of those around you without actually looking into the arguments? I mean, I've been reading about EU Theory for a full year now and it doesn't even remotely resemble Creationism. In fact, many of the technical Creationist arguments can quite easily be hijacked by the EU Theorists and used to prove that religious themes have a scientific basis. No God is necessary.
I'm guessing that you're speaking specifically to the notion that my conviction in EU Theory is like the conviction of Creationists. If that's the case, I would argue that a better analogy would be the conviction of Big Bang advocates to Creationists because BB advocates will oftentimes ignore evidence that contradicts their theory in favor of highly exotic mathematical explanations. Math can be like a religion too when its postulation is considered to be sufficient to explain something. When there is little consideration to the likelihood that these postulated theories are true, and few attempts to check for internal consistency between all of the theories, then mathematics can be transformed into a tool for creating conviction where evidence is not supportive. Many advocates of the mainstream theories clearly do not even understand the math itself, and yet they will point to the CMB as a basis for their conviction that the mainstream theories are true. A more rational person might allow some room for self-doubt when the proof being offered is so complex and mathematical.
Just to be clear, EU Theorists are in fact arguing that we need to re-examine our astrophysical fundamentals, and allow for common sense to play a bigger role in our interpretations of space observations. Mathematics plays an irreplaceable role in formulating and comparing theories of the universe, but mathematics should never be prioritized over common sense or qualitative arguments. They each play an equal, vital role in understanding our surroundings, and non-mathematical arguments can be just as powerful, if not more powerful, then highly mathematical arguments.
It's a good thing. We need people to disagree and discuss.
And you know, I think that it's very important that these explanations be available to people for consideration. All of these ideas need to be debated. The problem is that there is a possible electrical plasma explanation as well that, from what I can tell, is not being objectively or rigorously investigated or debated. There is no serious discourse on the idea that our mathematical models for space plasmas might be wrong -- as Hannes Alfven attempted to warn everybody -- in spite of a large volume of evidence that double layers may be more common than is currently accepted within the mainstream. And so, when it is observed that unusually energetic forces are occurring in deep space that our current fluids-oriented plasma models cannot explain, there is rarely a serious investigation into the legitimacy of the models themselves, or how they are being applied. Instead, it is typically postulated that the fluids equations *must* be right and that there *must* be some invisible particles that are causing our observations. Well, a rational person, before postulating the presence of invisible particles, would consider that perhaps they had made a mistake. And the heretical view of the Electric Universe Theory, that everybody here thinks is so preposterously not worth anybody's time, does nothing more bold than this. That's it! They are merely arguing that space plasmas should be modeled as electrical phenomenon that can and do frequently formulate double layers and violate quasi-neutrality, as we observe within the laboratory.
In the lab, as you likely know, plasmas respond to changes in charge density with changes in luminosity and electrical resistance according to three curves: the dark mode curve, the glow curve and the arc mode curve. Within the dark mode, plasmas can continue to conduct electricity and yet, exhibit no luminosity, making them excellent candidates for explaining dark matter. And yet, there is no interest whatsoever amongst the mainstream theorists in investigating this possibility. And even when computer models demonstrate that dark matter tends to be arranged in filamentary structures (!), exactly as plasmas do within the laboratory, they still refuse to consider that dark mode electrical plasmas could in fact be causing what they prefer to believe is dark matter.
It's the lack of meaningful debate that is the problem. In the realm of possible solutions to problems, we should *always* consider the notion that "what we observe is simply true" as a possible candidate. Instead, many times, the simple explanation is sidelined when it threatens the mainstream theories. In this particular case, the idea that the cold spot in the CMB is cold because there is a lack of matter there emitting the EM appears to not be a candidate even though it would be the simplest explanation of the data were it not for the consensus that the CMB is at the "edge".
Clearly, if the CMB is behind galaxies, then it is supposed to cast shadows. My understanding of the problem, actually, is that it has *not* been casting shadows as expected for all galaxies. Luckily, Big Bangers have a lot of tricks in their bag to explain such things. It matters little to the theorists that they might validate these ideas for internal consistency with the rest of their theory. All that really matters, for the most part to them, is that there is some *potential* mathematical explanation for what they see that would allow them to continue to say that their theory is true. When we allow them, though, to so frequently postulate smoke and mirrors to explain enigmatic findings, smoke and mirrors eventually become the norm, and the public begins to accept the idea that common sense does not apply to our observations of space. That's how you end up with ideas like nothingness absorbing light. What's surprising though is why they don't just call this "Tired Light Theory" because that's what it really is, eh?
The gravitational lensing explanation for the Einstein Cross makes for a similar example. There was never any serious effort to validate that theory, and in fact, the quasars continued to brighten over time rather than fading in, then out, as we would expect with a lensing effect. But, people don't care much to validate that these concepts are actually true. It's more important that they be postulated, and then everybody moves on, so that people like Halton Arp can be "proven" to be the heretic that he allegedly is for alleging that what we see are not tricks, but instead, exactly what they appear to be.
It's perhaps worth mentioning that even Einstein constantly doubted himself, and when he died, "Worlds in Collision" was left on his desk. Einstein and the big bad Velikovsky were actually good friends. You're aware of all of this, right? Are you aware that Carl Sagan would say anything in public, even if it meant contradicting his own publications, in order to dispute Velikovsky's assertions? Are you aware that the very man who created magnetohydrodynamics, the mathematical models used today to model space plasmas, pleaded with astrophysicists to stop modeling space plasmas as fluids that can instantaneously neutralize charge imbalances and that possess frozen-in-place magnetic fields? In other words, the man who created much of the math that is used today to model the universe as a gravitational system argued that the universe is in fact an electrical system. He was of course completely ignored.
What people tend to ignore is the fact that there is valuable information in the *stories* behind the theories too. The stories, in fact, are absolutely crucial to formulating any meaningful opinion. And in order to get the stories, you have to actually read what the heretics are saying. And this ultimately is where Slashdotters go wrong: they believe that they can understand everything they need to understand by just listening to the people espousing the popular theories. Many people here don't recognize the utility in allowing somebody else who disagrees with the mainstream to play devil's advocate. Without heretics, you have no meaningful discussion of the data and interpretations. All you end up with is a rote memorization of what the popular theories say, rather than a thoughtful treatment of the material that encourages two groups to engage in intellectual battles.
Let me ask you: How successful do you think this approach will be in zeroing in on an ultimate theory of everything? In a real general sense, if we actively suppress meaningful debate and encourage everybody to think the same, how effective will this strategy be?
Ultimately, it is our approach to the problem that will determine our success with it.
Oh! That clarifies everything. Thank you so much!
Many of these recent articles relate to EU Theory ...
a r=2007&isnumber=4287017
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isYe
They do publish outside of vanity presses, but many papers that should occur sometimes never do. We had one situation where a guy had built a rig out of spare parts and around $100 that precisely duplicated the features of Martian Spiders using a CRT monitor and some fiber glass dust. With just $100, he was able to present a possible explanation for something that at one time was considered a great mystery of the solar system. He presented everything to a journal and he was asked to explain how it might be that planets might store and trade electrical charges. This guy made this rig in his garage. He clearly knows nothing like that. A good case could be made that it is an impossible requirement to be met because it is a contentious subject. The general gist was that electrical terra-forming is not an option for at least that journal -- which is really quite sad because the evidence in support of it is plentiful.
NASA's seeing it on Io right now, and they're about to return more shots of it on Enceladus. We're all eagerly waiting over here to see how they're going to explain roving hot ice geysers with super-hot point sources of heat. It seems like an obvious contradiction to me, and I'm not sure that even they will believe themselves.
To create insurmountable barriers though for publication about the phenomenon seems wacked. This is the kind of crap that those guys have to deal with.
Actually, Ted Holden's analysis does indeed merit consideration. You can view it here:
http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/sauropo
If you can explain why he is wrong in a technical sense, then you would actually be the first. But I recommend waiting. Dwardu Cardona is in the process of giving this subject a comprehensive treatment in his next book (to be released in April of 2008). It is apparently far more complex than can be briefly summarized, but it appears that he has reason to believe that *both* gravity and air density were different in the past. I recommend not under-estimating Dwardu. He's very talented and possesses an amazing wealth of knowledge.
Although it actually proves nothing, it is worth mentioning that researchers currently believe that humans will experience no biological problems down to 1/3rd of the current Earth gravity. I'm not sure what they base this on, actually, but it is an unusual coincidence.
Some people prefer to wait until lots of people believe something before they will jump on board. I suggest that this is in fact the primary force preventing the theory from widespread acceptance at the moment. The technical arguments in favor of electrical space plasmas are in fact quite strong, but you will not realize this until you read what the theory says yourself. Nobody can convince you of these theories. You have to be willing to give them a chance before you can possibly be convinced of anything that is not popular. It is important though that there are people out there that are working on problems like this as there does increasingly appear to be problems with the CMB, and there really is no need to have everybody thinking the same way about the same problem. That's generally not the right way to solve problems.
You can find a list of references at Ian Tresman's Plasma Universe site (http://www.plasma-universe.com/). The wikipedia entry has been censored by ScienceApologist (Josh Schroeder), who believes that it is his right to prevent people from even learning what it states.
I also highly recommend the upcoming IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isYe
There are some articles in there by EU Theorists
I am not one of the theorists, and I only offer my advocacy of their theories completely free of charge. To be honest, they don't have the time to deal with Slashdot, and many, if not most, believe that what I do is a complete waste of time.
Ha! It is quite striking, huh? It's interesting to me that other people do not think anything of this.
The issue is this: everybody assumes that EU Theory is bullshit. Except every once in a while, somebody decides to pick up a copy of "The Electric Sky" and read it. For the space enthusiast that has no vested interest in the mainstream astrophysical theories, there is a very high certainty that this person will be convinced by those arguments in that book, because to be perfectly honest, what those people say makes sense. The real problem is that the traditional views have become so ingrained in our heads and that NASA is such an excellent advocate for those theories that it's hard for most people to take the idea seriously enough to actually be motivated to pay for the book.
If you believe that when the theory of everything is discovered that people will immediately jump out of their computer seats simultaneously and go running out into the streets, then you are in a fantasy land. The real theory of everything is not obvious -- or it would have already been discovered. In fact, if you believe that you've already figured out the theory of everything, more or less, already, then you will be disuaded from looking into possibilities that could bear fruit. In other words, your own confidence can undermine you and cause you to ask the wrong questions in the first place. In order to understand the theory of everything, you have to be willing to give up pre-existing cherished beliefs and open your mind to possibilities that you would have never otherwise suspected. I would argue that a great starting point is the idea that space plasmas are electrical. It's an extremely old debate and the arguments on the heretical side are far more impressive than most people realize. Don't be fooled by the lack of rigorous math. Not all evidence is mathematical, and that stuff *can* be generated over time. There is nothing about EU Theory, in other words, that cannot be made to work. It's merely a choice by mainstream astrophysicists to not try to make it work.
I presume you mean "can't" explain.
The thing is this: in those sciences for which we cannot generally perform controlled laboratory experiments, the only mechanism we really have for testing theories is their predictive track record. If the mainstream theories are failing in this regard -- and they certainly are -- then there's really no other reason to believe in them.
Wallace Thornhill was able to predict all of the results of the Deep Impact Mission on the basis of EU Theory. One of the things he predicted was that a second pre-impact flash would occur for that mission, and sure enough, there were two flashes recorded. People have yet to stop and think: how could he have gotten that right by chance? What are the real chances that he publicly went on the record and just got lucky?
The assertion that mainstream astrophysicists are mis-modeling space plasmas as fluids rather than electrical phenomenon is supported by observations of morphologies in space that correspond with electrical plasmas that we know from laboratory experience; by the very words of the man who invented the math for modeling plasmas, Hannes Alfven; by simulations of spiral galaxies by Anthony Peratt that appear to suggest that electrical plasmas can generate spiral galaxies *without* any dark matter whatsoever; by rilles (canyons) on the nearby rocky planets and moons that oftentimes track or move through the terrain without regard for gravity (the Grand Canyon does just this, in fact); by Wallace Thornhill's accurate prediction of all of the results of the Deep Impact Mission using EU Theory; by a very large volume of testimony that is recorded within ancient astronomical records and historical accounts of the past; by the fossil record, which indicates that the Earth once possessed a uniform temperature over the entire planet, as we see on other planets in our solar system right now; and so many other items that I'm forced to only touch on the major ones.
People have come up with it. It's just that people here on Slashdot spend a lot of time ridiculing the theory, which in turn prevents most people from just picking up a book about it and learning it. Once people finally start reading about it, they will realize that we can explain the universe quite well using forces and particles that we already understand. We don't generally need to invent invisible particles to do the work for us. It's taking quite a while though for people to pick up on all of this.
If you don't believe me, then pick up a copy of "The Electric Sky", which serves as the qualitative basis for the theory. You will be surprised that most, if not all, of the enigmas that plague the mainstream theories actually point to electrical space plasmas.
But, I think the bigger picture of what's happening right now is that what we mathematically predicted was a perfect CMB is turning out to have "defects". It was only this past April that NewScientist ran the somewhat heretical article regarding the "axis of evil". (maybe evil for Big Bangers)
From http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19425994.0 00-axis-of-evil-a-cause-for-cosmic-concern.html:
This inspired the creation of the GalaxyZoo Project. But as I've noted in the past here and elsewhere, you guys can somewhat be forgiven for not noticing because the story run about Galaxy Zoo on Space.com did not mention anything about the CMB whatsoever -- as if there was no threat.
It's also worth noting, just for the record, that static universe theories were far more accurate in predicting the CMB's actual K value, and yet the textbooks kind of forget to mention this fact, as if it was too inconvenient to be true.
One would have to expect that there would be some resistance to calling the last 100 years or so a giant waste of time by people who spent at least 10% of their lives studying it. But, it's the right time for people to stop adopting a pseudo-skeptical stance within astrophysics, and start applying skepticism to the mainstream models too. If the CMB has come under increasing threat, then we need to take an objective look at it, and start to consider cosmological alternatives. It's what a rational person would do, at least. And a very, very good starting point for everybody would be to start by reading what the heretics are saying. Heretics are useful because they force us to play devil's advocate. The biggest heretics around these parts at least are the Electric Universe Theorists. I've been reading their materials as a layperson for a full year now, and there is nothing wrong with their theories. They currently lack the rigorous application of electrodynamics and plasma physics mathematics, but this is to be expected for a young theory. I believe that Kuhn commented on the difficulty of comparing competing theories: it's hard because you will be presented with evidence of different types, and some of these types of evidence may not be the kinds that you prefer. But, you still must accept whatever evidence you have and get on with it. And what a lot of mainstream'ers would prefer that we not realize is that people could quite easily create this missing mathematics. The funny thing is that few people have really tried. Some entrepreneurial young astrophysicist who is following the news, and who is familiar with the math of electrodynamics and plasmas, will one day realize this and make himself famous by filling the void of mathematics for EU Theory. And don't be alarmed if it all happens quite overnight because much of the material from the time of Alfven is still quite relevant if the Big Bang is not the ultimate answer. The EU Theorists have done quite an excellent job of thinkin
What most people on Slashdot do not realize is that the evidence for EU Theory spans multiple disciplines while simultaneously maintaining internal consistency across completely unrelated fields. It's going to take decades for people to realize and accept this. We are at the very beginning of a transition point.
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That said, the impending close-up's of Enceladus could really turn some heads. Enceladus has a cometary tail of sorts, which is enigmatic to NASA because the only mechanism they know of lifting that material up into the atmosphere is ice geysers resulting from tidal heating. The problem is that the tidal heating appears to only be restricted to the southern hemisphere. So, I believe that Cassini is capturing images right about now of this mysterious uplift of material. NASA will quite certainly find that the material is being uplifted along the Tiger Stripe rilles that criss-cross that planet, as a result of electrical machining. The explanation is here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060
What's pretty silly, actually, is that if you watch NASA's video of Enceladus' jet, and focus on the shadow line during the animation, you will very clearly observe the jets remain stationary as the planetary features rotate
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/139185main_PIA07762_full_
It should be very obvious if we're seeing more electrical plasma activity in our solar system because the arc points should be very hot point sources -- unlike any of NASA's preferred theories. My guess is that they will have to advocate the existence of wandering hot ice geysers! People are paying so little attention these days that, to be honest, I suspect they could get away with it.
But what's also really silly about this whole thing is their response to the observation that Enceladus' poles are warmer than its equator. This is not all that unusual within EU Theory, and they've seen it before on other planets and moons where the plasmas are electrically active. There's a lot of strong evidence that something similar used to even be true for Earth -- explaining why we see things like croc bones and ancient coral reefs at nearly all latituides of the Earth for past ages of the Earth. After a while, one would think they would stop being surprised by these sorts of things.
Isn't it also possible that the cold spot in the CMB is actually just related to the void in space, as they are suggesting? I mean, it seems more likely than all of these other things that are being suggested for the relation ...
What a GREAT question!
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