At the risk of straining your desire to read material, I'm going to block excerpt an interesting piece on neutron stars from www.thunderbolts.info. My guess is that the thunderbolts crew will not really care so long as I include the URL, http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0601 23nebula.htm. My intention is to present an example of an alternative perspective on neutron stars, which you appear to be quite confident in. Notice how the history of the concept colors its credibility:
At the core of the Crab Nebula pictured above is a remarkable churning "wheel-and-axle" structure (inset) whose discovery shocked astronomers. No conventional model of supernova remnants ever anticipated exotic structures comparable to what is seen here. Some things are known about the Crab Nebula, however. It is close to certain that it is the result of a supernova observed from Earth in 1054 A.D. The inner ring of the central "motor" has a diameter of about one light year. Intensely energetic jets stream outward from the central light source in two directions along the axis of an intense magnetic field. Additionally, observations over time have shown that rings and strands of material are moving outward on the equatorial plane at great speeds, some up to half the speed of light.
The point of light at the center of the image is a pulsar, so called because it generates pulses at radio frequencies roughly 60 times a second. (Pulses can also be observed optically and in X-rays.)
But what cause these rapid pulses? Most astronomers today attempt to interpret pulsars using a strange idea based entirely on mathematical conjectures. They say that the pulsar is a tiny spinning "neutron star"--the collapsed remains of the historic supernova.
Neutron stars were predicted theoretically in the 1930's to be the end result of a supernova explosion. For many years astronomers doubted their existence. But then, with the discovery of the first pulsar in 1967, astronomers imagined that the pulses were due to a rapidly rotating beam of radiation sweeping past the Earth. Having ignored all of the things that electricity can do quite routinely, the theorists were required to conceive a star so dense that it could rotate at the rate of a dentists drill without flying apart. So the neutron star received a second life. The energy of the star's radiation, it was supposed, came from in-falling matter from a companion star.
The imaginative construct received no support from later observations. In the Crab Nebula, what we now see is not gravitational accretion, but material accelerated away from the central star. In fact, all of the weird and wonderful things said about neutron stars, such as the super-condensed "neutronium" or "quark" soup from which they are claimed to have formed, lie outside the realm of verifiable science. They are abstractions disconnected from nature, but required to save a paradigm that has no other force than gravity to provide compact sources of radiation.
[...]
Such speculations, resting upon the earlier flights of cosmological fancy, beg the question as to the origin of all other stars. Supernovae are exceedingly rare events, and there is no sound reason to believe that neutron stars are even physically possible.
However appealing the original logic may have been to some, the neutron star model should have been discarded when pulsars were found with supposed "spin" and cooling rates that required the mathematicians to conjure ever more dense and exotic particles-like quarks-that have never been observed.
Critics of the "neutron star" hypothesis say that it is a violation of common sense to speak of matter being gravitationally compressed to the point that the orbiting electrons in an atom are forced to join with the protons in the nucleus to form neutrons. The nearly 2000-fold difference in weight between the electron and the proton will ensure charge separa
Any competing theory must explain what we actually observe and not require unobserved processes.
Wow. You are the first person on Slashdot to apparently have read the paper. So, first of all, congratulations. It is a momentous occasion.
Actually, I don't believe in this particular instance that this is the *only* standard for determining whether or not a cosmology deserves investigation. I can think of another standard, planetary and star formation, that would without a doubt qualify EU Theory for investigation. When you get down to it, there really are only two logical ways to form stars and planets: through nebular collapse and through the z-pinch effect. These two mechanisms both represent the strongest forces in the universe that we are aware of. If you understand that you only have two primary options to begin with, then it make sense that you would study both of them. Additionally, z-pinch might better explain the unexpected variations in planetary atmospheres within the solar system than nebular collapse.
Going to the above paper that claims comets are "electrical" asteroids. Yet there's no process that would keep such an object electrically charged. With constant exposure to the Solar Wind, any charge will rapidly be neutralized
Your second statement is true, but the first statement does not follow from it. You must understand the difference between charge carriers in space and charge carriers in a plasma or an object in space. Within an object or plasma, charge can accumulate, separate and earn some protection from charge equalization with its surroundings. This is actually a very important point because it's how Kristian Birkeland theorized that the aurora borealis was the result of plasma being sent at us from the Sun. Just as you reason, Birkeland realized that if the Sun was merely sending charged particles at us, then these particles would very rapidly acquire the charge of the space that they traveled through and they'd become neutral in charge. Plasma, on the other hand, naturally develops a protective sheath around its charge which effectively protects that charge.
To counter this, the authors invent the idea that the Sun is at the bottom of a vast electrical potential. We don't observe this potential. Any charged object, like a proton or electron, when emerging from this should experience substantial acceleration (or deceleration depending on charge) which we can observe. The Earth cuts through these fields and we should see extremely active interplays of the Earth's magnetic fields and trapped charged particles with this field. We don't see any of that. Until this theory makes predictions compatible with what we actually see, it's not worth consideration.
What you're actually alleging here is that diffuse charge flows are not possible within the universe. This is more a failure of imagination than anything else because it is conceivable, and even probable, that there are charge flows within the universe that are too diffuse for us to measure over a few tens of meters. The charge differential at the Earth's distance from the Sun is perhaps only one or two electrons per cubic meter, but the charge density is far higher closer to the Sun. The thing is, we can see these phenomenon happening over millions of kilometers. I like to think about this problem in terms of scale. It is only because humans are so small compared to the flows that we have difficulty in conceiving of them. If we were a million times larger, then these diffuse flows would not seem unusual to us at all.
We actually do observe acceleration of the solar wind as it comes from the Sun. This acceleration, in fact, continues as the particles move past the Earth, Venus and Mars. This lacks any traditional explanation and it actually matches what we would expect with charges moving through a field in the same way that your television works when it accelerates electrons until they hit your screen. This is the result of the Sun's weak electric field, which
That's the creationist semantic dodge about evolutionary biology. "It's just a theory -- you should have an open mind." The process of evolution is a fact; there is a theory that explains how that process takes place, which is mostly correct but probably wrong about some of the details.
Likewise, the expansion of the universe from a hotter, denser state is a fact. There are a whole class of related models about how specifically that happened, called "Big Bang cosmology". They all agree on the gross features of the expansion, but they don't have the details pinned down exactly and won't until we know more about things like dark matter and dark energy.
I'd like to note that you've likely made your decision about Big Bang Theory without actually learning about this other alternative to the extent that you normally would of things you dismiss. Many people will say they have, but few really did. My problem is that practically nobody even *knows* what EU Theory is. I get lectured on a daily basis about why EU Theory is silly and I can typically point out that these opinions are based upon mischaracterizations with little more than a few seconds of research. Let's be real here -- nobody actually cares enough to research it. And yet everybody is so sure that it's not true. As far as I can tell, I'm actually the only person who has in fact read what EU Theory is. That doesn't mean looking up the wikipedia entry. I mean, I have read nearly all of the freely available materials. It took me about three months of my free time. I'm a normal college-educated slashdot-reading guy. I've worked at a major semiconductor manufacturing firm for a few years and coded for a dot-com for another couple years. I was an average student, but at a great school. My final judgment?
These guys make a lot of really good points. We are being obstinate idiots by not pursuing the possibility that they may be correct. There are numerous observations on Mars alone that just don't make any sense *without* electricity (and that's surely not for lack of NASA trying).
In the end though, it really comes down to one single idea: That we should first try to explain the universe in terms of forces and matter that we understand *before* resorting to un-physical forces and matter.
The major claims of the various EU theories are demonstrably false.
I'm going to ask you to back that up, actually. I'm always interested in hearing what people believe to be wrong with EU Theory. So, please, educate me.
EU theory doesn't actually have any alternatives to dark matter and dark energy; it cannot collectively explain the galactic rotation curves, origin and spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, flatness of space, Type Ia supernova observations, and so on and so forth. In fact, it can't adequately explain any single one of those phenomena without resorting to dark matter or dark energy, let alone all of them.
Okay, so this is the part where I explain to you what EU Theory is. Keep in mind that I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just going to summarize the information that I have read. You can believe whatever you want.
EU Theory proposes that the large majority of the universe (more than 99%) is made of plasma that consists of mobile electrons, protons and ions. This means that this plasma can conduct electricity. Plasma is particular about the shapes that it takes in the universe. It tends to form what are called Birkeland Currents. We know very well from plasma laboratory experiments that these Birkeland Current filaments tend to attract one another. This attraction is called the "pinch effect" or "z-pinch". This attraction is the strongest known force in the universe -- approximately 10^39 stronger than gravity -- and it decays inversely to the *single* power (not the square or the cube, as many people will try to tell you). So, you have the most abundant state of matter. You have the strongest force in the universe acting over that most abundant s
Actually, I wanted to add to my prior comments on these points specifically...
Agreed, but EU has already been compared and evaluated, in the early 60's it was found to be hoplessly inadequate compared to the currently accepted theories
You should note that EU Theory is not really the same as Catastrophism. Although they agree on some points -- like that Venus used to be a comet and was formed relatively recently -- EU Theory additionally explains the mechanism for how this is so. The advent of x-ray and radio telescopes have also changed the picture quite a bit because they both can image signs of large-scale electrical currents in the universe (and have in fact done so), which would appear to confirm some of EU Theory.
Something happened recently that you should be aware of. In June of 2005, a mission called Deep Impact shot a copper ball at Comet Tempel 1 in order to study the effect that this impact would have upon the body. The results shocked experts and we continue to wait for the analysis of those results. However, Wallace Thornhill of www.thunderbolts.info accurately predicted the results for that mission.
He predicted that prior to impact, there would be a charge equalization between the copper ball and the comet. This is the same thing that the EU Theorists say about impact craters -- that charge equalization tends to occur between a planet and any approaching body prior to any impacts that may follow. On planets, this charge equalization will oftentimes result in a burn scar and multiple smaller craters. This is an important point because it implies that planets, comets and asteroids are not necessarily charge neutral. Thornhill was right. There was a small flash of bright light as the ball approached the comet, followed by the larger flash of the impact. He made other notably correct predictions as well (from wiki):
* (1) "The discharge and/or impact may initiate a new jet on the nucleus (2) (which will be collimated -- filamentary -- not sprayed out) and (3) could even abruptly change the positions and intensities of other jets due to the sudden change in charge distribution on the comet nucleus." * (4) "The impact/electrical discharge will be into rock, (5) not loosely consolidated ice and dust. (6) The impact crater will be smaller than expected." * (7) "Tempel 1 has a low-eccentricity orbit. Therefore its charge imbalance with respect to its environment at perihelion is low. (It is a "low-voltage" comet.) Electrical interactions with Deep Impact may be slight, but they should be measurable if NASA will look for them. They would likely be similar to those of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 prior to striking Jupiter's atmosphere: The most obvious would be a flash (lightning-like discharge) shortly before impact." * (8) "An abundance of water on or below the surface of the nucleus (the underlying assumption of the "dirty snowball" hypothesis) is unlikely." * (9) "The (electric comet) model predicts a sculpted surface, distinguished by sharply defined craters, valleys, mesas, and ridges--the opposite of the softened relief expected of a sublimating "dirty snowball"."
If comets are not in fact sublimating snowballs with out-gassing jets, but rather electrical phenomenon whose jets are the result of electrical machining, then this is a big big problem for the gravitational constant G. Comets are known to exhibit something called non-gravitational acceleration, which means that they follow orbits that would appear to violate the gravitational constant. It was theorized by a man named Whipple that this was the result of gases building up inside of the comet and spurting out, throwing the comet around in strange directions. But it appears that these jets are in fact electrical machining -- which is a very different type of thing that probably does not account for the strange movements. Many EU Theorists have been proposing for some time now that there is a relation between the electrical charge of
Agreed, but EU has already been compared and evaluated, in the early 60's it was found to be hoplessly inadequate compared to the currently accepted theories. Black holes and CBR were predicted by current theory and found by observation, EU theory tacked on a bit to explain them after they were discovered, see the difference yet?
I disagree that black holes perfectly match our observations. They were in fact theorized before jets were observed, and when jets were observed, it was then proposed that black holes could *emit* radiation. Furthermore, the nature of this emission from black holes is (for at least quasar jet 3C273) synchrotronic, which implies a current is occurring. From http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9kpgc4 td:
There have been two competing theories of how emissions arise from the particles -- the "Inverse-Compton" theory proposing that the emissions occur when jet particles scatter cosmic microwave background photons, and the "Synchrotron Radiation" theory postulating a separate population of extremely energetic electrons or protons that cause the high-energy emission.
According to the researchers, while the lifetime of the X-ray producing particles is only about 100 years, the data indicate that the visibly brightest part of the jet has a length of about 100,000 light years. Since there would be insufficient time for the particles to shoot out from the black hole at close to the speed of light and then release their energy as radiation as far out as they are seen, the particles have to be accelerated locally, where they produce their emission.
"The new observations show that the flow structure of this jet is more complicated than had been assumed previously," Jester explains. "That the present evidence favors the synchrotron model deepens the mystery of how jets produce the ultra-energetic particles that radiate at X-ray wavelengths." "Our results call for a radical rethink of the physics of relativistic jets that black holes drive," said Uchiyama.
There have been additional observations that have violated the theory of black holes that I believe are discussed in that article.
There is no need for black holes in EU Theory and they were never adopted by EU Theorists to my knowledge. According to them, the black hole is the result of dividing by zero: it is the end result of modeling a very strong force (pinching Birkeland currents) with a weak one (gravity). In order to compensate for the weakness of gravity, it is necessary to involve an infinite amount of mass.
I first met you because of a comment about global warming and you may have noticed I pay scant attention to the details of your theories. However I am genuinely curious, exactly what is it that makes you think you are right and just about every scientist on the planet is wrong about everything from gravity to glaciers?
I believe that we should not necessarily be constraining our interpretations of our observations by any cosmology because that presumes that we have more confidence in our cosmology than we have come to expect in other sciences. We should be studying phenomenon objectively on a case-by-case basis, and that typically means at least considering the simplest explanation for each observation. Things like neutron stars, for instance, are far easier to explain in terms of sparking.
I'm very disappointed in how people like Halton Arp and Immanuel Velikovsky have been treated in the past. I'm still in the process of learning about those incidents, but I'm getting the general sense (from this forum and from my readings) that there is a strong need for conformity in physics today. But when I look at history, I see that the brightest minds were the most unusual people who certainly did *not* conform. I don't believe that all good things come from experts in their own domains. There is a long history of people interjecting themse
2. Peratt doesn't have any plasma simluations of galaxies. He has plasma experiments that form spiral structures. Claiming they are simluations of galaxies because they're spiral shaped makes about as much sense as claiming that ball lightning is a simulation of a star because both of them are spherical.
This is another instance of misrepresentation of EU Theory. They have *both* simulations and experimental support. Unless you are alleging that they are actually lying, they specifically state that spiral galaxies can be generated using simple plasma equations without any dark matter or dark energy to generate its rotational properties. Without that evidence, I'd be a little bit closer to where you're at.
More relevantly, they're sure that "plasma galaxies" are wrong, for obvious reasons, one of which is that plasma effects don't scale the way EU proponents claim they do. The electric force exerted on intragalactic gas, let alone on stars, due to intragalactic electromagnetic fields is negligible compared to the gravitational force. (And we do know how strong those fields are, and therefore the forces they exert.) Certainly those fields are important in understanding the ionization state of intragalactic gas, but they have little to do with galactic structure.
If the electric force were in fact negligible on the intergallactic gaps, then his computer simulations should not have worked in the first place because they are apparent within his simulations.
It appears to me that the EU Theorists are alleging that mistakes have been made in characterizing electricity within the universe. For instance, there appear to be numerous observations involving synchrotron radiation as the primary component to electron radiation, and yet no corresponding reference to the electric fields and currents which by definition must be causing them appears. From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0603 09radio.htm:
So there were attempts to simulate synchrotron radiation using only gravity and magnetic fields. But Alfvén had already come to realize that magnetism alone is not sufficient. Causative electric fields and currents are essential. The simulations failed.
In other words, it's not clear to me that the observations are being objectively interpreted.
This is just the creationist "God of the Gaps" argument all over again. Face it: the same physics which describes our Sun also describes other stars; they aren't radically different objects that just happen to look the same as ordinary stars.
Well, this is the exact point. It's the persuasive arguments *for* faraway electric stars that convinces me that there is likely an electrical explanation for our Sun too. This is not anything like creationism because I'm willing to be proven wrong. I just am not impressed with the evidence that has been offered by the astrophysicists for BB Theory or stellar evolution. Stellar evolution has been observed to be violated for various stars and even for the same star on multiple occasions.
Based on their model, astronomers had assumed that the cloud was "between 10,000 to 100,000 years into the process of gathering itself together". Its temperature was estimated at 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 240 Celsius). Traditional theory says that millions of years will pass before the cloud has collapsed sufficiently to "ignite the nuclear fusion" of a new star.
Investigators had not anticipated anything comparable to the events they observed. Extreme
The authour can be somewhat excused since he seems to be suffering from persecution complex concerning the "scientific establishment", however I do find it drepressing that he is dragging gullible people down with him.
But Big Bang Cosmology is still a *theory* right? I would think that open-minded people would want choices to compare and evaluate. You seem to want to deprive them of those choices by convincing others that I am misleading people even though evidence exists in support of both theories. Big Bang proponents tend to be hostile to the existence of any alternative that doesn't totally stack up, but I find fault with this approach. That would presume that without a doubt we are absolutely sure that EU Theory is wrong. The problem is that it hasn't fully been investigated yet. We would be dropping the theory before it was even really given a chance to develop in spite of the existence of observational evidence that supports it. That doesn't make sense to me.
Certainly nobody is being misled so long as there is no satisfactory explanation for things like dark matter and dark energy. To argue that we really only fully understand 4 or 5% of the universe and then chastise others for explaining those observed effects in terms of phenomenon we already understand is from my own perspective misleading gullible people. It is not as clear-cut as you would have people believe. If you're saying that we now definitely understand how the universe works, I'll remind you that we were just as sure each time we thought we knew many times before. Maybe in fact the human desire to feel sure that we know is actually getting in the way of being objective in the search for the truth.
Ultimately, there's no harm in educating people about EU Theory because the merits of the arguments on both sides will always win in the end. To insinuate that something bad is happening when people learn about alternative cosmologies is kind of silly. I could similarly argue that it is dangerous to declare stellar evolution the definite king in the middle of a global warming debate when we have observational evidence that the Sun is actually warming. This isn't to say that co2 isn't increasing the temperature, but rather that just decreasing co2 might not necessarily solve the warming problem. Constraining how we think about the problem certainly affects the solutions that we come up with for this particular topical problem. I would also argue that the constraints that BB Theory have imposed upon our Venus observations have almost certainly skewed our understanding of the process of greenhouse warming. Were it not for gravitational collapse theories, we would have *never* considered Venus to be our twin planet gone bad.
It's as if you're saying that people can't handle the process of thinking for themselves. Some people have categorized some of my articles on electrical activity on Mars as being informative. I believe that the only *bad* thing is if I misrepresent the theory or start taking offense at the insults that are dished at me. I have on occasion made mistakes (like for this particular/. article), but I promise, I'll get better over time. And I will do my best to never insult *anybody* for believing something different from myself. If all I can accomplish is to get people here to stop being hostile, then that will be an accomplishment in itself because people tend to think more when they're not feeling hostile.
I took the so-called "red pill", and discovered the following: "Suffice to say for now that if science is what you are looking for, you will find none where the electric sun is concerned, save that which shows it to be an untenable hypothesis."
If you continue to read down towards the end of the article, you will see some evidence in support of EU Theory. What you have to realize is that there is evidence for and against both Big Bang and EU Theories.
Once the Deep Impact results become official, in fact, astrophysics will most likely have to grapple once again with the concept of non-gravitational acceleration for comets. Whipple's theories about outgassing jets does not appear to simply follow from the observations. Of course, they may do their best to avoid actually having to think about this again.
The lack of an obvious energy input to the Sun is generally treated as the most serious flaw of the Electric Sun Theory. Astrophysicists will argue that it has never been measured and the solar wind would tend to push against and negate any possible input. I personally believe that it's still open for debate in that you can observe that diffuse electrical flows are happening in Peratt's spiral galaxy simulations using plasma (see http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040913 plasma-galaxy.htm). They are also presumably what is causing those parts of the simulation to light up. Maybe this simulation is just too simple to be compared to spiral galaxies. These are the kinds of things that people should be talking about and working on, but there's really no interest in pursuing it in the Big Bang crowd because they're pretty sure that they're already right.
Please don't push your misguided psuedo-science off as something grounded in reality.
Actually, I could say the same thing for concepts like black holes, neutron stars and gravitational collapse. These things have never actually been proven to the extent that we expect in other sciences.
Remember, scientists look for facts and work them into theory, quacks make up a "theory" and then try to find facts to fit it. The electric sun is as much science as "creation science" or "intelligent design," and should be met with the same contempt by anyone logical enough to read a science book.
You're basically saying that the pinch effect cannot happen on a universal scale even though we can generate it in the lab, even though plasma scales in both time and space, and even though we see a lot of things through our telescopes that look very much like Birkeland Currents. I personally believe that the arguments for faraway electric stars is currently much more convincing than for our own Sun, so I wouldn't dismiss the entire theory on the basis of the Electric Sun model by itself. You're attacking the weakest part of the theory and completely ignoring its better parts.
I'm guessing you're not interested based upon your tone, but if you do decide to look at the arguments in *favor* of EU Theory, then wiki is probably not the best site for that. That would be www.thunderbolts.info. But I would suggest that if you decide *not* to understand EU Theory's merits then it makes little sense to be so hostile towards it. It's really not a big deal to have disagreements in cosmology. In fact, you can make very good arguments that it is actually a *bad* thing that everybody might believe in a single cosmology. It is after all possible that we could be wrong.
Parallel plasma filaments attract one another with a force inversely proportional to their distance apart. Compare this with gravity, which attracts matter with a force inversely proportional to the SQUARE of the distance. That makes pinched Birkeland currents by far the most effective way of condensing rarefied dust and gas to form molecular clouds and stars.
This is the explanation for why EU Theorists commonly say that the electrical force is the strongest force in the universe. Pinching Birkeland currents are the archetypal form that plasma tends to take in space. It's the same thing that you see in novelty plasma globes. Those strands that go to the glass from the center are actually a pair of twisting filaments. You can see these structures with telescopes throughout the universe, but they don't have to be illuminated in order to conduct currents.
The mere existence of these types of structures in the universe would seem to imply that there is at least *some* matter that is being condensed through this method because in the presence of gravitational forces, the Birkeland currents will always win. To say that all planets and stars are the result of gravitational collapse is the same as saying that the pinch effect could never happen on a universal scale -- and I do not believe that all plasma physicists would necessarily agree with that statement. In fact, I believe that this is the debate itself.
I've been playing devil's advocate for a while now on Slashdot mostly because it appears that people tend to repeatedly misunderstand or misstate the Electric Universe arguments. But it's also, for my many "fans" out there, an attempt to elicit effective arguments *against* Electric Universe Theory. I'm willing to admit that I can in fact be wrong, but this science isn't actually like other sciences. We don't have the level of proof for concepts like black holes, neutron stars and gravitational collapse that we have for things like chemical reactions or mechanics of the cell, or whatever. My postings appear to inevitably elicit condescending conversations with people who are familiar with the math and proofs for the Big Bang. I find some of these arguments somewhat convincing, but I also find that the EU people also have some good points that are being completely ignored by the mainstream.
I've actually had a hell of a time just trying to get people to read documents which contradict their world view of physics, which has affected my own impression of the Slashdot crowd as being generally close-minded on the subject. Many times, people will suggest that the EU people should actually stick their necks out and make some predictions. Perhaps it's not being done to the *extent* that would be required of a real competing cosmology, but it has been attempted and they did succeed with the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1. I will point you to this document as I have every person before:
If you can explain why this document is in error, you will be the first. In fact, you'd be the first of many to even comment on it.
The problem is that you never seen stable naked charge. It's always paired with opposite charge. That means that the sources of static fields are no better than dipoles. That's why the electric force isn't considered at the cosmological level despite being a lot of orders of magnitude stronger on paper than the gravitational force. The strong and weak forces are even stronger, but they don't manifest on the cosmological scale at all.
This is surely a common argument. But I'm not so sure that it's true. The EU theorists point out that you can find observations that would contradict it:
Now, I'm quite sure that there is a non-EU explanation for NGC4458. My general point is that the assumptions within astrophysics today are constraining our interpretation of our observations. Since astrophysicists assume that charge separation does not commonly occur in space, they concoct alternative explanations to describe our observations that treat electricity as a secondary phenomenon. But sometimes, these alternative explanations by themselves seem ridiculous compared to the electrical explanations. Things like black holes and neutron stars can possibly have very simple electrical explanations if you're willing to accept that we may have made some mistakes with our understanding of electricity's role in space.
The fact that we can create spiral galaxies without the need for dark matter or dark energy is another example (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04091 3plasma-galaxy.htm). Astrophysicists would rather believe in these phenomenon that aren't fully understood rather than believing that plasma could be doing this on its own without any dark matter or dark energy. In the process of seeing the effect happen for a simulation of a spiral galaxy, I'm forced to wonder why this wouldn't apply to actual spiral galaxies. As you can see, the computer towards the end of the simulation actually includes significant breaks in the spiral arms. This says to me that electricity can act to shape structures of the universe even when t
Re:And the universe begins to look more electric
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Predicting Space Weather
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't have a citation, but it's not really the facts that are in dispute. It's the interpretation...
There is also another aspect to the interplanetary circuitry affecting Mars. The greatest storm on Mars (2001) occurred when the planet was nearing perihelion and was the closest it had been to Earth in about 12 years. At that time it was also being "tickled" by the Earth's plasma sheath, or magnetosphere, establishing a temporary electrical connection between Earth and Mars for the transfer of charge. It seems that Mars responded with an outburst of atmospheric discharges, these taking the form of monstrous dust devils--or more accurately, electrical tornadoes.
At the same time the electric currents flowing in the Martian ionosphere will drive the high-speed winds in the upper atmosphere.
In the two Martian dust storm images above, it appears that the dust is being jetted upwards rather than being blown along the surface. This is explicable in the electric tornado model and explains how dust is raised efficiently many kilometers into the thin air and suspended for a time electrostatically. The role of violent vortices on the leading edge of dust storms is particularly clear in the image we've placed here. Closer examination should show that these tornadoes form preferentially on high points and the sharp edges of craters or escarpments.
Even though charged particles fill space and even though the electric force is the strongest force in the universe, we're told that currents cannot be moving through space to an extent that they actually *do* anything.
The research further disabuses the notion that space is empty. The region between Earth and the Sun is full of energetic particles, most of which are generated Sun. Temperatures of a few million degrees accelerate a stream of these particles, called the solar wind, to roughly one million mph.
So, now we see charged particle interaction halfway between the Sun and the Earth? I'm guessing that we'd see similar things to varying degrees for many of the other planets too, which would tend to disagree with the notion that planets are disconnected bodies within the solar system.
I wonder where the *other* charged particles are coming from that are *not* from the Sun?
When a global dust storm that engulfed Mars coincided with the Earth's magnetosphere tail touching Mars, the coincidence was ignored because it was thought that the contact was too small to possibly be the cause of the dust storm. Maybe we should rethink this now?
The only thing that would cause astrophysicists to seriously consider competing cosmologies is the existence of a serious competing cosmology.
I'm not sure who you expect to come up with these competing theories. All of the astrophysicists are trained in Big Bang. Few astrophysicists are actually taught much in the way of electricity and magnetism. It's no surprise then that the astrophysical thought experiments have considered electricity to be unimportant. Then, when the electrical experts try to chime in and explain that some of your observations look extremely similar to things they know a *lot* about, you claim that you already have models that work and you use your limited knowledge of E&M to make statements about *their* domain of science. I'm completely unimpressed and I'm disappointed.
EU is not it. It doesn't just lack competing explanations; the ones that it proposes are manifestly false. You've bought their propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
You're missing the big picture. It shouldn't really be the responsibility of electrical engineers to develop theories of the universe. The only reason this is happening right now is because people noticed that you were trying to disregard the strongest force in the universe in your attempts to describe the universe. But really, it should be the responsbility of astrophysicists themselves to create their own competing models, and compare the models against one another. The fact that you really only have one competent model is a failure and is the fault of astrophysicists themselves. If somebody with electrical credentials suggests to you that you may be underestimating electrical phenomenon, then the logical response for the entire field would be to start requiring more electrical education in school so that you can be sure that they are wrong.
You can falsify specific Big Bang cosmologies, but you can't turn the fact that the universe is expanding into a non-fact.
But you're not *just* asserting expansion. You're also asserting that the expansion relates to the *entire* universe. And yet, there's no guarantee that we're seeing the entire universe. And for as long as man has had telescopes, he has for the most part assumed that he was seeing everything there was out there through them. I just don't see why this is any different. What has changed from when we thought that the Milky Way was all there was?
That is the way that old theories are falsified and replaced by new theories, not by your fairy-tale version where everything we know is wrong and has to be rewritten from scratch. That doesn't happen and cannot, because new discoveries do not get rid of old evidence; the new theory has to be compatible with everything that has gone before.
EU Theorists take issue with many of your *early* assumptions like gravitationally collapsing solar systems and stars, and things like black holes and neutron stars. Nobody has ever created undeniable observational proof of gravitational collapse, black holes or neutron stars. And yet, these thought experiments were allowed to solidify into accepted dogma even though there's been nothing that has completely confirmed them to the degree that is expected in other non-speculative sciences (geology and archaeology don't qualify). EU Theorists are merely proposing that those things for which you cannot produce conclusive proof of are still fair game for alternative explanations. The real problem here is that you guys allowed yourselves to become overconfident of your thought experiments. Rather than actively encouraging creative problem-solving and objective introspection, a conformist attitude prevailed.
No "shadow test" has been failed. You are probably referring to the study of Lieu et al. on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. You may have missed their followup paper in which they present evidence that the "anomaly" is due to diffuse non-thermal electrons in the cluster.
Well, I wouldn't expect them to give up. I'm sure that you guys can figure out all of your anomalies to an extent that you are satisfied. I'm especially anxious to witness the creativity that will be involved in explaining the Deep Impact mission results. That's the point of EU Theorists: that there is no contradiction or complication that can possibly cause you guys to start seriously considering competing cosmologies. It appears that there is no longer any observation that could falsify Big Bang Theory any more. When there is a problem that cannot be solved, it is merely compartmentalized and labeled for future reference until an explanation appears that is as satisfactory as can be for that cosmology. It never compromises the assumptions. It appears that nearly all of the components of the theories have had to go through various transformations over time. You can make the case that this is a natural process of creating theory, but the case can also be made that this should temper your confidence in your theories' assumptions to begin with. That side of the argument is never really discussed. The philosophy of science arguments seem to be losing importance as the math becomes increasingly complex and the phenomenon increasingly disjointed. The evolution of the discussion here is emblematic of the process that is causing this result. But the problem is not a technical one; it's a problem of maintaining context, objectivity and balance. Like I've said before, these types of problems don't require a degree in astrophysics to understand. But it's inevitable that astrophysicists will steer the discussion to areas that are less understood by whoever they are talking to, and then derive pleasure out of watching the person struggle under the load of the information thrown at them. This allows them to feel as if they are winning the argument without actually having to consider the merits of any philosophical arguments about their own methodology.
I'm not here to allege that astrophysicists and Big Bang Cosmologists can't resolve their math problems. I'm here to allege that you guys are passing off quite a bit of theory as fact and using the complexity of your subject matter to disguise this. I also believe that people can be wrong (even astrophysicists) and that it was a mistake to allow modern physics to devolve into the conformist culture that it is today.
It's commonly stated that things like aether theory and steady state universes have been thoroughly discredited. But this is again an expression of over-confidence for the queen of the sciences have in fact constrained the curiosity of people to investigate those things because of the momentum that the BB Theory has acquired within the educational system. The theory evolves into a self-fulfilling prophecy that can absorb whatever anomaly is thrown at it no matter how absurd or unnatural the solution. And when phenomenon are observed that can more simply be described without the burden of Big Bang Cosmology or stellar evolution or whatever, those explanations are overwhelmingly not considered.
You want to insist that we can never be confident in any theory just because of the mere possibility of alternatives, but this is nothing but hypocrisy; you're not attacking other theories the way you're attacking the opponents of your pet theory.
Why would I? The Big Bang monopoly is the *reason* why all of the others aren't as advanced as it. There is no desire in your field to advance all of the theories. You guys have allowed yourself to become preferential to one possible explanation even though others exist. I view it as a unique failure of science. I have no idea how to fix it, but I doubt that it will be fixed any time soon because it's clear that there is no recognition that balance would be a positive thing in the first place. As you said, the Big Bang is pretty much true anyways. Why bother, right?
New theories which model already known phenomena -- even if they do so precisely -- are of no value if they cannot predict in advance not yet known phenomena that are amenable to study in such a way that multiple observers can readily distinguish between the predictions made by the new theory and those made by the old theory.
This appears to have been accomplished with the Deep Impact mission. Nobody on Slashdot appears to be willing to read about it though. I'll post the link again, but it seems kind of useless unless people actually read it:
Your complaint that the standard theories are fine-tuned is exactly backwards. The proposed fine-tunings are new theories which make very different predictions about what observational cosmologists will see with particular instruments that are already under construction. It just so happens that the initial starting conditions of the inflationary epoch are extremely critical because so much of standard physics falls out of those conditions; moreover, these conditions drove the development of all the large scale structure of the visible universe, and there is so much of that there is ample evidence for and against extremely subtle differences among the various inflationary theories.
The problem is that many of these changes cannot be said to be "fine-tuning". The fact that we now have a universe that is only 4 or 5% normal matter is not fine-tuning. That's a system overhaul.
That is to say, the competing theories that seek to extend the standard model make very specific predictions which are readily amenable to testing by existing and being-built observational platforms. Other theories are simply uninteresting because they do not make useful predictions at this time, as those predictions are not going to be widely testable for some time.
I've thought about this. Meteor impact sites are supposedly all round because the kinetic energy of the physical impact generates an explosion that is similar for all trajectories. The EU Theory proposes that these craters are nearly all round because the charge transfer as something approaches the Earth would typically occur before impact and always occur at right angles. The difference between the two is that the rock layers would be left undisturbed in the latter case. This has been observed with Meteor Crater in Arizona. A comprehensive study of all craters would tell us if it is common, but that would require a geologist who is not hostile to EU Theory (which is perhaps rare).
We could also shoot projectiles of various typical compositions at Mars and watch what happens with x-rays. EU Theory would predict that the objects would experience charge transfer as they approach the planet and many of them would be broken up. Thing is, we already did this for Comet Tempel 1 and the results supported the *EU Model*.
Fine-tuning is not retrofitting new observations into an old model. That is the hallmark of pseudoscience. Fine-tuning is an exercise of forming hypotheses in advance of observations that make discrete predictions that different tunings do not. Those that do not match the observations are discarded.
Let's get to the meat of it then. I'm curious: if it is shown that the CMBR fails more shadow tests, will you agree that the Big Bang never happened? Or will you continue to fine-tune?
The problem with EU is that it does not make readily testable predictions in advance which are readily and widely measurable by third parties. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of EU is that a great deal of work has been done in ex post facto fitting of EU theory to extant observational data. That is part of what makes EU pseudoscience.
This isn't really the case and I can only assume that you believe so because you haven't fully investigated it. There are some falsifiable claims about the poles of Venus and Satur
By the way, Tim Thompson is notorious for passing off the existence of Big Bang theories as sufficient reason for not looking at alternative cosmologies. The point that EU theorists make is that oftentimes, the later theories do not follow from the earlier theories, but are only derived because of observations that violated the prior theories. If this happens repeatedly, and you begin to accept this as normal, then you become accustomed to developing theory that has little predictive capabilities. It's a valid point that has nothing to do with the topic of pseudosciences.
Thompson will, for instance, vehemently assert that the existence of a magnetic reconnection theory is sufficient to explain the Sun's corona when in fact magnetic reconnections do not match observations and are not supported by plasma physics. Magnetic reconnections are in fact redundant of the plasma physics concepts of double layers and electric discharge. Plasma physics is being cherry-picked when it is useful in order to explain the corona's temperature, which wasn't predicted by a nuclear fusion model for the Sun. This works in science because all of the math can be put into place and made to be pretty, but it's not really very good methodology.
EU Theorists are merely proposing that there should be an alternative line of questioning that investigates the possibility of unifying principles of the universe as opposed to breaking the universe down into little supposedly isolated parts and trying to explain them independently. A theory of everything would of course involve unifying principles, so this isn't pseudoscience. It's logical.
I think the world certainly needs people like Tim Thompson and I respect his authority in his field. I do believe that he should take a humble pill though because there are many things we still do not understand about the universe. I also strongly believe that there is not enough debate happening in cosmology today. The Big Bang Theory has a monopoly on instrumentation time and much of the journal publication space. Physics would be healthier if NASA press releases were more regularly challenged instead of just accepted as word of God. These people are in fact fallible and we should set up a system that is meant to challenge them so that we can be more sure of their results. The risk is that we could end up going down a wrong path and start building additional assumptions upon older false assumptions. The fact that we now have a universe that supposedly consists of only 4 or 5% normal matter should alarm people. How are we really explaining the universe if we're really only talking about 4 or 5% of it most of the time?
And as for string theory, it's just math. Pretty math, I hear, but just math nonetheless. Many times, these theories gain in popularity because nobody can disprove them. And few people can disprove them because few people can understand them.
Big Bang cosmology predicted the CMBR and its blackbody spectrum.
And yet failed the first galactic shadow test. I'm really curious how you will respond if it is shown for a second and third time that the light is *not* coming from far away. Will you stick to your guns in spite of the evidence, or will you become curious about other cosmologies as an objective person would?
Its inflationary extension later predicted the angular anisotropies that are now being observed.
Anisotropy certainly doesn't *prove* Big Bang any more than plasma cosmology could (which EU Theory heavily draws upon). A cosmology based upon plasma would by default include this sort of stuff because this is what plasma does. This is a common problem with Big Bang arguments: they oftentimes claim that their theory is proven by things that can result from other cosmologies as well.
Inflation also predicts the large-scale statistical distribution of galaxies
If you come up with a theory whose purpose is to explain the current structure of the universe, then you should not be surprised when it in fact does just that. The math can be made to work, but working math does not mean proof of physical concepts.
Big Bang cosmology also predicted the Hubble expansion... Which Hubble would have never proposed if he had observed the unusual redshift distribution of quasars *first*.
the observed luminosity-redshift relation... Which is violated by an objective observation of quasars.
and the light element nucleosynthesis ratios.... Which due to the proposed existence of dark matter and dark energy really only relate to some supposedly minuscule amount of matter. But that aside, once again, there are *other* explanations for why these ratios might be observed. It could just be a natural result of stellar fusion. Hoyle apparently talks about this in his book "A Different Approach to Cosmology: From a Static Universe through the Big Bang towards Reality", but I have not read it.
The point is that it is important when trying to prove something that you make sure that there are no other explanations and you should put effort into identifying anomalies. This doesn't appear to be important to Big Bang proponents. They are far more interested in generating data in support of the theory.
At this point in time, I have to interrupt myself from further investigation of your evidence. It's my belief that we can draw conclusions about whether or not to believe complex arguments on the basis of an evaluation of just a few pieces of that evidence. I see where you're generally going here and I'm unimpressed. I was hoping that you were going to be throwing stuff at me that was harder to refute.
all of the alternative redshift explanations you proposed are wrong... Astrophysicists did not arrive at the expanding universe explanation because they ignored the alternatives; the alternatives simply don't work.
This is another interesting facet of Big Bang theory -- that we're not supposed to believe our eyes over the theory. I can look at those two pictures and determine that quasars are in *front* of spiral galaxies. You have yet to explain why my eyes are wrong other than to assert that they are. Are you alleging that these are not quasars?
Don't be absurd. Thermal turbulence doesn't predict that Martian dust devils are perpetual motion machines any more than it does terrestrial dust devils.
I'm talking about the global dust storms. Nobody has even proposed a model yet for why they ever stop other than the EU guys.
It is easy to construct a computer simulation of a storm system driven by thermal effects which behaves the same way real storms do. Where is the simluation of the same system driven by electricity?
Good question. Does it not exist because it *can't* be made? Has anybody actually tried?
... because it does not make their jobs any easier, since EU theory neither simplifies the standard theories without losing accuracy, nor does it extend current understanding by making accurate predictions that the standard theories do not.
This is completely false. EU Theory eliminates the need for dark matter and dark energy, explains numerous mysteries associated with a nuclear-only model for the Sun, explains why stars do not always follow their stellar evolutions, explains how spiral galaxies can rotate at the speeds that they do without invoking any strange matter or forces, explains how gravity is related to electricity, explains why we cannot predict the weather very well, explains how it is possible that stars can be forming in nebulae even though many nebulae's spectra have been observed to mimic that of electrical phenomenon here on Earth, proposes a far superior explanation for why large-scale structures in the universe are filamentary, proposes an explanation for why so many neutron stars are actually binary star pairs, proposes a far simpler explanation for how neutron stars can flicker so fast and why this flickering has been observed to glitch, explains why Meteor Crater in Arizona is like other craters round and yet has undisturbed rock layers beneath it, explains why we are observing upper-atmosphere lightning that reaches up to 40 miles above the surface of the planet, explains why asteroids and comets look so similar to one another, explains why the Stardust mission captured cometary materials that can *only* have been formed under high temperatures, explains (and predicted) all of the Deep Impact results (which remain unexplained by NASA to this day), offers an explanation for why we observe non-gravitational acceleration for comets and an absence of "jets" to push the comets around, offers a good explanation for why the Sun goes through 11-year cycles, explains why quasars have been observed to be ejected from the centers of spiral galaxies and offers some math to explain how quasar redshifts vary as they move away from those spiral galaxies, and as a bonus, explains why the dinosaurs went extinct and how it's possible that birds could have existed in the past with 40-60 foot wingspans, explains why dust devils on Mars are electrified, explains how those dust devils can exist in the first place given that Mars' atmosphere is only 1% of the Earth's, explains how it is possible for Mars' global dust storms to raise dust particles 40 miles off of the surface of that planet without the benefit of wind (which cannot exist with only 1% of our atmosphere), proposes a pretty good explanation for the Great Chicago Fire, explains why some comets have been observed to flare up in the presence of the gas giant planets, and finally, it explains why the dust storms on Mars started when they did and why they ever actually stop.
That's a pretty impressive list. And I'm sure I missed some items too.
Until then, nobody is stopping EU people from working out their theories in hopes of demonstrating greater accuracy or easier application (without loss of accuracy) than the standard ones.
The problem is that they've had a lot of time to theorize now. They have lots of theories. There are at least ten recent books on the subject. Although there are obviously alternative more popular theories for all of this stuff, nobody's really poked *any* holes in the stuff they've been saying so far. To the contrary, observations of huge magnetic fields in space have only confirmed that huge currents are flowing out there. Comets appear to in fact be no different than asteroids, and the results of the Deep Impact mission were precisely predicted by Wallace Thornhill. You eventually reach a wall though with theory, especially when your theory proposes that things are interconnected. If you can't observe the interconnections in detail, then you can never really draw up the detailed math that would complete the theory.
If you really talked to astrophysicists and cosmologists,
Furthermore, Big Bang cosmology made a number of predictions that were subsequently confirmed.
I'm interested in hearing more about this, but unless you are more specific, it's not very convincing.
(Incidentally, note that quasars in front of galaxies only falsifies models of quasars, not the Big Bang; AFAIK, not even Arp is disputing that galaxies at high redshift are distant and receding.)
If it can be shown that there are redshift components *other* than just recessional velocity for any observed star, then we must re-evaluate the use of redshift for determining the distance to all stars that cannot be distanced using parallax or whatever other distancing techniques exist. To assume that whatever is altering the redshifts of quasars is *only* happening for quasars and not any other types of stars is very typical of the compartmentalization that occurs in astrophysics today.
The universe is not homogeneous and isotropic on that scale. It is, however, homogeneous and isotropic on cosmological scales. The formation of filamentary structures is not a "problem" for the Big Bang; in fact, computer models predict such structures.
But these filamentary structures both coincidentally point to *us*. I'm sure you would agree that this can only happen so many times before it becomes a problem.
The fact of the matter is that dark matter explains a number of independent astrophysical phenomena in a consistent manner. There is no reason to expect an ad-hoc fudge to do so.
Just because something *can* explain something doesn't mean that it does. You admit that there are gaps in our knowledge about things like dark matter, but you do not allow these gaps to affect your confidence in the theories.
There are certainly no electric effects observed to be strong enough to cause the weather.
This statement is not supported by observational evidence of planets in our solar system. And this is a common problem that astrophysicists make when trying to understand phenomenon throughout the solar system: they ignore that similar phenomenon on multiple planets might have common causes. Instead, they assume that all bodies in space are isolated even though we know that planets can, for instance, "touch" each other with their plasma tails.
Atmospheric density on Mars is only 1% of that on Earth and yet Mars has dust devils that reach 5 miles into its atmosphere and dwarf Earthly tornadoes. How is wind happening within this virtual vacuum on Mars to the extent that it can cause these dust devils? Mars occasionally is engulfed by global dust storms that elevate particles up to 40 miles above the surface of the planet. Since this is a virtual vacuum, how are they possible? What is lifting the dust particles into the atmosphere? Without any "fluid" to push around other than the dust itself, thermal and mechanical explanations are less convincing than they are here on Earth.
These observations inspired scientists to study dust devils here on Earth, and sure enough they exhibit strong electric fields of 4,000 volts per meter. Now, if you see a weather phenomenon with electrical characteristics on both Mars *and* the Earth, then you'd be smart to ask if the electricity is driving the dust devils on both planets.
Most scientists believe that the Mars dust storms are thermal in nature because they appear to coincide with the planet's closest approach to the Sun. In fact, this is the case for the biggest dust storm ever observed on Mars in 2001. However, it is also true that that dust storm coincided with a point in Mars' orbit when it was in the path of Earth's plasma tail (the magnetosphere). The thermal explanation for dust storms fails to explain why they ever stop and NASA scientists have admitted as much.
Yeah, I agree. But I don't think you can conclude that this might account for all of the electrical evidence we're seeing because at least some of the craters we're seeing involve plasma flows at right angles from the ground to the object (or its plasma trail). And contrary to atmospheric scientists, astrophysicists, NASA *and* meteorologists, this can happen in the upper atmosphere too if the conditions are right. According to EU Theory, electrical storm activity is not a *function* of weather. It drives weather and is itself a function of Earth's electrical interaction with outer space. Intense storm clouds are nothing more than a conductive pathway for a leaky capacitor. This is why we cannot always accurately predict the weather -- because there is a galactic input to the weather system. This would also explain why planets far away from the Sun can still have very active weather systems.
The existence of upper atmosphere lightning is a very important point because few people realize that when the Space Shuttle Columbia was brought down, an amateur photographer was lucky enough to snap a picture of the shuttle's plasma trail at the very moment that the malfunction occurred. In this picture, you can clearly make out a bolt of lightning that connects up with the trail and then follows the trail in the direction of the Shuttle. This subject is covered at the holoscience site ( http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y42 4y) and the actual image is available here: http://www.weatherwars.info/index.php?news_id=30&s tart=0&category_id=&parent_id=0&arcyear=&arcmonth=
Pilots see upper atmosphere lightning all the time, but if the weather system is some sort of self-contained system that ignores all electrical input from outer space, then this stuff should not really exist. It rocks the foundations of the notion that bodies in space are neutrally charged.
NASA disputed the image on the basis that upper-atmosphere should not exist, but also because they did not pick up any sonic recordings of lightning from their ground sensors. Well, this is kind of silly because if they refuse to believe that it even exists, then how would they even know what sonic footprint to look for on the tapes? It might not even be in the audio range for those recorders. Certainly, the air is a different density up there.
When I think of astronauts landing on Mars to locate the "water", I have a similar image in my mind of them traveling all that way only to be zapped by electricity instead. It may very well turn out that Mars is far too electrical to safely sustain a base. At least, if we're going to send anybody there, I highly recommend that they all be both electrical engineers and doctors.
I admit that this is completely how it appears, and you should be given credit for actually thinking about the problem (which is more than most people do). But we're talking about plasma physics and electrodynamics here, and we can model the behavior of plasma in the lab and simulate it on computers. It's a common misconception that you can apply electrostatic charge principles to the plasma universe that surrounds us. Plasmas naturally develop protective sheaths around themselves; they don't resemble point charges in space like in electrostatics. There is a link that discusses this exact issue (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050 301pithballs.htm) and I'm going to pull a topical quote from it:
Bodies immersed in plasma aren't isolated; they are connected by circuits. They often aren't at equilibrium; most astronomical bodies are radiating energy because they are in unstable conditions and are moving toward equilibrium. Currents in plasma contract into linear filaments; and the force between filaments decreases linearly with distance, which makes it the most powerful long-range force in the universe. Plasma divides into cells that are separated by capacitor-like double layers; and this ensures that plasma phenomena are characterized by conditions of non-isotropy, discontinuity and inhomogeneity.
Furthermore, the electrical charge required to blow a 200 metre wide crater in the surface of a planet is going to completely ionize the meteor.
That is not necessarily what we observe when we see comets break apart. They fragment and pieces oftentimes make it to the ground.
Assuming it didn't snuff itself out of existence, the descent through the Earth's atmosphere would drain off any major charge imbalance long before the rock hit the surface.
That would actually depend in part on how much charge is present to begin with. We're really just speculating here though. We can do better than that.
You may have heard about the the Great Chicago Fire. That fire actually ignited simultaneously all over North America and it appears to have coincided with Earth passing through the debris trail of Comet Biela, which observations suggest broke apart just prior. It's a completely fascinating story that you can access at:
This is a completely unique situation because if it is true that this was cometary debris, then this would be the only time that modern man has ever actually up-close witnessed an "impact" (comets are really no different from asteroids, except that their electrical charge would be more intense if their plasma tail is illuminated in space). What is most striking about the firsthand accounts is the *electrical* nature of these impacts. Not only did the debris rain down in the form of "ball lightning", which you may be aware of, but many houses became electrified to the extent that discharges between metallic objects within the houses appeared to cause house fires. One man was electrocuted by the change he had in both pockets!
So, you have theory in terms of plasma physics, electrodynamics and Electric Universe Theory. You have geological evidence in the ground here on Earth and in a more limited sense on other planets like Mars. You have numerous potential firsthand accounts from a single incident. You can argue the case for *more* evidence, but we're running out of potential evidentiary sour
Ignore for a second all of the arguments about electricity. Think for a second what it must feel like to be an astrophysicist working at NASA or frequently publishing in journals. Think about the prestige and the respect that comes along with that. Now imagine that these people are also in a sense stewards of our planet. We may one day owe our existences to these people. We would expect, or at least hope as our protectors, that they would be able to toss aside things like bias, arrogance or any other character flaws they may have -- like Captain Kirk or Spock would have. We would hope that they would have strong, pure character and our expectations of that come through in shows like Star Trek.
But if you actually talk to astrophysicists, you quickly realize that they don't match up character-wise to our idols. They are completely unable to accept the notion that they may be wrong. This comes through crystal-clear in conversations that I've had and observed with them. They are unable to accept that the widespread indoctrination of Big Bang Theory in our schools biases them against other theories. They are far too fast to find faults in alternative cosmologies and they lack enough curiosity of anomalies to even maintain the appearance of objectivity. Most see no reason to waste their time even debating EU Theory. It has all the components of a Greek tragedy and it is real.
This is a major problem. Even if I am wrong about the electrical shit, this must stop because everybody agrees that we will one day need to call upon these people for help. And in the middle of a crisis is the last point in time when we should be working on character flaws or theories of the universe. The stewards of our planet should be both intelligent *and* humble if we are to survive in the long-term as a human race. And you don't have to be an astrophysicist to understand *that*.
Actually, many talented geologists have generated data that support the notion that meteors exchange charge with planets prior to any subsequent impacts. Meteor Crater in Arizona is an excellent example and I direct you to a summary of the evidence at http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0601 31crater.htm. The discoveries include:
- George P Merrill concluded that quartz glass found in the crater could only be produced by intense heat, "similar to the heat generated by a lightning strike on sand".
- Merrill also pointed to the *undisturbed rock beds* below the crater. We are told that most craters are round because the kinetic energy of their impact creates a ginormous explosion which isn't affected by the angle at which bodies strike the Earth, but the rock beds at least in this case are undisturbed. So, which is it? The theory appears to contradict itself.
- Daniel Moreau Barringer, a mining engineer who first declared the crater to be from a meteor, noticed that the debris field was laid down roughly in layers that reversed the strata of the surrounding terrain. This is actually what happens when a rotating, crater-producing electric arc works its way down through the surface layers of soil.
- Furthermore, the presence of nearby rilles (or sinuous channels) and fulgarites both suggest electrical origins. Fulgurites are only known to result from lightning strikes.
- A more recent analysis from 2005 by Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona indicates the likelihood of substantial fragmentation of the body prior to striking the ground.
So, it's not that this concept is ignoring the work of talented geologists. It's that many geologists are ignoring this theory because although all of this evidence exists, very few people are suggesting that meteors tend to trade charge with the bodies they strike prior to collision. The reason that they do not suggest this is because we've all been taught that bodies in space do not acquire, possess or trade charge under any circumstances -- an assumption that has no basis whatsoever and that is causing a great number of problems for archaeology, geology and astronomy at the moment. It can similarly be shown that NASA is ignoring the electrical nature of Mars' features in the same way. This is not a small issue either because so long as all of these scientists continue to be allowed to insist that electricity plays no part in our solar system, then they will continue to insist that it plays no part in the larger universe too -- and so long as this is the case, we will continue to not fully understand our surroundings. And since we can only defend ourselves from those things which we understand, we continue on a potentially self-destructive path.
So, yes, it is *very* important that geologists get this right. It sounds silly, but the long-term survival of our planet to some extent depends on a small handful of astrophysicists and geologists at NASA swallowing their pride and admitting that perhaps there is a chance that they have been wrong. I don't know how many astrophysicists you've met, but the chances aren't so good of that. I have yet to meet one so far that is actually humble.
Plasma scientists have found that if these discharges last long enough, in fact, the walls of the craters will scallop as the Birkeland Currents twist around one another. This morphology is observed especially on comets and asteroids, but does not make so much sense in terms of physical impacts on the asteroids and comets. The thought that so many asteroids and comets would have so many craters -- large, *flat* craters -- tends to violate believability to an open-minded person that these are actually impacts.
The *only* reason that we don't blame electrical machining is because astrophysics tends to assume that bodies in space do not acquire and trade charge with surrounding space and other bodies. This is a pretty absurd assumption considering that interstellar space is filled with charged particles. But it is most likely why we end up with silly concepts like dark matter and dark energy... If you weren't looking for large-scale electrical transfers in the universe, you'd see an existence of a strong force (10^39 stronger than gravity, actually) and the absence of matter to impart it.
What's that white stuff around the crater's rim? Is that just a trick of the light? If it's not could whatever it is be the same material as the 'flow?' It has a similar intensity to the light-colored 'flow.'
Slashdot Mirror
Any competing theory must explain what we actually observe and not require unobserved processes.
Wow. You are the first person on Slashdot to apparently have read the paper. So, first of all, congratulations. It is a momentous occasion.
Actually, I don't believe in this particular instance that this is the *only* standard for determining whether or not a cosmology deserves investigation. I can think of another standard, planetary and star formation, that would without a doubt qualify EU Theory for investigation. When you get down to it, there really are only two logical ways to form stars and planets: through nebular collapse and through the z-pinch effect. These two mechanisms both represent the strongest forces in the universe that we are aware of. If you understand that you only have two primary options to begin with, then it make sense that you would study both of them. Additionally, z-pinch might better explain the unexpected variations in planetary atmospheres within the solar system than nebular collapse.
Going to the above paper that claims comets are "electrical" asteroids. Yet there's no process that would keep such an object electrically charged. With constant exposure to the Solar Wind, any charge will rapidly be neutralized
Your second statement is true, but the first statement does not follow from it. You must understand the difference between charge carriers in space and charge carriers in a plasma or an object in space. Within an object or plasma, charge can accumulate, separate and earn some protection from charge equalization with its surroundings. This is actually a very important point because it's how Kristian Birkeland theorized that the aurora borealis was the result of plasma being sent at us from the Sun. Just as you reason, Birkeland realized that if the Sun was merely sending charged particles at us, then these particles would very rapidly acquire the charge of the space that they traveled through and they'd become neutral in charge. Plasma, on the other hand, naturally develops a protective sheath around its charge which effectively protects that charge.
To counter this, the authors invent the idea that the Sun is at the bottom of a vast electrical potential. We don't observe this potential. Any charged object, like a proton or electron, when emerging from this should experience substantial acceleration (or deceleration depending on charge) which we can observe. The Earth cuts through these fields and we should see extremely active interplays of the Earth's magnetic fields and trapped charged particles with this field. We don't see any of that. Until this theory makes predictions compatible with what we actually see, it's not worth consideration.
What you're actually alleging here is that diffuse charge flows are not possible within the universe. This is more a failure of imagination than anything else because it is conceivable, and even probable, that there are charge flows within the universe that are too diffuse for us to measure over a few tens of meters. The charge differential at the Earth's distance from the Sun is perhaps only one or two electrons per cubic meter, but the charge density is far higher closer to the Sun. The thing is, we can see these phenomenon happening over millions of kilometers. I like to think about this problem in terms of scale. It is only because humans are so small compared to the flows that we have difficulty in conceiving of them. If we were a million times larger, then these diffuse flows would not seem unusual to us at all.
We actually do observe acceleration of the solar wind as it comes from the Sun. This acceleration, in fact, continues as the particles move past the Earth, Venus and Mars. This lacks any traditional explanation and it actually matches what we would expect with charges moving through a field in the same way that your television works when it accelerates electrons until they hit your screen. This is the result of the Sun's weak electric field, which
That's the creationist semantic dodge about evolutionary biology. "It's just a theory -- you should have an open mind." The process of evolution is a fact; there is a theory that explains how that process takes place, which is mostly correct but probably wrong about some of the details.
Likewise, the expansion of the universe from a hotter, denser state is a fact. There are a whole class of related models about how specifically that happened, called "Big Bang cosmology". They all agree on the gross features of the expansion, but they don't have the details pinned down exactly and won't until we know more about things like dark matter and dark energy.
I'd like to note that you've likely made your decision about Big Bang Theory without actually learning about this other alternative to the extent that you normally would of things you dismiss. Many people will say they have, but few really did. My problem is that practically nobody even *knows* what EU Theory is. I get lectured on a daily basis about why EU Theory is silly and I can typically point out that these opinions are based upon mischaracterizations with little more than a few seconds of research. Let's be real here -- nobody actually cares enough to research it. And yet everybody is so sure that it's not true. As far as I can tell, I'm actually the only person who has in fact read what EU Theory is. That doesn't mean looking up the wikipedia entry. I mean, I have read nearly all of the freely available materials. It took me about three months of my free time. I'm a normal college-educated slashdot-reading guy. I've worked at a major semiconductor manufacturing firm for a few years and coded for a dot-com for another couple years. I was an average student, but at a great school. My final judgment?
These guys make a lot of really good points. We are being obstinate idiots by not pursuing the possibility that they may be correct. There are numerous observations on Mars alone that just don't make any sense *without* electricity (and that's surely not for lack of NASA trying).
In the end though, it really comes down to one single idea: That we should first try to explain the universe in terms of forces and matter that we understand *before* resorting to un-physical forces and matter.
The major claims of the various EU theories are demonstrably false.
I'm going to ask you to back that up, actually. I'm always interested in hearing what people believe to be wrong with EU Theory. So, please, educate me.
EU theory doesn't actually have any alternatives to dark matter and dark energy; it cannot collectively explain the galactic rotation curves, origin and spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, flatness of space, Type Ia supernova observations, and so on and so forth. In fact, it can't adequately explain any single one of those phenomena without resorting to dark matter or dark energy, let alone all of them.
Okay, so this is the part where I explain to you what EU Theory is. Keep in mind that I'm not trying to convince you. I'm just going to summarize the information that I have read. You can believe whatever you want.
EU Theory proposes that the large majority of the universe (more than 99%) is made of plasma that consists of mobile electrons, protons and ions. This means that this plasma can conduct electricity. Plasma is particular about the shapes that it takes in the universe. It tends to form what are called Birkeland Currents. We know very well from plasma laboratory experiments that these Birkeland Current filaments tend to attract one another. This attraction is called the "pinch effect" or "z-pinch". This attraction is the strongest known force in the universe -- approximately 10^39 stronger than gravity -- and it decays inversely to the *single* power (not the square or the cube, as many people will try to tell you). So, you have the most abundant state of matter. You have the strongest force in the universe acting over that most abundant s
Agreed, but EU has already been compared and evaluated, in the early 60's it was found to be hoplessly inadequate compared to the currently accepted theories
You should note that EU Theory is not really the same as Catastrophism. Although they agree on some points -- like that Venus used to be a comet and was formed relatively recently -- EU Theory additionally explains the mechanism for how this is so. The advent of x-ray and radio telescopes have also changed the picture quite a bit because they both can image signs of large-scale electrical currents in the universe (and have in fact done so), which would appear to confirm some of EU Theory.
Something happened recently that you should be aware of. In June of 2005, a mission called Deep Impact shot a copper ball at Comet Tempel 1 in order to study the effect that this impact would have upon the body. The results shocked experts and we continue to wait for the analysis of those results. However, Wallace Thornhill of www.thunderbolts.info accurately predicted the results for that mission.
He predicted that prior to impact, there would be a charge equalization between the copper ball and the comet. This is the same thing that the EU Theorists say about impact craters -- that charge equalization tends to occur between a planet and any approaching body prior to any impacts that may follow. On planets, this charge equalization will oftentimes result in a burn scar and multiple smaller craters. This is an important point because it implies that planets, comets and asteroids are not necessarily charge neutral. Thornhill was right. There was a small flash of bright light as the ball approached the comet, followed by the larger flash of the impact. He made other notably correct predictions as well (from wiki):
If comets are not in fact sublimating snowballs with out-gassing jets, but rather electrical phenomenon whose jets are the result of electrical machining, then this is a big big problem for the gravitational constant G. Comets are known to exhibit something called non-gravitational acceleration, which means that they follow orbits that would appear to violate the gravitational constant. It was theorized by a man named Whipple that this was the result of gases building up inside of the comet and spurting out, throwing the comet around in strange directions. But it appears that these jets are in fact electrical machining -- which is a very different type of thing that probably does not account for the strange movements. Many EU Theorists have been proposing for some time now that there is a relation between the electrical charge of
I disagree that black holes perfectly match our observations. They were in fact theorized before jets were observed, and when jets were observed, it was then proposed that black holes could *emit* radiation. Furthermore, the nature of this emission from black holes is (for at least quasar jet 3C273) synchrotronic, which implies a current is occurring. From http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9kpgc4 td:
There have been additional observations that have violated the theory of black holes that I believe are discussed in that article.
There is no need for black holes in EU Theory and they were never adopted by EU Theorists to my knowledge. According to them, the black hole is the result of dividing by zero: it is the end result of modeling a very strong force (pinching Birkeland currents) with a weak one (gravity). In order to compensate for the weakness of gravity, it is necessary to involve an infinite amount of mass.
I first met you because of a comment about global warming and you may have noticed I pay scant attention to the details of your theories. However I am genuinely curious, exactly what is it that makes you think you are right and just about every scientist on the planet is wrong about everything from gravity to glaciers?
I believe that we should not necessarily be constraining our interpretations of our observations by any cosmology because that presumes that we have more confidence in our cosmology than we have come to expect in other sciences. We should be studying phenomenon objectively on a case-by-case basis, and that typically means at least considering the simplest explanation for each observation. Things like neutron stars, for instance, are far easier to explain in terms of sparking.
I'm very disappointed in how people like Halton Arp and Immanuel Velikovsky have been treated in the past. I'm still in the process of learning about those incidents, but I'm getting the general sense (from this forum and from my readings) that there is a strong need for conformity in physics today. But when I look at history, I see that the brightest minds were the most unusual people who certainly did *not* conform. I don't believe that all good things come from experts in their own domains. There is a long history of people interjecting themse
This is another instance of misrepresentation of EU Theory. They have *both* simulations and experimental support. Unless you are alleging that they are actually lying, they specifically state that spiral galaxies can be generated using simple plasma equations without any dark matter or dark energy to generate its rotational properties. Without that evidence, I'd be a little bit closer to where you're at.
More relevantly, they're sure that "plasma galaxies" are wrong, for obvious reasons, one of which is that plasma effects don't scale the way EU proponents claim they do. The electric force exerted on intragalactic gas, let alone on stars, due to intragalactic electromagnetic fields is negligible compared to the gravitational force. (And we do know how strong those fields are, and therefore the forces they exert.) Certainly those fields are important in understanding the ionization state of intragalactic gas, but they have little to do with galactic structure.
If the electric force were in fact negligible on the intergallactic gaps, then his computer simulations should not have worked in the first place because they are apparent within his simulations.
It appears to me that the EU Theorists are alleging that mistakes have been made in characterizing electricity within the universe. For instance, there appear to be numerous observations involving synchrotron radiation as the primary component to electron radiation, and yet no corresponding reference to the electric fields and currents which by definition must be causing them appears. From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0603 09radio.htm:
In other words, it's not clear to me that the observations are being objectively interpreted.
This is just the creationist "God of the Gaps" argument all over again. Face it: the same physics which describes our Sun also describes other stars; they aren't radically different objects that just happen to look the same as ordinary stars.
Well, this is the exact point. It's the persuasive arguments *for* faraway electric stars that convinces me that there is likely an electrical explanation for our Sun too. This is not anything like creationism because I'm willing to be proven wrong. I just am not impressed with the evidence that has been offered by the astrophysicists for BB Theory or stellar evolution. Stellar evolution has been observed to be violated for various stars and even for the same star on multiple occasions.
One of the most convincing observations that I've read about is the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory's imaging of a star-forming region called R Corona Australis (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050 304starbirth.htm):
The authour can be somewhat excused since he seems to be suffering from persecution complex concerning the "scientific establishment", however I do find it drepressing that he is dragging gullible people down with him.
/. article), but I promise, I'll get better over time. And I will do my best to never insult *anybody* for believing something different from myself. If all I can accomplish is to get people here to stop being hostile, then that will be an accomplishment in itself because people tend to think more when they're not feeling hostile.
But Big Bang Cosmology is still a *theory* right? I would think that open-minded people would want choices to compare and evaluate. You seem to want to deprive them of those choices by convincing others that I am misleading people even though evidence exists in support of both theories. Big Bang proponents tend to be hostile to the existence of any alternative that doesn't totally stack up, but I find fault with this approach. That would presume that without a doubt we are absolutely sure that EU Theory is wrong. The problem is that it hasn't fully been investigated yet. We would be dropping the theory before it was even really given a chance to develop in spite of the existence of observational evidence that supports it. That doesn't make sense to me.
Certainly nobody is being misled so long as there is no satisfactory explanation for things like dark matter and dark energy. To argue that we really only fully understand 4 or 5% of the universe and then chastise others for explaining those observed effects in terms of phenomenon we already understand is from my own perspective misleading gullible people. It is not as clear-cut as you would have people believe. If you're saying that we now definitely understand how the universe works, I'll remind you that we were just as sure each time we thought we knew many times before. Maybe in fact the human desire to feel sure that we know is actually getting in the way of being objective in the search for the truth.
Ultimately, there's no harm in educating people about EU Theory because the merits of the arguments on both sides will always win in the end. To insinuate that something bad is happening when people learn about alternative cosmologies is kind of silly. I could similarly argue that it is dangerous to declare stellar evolution the definite king in the middle of a global warming debate when we have observational evidence that the Sun is actually warming. This isn't to say that co2 isn't increasing the temperature, but rather that just decreasing co2 might not necessarily solve the warming problem. Constraining how we think about the problem certainly affects the solutions that we come up with for this particular topical problem. I would also argue that the constraints that BB Theory have imposed upon our Venus observations have almost certainly skewed our understanding of the process of greenhouse warming. Were it not for gravitational collapse theories, we would have *never* considered Venus to be our twin planet gone bad.
It's as if you're saying that people can't handle the process of thinking for themselves. Some people have categorized some of my articles on electrical activity on Mars as being informative. I believe that the only *bad* thing is if I misrepresent the theory or start taking offense at the insults that are dished at me. I have on occasion made mistakes (like for this particular
And I've added your book to my list. Thank you.
I took the so-called "red pill", and discovered the following: "Suffice to say for now that if science is what you are looking for, you will find none where the electric sun is concerned, save that which shows it to be an untenable hypothesis."
3 plasma-galaxy.htm). They are also presumably what is causing those parts of the simulation to light up. Maybe this simulation is just too simple to be compared to spiral galaxies. These are the kinds of things that people should be talking about and working on, but there's really no interest in pursuing it in the Big Bang crowd because they're pretty sure that they're already right.
If you continue to read down towards the end of the article, you will see some evidence in support of EU Theory. What you have to realize is that there is evidence for and against both Big Bang and EU Theories.
Once the Deep Impact results become official, in fact, astrophysics will most likely have to grapple once again with the concept of non-gravitational acceleration for comets. Whipple's theories about outgassing jets does not appear to simply follow from the observations. Of course, they may do their best to avoid actually having to think about this again.
The lack of an obvious energy input to the Sun is generally treated as the most serious flaw of the Electric Sun Theory. Astrophysicists will argue that it has never been measured and the solar wind would tend to push against and negate any possible input. I personally believe that it's still open for debate in that you can observe that diffuse electrical flows are happening in Peratt's spiral galaxy simulations using plasma (see http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04091
Please don't push your misguided psuedo-science off as something grounded in reality.
Actually, I could say the same thing for concepts like black holes, neutron stars and gravitational collapse. These things have never actually been proven to the extent that we expect in other sciences.
Remember, scientists look for facts and work them into theory, quacks make up a "theory" and then try to find facts to fit it. The electric sun is as much science as "creation science" or "intelligent design," and should be met with the same contempt by anyone logical enough to read a science book.
You're basically saying that the pinch effect cannot happen on a universal scale even though we can generate it in the lab, even though plasma scales in both time and space, and even though we see a lot of things through our telescopes that look very much like Birkeland Currents. I personally believe that the arguments for faraway electric stars is currently much more convincing than for our own Sun, so I wouldn't dismiss the entire theory on the basis of the Electric Sun model by itself. You're attacking the weakest part of the theory and completely ignoring its better parts.
I'm guessing you're not interested based upon your tone, but if you do decide to look at the arguments in *favor* of EU Theory, then wiki is probably not the best site for that. That would be www.thunderbolts.info. But I would suggest that if you decide *not* to understand EU Theory's merits then it makes little sense to be so hostile towards it. It's really not a big deal to have disagreements in cosmology. In fact, you can make very good arguments that it is actually a *bad* thing that everybody might believe in a single cosmology. It is after all possible that we could be wrong.
This is the explanation for why EU Theorists commonly say that the electrical force is the strongest force in the universe. Pinching Birkeland currents are the archetypal form that plasma tends to take in space. It's the same thing that you see in novelty plasma globes. Those strands that go to the glass from the center are actually a pair of twisting filaments. You can see these structures with telescopes throughout the universe, but they don't have to be illuminated in order to conduct currents.
The mere existence of these types of structures in the universe would seem to imply that there is at least *some* matter that is being condensed through this method because in the presence of gravitational forces, the Birkeland currents will always win. To say that all planets and stars are the result of gravitational collapse is the same as saying that the pinch effect could never happen on a universal scale -- and I do not believe that all plasma physicists would necessarily agree with that statement. In fact, I believe that this is the debate itself.
I've been playing devil's advocate for a while now on Slashdot mostly because it appears that people tend to repeatedly misunderstand or misstate the Electric Universe arguments. But it's also, for my many "fans" out there, an attempt to elicit effective arguments *against* Electric Universe Theory. I'm willing to admit that I can in fact be wrong, but this science isn't actually like other sciences. We don't have the level of proof for concepts like black holes, neutron stars and gravitational collapse that we have for things like chemical reactions or mechanics of the cell, or whatever. My postings appear to inevitably elicit condescending conversations with people who are familiar with the math and proofs for the Big Bang. I find some of these arguments somewhat convincing, but I also find that the EU people also have some good points that are being completely ignored by the mainstream.
I've actually had a hell of a time just trying to get people to read documents which contradict their world view of physics, which has affected my own impression of the Slashdot crowd as being generally close-minded on the subject. Many times, people will suggest that the EU people should actually stick their necks out and make some predictions. Perhaps it's not being done to the *extent* that would be required of a real competing cosmology, but it has been attempted and they did succeed with the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1. I will point you to this document as I have every person before:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf
If you can explain why this document is in error, you will be the first. In fact, you'd be the first of many to even comment on it.
The problem is that you never seen stable naked charge. It's always paired with opposite charge. That means that the sources of static fields are no better than dipoles. That's why the electric force isn't considered at the cosmological level despite being a lot of orders of magnitude stronger on paper than the gravitational force. The strong and weak forces are even stronger, but they don't manifest on the cosmological scale at all.
This is surely a common argument. But I'm not so sure that it's true. The EU theorists point out that you can find observations that would contradict it:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040803 charge-space.htm
Now, I'm quite sure that there is a non-EU explanation for NGC4458. My general point is that the assumptions within astrophysics today are constraining our interpretation of our observations. Since astrophysicists assume that charge separation does not commonly occur in space, they concoct alternative explanations to describe our observations that treat electricity as a secondary phenomenon. But sometimes, these alternative explanations by themselves seem ridiculous compared to the electrical explanations. Things like black holes and neutron stars can possibly have very simple electrical explanations if you're willing to accept that we may have made some mistakes with our understanding of electricity's role in space.
The fact that we can create spiral galaxies without the need for dark matter or dark energy is another example (http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04091 3plasma-galaxy.htm). Astrophysicists would rather believe in these phenomenon that aren't fully understood rather than believing that plasma could be doing this on its own without any dark matter or dark energy. In the process of seeing the effect happen for a simulation of a spiral galaxy, I'm forced to wonder why this wouldn't apply to actual spiral galaxies. As you can see, the computer towards the end of the simulation actually includes significant breaks in the spiral arms. This says to me that electricity can act to shape structures of the universe even when t
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/051
Even though charged particles fill space and even though the electric force is the strongest force in the universe, we're told that currents cannot be moving through space to an extent that they actually *do* anything.
The research further disabuses the notion that space is empty. The region between Earth and the Sun is full of energetic particles, most of which are generated Sun. Temperatures of a few million degrees accelerate a stream of these particles, called the solar wind, to roughly one million mph.
So, now we see charged particle interaction halfway between the Sun and the Earth? I'm guessing that we'd see similar things to varying degrees for many of the other planets too, which would tend to disagree with the notion that planets are disconnected bodies within the solar system.
I wonder where the *other* charged particles are coming from that are *not* from the Sun?
When a global dust storm that engulfed Mars coincided with the Earth's magnetosphere tail touching Mars, the coincidence was ignored because it was thought that the contact was too small to possibly be the cause of the dust storm. Maybe we should rethink this now?
The only thing that would cause astrophysicists to seriously consider competing cosmologies is the existence of a serious competing cosmology.
I'm not sure who you expect to come up with these competing theories. All of the astrophysicists are trained in Big Bang. Few astrophysicists are actually taught much in the way of electricity and magnetism. It's no surprise then that the astrophysical thought experiments have considered electricity to be unimportant. Then, when the electrical experts try to chime in and explain that some of your observations look extremely similar to things they know a *lot* about, you claim that you already have models that work and you use your limited knowledge of E&M to make statements about *their* domain of science. I'm completely unimpressed and I'm disappointed.
EU is not it. It doesn't just lack competing explanations; the ones that it proposes are manifestly false. You've bought their propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
You're missing the big picture. It shouldn't really be the responsibility of electrical engineers to develop theories of the universe. The only reason this is happening right now is because people noticed that you were trying to disregard the strongest force in the universe in your attempts to describe the universe. But really, it should be the responsbility of astrophysicists themselves to create their own competing models, and compare the models against one another. The fact that you really only have one competent model is a failure and is the fault of astrophysicists themselves. If somebody with electrical credentials suggests to you that you may be underestimating electrical phenomenon, then the logical response for the entire field would be to start requiring more electrical education in school so that you can be sure that they are wrong.
You can falsify specific Big Bang cosmologies, but you can't turn the fact that the universe is expanding into a non-fact.
But you're not *just* asserting expansion. You're also asserting that the expansion relates to the *entire* universe. And yet, there's no guarantee that we're seeing the entire universe. And for as long as man has had telescopes, he has for the most part assumed that he was seeing everything there was out there through them. I just don't see why this is any different. What has changed from when we thought that the Milky Way was all there was?
That is the way that old theories are falsified and replaced by new theories, not by your fairy-tale version where everything we know is wrong and has to be rewritten from scratch. That doesn't happen and cannot, because new discoveries do not get rid of old evidence; the new theory has to be compatible with everything that has gone before.
EU Theorists take issue with many of your *early* assumptions like gravitationally collapsing solar systems and stars, and things like black holes and neutron stars. Nobody has ever created undeniable observational proof of gravitational collapse, black holes or neutron stars. And yet, these thought experiments were allowed to solidify into accepted dogma even though there's been nothing that has completely confirmed them to the degree that is expected in other non-speculative sciences (geology and archaeology don't qualify). EU Theorists are merely proposing that those things for which you cannot produce conclusive proof of are still fair game for alternative explanations. The real problem here is that you guys allowed yourselves to become overconfident of your thought experiments. Rather than actively encouraging creative problem-solving and objective introspection, a conformist attitude prevailed.
No "shadow test" has been failed. You are probably referring to the study of Lieu et al. on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. You may have missed their followup paper in which they present evidence that the "anomaly" is due to diffuse non-thermal electrons in the cluster.
Well, I wouldn't expect them to give up. I'm sure that you guys can figure out all of your anomalies to an extent that you are satisfied. I'm especially anxious to witness the creativity that will be involved in explaining the Deep Impact mission results. That's the point of EU Theorists: that there is no contradiction or complication that can possibly cause you guys to start seriously considering competing cosmologies. It appears that there is no longer any observation that could falsify Big Bang Theory any more. When there is a problem that cannot be solved, it is merely compartmentalized and labeled for future reference until an explanation appears that is as satisfactory as can be for that cosmology. It never compromises the assumptions. It appears that nearly all of the components of the theories have had to go through various transformations over time. You can make the case that this is a natural process of creating theory, but the case can also be made that this should temper your confidence in your theories' assumptions to begin with. That side of the argument is never really discussed. The philosophy of science arguments seem to be losing importance as the math becomes increasingly complex and the phenomenon increasingly disjointed. The evolution of the discussion here is emblematic of the process that is causing this result. But the problem is not a technical one; it's a problem of maintaining context, objectivity and balance. Like I've said before, these types of problems don't require a degree in astrophysics to understand. But it's inevitable that astrophysicists will steer the discussion to areas that are less understood by whoever they are talking to, and then derive pleasure out of watching the person struggle under the load of the information thrown at them. This allows them to feel as if they are winning the argument without actually having to consider the merits of any philosophical arguments about their own methodology.
I'm not here to allege that astrophysicists and Big Bang Cosmologists can't resolve their math problems. I'm here to allege that you guys are passing off quite a bit of theory as fact and using the complexity of your subject matter to disguise this. I also believe that people can be wrong (even astrophysicists) and that it was a mistake to allow modern physics to devolve into the conformist culture that it is today.
It's commonly stated that things like aether theory and steady state universes have been thoroughly discredited. But this is again an expression of over-confidence for the queen of the sciences have in fact constrained the curiosity of people to investigate those things because of the momentum that the BB Theory has acquired within the educational system. The theory evolves into a self-fulfilling prophecy that can absorb whatever anomaly is thrown at it no matter how absurd or unnatural the solution. And when phenomenon are observed that can more simply be described without the burden of Big Bang Cosmology or stellar evolution or whatever, those explanations are overwhelmingly not considered.
You want to insist that we can never be confident in any theory just because of the mere possibility of alternatives, but this is nothing but hypocrisy; you're not attacking other theories the way you're attacking the opponents of your pet theory.
Why would I? The Big Bang monopoly is the *reason* why all of the others aren't as advanced as it. There is no desire in your field to advance all of the theories. You guys have allowed yourself to become preferential to one possible explanation even though others exist. I view it as a unique failure of science. I have no idea how to fix it, but I doubt that it will be fixed any time soon because it's clear that there is no recognition that balance would be a positive thing in the first place. As you said, the Big Bang is pretty much true anyways. Why bother, right?
New theories which model already known phenomena -- even if they do so precisely -- are of no value if they cannot predict in advance not yet known phenomena that are amenable to study in such a way that multiple observers can readily distinguish between the predictions made by the new theory and those made by the old theory.
This appears to have been accomplished with the Deep Impact mission. Nobody on Slashdot appears to be willing to read about it though. I'll post the link again, but it seems kind of useless unless people actually read it:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf
Your complaint that the standard theories are fine-tuned is exactly backwards. The proposed fine-tunings are new theories which make very different predictions about what observational cosmologists will see with particular instruments that are already under construction. It just so happens that the initial starting conditions of the inflationary epoch are extremely critical because so much of standard physics falls out of those conditions; moreover, these conditions drove the development of all the large scale structure of the visible universe, and there is so much of that there is ample evidence for and against extremely subtle differences among the various inflationary theories.
The problem is that many of these changes cannot be said to be "fine-tuning". The fact that we now have a universe that is only 4 or 5% normal matter is not fine-tuning. That's a system overhaul.
That is to say, the competing theories that seek to extend the standard model make very specific predictions which are readily amenable to testing by existing and being-built observational platforms. Other theories are simply uninteresting because they do not make useful predictions at this time, as those predictions are not going to be widely testable for some time.
I've thought about this. Meteor impact sites are supposedly all round because the kinetic energy of the physical impact generates an explosion that is similar for all trajectories. The EU Theory proposes that these craters are nearly all round because the charge transfer as something approaches the Earth would typically occur before impact and always occur at right angles. The difference between the two is that the rock layers would be left undisturbed in the latter case. This has been observed with Meteor Crater in Arizona. A comprehensive study of all craters would tell us if it is common, but that would require a geologist who is not hostile to EU Theory (which is perhaps rare).
We could also shoot projectiles of various typical compositions at Mars and watch what happens with x-rays. EU Theory would predict that the objects would experience charge transfer as they approach the planet and many of them would be broken up. Thing is, we already did this for Comet Tempel 1 and the results supported the *EU Model*.
Fine-tuning is not retrofitting new observations into an old model. That is the hallmark of pseudoscience. Fine-tuning is an exercise of forming hypotheses in advance of observations that make discrete predictions that different tunings do not. Those that do not match the observations are discarded.
Let's get to the meat of it then. I'm curious: if it is shown that the CMBR fails more shadow tests, will you agree that the Big Bang never happened? Or will you continue to fine-tune?
The problem with EU is that it does not make readily testable predictions in advance which are readily and widely measurable by third parties. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of EU is that a great deal of work has been done in ex post facto fitting of EU theory to extant observational data. That is part of what makes EU pseudoscience.
This isn't really the case and I can only assume that you believe so because you haven't fully investigated it. There are some falsifiable claims about the poles of Venus and Satur
By the way, Tim Thompson is notorious for passing off the existence of Big Bang theories as sufficient reason for not looking at alternative cosmologies. The point that EU theorists make is that oftentimes, the later theories do not follow from the earlier theories, but are only derived because of observations that violated the prior theories. If this happens repeatedly, and you begin to accept this as normal, then you become accustomed to developing theory that has little predictive capabilities. It's a valid point that has nothing to do with the topic of pseudosciences.
Thompson will, for instance, vehemently assert that the existence of a magnetic reconnection theory is sufficient to explain the Sun's corona when in fact magnetic reconnections do not match observations and are not supported by plasma physics. Magnetic reconnections are in fact redundant of the plasma physics concepts of double layers and electric discharge. Plasma physics is being cherry-picked when it is useful in order to explain the corona's temperature, which wasn't predicted by a nuclear fusion model for the Sun. This works in science because all of the math can be put into place and made to be pretty, but it's not really very good methodology.
EU Theorists are merely proposing that there should be an alternative line of questioning that investigates the possibility of unifying principles of the universe as opposed to breaking the universe down into little supposedly isolated parts and trying to explain them independently. A theory of everything would of course involve unifying principles, so this isn't pseudoscience. It's logical.
I think the world certainly needs people like Tim Thompson and I respect his authority in his field. I do believe that he should take a humble pill though because there are many things we still do not understand about the universe. I also strongly believe that there is not enough debate happening in cosmology today. The Big Bang Theory has a monopoly on instrumentation time and much of the journal publication space. Physics would be healthier if NASA press releases were more regularly challenged instead of just accepted as word of God. These people are in fact fallible and we should set up a system that is meant to challenge them so that we can be more sure of their results. The risk is that we could end up going down a wrong path and start building additional assumptions upon older false assumptions. The fact that we now have a universe that supposedly consists of only 4 or 5% normal matter should alarm people. How are we really explaining the universe if we're really only talking about 4 or 5% of it most of the time?
And as for string theory, it's just math. Pretty math, I hear, but just math nonetheless. Many times, these theories gain in popularity because nobody can disprove them. And few people can disprove them because few people can understand them.
And yet failed the first galactic shadow test. I'm really curious how you will respond if it is shown for a second and third time that the light is *not* coming from far away. Will you stick to your guns in spite of the evidence, or will you become curious about other cosmologies as an objective person would?
Its inflationary extension later predicted the angular anisotropies that are now being observed.
Anisotropy certainly doesn't *prove* Big Bang any more than plasma cosmology could (which EU Theory heavily draws upon). A cosmology based upon plasma would by default include this sort of stuff because this is what plasma does. This is a common problem with Big Bang arguments: they oftentimes claim that their theory is proven by things that can result from other cosmologies as well.
Inflation also predicts the large-scale statistical distribution of galaxies
If you come up with a theory whose purpose is to explain the current structure of the universe, then you should not be surprised when it in fact does just that. The math can be made to work, but working math does not mean proof of physical concepts.
Big Bang cosmology also predicted the Hubble expansion
the observed luminosity-redshift relation
and the light element nucleosynthesis ratios.
The point is that it is important when trying to prove something that you make sure that there are no other explanations and you should put effort into identifying anomalies. This doesn't appear to be important to Big Bang proponents. They are far more interested in generating data in support of the theory.
At this point in time, I have to interrupt myself from further investigation of your evidence. It's my belief that we can draw conclusions about whether or not to believe complex arguments on the basis of an evaluation of just a few pieces of that evidence. I see where you're generally going here and I'm unimpressed. I was hoping that you were going to be throwing stuff at me that was harder to refute.
all of the alternative redshift explanations you proposed are wrong
This is another interesting facet of Big Bang theory -- that we're not supposed to believe our eyes over the theory. I can look at those two pictures and determine that quasars are in *front* of spiral galaxies. You have yet to explain why my eyes are wrong other than to assert that they are. Are you alleging that these are not quasars?
Don't be absurd. Thermal turbulence doesn't predict that Martian dust devils are perpetual motion machines any more than it does terrestrial dust devils.
I'm talking about the global dust storms. Nobody has even proposed a model yet for why they ever stop other than the EU guys.
It is easy to construct a computer simulation of a storm system driven by thermal effects which behaves the same way real storms do. Where is the simluation of the same system driven by electricity?
Good question. Does it not exist because it *can't* be made? Has anybody actually tried?
... because it does not make their jobs any easier, since EU theory neither simplifies the standard theories without losing accuracy, nor does it extend current understanding by making accurate predictions that the standard theories do not.
This is completely false. EU Theory eliminates the need for dark matter and dark energy, explains numerous mysteries associated with a nuclear-only model for the Sun, explains why stars do not always follow their stellar evolutions, explains how spiral galaxies can rotate at the speeds that they do without invoking any strange matter or forces, explains how gravity is related to electricity, explains why we cannot predict the weather very well, explains how it is possible that stars can be forming in nebulae even though many nebulae's spectra have been observed to mimic that of electrical phenomenon here on Earth, proposes a far superior explanation for why large-scale structures in the universe are filamentary, proposes an explanation for why so many neutron stars are actually binary star pairs, proposes a far simpler explanation for how neutron stars can flicker so fast and why this flickering has been observed to glitch, explains why Meteor Crater in Arizona is like other craters round and yet has undisturbed rock layers beneath it, explains why we are observing upper-atmosphere lightning that reaches up to 40 miles above the surface of the planet, explains why asteroids and comets look so similar to one another, explains why the Stardust mission captured cometary materials that can *only* have been formed under high temperatures, explains (and predicted) all of the Deep Impact results (which remain unexplained by NASA to this day), offers an explanation for why we observe non-gravitational acceleration for comets and an absence of "jets" to push the comets around, offers a good explanation for why the Sun goes through 11-year cycles, explains why quasars have been observed to be ejected from the centers of spiral galaxies and offers some math to explain how quasar redshifts vary as they move away from those spiral galaxies, and as a bonus, explains why the dinosaurs went extinct and how it's possible that birds could have existed in the past with 40-60 foot wingspans, explains why dust devils on Mars are electrified, explains how those dust devils can exist in the first place given that Mars' atmosphere is only 1% of the Earth's, explains how it is possible for Mars' global dust storms to raise dust particles 40 miles off of the surface of that planet without the benefit of wind (which cannot exist with only 1% of our atmosphere), proposes a pretty good explanation for the Great Chicago Fire, explains why some comets have been observed to flare up in the presence of the gas giant planets, and finally, it explains why the dust storms on Mars started when they did and why they ever actually stop.
That's a pretty impressive list. And I'm sure I missed some items too.
Until then, nobody is stopping EU people from working out their theories in hopes of demonstrating greater accuracy or easier application (without loss of accuracy) than the standard ones.
The problem is that they've had a lot of time to theorize now. They have lots of theories. There are at least ten recent books on the subject. Although there are obviously alternative more popular theories for all of this stuff, nobody's really poked *any* holes in the stuff they've been saying so far. To the contrary, observations of huge magnetic fields in space have only confirmed that huge currents are flowing out there. Comets appear to in fact be no different than asteroids, and the results of the Deep Impact mission were precisely predicted by Wallace Thornhill. You eventually reach a wall though with theory, especially when your theory proposes that things are interconnected. If you can't observe the interconnections in detail, then you can never really draw up the detailed math that would complete the theory.
If you really talked to astrophysicists and cosmologists,
Furthermore, Big Bang cosmology made a number of predictions that were subsequently confirmed.
I'm interested in hearing more about this, but unless you are more specific, it's not very convincing.
(Incidentally, note that quasars in front of galaxies only falsifies models of quasars, not the Big Bang; AFAIK, not even Arp is disputing that galaxies at high redshift are distant and receding.)
If it can be shown that there are redshift components *other* than just recessional velocity for any observed star, then we must re-evaluate the use of redshift for determining the distance to all stars that cannot be distanced using parallax or whatever other distancing techniques exist. To assume that whatever is altering the redshifts of quasars is *only* happening for quasars and not any other types of stars is very typical of the compartmentalization that occurs in astrophysics today.
The universe is not homogeneous and isotropic on that scale. It is, however, homogeneous and isotropic on cosmological scales. The formation of filamentary structures is not a "problem" for the Big Bang; in fact, computer models predict such structures.
But these filamentary structures both coincidentally point to *us*. I'm sure you would agree that this can only happen so many times before it becomes a problem.
The fact of the matter is that dark matter explains a number of independent astrophysical phenomena in a consistent manner. There is no reason to expect an ad-hoc fudge to do so.
Just because something *can* explain something doesn't mean that it does. You admit that there are gaps in our knowledge about things like dark matter, but you do not allow these gaps to affect your confidence in the theories.
There are certainly no electric effects observed to be strong enough to cause the weather.
This statement is not supported by observational evidence of planets in our solar system. And this is a common problem that astrophysicists make when trying to understand phenomenon throughout the solar system: they ignore that similar phenomenon on multiple planets might have common causes. Instead, they assume that all bodies in space are isolated even though we know that planets can, for instance, "touch" each other with their plasma tails.
Atmospheric density on Mars is only 1% of that on Earth and yet Mars has dust devils that reach 5 miles into its atmosphere and dwarf Earthly tornadoes. How is wind happening within this virtual vacuum on Mars to the extent that it can cause these dust devils? Mars occasionally is engulfed by global dust storms that elevate particles up to 40 miles above the surface of the planet. Since this is a virtual vacuum, how are they possible? What is lifting the dust particles into the atmosphere? Without any "fluid" to push around other than the dust itself, thermal and mechanical explanations are less convincing than they are here on Earth.
An image or two can say a lot:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0509 16dustdevil.htm
These observations inspired scientists to study dust devils here on Earth, and sure enough they exhibit strong electric fields of 4,000 volts per meter. Now, if you see a weather phenomenon with electrical characteristics on both Mars *and* the Earth, then you'd be smart to ask if the electricity is driving the dust devils on both planets.
Most scientists believe that the Mars dust storms are thermal in nature because they appear to coincide with the planet's closest approach to the Sun. In fact, this is the case for the biggest dust storm ever observed on Mars in 2001. However, it is also true that that dust storm coincided with a point in Mars' orbit when it was in the path of Earth's plasma tail (the magnetosphere). The thermal explanation for dust storms fails to explain why they ever stop and NASA scientists have admitted as much.
On V
Yeah, I agree. But I don't think you can conclude that this might account for all of the electrical evidence we're seeing because at least some of the craters we're seeing involve plasma flows at right angles from the ground to the object (or its plasma trail). And contrary to atmospheric scientists, astrophysicists, NASA *and* meteorologists, this can happen in the upper atmosphere too if the conditions are right. According to EU Theory, electrical storm activity is not a *function* of weather. It drives weather and is itself a function of Earth's electrical interaction with outer space. Intense storm clouds are nothing more than a conductive pathway for a leaky capacitor. This is why we cannot always accurately predict the weather -- because there is a galactic input to the weather system. This would also explain why planets far away from the Sun can still have very active weather systems.
2 4y) and the actual image is available here: http://www.weatherwars.info/index.php?news_id=30&s tart=0&category_id=&parent_id=0&arcyear=&arcmonth=
The existence of upper atmosphere lightning is a very important point because few people realize that when the Space Shuttle Columbia was brought down, an amateur photographer was lucky enough to snap a picture of the shuttle's plasma trail at the very moment that the malfunction occurred. In this picture, you can clearly make out a bolt of lightning that connects up with the trail and then follows the trail in the direction of the Shuttle. This subject is covered at the holoscience site ( http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=cc6y4
Pilots see upper atmosphere lightning all the time, but if the weather system is some sort of self-contained system that ignores all electrical input from outer space, then this stuff should not really exist. It rocks the foundations of the notion that bodies in space are neutrally charged.
NASA disputed the image on the basis that upper-atmosphere should not exist, but also because they did not pick up any sonic recordings of lightning from their ground sensors. Well, this is kind of silly because if they refuse to believe that it even exists, then how would they even know what sonic footprint to look for on the tapes? It might not even be in the audio range for those recorders. Certainly, the air is a different density up there.
When I think of astronauts landing on Mars to locate the "water", I have a similar image in my mind of them traveling all that way only to be zapped by electricity instead. It may very well turn out that Mars is far too electrical to safely sustain a base. At least, if we're going to send anybody there, I highly recommend that they all be both electrical engineers and doctors.
Furthermore, the electrical charge required to blow a 200 metre wide crater in the surface of a planet is going to completely ionize the meteor.
That is not necessarily what we observe when we see comets break apart. They fragment and pieces oftentimes make it to the ground.
Assuming it didn't snuff itself out of existence, the descent through the Earth's atmosphere would drain off any major charge imbalance long before the rock hit the surface.
That would actually depend in part on how much charge is present to begin with. We're really just speculating here though. We can do better than that.
You may have heard about the the Great Chicago Fire. That fire actually ignited simultaneously all over North America and it appears to have coincided with Earth passing through the debris trail of Comet Biela, which observations suggest broke apart just prior. It's a completely fascinating story that you can access at:
P1: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 06chicagofire.htm
P2: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 07biela.htm
P3: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0602 09chicagofire.htm
This is a completely unique situation because if it is true that this was cometary debris, then this would be the only time that modern man has ever actually up-close witnessed an "impact" (comets are really no different from asteroids, except that their electrical charge would be more intense if their plasma tail is illuminated in space). What is most striking about the firsthand accounts is the *electrical* nature of these impacts. Not only did the debris rain down in the form of "ball lightning", which you may be aware of, but many houses became electrified to the extent that discharges between metallic objects within the houses appeared to cause house fires. One man was electrocuted by the change he had in both pockets!
So, you have theory in terms of plasma physics, electrodynamics and Electric Universe Theory. You have geological evidence in the ground here on Earth and in a more limited sense on other planets like Mars. You have numerous potential firsthand accounts from a single incident. You can argue the case for *more* evidence, but we're running out of potential evidentiary sour
Ignore for a second all of the arguments about electricity. Think for a second what it must feel like to be an astrophysicist working at NASA or frequently publishing in journals. Think about the prestige and the respect that comes along with that. Now imagine that these people are also in a sense stewards of our planet. We may one day owe our existences to these people. We would expect, or at least hope as our protectors, that they would be able to toss aside things like bias, arrogance or any other character flaws they may have -- like Captain Kirk or Spock would have. We would hope that they would have strong, pure character and our expectations of that come through in shows like Star Trek.
But if you actually talk to astrophysicists, you quickly realize that they don't match up character-wise to our idols. They are completely unable to accept the notion that they may be wrong. This comes through crystal-clear in conversations that I've had and observed with them. They are unable to accept that the widespread indoctrination of Big Bang Theory in our schools biases them against other theories. They are far too fast to find faults in alternative cosmologies and they lack enough curiosity of anomalies to even maintain the appearance of objectivity. Most see no reason to waste their time even debating EU Theory. It has all the components of a Greek tragedy and it is real.
This is a major problem. Even if I am wrong about the electrical shit, this must stop because everybody agrees that we will one day need to call upon these people for help. And in the middle of a crisis is the last point in time when we should be working on character flaws or theories of the universe. The stewards of our planet should be both intelligent *and* humble if we are to survive in the long-term as a human race. And you don't have to be an astrophysicist to understand *that*.
Actually, many talented geologists have generated data that support the notion that meteors exchange charge with planets prior to any subsequent impacts. Meteor Crater in Arizona is an excellent example and I direct you to a summary of the evidence at http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0601 31crater.htm. The discoveries include:
- George P Merrill concluded that quartz glass found in the crater could only be produced by intense heat, "similar to the heat generated by a lightning strike on sand".
- Merrill also pointed to the *undisturbed rock beds* below the crater. We are told that most craters are round because the kinetic energy of their impact creates a ginormous explosion which isn't affected by the angle at which bodies strike the Earth, but the rock beds at least in this case are undisturbed. So, which is it? The theory appears to contradict itself.
- Daniel Moreau Barringer, a mining engineer who first declared the crater to be from a meteor, noticed that the debris field was laid down roughly in layers that reversed the strata of the surrounding terrain. This is actually what happens when a rotating, crater-producing electric arc works its way down through the surface layers of soil.
- Furthermore, the presence of nearby rilles (or sinuous channels) and fulgarites both suggest electrical origins. Fulgurites are only known to result from lightning strikes.
- A more recent analysis from 2005 by Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona indicates the likelihood of substantial fragmentation of the body prior to striking the ground.
So, it's not that this concept is ignoring the work of talented geologists. It's that many geologists are ignoring this theory because although all of this evidence exists, very few people are suggesting that meteors tend to trade charge with the bodies they strike prior to collision. The reason that they do not suggest this is because we've all been taught that bodies in space do not acquire, possess or trade charge under any circumstances -- an assumption that has no basis whatsoever and that is causing a great number of problems for archaeology, geology and astronomy at the moment. It can similarly be shown that NASA is ignoring the electrical nature of Mars' features in the same way. This is not a small issue either because so long as all of these scientists continue to be allowed to insist that electricity plays no part in our solar system, then they will continue to insist that it plays no part in the larger universe too -- and so long as this is the case, we will continue to not fully understand our surroundings. And since we can only defend ourselves from those things which we understand, we continue on a potentially self-destructive path.
So, yes, it is *very* important that geologists get this right. It sounds silly, but the long-term survival of our planet to some extent depends on a small handful of astrophysicists and geologists at NASA swallowing their pride and admitting that perhaps there is a chance that they have been wrong. I don't know how many astrophysicists you've met, but the chances aren't so good of that. I have yet to meet one so far that is actually humble.
Actually, craters have been created in the lab that precisely match the morphology of craters on planets, comets and asteroids ...
2 craters.htm
... If you weren't looking for large-scale electrical transfers in the universe, you'd see an existence of a strong force (10^39 stronger than gravity, actually) and the absence of matter to impart it.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/04070
Plasma scientists have found that if these discharges last long enough, in fact, the walls of the craters will scallop as the Birkeland Currents twist around one another. This morphology is observed especially on comets and asteroids, but does not make so much sense in terms of physical impacts on the asteroids and comets. The thought that so many asteroids and comets would have so many craters -- large, *flat* craters -- tends to violate believability to an open-minded person that these are actually impacts.
The *only* reason that we don't blame electrical machining is because astrophysics tends to assume that bodies in space do not acquire and trade charge with surrounding space and other bodies. This is a pretty absurd assumption considering that interstellar space is filled with charged particles. But it is most likely why we end up with silly concepts like dark matter and dark energy
What's that white stuff around the crater's rim? Is that just a trick of the light? If it's not could whatever it is be the same material as the 'flow?' It has a similar intensity to the light-colored 'flow.'
4 27luminousrims.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060