You are attempting to interpret raw data as if there is only one possible explanation for it. This is a common problem in astrophysics today. People tend to assume that since the majority of scientists are largely pursuing one primary explanation for our observations that this explanation is the only one that makes sense. In fact, we can develop multiple cosmologies if we care to do so. And the only way that we will eventually figure out which one is true is to seriously consider and compare all of the best candidates. Any cosmology that's based upon laboratory plasma physics, as is EU Theory, deserves to be a candidate because we know that space essentially *is* a giant plasma. By not developing some so that we can only focus exclusively on others, we can easily deceive ourselves that our models require regular slight adjustments to fit each new anomalous observation rather than a complete overhaul.
In this particular instance, nobody is arguing that we cannot create models for the breakdown of water into OH by ultraviolet light (photolysis). However, Hannes Alfven also presented laboratory evidence for the production of OH from silicates sputtered off comet surfaces in interactions with the solar wind. It's NASA's choice to present one single interpretation of that data, but the price they ultimately pay is that if they choose the wrong interpretation, their ability to predict cometary mission results will suffer. This is in fact what we observe to be happening right now. Not only is NASA not effectively predicting the results of cometary missions, but they are having difficulty even understanding what happened after the fact with their dirty snowball models. It takes a skeptical mind to notice it. They are very clever with their press releases.
Also, it seems a little strange that the presence of ionized water would be cited as an argument against an electric model of comets. The electric model offers a logical explanation for the presence of ionized water in a comet coma without having to extract it directly from the DRY surface of a comet nucleus.
The article you linked to about Comet Linear is the very first time (in months of trying) that I've ever actually seen a disagreement over data between EU materials and NASA's press releases -- which is an important factor for my own personal evaluation of EU theory. I have to admit that I don't actually know who is right on that one. But I'd like to point out that there are in fact some interesting footnotes to the data in the links you sent me:
The character of the comet did not change throughout the months of observation by SWAN, even when deep layers inside the nucleus were being laid bare. Comet scientists usually have to consider the possibility that the surface of the nucleus is different in composition from the interior. One lesson from the 'SWAN song' of Comet LINEAR seems to be that, in this case at least, the surface exposed at the outset was representative of the whole nucleus.
The SWAN team also suspects that Comet LINEAR was as flimsy and light as the expanded polystyrene used for packing fragile equipment. The density of its water ice may have been as low as 15 kilograms per cubic meter, compared with 917 kg/m3 for familiar non-porous ice on the Earth. Even allowing for a possibly equal mass of dust grains within the comet, a total density of 30 kg/m3 would be far less than the 500 kg/m3 often assumed by comet scientists. By this reckoning, the initial diameter of Comet LINEAR on its approach to the Sun was about 750 metres.
These facts do not exactly correspond with the existence of a large reservoir of ice or water within the comet's interior. We've seen enough comets now in pictures to know that their surfaces bear more resemblance to asteroids than to dirty snowballs. Also, the Deep Impact mission generated a giant dust up at impact, involving very fine particulates that would tend not to take that form in the presence of water.
The "theory" is as well-founded as Flat Earth. There are many qualified physicists who posted to that effect. I know enough science to detect the smell of bullshit.
If you know about science, then let me explain to you quickly what is being argued with Electric Universe Theory, and then you can decide for *yourself* rather than having to rely upon qualified physicists.
All they are saying is that plasma in space should reflect the behavior of plasmas that we see within the laboratory. This is a big deal because space basically *is* a large plasma and we know that plasma in the laboratory is an *electrical* phenomenon. In the lab, gases become plasmas with less than 1% ionization. Once a gas becomes electrical, its motions no longer have anything to do with gravity. The plasmas can continue to conduct electricity even once they've cooled and no longer glow (the dark mode). Mainstream astrophysicists are taught in magnetohydrodynamics that plasmas in space can be modeled as fluids, that plasmas can *instantaneously* neutralize any charge imbalances, and that plasmas contain frozen-in-place magnetic fields. These modeling concepts have very limited applicability in the laboratory, and yet we base our understanding of nearly all space plasmas on them. You should *expect* that astrophysicists would defend principles that they were taught in school, but you should not interpret this vigorous defense to constitute proof that everybody else is wrong. Even astrophysicists can be wrong. Nobody is impervious to that and history tells us as much. In fact, if you pay attention to the wording of NASA press releases, you will notice that they are frequently admitting that their models are wrong and must be changed on a regular basis to accommodate new observations.
But that's really just the beginning. We see numerous observations with our own Sun and elsewhere in space that are disconfirming to traditional models and yet tend to confirm the Electric Universe materials. The fact that spiral galaxies tend to rotate as a fixed plate actually *supports* the EU notion that electricity is keeping it together because we can do plasma simulations and experiments that look exactly like spiral galaxies. Arguing that it instead supports the existence of some dark matter and that this dark matter (which has never been directly observed after 20 years of trying) constitutes a massive proportion of our universe's matter is inherently non-testable (bad science). How can it ever be completely disproven? We should not be so quick to infer the existence of invisible particles and forces when their characteristics appear to nicely correlate with the behavior of particles and forces that we can demonstrate within a laboratory. Dark matter, for instance, is supposedly matter that gravitationally repels. But plasmas, unlike gravitational forces that we currently know of, can inherently induce repulsion too. Attempts to study dark matter in the universe have revealed that it is oftentimes filamentary in nature. We know from the laboratory that plasmas are also inherently filamentary (and like I said can still exert forces while not glowing).
In fact, to argue that plasma-based cosmologies are like flat earth nonsense is a slander of sorts because the universe consists almost entirely of matter within the plasma state. From the ionosphere as your starting point, you will only find matter in the non-plasma state on the other rocky planets and asteroids. It should come as no surprise that we don't fully recognize the importance of plasmas because they are relatively rare in our immediate surroundings.
When it comes to Electric Universe, Slashdot is a circus. By drawing conclusions based upon the behavior of others rather than formulating their own opinions based upon the evidence, the large majority of people on Slashdot create a monkey-like atmosphere where everybody looks to everybody else to figure out what they should believe. Slashdot is no holy grail of objectivity,
The thunderbolts folks is really a small group of about five or six guys. They've been trying to just figure out a way to attract other intelligent physicists who are willing to work outside of the mainstream and with no promise for funding for quite a while now. The only way that they've had success with this is in creating materials that can be understood by the public. If you can get to somebody *before* they enter an astrophysics program, for instance, then that student will do a better job of educating himself. To clarify further, the EU Theorists specifically argue that the magnetohydrodynamics class that astrophysics students take is improperly teaching students that they can model space plasmas as fluids. We know from laboratory plasma physics that plasmas in the lab are *electrical* phenomenon, and that their motions are controlled by currents, and vice-versa. And yet, astrophysicists continue to use fluids equations to model space plasmas. This continues even though we now observe numerous hourglass morphologies in our space observations. Hourglass morphologies are the characteristic shape for electrical plasma z-pinches that we observe within the laboratory. One of the closest we've observed, the 1987A supernova remnant, has visible cross sections of filaments that laboratory plasma physicists can precisely enumerate using electrical plasma theory. These "beads" move around in circles around one another. But the entire structure has retained its general shape and size over time, defying any attempt to call it any sort of an explosion remnant. There is nothing about our observations of this particular structure that suggest gravity is a factor. And any time you see a well-defined jet in space, you can pretty much say the same thing. Vortexes will tend to be the natural result of magnetic and electric fields, which induce particles using the right-hand rule to move in circles as they also move laterally through space. Without those fields, most particles in a well-defined jet would just disperse into space into a nebulous cloud.
There are plenty of papers out there that support plasma-based cosmologies. Search on Halton Arp, Anthony Peratt, Eric Lerner or Hannes Alfven. Anthony Peratt actually wrote a popular plasma physics book that has been used in university classes. The www.thunderbolts.info site is not designed to *prove* their theory. It's there to tell you what their theory says, and to make sure that their audience is as wide as possible. If you thought you had discovered something really important about the way the universe works, you might find it more important to describe what you found than to get bogged down in trying to prove it (which you will never convince everybody of anyways).
None of their images are doctored. They are all taken directly from NASA press releases. All of their quotes also come from those press releases. Many times, you can confirm what they're saying by merely following the link to the press release. They do a bit more citation within Don Scott's book, "The Electric Sky".
But the real issue here is that the people on Slashdot will argue with any cosmology that is not gravitationally-dominated. Mainstream astrophysicists have taken the unfortunate position that plasma in space does not reflect the behavior of plasmas we observe within the laboratory. Plasmas in the laboratory are *electrical* in nature and we only use fluids equations to represent them in very limited situations. The idea that plasmas in space are different makes it easier to model them, but there's a great case to be made that it's also the cause of the dark matter "error term" that so many people already suspect is the case. Why infer the existence of invisible particles to explain the rotational characeristics of spiral galaxies when we already know that Anthony Peratt can generate the same spiral galaxy morphologies using nothing but electrical plasmas within the laboratory and in computer simulations?
It doesn't matter how much "water" you're observing coming off of the comets if you cannot identify the source. What's particularly striking is that in the single instance where we've been able to observe the inside of a comet (when Comet Linear disintegrated), there were no water traces whatsoever in the immediate debris. An objective-minded person might infer from that that the traces of "water" you're seeing are in fact a byproduct of the comet's movements through space. The Electric Comet document explains in quite clear terms that the indicators of "water" you're observing is the result of a simple chemical reaction between the solar wind and negative oxygen ions being stripped off of the comet's surface:
The results of the Deep Impact mission were published in the journal Science.Team members reported that they found only a smattering of water ice on the surface of Tempel 1. In fact, to account for the water supposedly emitted into the coma of Tempel 1, the investigators needed 200 times more exposed water-ice than they could find.
But a much different vantage point on the water question is possible. When astronomers view the comas of comets spectroscopically, what they actually see is the hydroxyl radical (OH), which they assume to be a residue of water (H2O) broken down by the ultraviolet light of the Sun (photolysis). This assumption is not only unwarranted, it requires a speed of "processing" by solar radiation beyond anything that can be demonstrated experimentally.
The mysteries find direct answers electrically--in the transaction between a negatively charged comet nucleus and the Sun. In the electric model, negative oxygen ions are accelerated away from the comet in energetic jets, then combine preferentially with protons from the solar wind to form the observed OH radical and the neutral hydrogen gathered around the coma in vast concentric bubbles. These abundances simply confirm the energetic charge exchange between the nucleus and the Sun.
The electric model thus resolves two problems for the standard theory: 1) Cometologists have never verified that the assumed photolysis is feasible on the super-efficient scale their "explanation" requires; 2) Neutral hydrogen is far too plentiful in the coma to be the "leftover" of the hypothesized conversion of water into OH. But if the negatively charged nucleus provides the electrons in a charge exchange with the solar wind, the dilemma is resolved and the vast hydrogen envelope is a predictable effect.
You state in your response:
And even if the flash did occur prior to impact, you don't provide any model at all that explains such a phenomenon, only that you have "predicted it."
The Electric Universe Theorists merely state that plasmas in space are electrical phenomenon like the plasmas we observe within the laboratory. All they are saying is that the plasma phenomenon we observe within the laboratory scale up to galactic scales. They state that mainstream astrophysicists are using fluids equations to model plasmas in space when in fact the plasmas' movements are being controlled more by electrical forces as occurs in the lab.
I'd be interested in knowing what journal that prediction was published in the first place.
And I suppose if somebody makes a prediction and it is rejected by all journals, then that prediction doesn't count? I suppose that would be convenient for the mainstream advocates.
Finally, and most telling, is that you have plenty of expensive books available for sale from your website, but not a single bit of relevent scientific information is presented that would allow an objective person to make a judgement about your supposed theories. You operate like a con artist offering unseen answers to the gullible and line your own pockets with their ignorance.
I'm curious how you expect these people to survive. Most of them receive no funding whatsoever. They're only availabl
I'm generally open minded, but given the type of arguments used to promote the hypothesis, I'll just ignore it. While science is unfortunately resistant to change, if there really is something to the hypothesis, eventually something will come up and they'll eventually come around to the new hypothesis. I just don't buy it that the entire profession is trying to be dumb or trying to suppress new knowledge despite decades of evidence otherwise.
I don't get the sense that you've actually read what the theory says yet.
Things have definitely already "come up". Astrophysics is overflowing with anomalies. How can you even say that you even superficially understand the universe when 95% of your matter is missing? All that these guys are saying is that we can understand plasma in space by studying plasma in the laboratory. Plasma in the laboratory is an electrical phenomenon. And yet, mainstream astrophysicisists are taught in school that they can model plasma in space with fluids equations. They assume that plasmas in space can instantaneously neutralize any charge imbalances and have frozen-in-place magnetic fields. The thing is, we know from the lab that plasma's motions are affected by current flow, and vice-versa, and plasma can continue to conduct electricity in its dark mode. This is the source of the confusion. This is why we see the effects of forces within the universe and no particles there to cause those forces. It can be very difficult to observe diffuse flows of electricity over plasma.
Astrophysicists don't really take too kindly to people telling them that they've been educated incorrectly about plasmas. Who's going to want the Electric Universe Theorist in their astrophysics department? He's basically alleging that everybody else around him is wrong. It's a big problem for them figuring out how to move forward on this issue. They're only resort is to create publications that directly appeal to the public. For this reason, their arguments oftentimes seem too simplistic for the/. crowd. People around here want equations and peer reviewed journal articles and all of that. Quite a bit of that exists, but they draw the large majority of their theory on laboratory plasma physics. The thing is this though: once you get a feel for how plasma really acts within the laboratory, the things that these guys are saying will no longer sound crazy to you. If you are interested, you should read Don Scott's "The Electric Sky". By the end of that book, you will be capable of deciding for yourself if there is anything to the theory.
>>this kind of crippling ignorance among professional astrophysicists is astonishing.
Isn't it rather an indication that they're doing their job? Data which challenge our current models are the most valuable things scientists can collect, because they give researchers chance to refine their theories.
You fail to acknowledge, however, that data can occasionally disconfirm our assumptions. You present the scientific process as if it never dramatically changes directions, and we know from history that this is not the case. If you look at what's happening with comets in detail, actually, you will realize that we are already at this point for comets. The data just does not support the traditional theories anymore. And yet, we refuse to consider alternative explanations.
The Electric Universe Theorists present very strong evidence for their arguments. The problem is that nobody is listening to what they're saying. As evidenced by the responses to this article, people would rather just ridicule them.
Sir, I explored the website linked in the original story. It indicated that a number of features of the solar system were caused by electric forces; however, it failed to quantitatively show how these events could have happened. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I just don't see it anywhere linked.
Anthony Perratt has performed both computer simulations and laboratory experiments that demonstrate that spiral galaxy morphologies can be generated with electrical plasmas. Electrical plasmas can quite easily explain why these galaxies rotate as a fixed plate without any need to introduce invisible particles like dark matter.
The HR diagram for stars can be explained entirely in terms of the states and nature of plasma. Many red giant stars have surfaces that are in fact too cool given their size to accomodate fusion within their interiors. We have evidence now that numerous stars violate the rules of stellar evolution, including FG Sagittae, V605 Aquilae, V4334 Sagittarii, V838 Monocerotis, Sirius, Castor and Capella. Stellar evolution has become an untestable hypothesis in that the existence of counter-examples is never interpreted to mean that the theory has been violated.
Many of the Sun's features are more easily explained if it is largely an electrical phenomenon with fusion occurring in the corona.
All of our detailed observations of comets, when looked at together, allow only one possible conclusion: that comets are really just asteroids on elliptical orbits and that their illumination results from electrical machining.
We've seen amazingly detailed images of supernova remnants like 1987A that bear a striking resemblance to laboratory electrical plasma phenomenon. We see hourglass morphologies all over space that correspond with electrical z-pinches that occur in laboratory electrical physics experiments.
A lot of people choose to ignore these things. But certainly, we should not choose to avoid taking them seriously just because these theories aren't as advanced as the mainstream theories. These guys don't get much, if any, funding. Considering that the best they can do is re-interpet NASA press releases, I think they have actually done quite a superb job. Wallace Thornhill effectively hijacked NASA's Deep Impact mission by accurately predicting all of the results -- results which to this day continue to confound NASA. Of these successful predictions was a pre-impact flash. How could he possibly have known about that?
I recommend that you read what they're saying before formulating an opinion on it. The purpose of the thunderbolts.info site is not to prove their theory. It's to tell you what their theory is. Much of the proof for these concepts derives from laboratory plasma physics. All they're really saying is that space plasmas act just like plasmas in the laboratory -- which we know to be electrical phenomenon -- and that all of space basically *is* a plasma (which a lot of mainstreamers would actually agree on).
Have you read any Electric Universe materials, btw? How do you know that these guys are kooks? It's social custom to listen to what somebody has to say before formulating an opinion about them. I recommend Don Scott's "The Electric Sky". Until you learn what they're saying and think about their arguments, you're just a part of the noise.
After a quick look at the "electric universe" site it appears that as long as you are a "mythologist" (wtf?) and you can get a book published, then people should believe you.
It's impressive that you believe that you can both understand and evaluate a group's theory of the mechanics of the universe with "a quick look".
Dave Talbott is a mythologist. But Wallace Thornhill is a very serious physicist. And so is Eric Lerner and Anthony Peratt. And so was Hannes Alfven.
You need to read the full theory in Don Scott's book "The Electric Sky" before you conclude that it's worthless. Until then, even with your credentials, you do not even know what they're saying. How can you possibly formulate an opinion?
I don't really know all the quacks that spoil the idea but I get the feeling most of the spite is "ol school boys" attitude
There is no error in their logic. Read Don Scott's book "The Electric Sky". These guys are not quacks. They're onto something very big. But they're having a hell of a time trying to get people to read their materials. People would rather just call them names than listen.
What I like about science is that it doesn't really matter what either of you says. All that really matters is the math, testable hypotheses, and repeatability.
Actually, mainstream astrophysics is overflowing with untestable hypotheses. How can we really disprove dark matter, for instance, if we don't possess any instrument that can directly observe it? How can we disprove a black hole if they supposedly suck all matter, including light, into them?
Consensus plays a big role in interpretive sciences like astrophysics. There's just not enough time or money to investigate every single theory, and so consensus tells us where the money should be spent. The thing is, it's very easy to prematurely formulate a consensus when all you can do is interpret your observations. Without the ability to provide an input, there is a lot of room for mistakes to be made.
The electric universe people use that tactic a lot; quote some real scientists' new discovery of some physics behind space plasmas and say it proves their pet theory about how fusion doesn't really happen... of course, they never seem to say where the energy really does come from if "it's all electric." Maybe the windmill down the road?
Um, no. You should really read what their theory says before formulating an opinion on it. You seem to have your facts all wrong.
They're not alleging that fusion does not occur. They're alleging that the sun is not powered from fusion at its core. They're saying that fusion is happening in the corona, where we observe the highest temperatures for the Sun.
There are in fact many unresolved problems associated with the standard solar model that you fail to recognize -- or at least mention. The Sun's corona, for instance, is around 2 million K and yet the surface is only around 6000 K. Mainstream astrophysicists have had a hell of a time explaining how energy is transfered through the surface of the Sun without heating it up. They've resorted to suggesting that magnetic fields can store and release energy. Thing is, magnetic fields are not real entities. They don't accept that magnetic fields can only exist as a result of electric currents, which was generally accepted up until they ran into this problem and had to change physics to suit their standard solar model.
Another major problem with the Sun is that the charged particles of the solar wind that it releases continue to accelerate for millions of miles even as they pass the planets. This is not easily explained by gravity, but it is very easily explained if the Sun has a weak electric field. That's in fact how most televisions work.
Another significant problem is that solar neutrinos, which are the required result of fusion, appear to inversely correlate with the number of sunspots on the Sun's surface. This is a really, really big problem for the standard solar model because neutrinos are not charged particles and would not be affected by the magnetic fields of the sunspots. It's also a big problem because mainstream astrophysicists have asserted that the convection process of the Sun requires tens of thousands of years to complete -- and yet neutrinos appear to correlate with activity on the Sun's surface. The two processes should not be instantaneously interacting with one another.
There's also a problem with the number of neutrinos coming from the Sun. There is in fact a deficit. To fix this, astrophysicists invoked the concept of neutrino flavors -- and stated that neutrinos must be changing flavors before they reach our instruments (which can only see one type of flavor). The thing is, in order for this to explain the deficit, it's necessary to have flavor changes in only one direction. If you notice that neutrinos can change flavors in the other direction too, then that eliminates the utility of this as an explanation for the deficit.
There are also lots of very strange observations that have been made of comets that appear to indicate that comets are electrical phenomenon. In fact, Wallace Thornhill, an Electric Universe Theorist, accurately predicted the results of the Deep Impact mission -- including a pre-impact flash when Deep Impact's impactor was sent at the comet. Nobody has adequately explained why that flash would have happened, or how it is that Thornhill could have known that if his theory is wrong? But this was just one of numerous predictions he got right for that mission. Also, the craters on comets defy most attempts to prove that they are the result of impacts. Instead, they bear a striking resemblance to electrical machining with plasmas in laboratory plasma experiments. The dust that was released in the Deep Impact mission bore a striking resemblance to dust that results from the sputtering process we use to manufacture chips. The more we observe comets, they more they appear electrical. The fact that come
I'm interested in what sort of disconfirming evidence you used to "debunk" Electric Universe Theory. I've seen only name-calling and insistences that it must not be true. It seems to me that you're basing your decision on the *consensus* of the posters on Slashdot without actually reading the theory itself. The fact that people are a little too vigorous in their defense of the mainstream theories should raise some alarm bells in your head. If people are so confident that Electric Universe Theory is wrong, then why don't these people present evidence instead of just insulting the advocates? If you ask them, they will tell you that it's not their responsibility to disprove somebody else's "pet theory", or they don't have the time to waste on it. If you asked every single person that's slandering EU Theory on this forum if they have actually read it, you're going to find that virtually none of them have read any major summary of the theory. Nearly all of the mainstreamers are formulating their opinions on the basis of observing everybody else. It's a bit like a pack of monkeys.
What you need to realize is that mainstream astrophysicists are taught in college in a class called magnetohydrodynamics that they can model plasmas in space with fluid equations. But we know for a fact that plasmas in the laboratory are electrical phenomenon. In fact, we can convert a gas to electrical plasma with less than 1% ionization. We also now know that plasma constitutes nearly all of space. Any errors in modeling it would have serious ramifications. If we're teaching the astrophysicists the wrong thing in school, then you should *expect* that they will vigorously challenge anything that contradicts their teachings -- and this over-confidence will inevitably bleed into the Slashdot forums. You also need to realize that our observations of electrical plasmas in the laboratory can explain pretty much all of our observations of plasma in space, including mysteries like dark matter, unusual supernova remnants, and many unusual features of our own Sun. Mainstream astrophysicists have taken the unfortunate position that laboratory electrical plasmas just do not scale to galactic scales. But we can observe things in space that look just like electrical plasmas from the laboratory (z-pinches).
I recommend that you read at least a few pages of what these guys are saying before you formulate an opinion on the matter. A good (free) starting point would be http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf. If you find that worthwhile, then check out Don Scotts's "The Electric Sky".
Why is it "bogus" to allege that the nature of plasma can explain our observations of space? Space basically *is* a giant plasma.
Also, I highly recommend that you watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The correlation curves popularized by Al Gore have been demonstrated to exhibit an 800-year gap between temperature and co2 changes, and the temperature changes *precede* the co2 changes.
No, what's happening is that space enthusiasts and mainstream astrophysicists alike are in denial about the observations that are being made right now. You can tell just by reading the postings on this forum for this article that few people are objectively considering the evidence. Very few people have actually read enough of the Electric Universe theory to actually formulate an opinion on the subject. And this is why you have this major disparity between advocates and critics. The advocates have read "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott. They know the volume of evidence and the weight of the arguments being made. The advocates speak almost entirely in terms of evidence.
The critics, on the other hand, have formulated their opinions of Electric Universe Theory on the basis of consensus. They observed that the people around them were making fun of it and joined in. They observed that mainstream astrophysicists don't believe it. And so, they hurl insults at the advocates. But they fail to realize that what is being alleged by the EU advocates is that the mainstream astrophysicists have been incorrectly taught in school that they can model plasma in space as a fluid that instantaneously neutralizes charge imbalances and has frozen-in-place magnetic fields. Plasma in the laboratory does not act like this. It has electrical resistance and its motions and current flow are interdependent. The only thing that prevents plasma in space from having electrical resistance is the astrophysicists themselves.
I love it when people fall for the Sudbury neutrino nonsense. Mainstreamers are always so quick to jump to the conclusion that Sudbury resolved the solar neutrino problem. From what I understand, Sudbury demonstrated neutrino fluctuations in only one direction. They don't take into consideration the obvious fact that fluctuations can occur in the opposite direction too, which once confirmed, will un-resolves the neutrino problem exactly back to where we were before -- a deficit.
Cluckshot, I hope you will accept my invitation to join and regularly participate in the new Thunderbolts Forum at http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/in dex.php. I'm very impresed with your awareness. We need more knowledgeable, open-minded people like you there. It is a moderated forum where you can be free to discuss electricity in space without the high noise levels here on Slashdot.
The corona is a few hundred thousand miles away from any fusion, with dense plasma in between
Really? It was my understanding that solar neutrino production has been observed to be inversely correlated with the number of sunspots. How is this possible if neutrinos are being created in the core? They shouldn't be affected by any magnetic fields.
Finally, you portray the accepted models as a sacred cow for scientists that would do anything to protect that sacred cow. Except that the history of science has shown repeatedly that such portrayals are completely and totally false. Which means that you are either ignorant or lying or both. It doesn't matter whether the universe is nearly 100% plasma or nearly 100% swiss cheese, you aren't presenting anything worthy of consideration. It's all too obvious that you have an axe to grind against the "scientific establishment" and because of it, you are incapable of being impartial about your own pet theory or your presumed opponents. And that's before we even get into the questionable credentials of the people supporting your theory.
This is completely absurd. You're not objectively analyzing the basis for mainstream astrophysical assumptions and speculations. This forum can be a very silly place. Of all 220 or 230 critical postings for this thread, 90% are nothing more than mob-mentality ad-hominen attacks about "crackpots", "loonies", "pet theories"... all of the standard anti-Electric Universe invective. It's apparently not enough for people to focus on the evidence -- which I can deduce from your comments that you've never actually read and never probably will. What you don't understand is that your rant does not convince anybody of anything. If you want to convince people that Electric Universe Theory is incorrect, then you should first read it. And then respond to it. Otherwise, you're just part of the background noise in the debate.
The evidence you site of astronomer's supposed bafflement is rediculous, pedestrian, and unworthy of any consideration what so ever. Try again when you have some hard experimental data that both disproves current cosmological theory and supports your own.
"there is another major downside of a lower oxygen abundance. Models of the solar interior once predicted that sound waves in the Sun traveled at certain speed, a value that agreed well with the measured speed. Because the speed depends on composition, this is another way that scientists learn about the processes that take place in the Sun, what elements it is made of, and in what quantities. Now, with the Sun having half as much oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and neon, the sound speed derived from the models doesn't match the measured speed well. "Exactly what this means is not very clear, but it casts doubt on the correctness or at least the accuracy of models of stellar interiors, which are a cornerstone of modern astrophysics," he said.
Black holes have been observed to emit filamentary jets of matter that span light years. Filaments are natural features of electrical plasmas -- not the natural result of gravity. My guess is that we can create math that would generate those morphologies using complex gravitational physics, but there is nothing about the original theory of black holes that would have suggested that this should be happening. And you find that this is the case for much of astrophysics today: as we've created increasingly powerful telescopes, we've been making observations that are not consistent with the original theories. You can decide to continue retrofitting your theory to accomodate these unexpected findings, but it's also important to investigate the possibility that the original assumptions and speculations have been incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
If you cover your eyes with your hands
And like a child, count to ten,
Then the Electric Universe bogeyman will go away
And never come back again.
In this particular instance, nobody is arguing that we cannot create models for the breakdown of water into OH by ultraviolet light (photolysis). However, Hannes Alfven also presented laboratory evidence for the production of OH from silicates sputtered off comet surfaces in interactions with the solar wind. It's NASA's choice to present one single interpretation of that data, but the price they ultimately pay is that if they choose the wrong interpretation, their ability to predict cometary mission results will suffer. This is in fact what we observe to be happening right now. Not only is NASA not effectively predicting the results of cometary missions, but they are having difficulty even understanding what happened after the fact with their dirty snowball models. It takes a skeptical mind to notice it. They are very clever with their press releases.
Also, it seems a little strange that the presence of ionized water would be cited as an argument against an electric model of comets. The electric model offers a logical explanation for the presence of ionized water in a comet coma without having to extract it directly from the DRY surface of a comet nucleus.
The article you linked to about Comet Linear is the very first time (in months of trying) that I've ever actually seen a disagreement over data between EU materials and NASA's press releases -- which is an important factor for my own personal evaluation of EU theory. I have to admit that I don't actually know who is right on that one. But I'd like to point out that there are in fact some interesting footnotes to the data in the links you sent me:These facts do not exactly correspond with the existence of a large reservoir of ice or water within the comet's interior. We've seen enough comets now in pictures to know that their surfaces bear more resemblance to asteroids than to dirty snowballs. Also, the Deep Impact mission generated a giant dust up at impact, involving very fine particulates that would tend not to take that form in the presence of water.
If you know about science, then let me explain to you quickly what is being argued with Electric Universe Theory, and then you can decide for *yourself* rather than having to rely upon qualified physicists.
All they are saying is that plasma in space should reflect the behavior of plasmas that we see within the laboratory. This is a big deal because space basically *is* a large plasma and we know that plasma in the laboratory is an *electrical* phenomenon. In the lab, gases become plasmas with less than 1% ionization. Once a gas becomes electrical, its motions no longer have anything to do with gravity. The plasmas can continue to conduct electricity even once they've cooled and no longer glow (the dark mode). Mainstream astrophysicists are taught in magnetohydrodynamics that plasmas in space can be modeled as fluids, that plasmas can *instantaneously* neutralize any charge imbalances, and that plasmas contain frozen-in-place magnetic fields. These modeling concepts have very limited applicability in the laboratory, and yet we base our understanding of nearly all space plasmas on them. You should *expect* that astrophysicists would defend principles that they were taught in school, but you should not interpret this vigorous defense to constitute proof that everybody else is wrong. Even astrophysicists can be wrong. Nobody is impervious to that and history tells us as much. In fact, if you pay attention to the wording of NASA press releases, you will notice that they are frequently admitting that their models are wrong and must be changed on a regular basis to accommodate new observations.
But that's really just the beginning. We see numerous observations with our own Sun and elsewhere in space that are disconfirming to traditional models and yet tend to confirm the Electric Universe materials. The fact that spiral galaxies tend to rotate as a fixed plate actually *supports* the EU notion that electricity is keeping it together because we can do plasma simulations and experiments that look exactly like spiral galaxies. Arguing that it instead supports the existence of some dark matter and that this dark matter (which has never been directly observed after 20 years of trying) constitutes a massive proportion of our universe's matter is inherently non-testable (bad science). How can it ever be completely disproven? We should not be so quick to infer the existence of invisible particles and forces when their characteristics appear to nicely correlate with the behavior of particles and forces that we can demonstrate within a laboratory. Dark matter, for instance, is supposedly matter that gravitationally repels. But plasmas, unlike gravitational forces that we currently know of, can inherently induce repulsion too. Attempts to study dark matter in the universe have revealed that it is oftentimes filamentary in nature. We know from the laboratory that plasmas are also inherently filamentary (and like I said can still exert forces while not glowing).
In fact, to argue that plasma-based cosmologies are like flat earth nonsense is a slander of sorts because the universe consists almost entirely of matter within the plasma state. From the ionosphere as your starting point, you will only find matter in the non-plasma state on the other rocky planets and asteroids. It should come as no surprise that we don't fully recognize the importance of plasmas because they are relatively rare in our immediate surroundings.
When it comes to Electric Universe, Slashdot is a circus. By drawing conclusions based upon the behavior of others rather than formulating their own opinions based upon the evidence, the large majority of people on Slashdot create a monkey-like atmosphere where everybody looks to everybody else to figure out what they should believe. Slashdot is no holy grail of objectivity,
The thunderbolts folks is really a small group of about five or six guys. They've been trying to just figure out a way to attract other intelligent physicists who are willing to work outside of the mainstream and with no promise for funding for quite a while now. The only way that they've had success with this is in creating materials that can be understood by the public. If you can get to somebody *before* they enter an astrophysics program, for instance, then that student will do a better job of educating himself. To clarify further, the EU Theorists specifically argue that the magnetohydrodynamics class that astrophysics students take is improperly teaching students that they can model space plasmas as fluids. We know from laboratory plasma physics that plasmas in the lab are *electrical* phenomenon, and that their motions are controlled by currents, and vice-versa. And yet, astrophysicists continue to use fluids equations to model space plasmas. This continues even though we now observe numerous hourglass morphologies in our space observations. Hourglass morphologies are the characteristic shape for electrical plasma z-pinches that we observe within the laboratory. One of the closest we've observed, the 1987A supernova remnant, has visible cross sections of filaments that laboratory plasma physicists can precisely enumerate using electrical plasma theory. These "beads" move around in circles around one another. But the entire structure has retained its general shape and size over time, defying any attempt to call it any sort of an explosion remnant. There is nothing about our observations of this particular structure that suggest gravity is a factor. And any time you see a well-defined jet in space, you can pretty much say the same thing. Vortexes will tend to be the natural result of magnetic and electric fields, which induce particles using the right-hand rule to move in circles as they also move laterally through space. Without those fields, most particles in a well-defined jet would just disperse into space into a nebulous cloud.
There are plenty of papers out there that support plasma-based cosmologies. Search on Halton Arp, Anthony Peratt, Eric Lerner or Hannes Alfven. Anthony Peratt actually wrote a popular plasma physics book that has been used in university classes. The www.thunderbolts.info site is not designed to *prove* their theory. It's there to tell you what their theory says, and to make sure that their audience is as wide as possible. If you thought you had discovered something really important about the way the universe works, you might find it more important to describe what you found than to get bogged down in trying to prove it (which you will never convince everybody of anyways).
None of their images are doctored. They are all taken directly from NASA press releases. All of their quotes also come from those press releases. Many times, you can confirm what they're saying by merely following the link to the press release. They do a bit more citation within Don Scott's book, "The Electric Sky".
But the real issue here is that the people on Slashdot will argue with any cosmology that is not gravitationally-dominated. Mainstream astrophysicists have taken the unfortunate position that plasma in space does not reflect the behavior of plasmas we observe within the laboratory. Plasmas in the laboratory are *electrical* in nature and we only use fluids equations to represent them in very limited situations. The idea that plasmas in space are different makes it easier to model them, but there's a great case to be made that it's also the cause of the dark matter "error term" that so many people already suspect is the case. Why infer the existence of invisible particles to explain the rotational characeristics of spiral galaxies when we already know that Anthony Peratt can generate the same spiral galaxy morphologies using nothing but electrical plasmas within the laboratory and in computer simulations?
You state in your response:
The Electric Universe Theorists merely state that plasmas in space are electrical phenomenon like the plasmas we observe within the laboratory. All they are saying is that the plasma phenomenon we observe within the laboratory scale up to galactic scales. They state that mainstream astrophysicists are using fluids equations to model plasmas in space when in fact the plasmas' movements are being controlled more by electrical forces as occurs in the lab.
And I suppose if somebody makes a prediction and it is rejected by all journals, then that prediction doesn't count? I suppose that would be convenient for the mainstream advocates.
I'm curious how you expect these people to survive. Most of them receive no funding whatsoever. They're only availabl
You didn't answer any of that guy's legitimate questions. Then, you slandered him and his theory. And then you told him to go away.
I don't understand what the big deal is. If you disagree with the theory so much, why don't you attack it on the basis of its arguments?
By the way, have you actually read the theory?
Things have definitely already "come up". Astrophysics is overflowing with anomalies. How can you even say that you even superficially understand the universe when 95% of your matter is missing? All that these guys are saying is that we can understand plasma in space by studying plasma in the laboratory. Plasma in the laboratory is an electrical phenomenon. And yet, mainstream astrophysicisists are taught in school that they can model plasma in space with fluids equations. They assume that plasmas in space can instantaneously neutralize any charge imbalances and have frozen-in-place magnetic fields. The thing is, we know from the lab that plasma's motions are affected by current flow, and vice-versa, and plasma can continue to conduct electricity in its dark mode. This is the source of the confusion. This is why we see the effects of forces within the universe and no particles there to cause those forces. It can be very difficult to observe diffuse flows of electricity over plasma.
Astrophysicists don't really take too kindly to people telling them that they've been educated incorrectly about plasmas. Who's going to want the Electric Universe Theorist in their astrophysics department? He's basically alleging that everybody else around him is wrong. It's a big problem for them figuring out how to move forward on this issue. They're only resort is to create publications that directly appeal to the public. For this reason, their arguments oftentimes seem too simplistic for the
The Electric Universe Theorists present very strong evidence for their arguments. The problem is that nobody is listening to what they're saying. As evidenced by the responses to this article, people would rather just ridicule them.
The HR diagram for stars can be explained entirely in terms of the states and nature of plasma. Many red giant stars have surfaces that are in fact too cool given their size to accomodate fusion within their interiors. We have evidence now that numerous stars violate the rules of stellar evolution, including FG Sagittae, V605 Aquilae, V4334 Sagittarii, V838 Monocerotis, Sirius, Castor and Capella. Stellar evolution has become an untestable hypothesis in that the existence of counter-examples is never interpreted to mean that the theory has been violated.
Many of the Sun's features are more easily explained if it is largely an electrical phenomenon with fusion occurring in the corona.
All of our detailed observations of comets, when looked at together, allow only one possible conclusion: that comets are really just asteroids on elliptical orbits and that their illumination results from electrical machining.
We've seen amazingly detailed images of supernova remnants like 1987A that bear a striking resemblance to laboratory electrical plasma phenomenon. We see hourglass morphologies all over space that correspond with electrical z-pinches that occur in laboratory electrical physics experiments.
A lot of people choose to ignore these things. But certainly, we should not choose to avoid taking them seriously just because these theories aren't as advanced as the mainstream theories. These guys don't get much, if any, funding. Considering that the best they can do is re-interpet NASA press releases, I think they have actually done quite a superb job. Wallace Thornhill effectively hijacked NASA's Deep Impact mission by accurately predicting all of the results -- results which to this day continue to confound NASA. Of these successful predictions was a pre-impact flash. How could he possibly have known about that?
I recommend that you read what they're saying before formulating an opinion on it. The purpose of the thunderbolts.info site is not to prove their theory. It's to tell you what their theory is. Much of the proof for these concepts derives from laboratory plasma physics. All they're really saying is that space plasmas act just like plasmas in the laboratory -- which we know to be electrical phenomenon -- and that all of space basically *is* a plasma (which a lot of mainstreamers would actually agree on).
Have you read any Electric Universe materials, btw? How do you know that these guys are kooks? It's social custom to listen to what somebody has to say before formulating an opinion about them. I recommend Don Scott's "The Electric Sky". Until you learn what they're saying and think about their arguments, you're just a part of the noise.
If you have access to journals, you might start by searching for papers by:
Hannes Alfven
Ralph Juergens
Anthony Perratt
Eric Lerner
Dave Talbott is a mythologist. But Wallace Thornhill is a very serious physicist. And so is Eric Lerner and Anthony Peratt. And so was Hannes Alfven.
You need to read the full theory in Don Scott's book "The Electric Sky" before you conclude that it's worthless. Until then, even with your credentials, you do not even know what they're saying. How can you possibly formulate an opinion?
Consensus plays a big role in interpretive sciences like astrophysics. There's just not enough time or money to investigate every single theory, and so consensus tells us where the money should be spent. The thing is, it's very easy to prematurely formulate a consensus when all you can do is interpret your observations. Without the ability to provide an input, there is a lot of room for mistakes to be made.
Um, no. You should really read what their theory says before formulating an opinion on it. You seem to have your facts all wrong.
They're not alleging that fusion does not occur. They're alleging that the sun is not powered from fusion at its core. They're saying that fusion is happening in the corona, where we observe the highest temperatures for the Sun.
There are in fact many unresolved problems associated with the standard solar model that you fail to recognize -- or at least mention. The Sun's corona, for instance, is around 2 million K and yet the surface is only around 6000 K. Mainstream astrophysicists have had a hell of a time explaining how energy is transfered through the surface of the Sun without heating it up. They've resorted to suggesting that magnetic fields can store and release energy. Thing is, magnetic fields are not real entities. They don't accept that magnetic fields can only exist as a result of electric currents, which was generally accepted up until they ran into this problem and had to change physics to suit their standard solar model.
Another major problem with the Sun is that the charged particles of the solar wind that it releases continue to accelerate for millions of miles even as they pass the planets. This is not easily explained by gravity, but it is very easily explained if the Sun has a weak electric field. That's in fact how most televisions work.
Another significant problem is that solar neutrinos, which are the required result of fusion, appear to inversely correlate with the number of sunspots on the Sun's surface. This is a really, really big problem for the standard solar model because neutrinos are not charged particles and would not be affected by the magnetic fields of the sunspots. It's also a big problem because mainstream astrophysicists have asserted that the convection process of the Sun requires tens of thousands of years to complete -- and yet neutrinos appear to correlate with activity on the Sun's surface. The two processes should not be instantaneously interacting with one another.
There's also a problem with the number of neutrinos coming from the Sun. There is in fact a deficit. To fix this, astrophysicists invoked the concept of neutrino flavors -- and stated that neutrinos must be changing flavors before they reach our instruments (which can only see one type of flavor). The thing is, in order for this to explain the deficit, it's necessary to have flavor changes in only one direction. If you notice that neutrinos can change flavors in the other direction too, then that eliminates the utility of this as an explanation for the deficit.
There are also lots of very strange observations that have been made of comets that appear to indicate that comets are electrical phenomenon. In fact, Wallace Thornhill, an Electric Universe Theorist, accurately predicted the results of the Deep Impact mission -- including a pre-impact flash when Deep Impact's impactor was sent at the comet. Nobody has adequately explained why that flash would have happened, or how it is that Thornhill could have known that if his theory is wrong? But this was just one of numerous predictions he got right for that mission. Also, the craters on comets defy most attempts to prove that they are the result of impacts. Instead, they bear a striking resemblance to electrical machining with plasmas in laboratory plasma experiments. The dust that was released in the Deep Impact mission bore a striking resemblance to dust that results from the sputtering process we use to manufacture chips. The more we observe comets, they more they appear electrical. The fact that come
I'm interested in what sort of disconfirming evidence you used to "debunk" Electric Universe Theory. I've seen only name-calling and insistences that it must not be true. It seems to me that you're basing your decision on the *consensus* of the posters on Slashdot without actually reading the theory itself. The fact that people are a little too vigorous in their defense of the mainstream theories should raise some alarm bells in your head. If people are so confident that Electric Universe Theory is wrong, then why don't these people present evidence instead of just insulting the advocates? If you ask them, they will tell you that it's not their responsibility to disprove somebody else's "pet theory", or they don't have the time to waste on it. If you asked every single person that's slandering EU Theory on this forum if they have actually read it, you're going to find that virtually none of them have read any major summary of the theory. Nearly all of the mainstreamers are formulating their opinions on the basis of observing everybody else. It's a bit like a pack of monkeys.
f . If you find that worthwhile, then check out Don Scotts's "The Electric Sky".
What you need to realize is that mainstream astrophysicists are taught in college in a class called magnetohydrodynamics that they can model plasmas in space with fluid equations. But we know for a fact that plasmas in the laboratory are electrical phenomenon. In fact, we can convert a gas to electrical plasma with less than 1% ionization. We also now know that plasma constitutes nearly all of space. Any errors in modeling it would have serious ramifications. If we're teaching the astrophysicists the wrong thing in school, then you should *expect* that they will vigorously challenge anything that contradicts their teachings -- and this over-confidence will inevitably bleed into the Slashdot forums. You also need to realize that our observations of electrical plasmas in the laboratory can explain pretty much all of our observations of plasma in space, including mysteries like dark matter, unusual supernova remnants, and many unusual features of our own Sun. Mainstream astrophysicists have taken the unfortunate position that laboratory electrical plasmas just do not scale to galactic scales. But we can observe things in space that look just like electrical plasmas from the laboratory (z-pinches).
I recommend that you read at least a few pages of what these guys are saying before you formulate an opinion on the matter. A good (free) starting point would be http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pd
Why is it "bogus" to allege that the nature of plasma can explain our observations of space? Space basically *is* a giant plasma.
Also, I highly recommend that you watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The correlation curves popularized by Al Gore have been demonstrated to exhibit an 800-year gap between temperature and co2 changes, and the temperature changes *precede* the co2 changes.
No, what's happening is that space enthusiasts and mainstream astrophysicists alike are in denial about the observations that are being made right now. You can tell just by reading the postings on this forum for this article that few people are objectively considering the evidence. Very few people have actually read enough of the Electric Universe theory to actually formulate an opinion on the subject. And this is why you have this major disparity between advocates and critics. The advocates have read "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott. They know the volume of evidence and the weight of the arguments being made. The advocates speak almost entirely in terms of evidence.
The critics, on the other hand, have formulated their opinions of Electric Universe Theory on the basis of consensus. They observed that the people around them were making fun of it and joined in. They observed that mainstream astrophysicists don't believe it. And so, they hurl insults at the advocates. But they fail to realize that what is being alleged by the EU advocates is that the mainstream astrophysicists have been incorrectly taught in school that they can model plasma in space as a fluid that instantaneously neutralizes charge imbalances and has frozen-in-place magnetic fields. Plasma in the laboratory does not act like this. It has electrical resistance and its motions and current flow are interdependent. The only thing that prevents plasma in space from having electrical resistance is the astrophysicists themselves.
I love it when people fall for the Sudbury neutrino nonsense. Mainstreamers are always so quick to jump to the conclusion that Sudbury resolved the solar neutrino problem. From what I understand, Sudbury demonstrated neutrino fluctuations in only one direction. They don't take into consideration the obvious fact that fluctuations can occur in the opposite direction too, which once confirmed, will un-resolves the neutrino problem exactly back to where we were before -- a deficit.
n dex.php. I'm very impresed with your awareness. We need more knowledgeable, open-minded people like you there. It is a moderated forum where you can be free to discuss electricity in space without the high noise levels here on Slashdot.
Cluckshot, I hope you will accept my invitation to join and regularly participate in the new Thunderbolts Forum at http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/i
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pd
Please explain to me how it is that Wallace Thornhill was able to predict a pre-impact flash during the Deep Impact mission?
You seem to not be paying much attention to what's happening in astrophysics right now ...
From http://www.physorg.com/news97326842.html:
"there is another major downside of a lower oxygen abundance. Models of the solar interior once predicted that sound waves in the Sun traveled at certain speed, a value that agreed well with the measured speed. Because the speed depends on composition, this is another way that scientists learn about the processes that take place in the Sun, what elements it is made of, and in what quantities. Now, with the Sun having half as much oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and neon, the sound speed derived from the models doesn't match the measured speed well. "Exactly what this means is not very clear, but it casts doubt on the correctness or at least the accuracy of models of stellar interiors, which are a cornerstone of modern astrophysics," he said.
Black holes have been observed to emit filamentary jets of matter that span light years. Filaments are natural features of electrical plasmas -- not the natural result of gravity. My guess is that we can create math that would generate those morphologies using complex gravitational physics, but there is nothing about the original theory of black holes that would have suggested that this should be happening. And you find that this is the case for much of astrophysics today: as we've created increasingly powerful telescopes, we've been making observations that are not consistent with the original theories. You can decide to continue retrofitting your theory to accomodate these unexpected findings, but it's also important to investigate the possibility that the original assumptions and speculations have been incorrect.