I could care less about wikipedia to be honest. I'm a normal person who has read something that other people are refusing to read about. I speak to others with the expectation that people will listen and respond to evidence. My conclusions are based upon the arguments that I have read, the current events that are transpiring within the news on a daily basis, my ability to ask questions of the theorists and other astrophysicists and plasma physicists, my willingness to spend time on an issue that most people are apathetic about, my lack of investment within the current theories and my willingness to hear out arguments.
It's great that in 10 minutes or so you were able to cover all of the arguments that it took me 18 months to investigate.
People who call advocates of EU Theory crazy are inventing a fictional world for themselves where there are no longer debates about the interpretation of astrophysical observations and where a theory of everything has been figured out. The majority of your contemplative process involves basically looking at the conclusions and deciding that you do not want to believe that. Your own human perception of what should be normal for a theory is more important than an exhaustive analysis of the evidence. You shoot from the hip, and expect to figure out the answer to the hardest questions man has ever asked based upon a superficial investigation -- feeling confident enough in your analysis that you feel totally fine with calling somebody else who has gone through this difficult process a crazy person. You don't even realize it yet, but your actions constitute a self-inflicted wound of sorts. It's the collective lack of rigor, the willingness to pass judgment on others so quickly, the lack of concern for any evidence that is presented, the lack of trust in your own abilities to judge the evidence, and the tendency to be more skeptical of things that are less popular... it's all of these things that drives people like yourself, in a collective fashion, to play a supportive role in the overall process of allowing astrophysics to become stuck.
Wikipedia is not the place for new theories to "get a word in".
What you don't realize is that the essence of the Electric Universe is not new. These arguments about quasi-neutrality, space plasmas and interactions of bodies in space have been going on for *decades*. Kristian Birkeland has been discussing the electrical nature of comets since the 1800's. Most of EU Theory is based upon laboratory plasma physics, which is also certainly NOT a new concept. EU Theorists argue that we should obey Maxwell's Equations -- which is also NOT a new concept. Wallace Thornhill's accurate prediction for Deep Impact occurred more than ten years ago. That's hardly new either. Discussions about the cause of the Grand Canyon or the extinction of the mammoths are not in the least new. It all seems so novel to you guys because you have not investigated the concept on your own.
The idea that the public should only be interested in hearing one point of view on controversial subjects is antiquated. The idea that astrophysicists will out of the kindness of their own hearts even allow a paradigm shift is naive. The idea that the astrophysical peer review journals are so perfect that they do not need their own critics is simplistic. The idea that wikipedia can continue to disallow an Electric Universe entry and not eventually be considered a part of the problem when the theory is ultimately more popular and accepted is optimistic.
Wikipedia is not a debate forum, and does not want to be. If you do not gain acceptance in traditional scientific journals, and then you go and stick stuff in Wikipedia, you're going to get a smack down.
The only reason I'm having this conversation with you right now is because wikipedia does not allow an entry for "Electric Universe Theory". Wikipedia takes a side when they *disallow* such an entry in spite of the existence of an overwhelming number of publications (both peer-reviewed and non-) that support the theory. The EU Theorists have done *everything* that has been requested of them to satisfy the requirements, and this has only resulted in the banning of Ian Tresman. Wikipedia refuses to even publish validated predictions regarding EU Theory. There is no longer any mention of the fact that Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of Deep Impact or the more recently validated prediction regarding Venus' lightning.
Validated predictions should rise to the level of HISTORICAL FACTS.
They should be beyond any reproach and they should not require publication within an astrophysical journal so long as they can be validated by Internet archives. When you allow people to censor such things, you are allowing them to re-write history. Wallace Thornhill's accurate Deep Impact Mission results in and of themselves should be more than sufficient to reconsider an Electric Universe entry within wikipedia because regardless of what the astrophysical journals say, predictions are our most valuable tool for evaluating theories. What wikipedia is essentially doing for Deep Impact is elevating the value of ad hoc explanations and after-the-fact computer simulations relative to accurate predictions. If somebody was actually tasked with taking an objective look at the evidence, they would realize that this is true and realize that Wallace Thornhill's prediction was too accurate to be a coincidence. Nobody else at the time was predicting *two* flashes, and the observation of two flashes points directly to the issue of whether or not bodies in space can acquire and trade electrical charge. The long-term implication is that the astrophysicists will continue to believe that they can just land a thrust-bearing probe onto one of these incoming threats and fire up the thrusters to redirect it away from our planet. What will instead happen is that there is a high chance that no probe could actually survive the charge neutralization that would happen for most such encounters. Wikipedia's over-zealous
Couldn't it be that you're the stubborn one who is so convinced that you are right that you would rather believe your own delusions than try to understand modern astrophysics?
The stubborn ones are certainly the mainstream astrophysicists, who prefer to do thought experiments on the universe rather than testing their concepts within a plasma physics laboratory. There are ultimately two types of people: those who like to imagine what is possible within the universe (elegant solutions), and those who are determined to find out what is actually probable. In order to be in the latter, you have to spend some time in the laboratory. That's why this debate is between the conventional astrophysicists and the laboratory plasma physicists. As time has gone on though, the data has not been supporting the dominant paradigms. They put on a good face for the public, but a thorough investigator will see right through it and realize that there is good reason for why they focus so much on what is *possible*. It's because they are backed into a corner by the evidence itself. Their theories are being constrained beyond believability, and they're collapsing due to the weight of band-aids. Things like dark matter and dark energy have become mathematical fudge factors that boost their mathematical formulas whenever they're under-performing relative to our observations. It's becoming a house of cards.
People like yourself understand so little of the debate that you think its acceptable to call people like myself "delusional". If you researched the issue even modestly, you would learn that Hannes Alfven -- the man who invented magnetohydrodynamics (the equations used to model the dominant state of matter in space) -- was the father of plasma cosmology. He warned astrophysicists during his Nobel Physics acceptance speech that they were heading down a dead-end, and that ideas like frozen-in-place magnetic fields were "pseudo-pedagogical" (an idea that appears to be true, but which in fact causes great harm). You know, there is a middle ground between being right and being delusional: it's a state called debate and arguments, where the scientific method determines the winner. I advise not being so quick to call ideas delusional when they are backed by evidence. The only reason that people do not accept the evidence for EU Theory is because they do not like the conclusions. There is in fact overwhelming evidence that supports their statements. It's one of the things you learn when you investigate it.
It sounds like you're arguing that if we can't literally see something, then it clearly must not exist. I guess all those particle accelerators must work by magic, and not invisibly small particles.
I recommend that you choose something a bit easier to validate your cosmology than particle accelerators. There is plenty of evidence out there that can be *seen* and *understood* by laypeople. Pointing to particle accelerators is like referring to the rabbit in your hat. There was a great article on particle accelerators recently that makes you wonder what the hell is going on in those facilities anyways. Check it out...
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 841 October 2, 2007 by Phillip F. Schewe www.aip.org/pnu
THE VACUUM STRIKES BACK. Modern physics has shown that the vacuum, previously thought of as a state of total nothingness, is really a seething background of virtual particles springing in and out of existence until they can seize enough energy to materialize as *real* particles. In high energy collisions at accelerator labs, some of the original beam energy can be consumed by ripping particle-antiparticle pairs out of the vacuum. Sometimes this process is the very reason for doing the experiment, but sometimes it is only a detriment. For example, in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), under construction at the CERN lab in Geneva, a majo
I'm speaking from firsthand experience regarding topics that are being censored from wikipedia. I've apparently observed a glimpse of wikipedia action from a different perspective than yourself.
A brief review of the history of science reveals that almost all ideas that are currently thought to be absurd will one day prove to be just obviously absurd. Which has nothing to do with the vast majority of Wikipedias content, which is not about scientific theory (it's historical, geographic, biographic etc.)
*MANY* people use wikipedia to understand scientific theories and concepts. If you don't realize that, then you are learning it right now. It plays a prominent role in peoples' perceptions of the space sciences.
I know for fact that there is a major mistake being made and that wikipedia is heavily implicated in the mistake. You seem to be so convinced that you are right that you would rather believe that than try to understand the implications of my own knowledge. That's fine, but just be aware that an event is brewing within the peer review system that will demonstrate that people have been abusing the wikipedia system. Wiki censors have been far too effective in convincing people to not read about certain astrophysical concepts. This would be okay if it weren't that astrophysics is a broken discipline right now. The conventional theories are demonstrating a complete lack of predictive capabilities and the entire set of equations is built upon invisible particles that have never been observed to exist, despite 20 years of searching for them. Our astrophysical theories will crumble if it turns out that these particles do not in fact exist because the entire discipline now requires the existence of those particles to explain our observations. Wikipedia is being actively used to direct people away from investigating alternative solutions to this problem. The site has been completely cleansed of any materials that are not conventional. There exist entire cosmological theories that have been banned from wikipedia because some censors declare that there is not enough peer review research. The claim completely lacks merit, and anybody who investigates the evidence associated with the debate (The Electric Universe controversy) will come out of the experience realizing that there is a legitimate debate here between laboratory plasma physicists and the astrophysical community. The claims being made are 100% rock solid and supported by evidence that spans multiple, completely unrelated disciplines. I've spent 18 months arguing the evidence here on Slashdot with people and consulting the theorists whenever legitimate challenges were raised. In every single case of a legitimate challenge, they were able to justify their position using evidence. We have a new astrophysical contender, and wikipedia is essentially being used to prevent it from making its challenge by people who have never read what the Electric Universe theory actually says. They've never read a single book about it. They have no idea what it actually says. They are fighting against a perception of a theory that is completely inappropriate for the claims being made by the theorists. They're not even oftentimes aware that they are arguing against laboratory evidence and even Maxwell's Equations, as it has become customary within conventional astrophysics to ignore Maxwell's Equations when convenient or necessary.
People are not paying attention to the debate. It is not currently in the news. But there are peer review papers appearing right now throughout the peer review system that support EU Theory. I'm currently building a website devoted to raising awareness of the issue, to counter the damage that wikipedia is causing by not allowing these people to simply explain what their theory says to the public within this supposed "encyclopedia". I will be enlisting the help of people who have been reading astrophysical papers for decades and an MIT PhD in mathematics to explain in concise language
I think that we ultimately agree together, and that I'm arguing that the concept of the encyclopedia should evolve to more accurately reflect the scientific method. If it does not, then we will call the useful sites of similar function of the future something other than encyclopedias. A brief review of the history of science reveals that ideas that are currently thought to be absurd will one day prove to not be so. This is important because unless we have really "figured it all out", there will eventually be a high-profile event of some sort that demonstrates that wikipedia was wrong, and the entire model for the site will be subsequently abandoned. This is a challenge to the very concept of wikipedia. It threatens its own invincibility as a product because it opens up an opportunity for competitors. It's a bit of an issue because the owners of the site will eventually have to decide if they will defend reality or the product. They will be forced to choose between the interests of their own pockets and the interests of the human race. It is surely the price you pay for putting all of your money down on whatever is popular. A smarter gambler would spread his bets a bit more.
But, what you're missing is that if his vanity page was more true than the content that it was replaced with or that challenges it on wikipedia now, then we *ALL* lost something of value. The loss is not confined to the person who pushed to have the material published. When people play such an active role in shaping the views of reality for other people, human psychology can play starring roles in the theories that we develop. I think that's the point of why all of this matters.
If you are so fortunate that everything you believe corresponds with what you currently read in wikipedia, then you can also count on eventually being wrong about a good number of things you believe as time goes on -- if the history of science is to have any bearing on how we currently judge things to be "mainstream" and "fringe". In this way, wikipedia miserably fails on controversial scientific issues because there are many things in science that are simply controversial. But wikipedia has no good process for presenting an intelligent discussion of divergent views (or at least, no mechanism for preventing censorship of the lesser popular view). There is a mismatch between wikpedia's model and the never-ending scientific process of moving ideas between the "fringe" and "mainstream" sects.
It used to be that the natural sciences thrived on disagreement and debate. I think that wikipedia indicates a cultural shift towards a communal desire to generate consensus, but I also believe that there are many scientific issues which we should not prematurely develop consensus on before more data is acquired, and that wikipedia is abandoning a rare opportunity to change the world into one that is not so black and white. In my own humble opinion, the end result is that many of our own most inquisitive children will one day observe the apparent existence of so much certainty within the sciences as reason to not go into science. Wikipedia acts to redirect peoples' curiosities about various controversial subjects. Rather than the focus being on the arguments, with full appreciation of the ongoing debate, they have instead opted to favor those ideas that are most popular. They invite people to just accept the most popular published "facts" rather than inviting people to understand the intricate details of the various debates (so that they can decide for themselves). It is truly an encyclopedia, but in an Internet era when something much more is needed to counter the perception in science that everything has been figured out.
It is a squandered opportunity that some other startup company will have to spend a large amount of effort and funds correcting before the people who run wikipedia will wake up.
Amd by "we" in "we will have to teach you" I suppose you mean you're a qualified astrophysicist? Either way there have been plenty of very qualified and otherwise successful people with PhD's from prestigious schools who got things wrong. You have to pick carefully who you believe.
There's certainly no shame in claiming that I believe in Hannes Alfven. He did after all create magnetohydrodynamics.
You're using the same argument by quantity that you just got done blasting: you say "EU Theory is not *popular*" and then you say "who have been reading astrophysical papers for 30 years" as if that's persuasive. There are still other such people who've been working on astrophysics at least that long who've reached different conclusions. We won't have to wait much longer to have the truth explained to us? I might be anxious like you for that event if it would shut you people up, but I don't think you'll accept any disproof anyway so I'm indifferent.
As I tell my girlfriend all of the time, it's not a competition! The point is that there are very qualified physicists and astrophysicists, both internal and external to the peer review system, that have read what EU Theory states and agree that there is nothing technically wrong with its arguments. What I've noticed over time is that mainstream advocates do not just want to be right; they also demand that they not be challenged. They refuse to accept that there can be any debate about the fundamentals -- like the mathematical modeling of space plasmas. My purpose is not to demonstrate that EU Theory is certainly right. All that I and others wish is to be admitted into a meaningful debate. We want people to talk about the evidence with us. People like Tim Thompson and those on the BAUT Forums have proposed various simplistic arguments that have in the past been designed to dissuade people from looking into the issue. There was, if I remember correctly, a rather simplistic calculation some time ago on BAUT that got passed around a lot that supposedly demonstrated that there was not enough charged particles between us and the nearest star to power the Sun. Since then, as you may be aware, it has been observed that the solar wind's structure consists of many individual flux-tubes. From http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000932000001000026000001:
Recent studies suggest that flux-tube-like structures may exist in the solar wind. In this scenario, the solar wind plasma are confined in many individual flux tubes and plasma in these flux tubes move independently from each other. Within each flux tubes, the (MHD) turbulence is due to the local non-linear dynamics. Across the boundaries between adjacent flux tubes, however, the (MHD) turbulence receives another contribution from the sudden change of magnetic field directions between different flux tubes. Thus the solar wind turbulence will naturally be of multiscale and intermittent. In this paper, using the procedure we developed in [1], we analyze magnetic field data obtained from Ulysses spacecraft in both fast and slow solar wind, at various radii and latitudes. Our results show flux tubes exist in both the fast and the slow solar wind.
As you may know, a "flux tube" is conventional astrophysicist speak for the movement of charged particles within filaments. In other words, electrical currents. This is not some loonie crackpot meandering. If you were being rational and objective about it, you would wonder *why* the solar wind has flux tubes. If you were informed of EU Theory or even just laboratory plasma physics, you would also realize that it tends to point to Birkeland Currents, and very importantly, the observation violates quasi-neutrality. Not only is the simplistic calculation completely worthless, but the physical world is look
Common sense would demand that if you're observing plasma voids within the universe, then you should identify what scenarios plasmas tend to form voids within the laboratory. You know, the whole point of inflation theory was to explain a homogeneous mass layout of the universe. It was only six months ago that mainstream astrophysics advocates were claiming that this observed homogeneousness was a great "prediction" of inflation, a prediction that had been 'proven' by the WMAP data. Now that they observe that the universe is not homogeneous, rather than accepting that inflation might be wrong, the astrophysicists propose that we're seeing an alternative universe, which -- and I shouldn't have to explain this -- is a completely untestable claim. Is that the common sense that EU Theory is lacking?
I think you're confusing common sense for popularity. EU Theory is not *popular* -- yet. It makes *FAR* more sense though than the dominant paradigm today because it is largely a re-statement of laboratory plasma physics -- which constitutes 99.999% of all visible matter within the universe.
But the reason that EU Theory is not popular has little to do with the arguments. I've studied the numerous arguments at great length for many months now. There is nothing wrong with them. They are all valid and many of the advocates of EU Theory have very serious credentials. The real problem to date has been that there is no place for people like yourself to go where you can be dealt the devastating argumentative blow to your own cherished cosmology that you expect in order to change your mind. All of the Electric Universe sites are designed to suit the needs of people who have already read the books. Since you guys refuse to read books that you do not already agree with, we will have to teach you EU Theory through peer reviewed papers. Once you're being explained what EU Theory is by people who have PhD's in mathematics from MIT and people who have been reading astrophysical papers for 30 years -- something which you won't have to wait much longer to observe -- you'll come to realize that this is not a bunch of crackpots.
Do grass fires work for birds, frogs and mullosks too?
But what about the fires? Let's look closer...
Probably the most destructive methods of hunting elephants is setting fire to the vegetation in a circle surrounding them. This method was used throughout Africa in the past and was "responsible for the deaths of many hundreds or even thousands of elephants each year." According to Sir Samuel Baker, writing in 1890:
"During the dry season, when the withered herbage from 10 to 14 feet in height is most inflammable, a large herd of elephants may be found in the middle of such high grass that they can only be perceived should a person be looking down from some elevated point. If they should be espied by some native hunter, he would immediately give due notice to the neighborhood, and in a short time the whole population would assemble for the hunt. This would be arranged by forming a circle of perhaps 2 miles in diameter, and simultaneously firing the grass so as to create a ring of flames around the center. An elephant is naturally afraid of fire, and it has an instinctive horror of the crackling of flames when the grass has been ignited. As the circle of fire contracts in approaching the encircled herd, they at first attempt to retreat until they become assured of their hopeless position; they at length become desperate, being maddened by fear, and panic-stricken by the wild shouts of the thousands who have surrounded them. At length, half-suffocated by the dense smoke, and terrified by the close approach of the roaring flames, the unfortunate animals charge recklessly through the fire, burnt and blinded, to be ruthlessly speared by the bloodthirsty crowd awaiting this last stampede. Sometimes a hundred or more elephants are simultaneously destroyed int his wholesale slaughter."
If this method works so well, one must ask why didn't the Africans kill off the elephants?
Not only were the numbers of Clovis insufficient to perform such maneuvers, but the idea that the Clovis could have in 1,000 years single-handedly destroyed the mammoths and mastodons in North America, Central and South America, but also the horses, camels, giant peccaries, mountain deer, giant beavers, four-pronged antelopes, ground sloths, dire wolves, native lions, and giant short-faced bears, as well -- it's a bit much to handle. If such a solution to the extinction is thought to be appropriate in this case, then we can draw upon no other historical scenario that might have set the precedent. On every other continent, human-induced extinctions took tens of thousands of years. It is also scientific fact that there is no technological advance that can explain why the Clovis were able to do this in 1,000 years where it took other cultures ten times that. Uniformitarianism is one of the fundamental philosophies that got us to this point in blaming the humans for this carnage. But if this level of carnage has never before been observed, then that in itself is a violation of uniformitarianism (more properly "actualism"), as we're supposing that something happened that we can find no precedent for.
Some scientists have resorted to calling the American animals dumber. Regardless, the dates associated with mammoth fossils in North America do not demonstrate a rolling wave of Clovis terror sweeping the continent. If we accept the timing derived by various dating techniques, many species became extinct in the south earlier compared to those in the north.
One is left wondering though how you exterminate a species with cliffs. That would imply that EVERY SINGLE MAMMOTH was driven by fire to a cliff. Some of the Americas are in fact populated by forests. It is not all grasslands, and there is no reason why the mammoths would not have populated these areas too.
You may be surprised to also learn that there are fewer than a dozen sites in North America that point to a link between humans and mammoths. In a scientific sense,
I would add to your comments an important and frequently ignored fact regarding the solar wind that it continues to accelerate as it moves away from the Sun -- even as it passes the planets.
If we're going to use the "wind" moniker, it's helpful to remind people that it is not really all that much like a wind at all in this regard -- unless you're intending an *electric* wind as happens to charged particles subjected to an electric field within a plasma physics laboratory. To date, there remains no adequate explanation within the conventional paradigm as to why the solar wind accelerates like this (although laboratory plasma physicists who don't dabble in astrophysics would wonder what all of the controversy is about). The fact that we're actually in this gigantic plasma structure too makes it a bit more difficult for astrophysicists to propose all sorts of unusual explanations for this acceleration.
I believe that we pay a heavy price for ignoring this important detail. It is not a minor fact that can be brushed aside as -- whatever it truly is -- is moving more matter in our solar system than any other force we know of. One could lucidly argue -- and people are doing just that -- that this force is playing a more important role in the universe than conventional astrophysicists will accept.
For example, I've had discussions with a person named Hank May, who has been studying the Pioneer Anomaly for some time now, and who has a rather simple explanation that the thermal blankets on the Pioneer ship have been acting as capacitors, which are responding to a weak electric field that is generated by the Sun (note that this weak electric field is not accepted by mainstream astrophysicists, although there are many plasma physicists who see no problem with it). He's been having issues getting his paper published because it defies the popular paradigms in astrophysics these days, which is a bit unusual considering that the Pioneer Anomaly is actually considered a test for mainstream cosmology. But, regardless, look at what he has to say about the issue...
Efforts are underway to launch a dedicated mission to resolve the Pioneer Anomaly once and for all. The major experiment (planned at this stage) involves two small spheres to be tethered near the mother ship, whose positions are monitored by lasers and other devices. In my paper I attribute the Pioneer Anomaly as due to the electric field, of course, but that requires a higher negative electric charge on the spacecraft than seems reasonable. I pondered and sweated over this problem, and finally realized that the charge resides in thermal blankets which cover the outer parts of the spacecraft. The point is, the test spheres are not to be covered with thermal blankets, whereas the mother ship will (in all likelihood). So . . . . . my model would predict that the spheres will continue in a Newtonian way, whereas the mother ship will undergo acceleration towards the Sun, leading to an anomalous acceleration of the test spheres in an antisunward direction. There have been about 50 proposed explanations for the Pioneer Anomaly, and I have looked at many of them. I believe my model is the only one of the 50 that predicts such a result. Of course, as mentioned in my attachment*, the Pioneers may have accumulated the bulk of ltheir charge during their Juputer flybys, so the anomaly may not be as large with the mothership. Also, if it uses different dielectric materials in its thermal blankets the effect might be different. But in any case my model predicts some effect as I have described, however small.
I have to agree, based upon my own reading, that the idea that man did not reach the Americas prior to 12,000 years ago is little more than orthodoxy at this point. There is ample evidence that points to alternative conclusions. If you doubt this, and are not afraid to challenge your own beliefs in this regard, then read Charles Ginenthal's "The Extinction of the Mammoth". Regarding the excerpt you post here:
An icon that was supremely effective: the introduction of the innovative spearpoint coincided with a mass extinction of the continent's megafauna. Not only the mammoth, but the giant armadillo, giant sloth and great black bear all disappeared soon after the Clovis point - and the hunters who used it - arrived on the scene.
This is a gigantic over-simplification. Ginenthal removes *ANY* doubt whatsoever in his analysis that the mammoths were not killed by people. The reasons are numerous. His logic is impeccable. I would argue that no rational person could read that book and come out of it still believing that the mammoths were slaughtered by people. Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that the list of species that went extinct with the mammoths include animals that man could not have possibly killed off -- including 10 classes of North American birds, small burrowing rodent-like animals in Alaska (the American badger and the black-footed ferrets), the tiny Aztlan rabbit, mullosks and even frogs! We're not talking about diminished populations here. We're talking about total eradication from their native areas of the time.
In the words of Charles Lyell himself, "we know how tedious a task it is in our times, even with the aid of firearms to exterminate a noxious quadruped..." As for the rabbits, well they tend to f*ck like rabbits! How man managed to wipe out species of birds with no firearms remains a legitimate open question.
What's also particularly damning is the fact that other fairly large fauna completely escaped the apparently ruthless Clovis hunters. There is little support for the notion that these people came in here and just wiped out everything that was worth hunting. The extinction event was highly selective. In particular, the musk oxen survived, which is highly enigmatic because these creatures will allow the entire herd to be obliterated if just one within their self-defensive circle is killed. They'll just stand there and take it. Why did those creatures survive? Why would the Clovis people specifically target the mammoths, which arguably possess woolly matting (8 inches), thick skin (another inch) and thick fat (an additional 6 inches) that is completely impenetrable to spear heads? Driving large herds of mammoths over cliffs would require hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters -- numbers which do not accurately portray the Clovis populations. If using spears, the prey would not instantly die. It would have to be trailed for many miles before you even had a chance of it bleeding itself to death. The arguments against the proposed kill-off scenario are actually far too numerous to list. What you see here is just a small sample of Ginenthal's explanation. Ultimately, every possible kill-off scenario is essentially unsupported by the evidence.
In truth, the extinction *OF* the mammoth was in truth an extinction event that *INVOLVED* the mammoth and numerous other creatures that man could not have possibly killed off.
What is particularly telling about the whole Clovis thing, in my own opinion, are the actions of Hrdlicka and the infamous "Clovis Police". Words to the wise: BUYER BEWARE when it comes to controversial issues within the natural sciences. If you sense any impropriety whatsoever, look into it with an open mind, as there is a long and detailed history of anthropologists defending their theories using completely unethical tactics. It can be hard for honest people to understand it, but many people in the field are far more interested in making sure that their theories survive the test of time than in finding the truth. If you think I'm full of it, then read Ginenthal's book and decide for yourself!
Okay, now we're kind of getting somewhere. I've listened for 18 months to what the people around here think about EU Theory, and I agree that your beliefs represent the majority of the people here. What I'm trying to tell you is that the number of adjustments that have been made to the mainstream theories is more plentiful than you're aware of, and the amount of support for EU Theory within peer-review journals is more than you're aware of.
The thing is, nobody here wants to read what the theory actually says, so there is no way for you guys to know that this is true for yourself. All you can do is to look at what the people around you are saying and evaluate their beliefs based upon their credentials. This is not a very effective way of evaluating a theory when the theory threatens the research of nearly everybody who has credentials.
What I'm in the process of doing right now is creating a website that is directed specifically to people like yourself. You believe that EU Theory is unscientific and unsupported by modern observations. I'm creating a website that will demonstrate beyond any doubt that this is incorrect, and that teaches pseudoskeptical people from Slashdot what EU Theory states on the basis of the most modern peer reviewed papers out there. It won't be until you see this site and the wealth of research that currently supports EU Theory that you will begin to realize that there is in fact emerging support for the theory, and that the current state of mainstream astrophysics was only arrived at through numerous incorrect predictions and supposedly minor tweaks.
I think though that this idea that these tweaks are always minor is a bit of an incorrect generalization. I mean, when we're talking about things like finding artifacts within the CMB that correspond with filaments of Hydrogen within our local galaxy -- as has been recently reported as Wired Magazine's top story this past week -- we're not talking about minor tweaks anymore. This is a possible paradigm change of the most dramatic proportions possible. Papers have been appearing within the peer review system that report that the solar wind resembles filamentary flux tubes of charged particles. If you perform a search through Harvard abstracts on "elephant trunks", you will find a wealth of papers that point directly to filaments of charged particles being observed throughout the universe. This type of stuff is precisely what EU Theory predicts, and this finding about flux tubes coming off of the Sun very importantly negates some of the simplified attempts to mathematically disprove that the Sun can be powered externally by those charged particles. These calculations (made famous on the BAUT Forums) need to be revisited in light of these new findings about the solar wind as I'm confident it will be shown that those calculations are no longer valid. The arguments against EU Theory are in fact losing weight in the face of improved observations. Astrophysicists are now noticing that stars within nebulae form within filaments. This is exactly what happens for electrical plasmas within laboratory plasma physics when Birkeland Currents pinch together at points called z-pinches. Perhaps you do not realize this, but any time that helical magnetic fields are being observed around filaments in space, this strongly suggests, according to Maxwell's Equations, that those filaments are in fact electric currents.
I strongly advise that you observe this situation with an open mind. Allow yourself to be presented with the evidence that argues against your own prefered theories. If you do as much, I think you will come to realize that the evidence is stronger than you currently realize. You do not realize it right now merely because the EU Theory websites that currently exist have been created to service the EU community. My site will be the first EU site ever designed from scratch to convince people like yourself using the most compelling arguments available. We will tap into 50
That was quite a response, and I have to thank you for it. It's unfortunately rare that people directly confront my claims. I ran your posting by Wallace Thornhill -- who has the rather distinguished credential of being the *only* scientist to accurately predict the Deep Impact Mission results -- and I'm presenting his comments with my own combined here.
No, it's because we can measure (right here on Earth, using cheap equipment -- an example experiment is here, others can be constructed with bits of styrofoam and plastic sheets, or latex balloons and latex-paint-covered ceilings) the ratio of the gravitational force to the electro-magnetic force. The ratio is HUGE (1:4.17e42). Since the Earth-Moon, Earth-Sun and Halley's Comet-Sun orbits have been closely approximated by classical Newtonian gravitation for centuries, this means that any contribution of electrical charge to these orbits is going to be tiny.
The problem with your logic is that you rule out an important, viable alternative within your assumptions. You do not consider the possibility that there is a unification of electromagnetism and gravity -- the idea that gravity and mass itself may be related. As you know, mass is a trait of matter. Wallace Thornhill specifically states:
[B]y the addition or subtraction of charge from a celestial body, the mass of that body is altered. To conserve energy the result is a proportional change in orbital radius. The problem for your correspondent is to realize that the masses in Newton's gravitational theory are electrical variables. And comets do not conform to classical Newtonian gravitation, exhibiting anomalous non-Newtonian accelerations that have been explained away principally as due to cometary jets.
Before you outright dismiss the suggestion, I would actually add to this further the following NewScientist article (from http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2814). The emphasis is my own:
Their work is based on theories such as string theory that try to unify all the forces, including electromagnetism and gravity, by invoking the existence of several extra spatial dimensions.
In a paper submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravity and presented at a meeting of the European Astronomical Society in Porto, Portugal, the researchers calculated the values they would expect G to have at different locations around the world. They say it should be greater where the Earth's magnetic field is stronger, with the highest measurements at the north and south magnetic poles.
The values of G measured so far seem to fit with that idea. But the researchers say the best way to test their theory would be to take accurate measurements of G at locations such as the magnetic poles and particular longitudes on the equator, and then check those values against the predictions.
Studies of the Sun also support the theory. To make mathematical models of the star's interior tally with experimental data, physicists have to use a lower value of G than is traditionally agreed. Mbelek says his calculations predict that electromagnetism would not boost gravity as much at higher temperatures, so you would expect G to be lower inside the Sun.
Exotic physics
But other researchers are not convinced. Clifford Will, a gravity theorist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, believes improvements in terrestrial experiments will eventually do away with the need for explanations that rely on such exotic physics.
"In many ways it's a scandal that we don't have an agreed value for G, but if you look at the experiments, the values have been converging," he says. "In five years or so, we'll have an agreed value."
But Mbelek does not think so. Although the precision of individual measurements is improving, he says, the values are not converging.
Keep in mind that the voltages we're talking about here are qui
Perhaps most of physics is "right" (-ish, that is of course), and you only take exception to some small portion of it that's clearly wrong?
You know, if you weren't so stubborn about reading things that you don't already agree with, you could quite easily find the answer. It's interesting that you will waste your time arguing with me over these things, and yet you won't actually spend the money or time to understand what the theory states. I am confident of my understanding of what is happening because I've expanded my awareness of what they theory says beyond yours. Your carefully-crafted arguments seem to me like one long drawn-out excuse to avoid challenging your own belief system. The idea that you would be preventing me from spreading misinformation on Slashdot is silly when you've yet to fully read what is being alleged.
"Some scientists were scorned during life and posthumously proven correct, so it's at least likely if not necessary that scorned scientists are correct." That's a false generalization.
That's clever. It wasn't meant as a generalization. It was intended as a rebuttal to your allegation that...
If there's observation in support of a scientific model, then that is the model that "mainstream" science will accept, ipso facto.
Your perception that I'm making sweeping generalizations is not accurate. The debate over the mathematical modeling of space plasmas is specific in its claims and philosophy and history of science can assist us in reaching a conclusion.
The majority of EU proponents steadfastly ignore the fact that the Standard Model is a more thorough framework, with fewer holes and more supporting evidence than the competing and largely mutually exclusive EU theory.
And yet, your thorough framework could come crumbling down like a house of cards at any moment...
As a sidenote, Wallace Thornhill's "The Electric Universe" was the first published book to reference Verschuur's allegations...
When the COBE satellite measured the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) at 2.7 Kelvin, proponents of the Big Bang immediately announced that the measurement ?confirmed? their theory. Principal investigator of the COBE team, Dr. John Mather: ?The Big Bang Theory comes out a winner.? John Huchra, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University: ?The discovery of the 2.7 degree background was the clincher for the current cosmological model, the hot Big Bang.? And astrophysicist Michael Turner: ?The significance of this cannot be overstated. They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology.? Did the measurement of the CMBR actually confirm a prediction of the Big Bang hypothesis? The truth is that predictions by other theorists, who did not base their estimates on the Big Bang, were a great deal closer.
The first astronomer to collect observations from which the temperature of space could be calculated was Andrew McKellar. In 1941 he announced a temperature of 2.3K from radiative excitation of certain molecules. But World War II occupied everyone?s attention and his paper was ignored. In 1954, Finlay-Freundlich predicted 1.9K to 6K based on ?tired light? assumptions. Tigran Shmaonov estimated 3K in 1955. In 1896, Charles Edouard Guillaume predicted a temperature of 5.6K from heating by starlight. Arthur Eddington refined the calculations in 1926 and predicted a temperature of 3K. Eric Regener predicted 2.8K in 1933.
In fact, the proponents of the Big Bang had made the worst predictions. Rob
The conversation is clearly off-topic by now, but it's not a big deal. It's an important subject.
Like what? Let me guess: black holes?
If a person never read any criticism of black holes, then they could be forgiven for not realizing that the theory of black holes has adjusted over time to reflect observations. For instance, it was once thought that black holes were so powerful that nothing could escape them. Then, black holes were observed to possess jets coming out of them that involved intense magnetic fields and particles moving at near the speed of light, and the theories had to be modified. There's a great critique of black hole theory on Wallace Thornhill's holoscience site (http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=tyybhrr8). If you can read that criticism and maintain a solid belief in black holes, then I'd have to at a minimum give you credit for actually challenging your own belief system.
While sciencists are only humans, like we are all, they should give predecence of observations over belief system, as you say. And I think they doing pretty good, weeding out mistakes and cheats.
It would certainly seem this way if you weren't paying close attention, at least. After all, how would you notice all of the people that are being blacklisted and outright dismissed? Have you seen this site?
If you do any history of science reading, you will find that it is inevitable that some ideas within the fringes of science today will eventually make their way into the mainstream, and become accepted fact. Sites like this prefer that scientists be dismissed for the sole reason that they advocate theories that are not currently conventional. I can guarantee you that some of the people being ridiculed on this site will one day be vindicated.
But I can get more specific on this point. Wallace Thornhill made numerous predictions regarding the 1995 Deep Impact Mission based upon the concept of the Electric Sun Hypothesis:
Now, if you go through those forum postings from Slashdot, you will observe that Slashdot readers make absolutely no distinction whatsoever between ridiculing an astrophysical PREDICTION and ridiculing an astrophysical theory. This is a very serious problem because predictions are the most powerful tool that astrophysicists have for validating theories. When it was subsequently discovered that Wallace Thornhill was right in nearly every single aspect of his prediction, there was no retraction by any of those people and no announcement by the moderators at Slashdot. Mention of the successful prediction was also eventually completely sanitized from wikipedia many years later. Clearly, they did such a good job that you've never heard of the entire situation.
One of Thornhill's successful predictions was that there would be a pre-impact flash -- something which nobody else was actually predicting at the time. There were in fact two flashes at the time of impact. Furthermore, images of Tempel 1 just prior to impact demonstrate clear whiteouts (arguably from electrical arcing... http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050705impression.htm [thunderbolts.info]).
What you learn when you look into these things is that scientists dismiss ideas that they consider absurd withou
In effect, there is only "science"; there is no "mainstream" vs. "fringe". If there's observation in support of a scientific model, then that is the model that "mainstream" science will accept, ipso facto.
Let me first congratulate the mainstream on their ability to agree on everything. When you rule out the alternatives within your assumptions, though, it does become a bit easier to find common ground.
Your views on astrophysical observations seem to me very parochial. You completely leave out the fact that there is plenty of debate on the interpretation of observations. For instance, you completely ignore the debate over Halton Arp's observations, suggesting that there is no meaningful debate over his observations of low-redshift quasars connected to or in front of higher redshift galaxies.
You also completely ignore the fact that many scientists have spent their entire lifetimes unsuccessfully pursuing acceptance of their theories only to have their theories vindicated or co-opted after their death. Kristian Birkeland, for instance, struggled his entire lifetime to convince Sydney Chapman and the British that the aurora were caused by the Sun. Chapman repeatedly ridiculed Birkeland's theory even though he himself had proposed something similar before he was admonished for it. Like many people who ridicule EU Theory, Chapman didn't even have his facts straight enough to know what he was arguing against; he thought Birkeland was arguing that the Sun only sent protons. In fact, Birkeland was arguing that it was only the solar protons that were creating the aurora.
The entire mess with the source of the aurora was of course the result of a throwaway comment by Lord Kelvin. Kelvin's star power blinded a lot of people to the fact that he was sometimes full of shit. The same thing happened with Carl Sagan and Velikovsky.
Your view that science is pure and virginal, and unaffected by social drama or public preferences and prejudices is a bit naive. I mean, clearly you can tell that the public *likes* Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, black holes, wormholes, multiple-dimensioned universes and other various esoteric concepts that may defy common sense. The public does not like these things because they have sifted through the evidence themselves and identified these concepts as being more true than other ideas in astrophysics. The majority of the public likes them because they are fascinating -- like science fiction. They induce a sense of wonder in space that adds to their mundane lives here on Earth. More mundane theories that involve electricity over space plasmas have a hard time competing with black holes, which many people have developed emotional attachments with. When I told my girlfriend that black holes do not exist, she said, "But I *like* black holes!" Precisely.
If it is apparent to once practitioner of science that a model is optimal, it is so apparent to all practitioners of science. Information travels fast these days, so the lag from the establishment of "proof" (in the sense of supporting evidence) to widespread knowledge of that "proof" is short.
With such a simple model in place for understanding science, one wonders why people even bother studying the history or philosophy of science.
Let's review a specific example for why this is complete nonsense. Wallace Thornhill made numerous predictions regarding the Deep Impact Mission based upon the concept of the Electric Sun Hypothesis:
You're the one arguing that that I'm a Catastrophist. EU Theory may sound like Catastrophism -- which is surely the heart of your confusion -- but it differs in its claims. EU Theory is fundamentally based upon laboratory plasma physics. Catastrophism was fundamentally based upon Velikovsky's linguistic knowledge.
As far as I am aware, EU hypothesis say nothing about expelling major celestial bodies from other major celestial bodies.
It certainly does. Read "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott. When stars undergo extreme electrical stress, they will reduce their charge density by fissioning into two bodies, or expelling a smaller object. How the charge density subsequently balances out determines if the two new bodies are stars, planets or a mixture of the two. This process is inherently understandable within the laboratory. It explains the HR diagram without the concept of stellar ageing. It explains pulsars and many energetic stellar events.
You know that kind of patronizing text is very typical of pseudosciencists and crackpots, right? And I do not "blindly accept" scientific results. Simply science works. Heck, thing that lies before me is very good proof that science works.
You bought your computer, right? Semiconductor and computer manufacturers must make working products in order to sell them. Our astrophysical theories can be wrong, and the astrophysicists will not receive any immediate feedback that it is so. In fact, by your own logic, you should be a bit concerned with the entertainment value that people derive from the mainstream astrophysical theories (wormholes, brane worlds, black holes, etc) as it represents a form of purchase by the public. If the public is demonstrating a clear preference for a particular theory based upon something other than its accuracy in making predictions, then they are possibly not judging the theory on the basis of its truthfulness -- but rather how much it stimulates them to imagine that space is strange. One would have to expect in such a scenario that more mundane, yet correct, explanations would receive less attention. I believe strongly that the public has developed emotional attachments to many objects in astrophysics that are highly speculative and probably do not even exist.
In domains where I have no knowledge, or time, or money to verify and check scientific results I see many scientists veryfing each other, checking results, producing knowledge (that later can be used by engineers to create more toys like that thing before me). This is called, you know, scientific method. Dismissing hundred years of accumulated knowledge and a lot of hard work of ten thousands people from around of world because this is at odds with your favorite crackpot "theories" is extremely arrogant.
I'm not dismissing anything. I accept all evidence that is compelling. I started out with an identical philosophy as yourself. Then, I decided to look a little bit further. I found out that the history of science is filled with these situations where dogma (somebody's belief system) superceded observations -- and it continues to this day. So long as you refuse to look into the situation any further and so long as you refuse to read materials outside of mainstream science, you will not be aware of it. We all define our own realities, and we tend to subconsciously reinforce our belief systems by our reading selection.
Comet-like "tail" is not enough to describe object in question as "comet-like". Especially when other properties of that body are drastically different from comets.
You know, comets are believed to be sublimating snow-balls because of the molecules they release as they move. Scientists observe large amounts of OH coming off of them. The thing is, oxygen is one of the most common elements in the universe. It is certainly present within the silicates contained within comets. And hydrogen is being sent towards
This seems like a bit of revisionist history here...
Revercombe and Suomi et. al. thought the upward IR flux was anomalous enough to warrant writing up a highly complex mathematical description of the manner in which all of those sensors had "failed".
If there was no problem, as you seem to suggest, then why bother?
Why didn't you just say, "I believe Venus is a comet that entered the solar system in the last 10,000 years and that's why global warming is a liberal conspiracy."? Is it because bitter experience has taught you that padding it out with a thousand extra words makes it less likely that people will notice you're a nutjob?
I talk about mythology *all* of the time in my postings. There is no trick here. The Slashdot article in question though had little to do with mythology, so it was not the focus of my posting.
I'm not bitter, btw. I'm trying to get people to respond to the arguments of the Electric Universe Theorists, which I've educated myself in, for the purpose of seeing if there are any legitimate arguments that cast doubt upon their theories. Most of the responses I get though tend to be ad hominem attacks, and claims that I am "misleading" people. Most people argue that I am not worth their time. People don't understand that they need to get their licks in now before I go public with my documentary on the subject.
When I find an argument that seems solid, I forward it to the theorists, and they respond in kind. I will typically repost their responses here. What I've found after 1.5 years of doing this is that people are not actually reading what their theory says, and are in fact dismissing the evidence they point to in a piecemeal fashion, unaware that there is a fabric that connects all of these pieces together. What needs to be done is that people need to understand what they are saying -- the entire theory -- so that observations can be evaluated on the basis of both paradigms. But nobody's doing this because there is this general sense that science is heading in the right direction. I feel that, in light of the arguments of the heretics, this is a big mistake.
It's as simple as that, and there's nothing unethical about what I'm doing. In fact, I'm quite sure that people will eventually thank me for my work.
Funny that many people mistake mythology with factual history... you also think that x-files are documentary, aren't you?
You are judging a discipline of research which you've clearly read nothing about. The ironic thing, to be perfectly clear, is that it is commonly believed that mythology is largely devoid of information for the sole reason that the mythologists of old have been using the dominant astrophysical theories within their interpretations with little successes to date. However, when documents are translated without this extraneous influence, they tend to make a lot more sense. They also tend to point directly to plasma-based cosmologies. So, the irony of somebody like yourself claiming that the field of comparative mythology is like the x-files makes for a great show! Their failure to generate results was in fact a direct function of listening to the mainstream astrophysicists.
Your comment is classical pseudoscience tactic: find some problem with actual theories and claim "so my completely ludicrous idiotic shambling on acid must be right!!!!oneone".
Um, no, not really. Unlike yourself, I've read what the Electric Universe Theorists are saying. Due to this exposure, and unlike yourself, I'm qualified to speak about their claims. Unfortunate for yourself, you will actually have to read what they are saying before you can be sure that they are wrong. If you ever do decide to read about them, you may be dismayed by what they are saying, for they are the ones arguing that laboratory plasma physics can teach us about space. They are the ones arguing that mainstream astrophysicists should have to follow Maxwell's Equations. I'm not so sure that you realize this at the moment, or you might not go so far out of your way to ridicule them.
And for rest of universe, I would like to present Velikovsky in all ot his (in)famous glory...
"report the arrival of Venus into our solar system as a comet-like body within the past 10,000 years"
No. Venus was to be expelled from Jupiter. And remind me, what comets have anything in common with Venus? Mass? Temperature? Looks? Materials? Orbital parameters?
Velikovsky was unfortunately wrong about Jupiter. Venus was expelled from Saturn. Dwardu Cardona demonstrates as much in "God Star", which if you ever get a desire to seriously challenge the dogma that you've come to blindly accept, I would recommend that you read.
We see large-scale comet-like bodies all over the universe, buddy. You should try reading more recent materials if you're not aware of it. Mira was observed to be emitting a comet-like tail in infrared just a couple of months ago. There was also this article...
pln2bz, I actually think you may be on to something, but not because of your wacky mystical theories.
Actually, it's hardly wacky to develop a cosmology based upon the behavior of laboratory plasmas. As you may already know, plasmas constitute 99.999% of all visible matter within the universe. Furthermore, gases can become plasmas with less than 1% ionization. Laboratory plasma physics clearly indicates that these plasmas can continue to conduct current while in their dark mode, which offers an elegant explanation for dark matter. It is commonly argued that quasi-neutrality precludes large-scale charge separation in space, but quasi-neutrality is an *assumption*. Arguing that space must be charge neutral on some scale is tantamount to declaring that we've reached a conclusion on a metaphysical question. But it is also in violation of our laboratory experiences, which indicate that plasmas can and do form double layers, Birkeland Currents and z-pinches. Don't be deceived into believing that the Electric Universe Theory is "mystical". Sure, it's different than standard cosmology and it correlates perfectly with human mythology and ancient documents (which should be an advantage, IMHO), but the theory that space plasmas are electrical can be explained completely separately from all of that. Hannes Alfven, Ralph Juergens, Wallace Thornhill and Anthony Perratt are not at all "mystics". Religion is in fact strictly forbidden as a topic amongst the theorists.
Of course, there's only one way to find out the real story behind Venus, and that's to go there.
I completely agree! People act as if I'm some sort of dogmatic rebel around here, but that's only because they are reading different evidence than I am. I would have to think that if Venus was emitting heat from its surface that this simple fact would appear on the lander's sensors. I am concerned by the hostility though towards the idea that Venus may not be in thermal equilibrium. I've yet to receive much in the way of technical criticism for my interpretation of Taylor's arguments. Most of the attacks upon my posting have been ad hominem attacks, or uninformed attacks upon the discipline of ancient document interpretation. This concerns me because it indicates that if we do clearly observe heat originating from Venus' surface, I do not see any indication that people would accept it for what it is.
What I recommend to you though is to not make the same assumption of others around here. Do not accept as fact this notion that there is no useful information within the field of comparative mythology without first trying to understand the strength of the evidence that is emerging within the field. Dwardu Cardona's "God Star" (published in 2006) presents a compelling case that there was in fact an event within the past 10,000 years that all cultures record in surprising detail. The problem up until now has been that mythologists have been using the popular cosmology to perform their translations. When they run into a translation regarding a star that is called "Saturn", they have up until now normalized the translation to "the sun". This has caused all sorts of problems for the discipline. What I find exceptionally arrogant though is that the mainstream astrophysicists subsequently blame the entire field of mythology for not being able to make sense of ancient writings and stories using their own favored cosmology, without ever considering that the ancient testimony is actually a test of their own theories' validity. These problems vanish once you drop the force-fitting and allow for the possibility of a plasma-based cosmology. Once you just interpret the documents as they stand, the story of what happened becomes quite clear and convincing and points directly to a plasma-based cosmology.
My goal is not to spread *belief*. I only advocate that people learn and judge for themselves what is being said. If somebody reads the evidence and subsequently disagrees wit
Comparative mythology is a science with rigorous methodology, and physics is not? Direct observation, with mathematical modeling, is bunk but translated/copied/forged human religous writings and artifacts, amounting to hearsay and outright lies, are not?
You seem to be quite intent to portray me as anti-science. Is it not possible that I believe in the scientific method, but just disagree with mainstream science? You appear to confuse the two...
Comparative mythology is structured similar to the way in which we evaluate court testimony. You analyze the testimony of multiple cultures for similarities on specific themes. People like yourself add significant confusion to the matter because you've never given it a chance. Like others, you incorrectly believe that the Garden of Eden is a *religious* concept even though both the historical and fossil records indicate quite clearly that the phenomenon was physical and occurred for the entire world. You are aware that alligator fossils and coral reef fossils have been found at all latitudes, right?
On this forum, you act like a contrarian blowhard with an unsatisfied ego.
You're the same guy we put up with around here espousing the disproven virtues of the Electric Universe cosmology and decrying fusion and the Standard Model.
Same on several bunk-science forums, according to a few seconds with google. I encourage moderators and interested readers to review your post history on Slashdot, and view samples your other writings on the web.
Perhaps we'd save some time if people actually just read the materials themselves, eh? After all, that appears to be the real problem -- the outright dismissal of data that is enigmatic to numerous disciplines.
You have an "us-versus-them" mentality that seems to pit you against Carl Sagan an awful lot, as well as other mainstream (and typically famous) scientists. It's as though you're at least as happy to sling mud at someone like Sagan as you are to imagine yourself part of a darkhorse theory of physics as it spreads its wings, blowing away the infantile ignorance and superstitions of old.
I'm sorry you think that I'm a crackpot. I'm really quite a normal person who was not dissuaded from reading materials that I subsequently found compelling. Why does everybody who disagrees with mainstream astrophysics have to be so loony? I mean, you act as if astrophysics is some sort of laboratory science, and that so long as the mathematical equation exist to make the theory work, then the mathematical equations must be true. Few degreed astrophysicists ever even attempted to develop the ability to compare and contrast cosmological models; most are satisfied to accept the theories they were taught in school as fact. You're so hostile to alternative physical models for the universe that you never allowed your brain to even witness them in any depth. You and others here put far more effort into learning the math than you do the philosophy and history of science. I've taken plenty of math in my life, but it is not a substitute for a rounded education. You appear to be completely unaware that many of the strongest adherents to the Electric Universe Theory are the laboratory plasma physicists. Even the guy who invented magnetohydrodynamics pleaded with the scientific community during his Nobel Physics acceptance speech to drop the frozen-in-place magnetic field concept. I mean, every week that goes by, more and more peer-reviewed papers are being published that indicate filaments surrounded by helical magnetic fields (do a Harvard Abstracts paper search on "elephant trunk"). Sure, there are ways to create such things without the filaments being electrical currents, but it is complete nonsense
Few people on this forum take the time to carefully consider the story of our investigations to date of Venus' exceptionally high temperatures. It is a very interesting story that has incredible ramifications for science to this day. The various probes sent there did not say what NASA wanted to hear, so it was decided that the *assumption* of global energy balance would take priority over the sensor data. And this is how the theory of CO2-based global warming survived one of its first scientific challenges...
If one assumes that Venus is the sister planet to Earth, formed out of swirling stellar material billions of years ago along with the Earth, then Venus should be about 20 degrees warmer at any given latitude than Earth is. And, in fact, that is what was taught 50 years ago before we had sent any probes to peer beneath Venus' dense cloud cover. When the 900 degree F surface temperatures of Venus were discovered in 1970 by the USSR's Venera 7 probe, Carl Sagan devised his "super greenhouse" theory, which instantly became the standard theory for explaining the extreme surface temperatures on Venus. Sagan's claim was that the less than 2% of solar energy which somehow finds its way through the thick carbon dioxide clouds of Venus to the surface is forever trapped there and cannot re-radiate as infra-red flux, and thus escape (flux is a measurement of an amount of something that flows through a unit area per unit time).
The only competing theory at the time was posited by Immanuel Velikovsky, who pointed to evidence supporting the notion that the planet Venus was a new planet that was still in the process of cooling down. Although Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" was so popular with the public that it once held the title of bestseller, the mainstream astrophysical community scoffed at the notion that an outsider whose expertise was in linguistics could offer any value whatsoever to a discussion about Venus' hot temperatures.
Carl Sagan's theory would require that Venus' atmosphere be in something called thermal balance. In other words, in order to rule out the possibility that Venus' heat originates from the planet itself, scientists must establish that the heat absorbed by Venus from the Sun must equal the heat emitted by Venus back into space. If Venus' surface was emitting more infrared light than the sunlight it was receiving, then Sagan's greenhouse theory would be ruled out and scientists would have to consider the possibility that Venus was probably cooling down from some past catastrophic event --a finding that could lend credence to Velikovsky's assertion that Venus was a new planet.
The November 13, 1980, issue of New Scientist contained an article titled, "The mystery of Venus' internal heat". It reads as follows:
Two years surveillance by the Pioneer Venus orbiter seems to show that Venus is radiating away more energy than it receives from the sun. If this surprising result is confirmed, it means that the planet itself is producing far more heat than the earth does.
F.W. Taylor of the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford presented these measurements at a Royal Society meeting last week. Venus surface temperature is higher than any other in the solar system, at 480 C. The generally accepted theory is that sunlight is absorbed at Venus' surface, and re-radiated as infrared. The latter is absorbed in the atmosphere, which thus acts as a blanket, keeping the planet hot. It is similar to the way a greenhouse keeps warm.
Pioneer has shown that there is enough carbon dioxide and the tiny proportion of water vapor needed to make the greenhouse effect work -- just. If this is the whole story, the total amount of radiation emitted back into space, after its journey up through the atmospheric blanket must be exactly equal to that absorbed from sunlight (otherwise the surface temperature would be continuously changing).
But Taylor found that Venus radiates 15 percent more energy than it receives. To keep the surface temperature constant
Slashdot Mirror
I could care less about wikipedia to be honest. I'm a normal person who has read something that other people are refusing to read about. I speak to others with the expectation that people will listen and respond to evidence. My conclusions are based upon the arguments that I have read, the current events that are transpiring within the news on a daily basis, my ability to ask questions of the theorists and other astrophysicists and plasma physicists, my willingness to spend time on an issue that most people are apathetic about, my lack of investment within the current theories and my willingness to hear out arguments.
... it's all of these things that drives people like yourself, in a collective fashion, to play a supportive role in the overall process of allowing astrophysics to become stuck.
It's great that in 10 minutes or so you were able to cover all of the arguments that it took me 18 months to investigate.
People who call advocates of EU Theory crazy are inventing a fictional world for themselves where there are no longer debates about the interpretation of astrophysical observations and where a theory of everything has been figured out. The majority of your contemplative process involves basically looking at the conclusions and deciding that you do not want to believe that. Your own human perception of what should be normal for a theory is more important than an exhaustive analysis of the evidence. You shoot from the hip, and expect to figure out the answer to the hardest questions man has ever asked based upon a superficial investigation -- feeling confident enough in your analysis that you feel totally fine with calling somebody else who has gone through this difficult process a crazy person. You don't even realize it yet, but your actions constitute a self-inflicted wound of sorts. It's the collective lack of rigor, the willingness to pass judgment on others so quickly, the lack of concern for any evidence that is presented, the lack of trust in your own abilities to judge the evidence, and the tendency to be more skeptical of things that are less popular
What you don't realize is that the essence of the Electric Universe is not new. These arguments about quasi-neutrality, space plasmas and interactions of bodies in space have been going on for *decades*. Kristian Birkeland has been discussing the electrical nature of comets since the 1800's. Most of EU Theory is based upon laboratory plasma physics, which is also certainly NOT a new concept. EU Theorists argue that we should obey Maxwell's Equations -- which is also NOT a new concept. Wallace Thornhill's accurate prediction for Deep Impact occurred more than ten years ago. That's hardly new either. Discussions about the cause of the Grand Canyon or the extinction of the mammoths are not in the least new. It all seems so novel to you guys because you have not investigated the concept on your own.
The idea that the public should only be interested in hearing one point of view on controversial subjects is antiquated. The idea that astrophysicists will out of the kindness of their own hearts even allow a paradigm shift is naive. The idea that the astrophysical peer review journals are so perfect that they do not need their own critics is simplistic. The idea that wikipedia can continue to disallow an Electric Universe entry and not eventually be considered a part of the problem when the theory is ultimately more popular and accepted is optimistic.
The only reason I'm having this conversation with you right now is because wikipedia does not allow an entry for "Electric Universe Theory". Wikipedia takes a side when they *disallow* such an entry in spite of the existence of an overwhelming number of publications (both peer-reviewed and non-) that support the theory. The EU Theorists have done *everything* that has been requested of them to satisfy the requirements, and this has only resulted in the banning of Ian Tresman. Wikipedia refuses to even publish validated predictions regarding EU Theory. There is no longer any mention of the fact that Wallace Thornhill accurately predicted the results of Deep Impact or the more recently validated prediction regarding Venus' lightning.
Validated predictions should rise to the level of HISTORICAL FACTS.
They should be beyond any reproach and they should not require publication within an astrophysical journal so long as they can be validated by Internet archives. When you allow people to censor such things, you are allowing them to re-write history. Wallace Thornhill's accurate Deep Impact Mission results in and of themselves should be more than sufficient to reconsider an Electric Universe entry within wikipedia because regardless of what the astrophysical journals say, predictions are our most valuable tool for evaluating theories. What wikipedia is essentially doing for Deep Impact is elevating the value of ad hoc explanations and after-the-fact computer simulations relative to accurate predictions. If somebody was actually tasked with taking an objective look at the evidence, they would realize that this is true and realize that Wallace Thornhill's prediction was too accurate to be a coincidence. Nobody else at the time was predicting *two* flashes, and the observation of two flashes points directly to the issue of whether or not bodies in space can acquire and trade electrical charge. The long-term implication is that the astrophysicists will continue to believe that they can just land a thrust-bearing probe onto one of these incoming threats and fire up the thrusters to redirect it away from our planet. What will instead happen is that there is a high chance that no probe could actually survive the charge neutralization that would happen for most such encounters. Wikipedia's over-zealous
The stubborn ones are certainly the mainstream astrophysicists, who prefer to do thought experiments on the universe rather than testing their concepts within a plasma physics laboratory. There are ultimately two types of people: those who like to imagine what is possible within the universe (elegant solutions), and those who are determined to find out what is actually probable. In order to be in the latter, you have to spend some time in the laboratory. That's why this debate is between the conventional astrophysicists and the laboratory plasma physicists. As time has gone on though, the data has not been supporting the dominant paradigms. They put on a good face for the public, but a thorough investigator will see right through it and realize that there is good reason for why they focus so much on what is *possible*. It's because they are backed into a corner by the evidence itself. Their theories are being constrained beyond believability, and they're collapsing due to the weight of band-aids. Things like dark matter and dark energy have become mathematical fudge factors that boost their mathematical formulas whenever they're under-performing relative to our observations. It's becoming a house of cards.
People like yourself understand so little of the debate that you think its acceptable to call people like myself "delusional". If you researched the issue even modestly, you would learn that Hannes Alfven -- the man who invented magnetohydrodynamics (the equations used to model the dominant state of matter in space) -- was the father of plasma cosmology. He warned astrophysicists during his Nobel Physics acceptance speech that they were heading down a dead-end, and that ideas like frozen-in-place magnetic fields were "pseudo-pedagogical" (an idea that appears to be true, but which in fact causes great harm). You know, there is a middle ground between being right and being delusional: it's a state called debate and arguments, where the scientific method determines the winner. I advise not being so quick to call ideas delusional when they are backed by evidence. The only reason that people do not accept the evidence for EU Theory is because they do not like the conclusions. There is in fact overwhelming evidence that supports their statements. It's one of the things you learn when you investigate it.
I recommend that you choose something a bit easier to validate your cosmology than particle accelerators. There is plenty of evidence out there that can be *seen* and *understood* by laypeople. Pointing to particle accelerators is like referring to the rabbit in your hat. There was a great article on particle accelerators recently that makes you wonder what the hell is going on in those facilities anyways. Check it out ...
*MANY* people use wikipedia to understand scientific theories and concepts. If you don't realize that, then you are learning it right now. It plays a prominent role in peoples' perceptions of the space sciences.
I know for fact that there is a major mistake being made and that wikipedia is heavily implicated in the mistake. You seem to be so convinced that you are right that you would rather believe that than try to understand the implications of my own knowledge. That's fine, but just be aware that an event is brewing within the peer review system that will demonstrate that people have been abusing the wikipedia system. Wiki censors have been far too effective in convincing people to not read about certain astrophysical concepts. This would be okay if it weren't that astrophysics is a broken discipline right now. The conventional theories are demonstrating a complete lack of predictive capabilities and the entire set of equations is built upon invisible particles that have never been observed to exist, despite 20 years of searching for them. Our astrophysical theories will crumble if it turns out that these particles do not in fact exist because the entire discipline now requires the existence of those particles to explain our observations. Wikipedia is being actively used to direct people away from investigating alternative solutions to this problem. The site has been completely cleansed of any materials that are not conventional. There exist entire cosmological theories that have been banned from wikipedia because some censors declare that there is not enough peer review research. The claim completely lacks merit, and anybody who investigates the evidence associated with the debate (The Electric Universe controversy) will come out of the experience realizing that there is a legitimate debate here between laboratory plasma physicists and the astrophysical community. The claims being made are 100% rock solid and supported by evidence that spans multiple, completely unrelated disciplines. I've spent 18 months arguing the evidence here on Slashdot with people and consulting the theorists whenever legitimate challenges were raised. In every single case of a legitimate challenge, they were able to justify their position using evidence. We have a new astrophysical contender, and wikipedia is essentially being used to prevent it from making its challenge by people who have never read what the Electric Universe theory actually says. They've never read a single book about it. They have no idea what it actually says. They are fighting against a perception of a theory that is completely inappropriate for the claims being made by the theorists. They're not even oftentimes aware that they are arguing against laboratory evidence and even Maxwell's Equations, as it has become customary within conventional astrophysics to ignore Maxwell's Equations when convenient or necessary.
People are not paying attention to the debate. It is not currently in the news. But there are peer review papers appearing right now throughout the peer review system that support EU Theory. I'm currently building a website devoted to raising awareness of the issue, to counter the damage that wikipedia is causing by not allowing these people to simply explain what their theory says to the public within this supposed "encyclopedia". I will be enlisting the help of people who have been reading astrophysical papers for decades and an MIT PhD in mathematics to explain in concise language
I think that we ultimately agree together, and that I'm arguing that the concept of the encyclopedia should evolve to more accurately reflect the scientific method. If it does not, then we will call the useful sites of similar function of the future something other than encyclopedias. A brief review of the history of science reveals that ideas that are currently thought to be absurd will one day prove to not be so. This is important because unless we have really "figured it all out", there will eventually be a high-profile event of some sort that demonstrates that wikipedia was wrong, and the entire model for the site will be subsequently abandoned. This is a challenge to the very concept of wikipedia. It threatens its own invincibility as a product because it opens up an opportunity for competitors. It's a bit of an issue because the owners of the site will eventually have to decide if they will defend reality or the product. They will be forced to choose between the interests of their own pockets and the interests of the human race. It is surely the price you pay for putting all of your money down on whatever is popular. A smarter gambler would spread his bets a bit more.
But, what you're missing is that if his vanity page was more true than the content that it was replaced with or that challenges it on wikipedia now, then we *ALL* lost something of value. The loss is not confined to the person who pushed to have the material published. When people play such an active role in shaping the views of reality for other people, human psychology can play starring roles in the theories that we develop. I think that's the point of why all of this matters.
If you are so fortunate that everything you believe corresponds with what you currently read in wikipedia, then you can also count on eventually being wrong about a good number of things you believe as time goes on -- if the history of science is to have any bearing on how we currently judge things to be "mainstream" and "fringe". In this way, wikipedia miserably fails on controversial scientific issues because there are many things in science that are simply controversial. But wikipedia has no good process for presenting an intelligent discussion of divergent views (or at least, no mechanism for preventing censorship of the lesser popular view). There is a mismatch between wikpedia's model and the never-ending scientific process of moving ideas between the "fringe" and "mainstream" sects.
It used to be that the natural sciences thrived on disagreement and debate. I think that wikipedia indicates a cultural shift towards a communal desire to generate consensus, but I also believe that there are many scientific issues which we should not prematurely develop consensus on before more data is acquired, and that wikipedia is abandoning a rare opportunity to change the world into one that is not so black and white. In my own humble opinion, the end result is that many of our own most inquisitive children will one day observe the apparent existence of so much certainty within the sciences as reason to not go into science. Wikipedia acts to redirect peoples' curiosities about various controversial subjects. Rather than the focus being on the arguments, with full appreciation of the ongoing debate, they have instead opted to favor those ideas that are most popular. They invite people to just accept the most popular published "facts" rather than inviting people to understand the intricate details of the various debates (so that they can decide for themselves). It is truly an encyclopedia, but in an Internet era when something much more is needed to counter the perception in science that everything has been figured out.
It is a squandered opportunity that some other startup company will have to spend a large amount of effort and funds correcting before the people who run wikipedia will wake up.
There's certainly no shame in claiming that I believe in Hannes Alfven. He did after all create magnetohydrodynamics.
As I tell my girlfriend all of the time, it's not a competition! The point is that there are very qualified physicists and astrophysicists, both internal and external to the peer review system, that have read what EU Theory states and agree that there is nothing technically wrong with its arguments. What I've noticed over time is that mainstream advocates do not just want to be right; they also demand that they not be challenged. They refuse to accept that there can be any debate about the fundamentals -- like the mathematical modeling of space plasmas. My purpose is not to demonstrate that EU Theory is certainly right. All that I and others wish is to be admitted into a meaningful debate. We want people to talk about the evidence with us. People like Tim Thompson and those on the BAUT Forums have proposed various simplistic arguments that have in the past been designed to dissuade people from looking into the issue. There was, if I remember correctly, a rather simplistic calculation some time ago on BAUT that got passed around a lot that supposedly demonstrated that there was not enough charged particles between us and the nearest star to power the Sun. Since then, as you may be aware, it has been observed that the solar wind's structure consists of many individual flux-tubes. From http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000932000001000026000001:
As you may know, a "flux tube" is conventional astrophysicist speak for the movement of charged particles within filaments. In other words, electrical currents. This is not some loonie crackpot meandering. If you were being rational and objective about it, you would wonder *why* the solar wind has flux tubes. If you were informed of EU Theory or even just laboratory plasma physics, you would also realize that it tends to point to Birkeland Currents, and very importantly, the observation violates quasi-neutrality. Not only is the simplistic calculation completely worthless, but the physical world is look
And I suppose this is supposed to make more common sense
http://www.trustedlog.com/2007/11/26/parallel-universe-exists-we-have-evidence/
Common sense would demand that if you're observing plasma voids within the universe, then you should identify what scenarios plasmas tend to form voids within the laboratory. You know, the whole point of inflation theory was to explain a homogeneous mass layout of the universe. It was only six months ago that mainstream astrophysics advocates were claiming that this observed homogeneousness was a great "prediction" of inflation, a prediction that had been 'proven' by the WMAP data. Now that they observe that the universe is not homogeneous, rather than accepting that inflation might be wrong, the astrophysicists propose that we're seeing an alternative universe, which -- and I shouldn't have to explain this -- is a completely untestable claim. Is that the common sense that EU Theory is lacking?
I think you're confusing common sense for popularity. EU Theory is not *popular* -- yet. It makes *FAR* more sense though than the dominant paradigm today because it is largely a re-statement of laboratory plasma physics -- which constitutes 99.999% of all visible matter within the universe.
But the reason that EU Theory is not popular has little to do with the arguments. I've studied the numerous arguments at great length for many months now. There is nothing wrong with them. They are all valid and many of the advocates of EU Theory have very serious credentials. The real problem to date has been that there is no place for people like yourself to go where you can be dealt the devastating argumentative blow to your own cherished cosmology that you expect in order to change your mind. All of the Electric Universe sites are designed to suit the needs of people who have already read the books. Since you guys refuse to read books that you do not already agree with, we will have to teach you EU Theory through peer reviewed papers. Once you're being explained what EU Theory is by people who have PhD's in mathematics from MIT and people who have been reading astrophysical papers for 30 years -- something which you won't have to wait much longer to observe -- you'll come to realize that this is not a bunch of crackpots.
But what about the fires? Let's look closer
Not only were the numbers of Clovis insufficient to perform such maneuvers, but the idea that the Clovis could have in 1,000 years single-handedly destroyed the mammoths and mastodons in North America, Central and South America, but also the horses, camels, giant peccaries, mountain deer, giant beavers, four-pronged antelopes, ground sloths, dire wolves, native lions, and giant short-faced bears, as well -- it's a bit much to handle. If such a solution to the extinction is thought to be appropriate in this case, then we can draw upon no other historical scenario that might have set the precedent. On every other continent, human-induced extinctions took tens of thousands of years. It is also scientific fact that there is no technological advance that can explain why the Clovis were able to do this in 1,000 years where it took other cultures ten times that. Uniformitarianism is one of the fundamental philosophies that got us to this point in blaming the humans for this carnage. But if this level of carnage has never before been observed, then that in itself is a violation of uniformitarianism (more properly "actualism"), as we're supposing that something happened that we can find no precedent for.
Some scientists have resorted to calling the American animals dumber. Regardless, the dates associated with mammoth fossils in North America do not demonstrate a rolling wave of Clovis terror sweeping the continent. If we accept the timing derived by various dating techniques, many species became extinct in the south earlier compared to those in the north.
One is left wondering though how you exterminate a species with cliffs. That would imply that EVERY SINGLE MAMMOTH was driven by fire to a cliff. Some of the Americas are in fact populated by forests. It is not all grasslands, and there is no reason why the mammoths would not have populated these areas too.
You may be surprised to also learn that there are fewer than a dozen sites in North America that point to a link between humans and mammoths. In a scientific sense,
If we're going to use the "wind" moniker, it's helpful to remind people that it is not really all that much like a wind at all in this regard -- unless you're intending an *electric* wind as happens to charged particles subjected to an electric field within a plasma physics laboratory. To date, there remains no adequate explanation within the conventional paradigm as to why the solar wind accelerates like this (although laboratory plasma physicists who don't dabble in astrophysics would wonder what all of the controversy is about). The fact that we're actually in this gigantic plasma structure too makes it a bit more difficult for astrophysicists to propose all sorts of unusual explanations for this acceleration.
I believe that we pay a heavy price for ignoring this important detail. It is not a minor fact that can be brushed aside as -- whatever it truly is -- is moving more matter in our solar system than any other force we know of. One could lucidly argue -- and people are doing just that -- that this force is playing a more important role in the universe than conventional astrophysicists will accept.
For example, I've had discussions with a person named Hank May, who has been studying the Pioneer Anomaly for some time now, and who has a rather simple explanation that the thermal blankets on the Pioneer ship have been acting as capacitors, which are responding to a weak electric field that is generated by the Sun (note that this weak electric field is not accepted by mainstream astrophysicists, although there are many plasma physicists who see no problem with it). He's been having issues getting his paper published because it defies the popular paradigms in astrophysics these days, which is a bit unusual considering that the Pioneer Anomaly is actually considered a test for mainstream cosmology. But, regardless, look at what he has to say about the issue
This is a gigantic over-simplification. Ginenthal removes *ANY* doubt whatsoever in his analysis that the mammoths were not killed by people. The reasons are numerous. His logic is impeccable. I would argue that no rational person could read that book and come out of it still believing that the mammoths were slaughtered by people. Perhaps most damning of all is the fact that the list of species that went extinct with the mammoths include animals that man could not have possibly killed off -- including 10 classes of North American birds, small burrowing rodent-like animals in Alaska (the American badger and the black-footed ferrets), the tiny Aztlan rabbit, mullosks and even frogs! We're not talking about diminished populations here. We're talking about total eradication from their native areas of the time.
In the words of Charles Lyell himself, "we know how tedious a task it is in our times, even with the aid of firearms to exterminate a noxious quadruped
What's also particularly damning is the fact that other fairly large fauna completely escaped the apparently ruthless Clovis hunters. There is little support for the notion that these people came in here and just wiped out everything that was worth hunting. The extinction event was highly selective. In particular, the musk oxen survived, which is highly enigmatic because these creatures will allow the entire herd to be obliterated if just one within their self-defensive circle is killed. They'll just stand there and take it. Why did those creatures survive? Why would the Clovis people specifically target the mammoths, which arguably possess woolly matting (8 inches), thick skin (another inch) and thick fat (an additional 6 inches) that is completely impenetrable to spear heads? Driving large herds of mammoths over cliffs would require hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters -- numbers which do not accurately portray the Clovis populations. If using spears, the prey would not instantly die. It would have to be trailed for many miles before you even had a chance of it bleeding itself to death. The arguments against the proposed kill-off scenario are actually far too numerous to list. What you see here is just a small sample of Ginenthal's explanation. Ultimately, every possible kill-off scenario is essentially unsupported by the evidence.
In truth, the extinction *OF* the mammoth was in truth an extinction event that *INVOLVED* the mammoth and numerous other creatures that man could not have possibly killed off.
What is particularly telling about the whole Clovis thing, in my own opinion, are the actions of Hrdlicka and the infamous "Clovis Police". Words to the wise: BUYER BEWARE when it comes to controversial issues within the natural sciences. If you sense any impropriety whatsoever, look into it with an open mind, as there is a long and detailed history of anthropologists defending their theories using completely unethical tactics. It can be hard for honest people to understand it, but many people in the field are far more interested in making sure that their theories survive the test of time than in finding the truth. If you think I'm full of it, then read Ginenthal's book and decide for yourself!
To assist with any investigation of the Deep Impact Mission results that you may decide to take on, if I may, can I recommend the following link?
http://www.suppressedscience.net/news.html
Okay, now we're kind of getting somewhere. I've listened for 18 months to what the people around here think about EU Theory, and I agree that your beliefs represent the majority of the people here. What I'm trying to tell you is that the number of adjustments that have been made to the mainstream theories is more plentiful than you're aware of, and the amount of support for EU Theory within peer-review journals is more than you're aware of.
The thing is, nobody here wants to read what the theory actually says, so there is no way for you guys to know that this is true for yourself. All you can do is to look at what the people around you are saying and evaluate their beliefs based upon their credentials. This is not a very effective way of evaluating a theory when the theory threatens the research of nearly everybody who has credentials.
What I'm in the process of doing right now is creating a website that is directed specifically to people like yourself. You believe that EU Theory is unscientific and unsupported by modern observations. I'm creating a website that will demonstrate beyond any doubt that this is incorrect, and that teaches pseudoskeptical people from Slashdot what EU Theory states on the basis of the most modern peer reviewed papers out there. It won't be until you see this site and the wealth of research that currently supports EU Theory that you will begin to realize that there is in fact emerging support for the theory, and that the current state of mainstream astrophysics was only arrived at through numerous incorrect predictions and supposedly minor tweaks.
I think though that this idea that these tweaks are always minor is a bit of an incorrect generalization. I mean, when we're talking about things like finding artifacts within the CMB that correspond with filaments of Hydrogen within our local galaxy -- as has been recently reported as Wired Magazine's top story this past week -- we're not talking about minor tweaks anymore. This is a possible paradigm change of the most dramatic proportions possible. Papers have been appearing within the peer review system that report that the solar wind resembles filamentary flux tubes of charged particles. If you perform a search through Harvard abstracts on "elephant trunks", you will find a wealth of papers that point directly to filaments of charged particles being observed throughout the universe. This type of stuff is precisely what EU Theory predicts, and this finding about flux tubes coming off of the Sun very importantly negates some of the simplified attempts to mathematically disprove that the Sun can be powered externally by those charged particles. These calculations (made famous on the BAUT Forums) need to be revisited in light of these new findings about the solar wind as I'm confident it will be shown that those calculations are no longer valid. The arguments against EU Theory are in fact losing weight in the face of improved observations. Astrophysicists are now noticing that stars within nebulae form within filaments. This is exactly what happens for electrical plasmas within laboratory plasma physics when Birkeland Currents pinch together at points called z-pinches. Perhaps you do not realize this, but any time that helical magnetic fields are being observed around filaments in space, this strongly suggests, according to Maxwell's Equations, that those filaments are in fact electric currents.
I strongly advise that you observe this situation with an open mind. Allow yourself to be presented with the evidence that argues against your own prefered theories. If you do as much, I think you will come to realize that the evidence is stronger than you currently realize. You do not realize it right now merely because the EU Theory websites that currently exist have been created to service the EU community. My site will be the first EU site ever designed from scratch to convince people like yourself using the most compelling arguments available. We will tap into 50
That should clearly read "the idea that electromagnetism and mass itself may be related". Typo.
The problem with your logic is that you rule out an important, viable alternative within your assumptions. You do not consider the possibility that there is a unification of electromagnetism and gravity -- the idea that gravity and mass itself may be related. As you know, mass is a trait of matter. Wallace Thornhill specifically states:
Before you outright dismiss the suggestion, I would actually add to this further the following NewScientist article (from http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2814). The emphasis is my own:
Keep in mind that the voltages we're talking about here are qui
You know, if you weren't so stubborn about reading things that you don't already agree with, you could quite easily find the answer. It's interesting that you will waste your time arguing with me over these things, and yet you won't actually spend the money or time to understand what the theory states. I am confident of my understanding of what is happening because I've expanded my awareness of what they theory says beyond yours. Your carefully-crafted arguments seem to me like one long drawn-out excuse to avoid challenging your own belief system. The idea that you would be preventing me from spreading misinformation on Slashdot is silly when you've yet to fully read what is being alleged.
That's clever. It wasn't meant as a generalization. It was intended as a rebuttal to your allegation that ...
Your perception that I'm making sweeping generalizations is not accurate. The debate over the mathematical modeling of space plasmas is specific in its claims and philosophy and history of science can assist us in reaching a conclusion.
And yet, your thorough framework could come crumbling down like a house of cards at any moment ...
...
...
http://plasmascience.net/tpu/downloadsCosmo/Verschuur-CIV-HI-TPS-Aug2007b.pdf
Or in layman's terms
http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2007/11/big_bang
As a sidenote, Wallace Thornhill's "The Electric Universe" was the first published book
to reference Verschuur's allegations
If a person never read any criticism of black holes, then they could be forgiven for not realizing that the theory of black holes has adjusted over time to reflect observations. For instance, it was once thought that black holes were so powerful that nothing could escape them. Then, black holes were observed to possess jets coming out of them that involved intense magnetic fields and particles moving at near the speed of light, and the theories had to be modified. There's a great critique of black hole theory on Wallace Thornhill's holoscience site (http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=tyybhrr8). If you can read that criticism and maintain a solid belief in black holes, then I'd have to at a minimum give you credit for actually challenging your own belief system.
It would certainly seem this way if you weren't paying close attention, at least. After all, how would you notice all of the people that are being blacklisted and outright dismissed? Have you seen this site?
... http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050705impression.htm [thunderbolts.info]).
http://www.crank.net/
If you do any history of science reading, you will find that it is inevitable that some ideas within the fringes of science today will eventually make their way into the mainstream, and become accepted fact. Sites like this prefer that scientists be dismissed for the sole reason that they advocate theories that are not currently conventional. I can guarantee you that some of the people being ridiculed on this site will one day be vindicated.
But I can get more specific on this point. Wallace Thornhill made numerous predictions regarding the 1995 Deep Impact Mission based upon the concept of the Electric Sun Hypothesis:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050704predictions.htm [thunderbolts.info]
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050630deepimpact.htm [thunderbolts.info]
Interestingly, the predictions were Slashdotted:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/03/1246254 [slashdot.org]
Now, if you go through those forum postings from Slashdot, you will observe that Slashdot readers make absolutely no distinction whatsoever between ridiculing an astrophysical PREDICTION and ridiculing an astrophysical theory. This is a very serious problem because predictions are the most powerful tool that astrophysicists have for validating theories. When it was subsequently discovered that Wallace Thornhill was right in nearly every single aspect of his prediction, there was no retraction by any of those people and no announcement by the moderators at Slashdot. Mention of the successful prediction was also eventually completely sanitized from wikipedia many years later. Clearly, they did such a good job that you've never heard of the entire situation.
One of Thornhill's successful predictions was that there would be a pre-impact flash -- something which nobody else was actually predicting at the time. There were in fact two flashes at the time of impact. Furthermore, images of Tempel 1 just prior to impact demonstrate clear whiteouts (arguably from electrical arcing
What you learn when you look into these things is that scientists dismiss ideas that they consider absurd withou
Let me first congratulate the mainstream on their ability to agree on everything. When you rule out the alternatives within your assumptions, though, it does become a bit easier to find common ground.
Your views on astrophysical observations seem to me very parochial. You completely leave out the fact that there is plenty of debate on the interpretation of observations. For instance, you completely ignore the debate over Halton Arp's observations, suggesting that there is no meaningful debate over his observations of low-redshift quasars connected to or in front of higher redshift galaxies.
You also completely ignore the fact that many scientists have spent their entire lifetimes unsuccessfully pursuing acceptance of their theories only to have their theories vindicated or co-opted after their death. Kristian Birkeland, for instance, struggled his entire lifetime to convince Sydney Chapman and the British that the aurora were caused by the Sun. Chapman repeatedly ridiculed Birkeland's theory even though he himself had proposed something similar before he was admonished for it. Like many people who ridicule EU Theory, Chapman didn't even have his facts straight enough to know what he was arguing against; he thought Birkeland was arguing that the Sun only sent protons. In fact, Birkeland was arguing that it was only the solar protons that were creating the aurora.
The entire mess with the source of the aurora was of course the result of a throwaway comment by Lord Kelvin. Kelvin's star power blinded a lot of people to the fact that he was sometimes full of shit. The same thing happened with Carl Sagan and Velikovsky.
Your view that science is pure and virginal, and unaffected by social drama or public preferences and prejudices is a bit naive. I mean, clearly you can tell that the public *likes* Carl Sagan, Albert Einstein, black holes, wormholes, multiple-dimensioned universes and other various esoteric concepts that may defy common sense. The public does not like these things because they have sifted through the evidence themselves and identified these concepts as being more true than other ideas in astrophysics. The majority of the public likes them because they are fascinating -- like science fiction. They induce a sense of wonder in space that adds to their mundane lives here on Earth. More mundane theories that involve electricity over space plasmas have a hard time competing with black holes, which many people have developed emotional attachments with. When I told my girlfriend that black holes do not exist, she said, "But I *like* black holes!" Precisely.
With such a simple model in place for understanding science, one wonders why people even bother studying the history or philosophy of science.
Let's review a specific example for why this is complete nonsense. Wallace Thornhill made numerous predictions regarding the Deep Impact Mission based upon the concept of the Electric Sun Hypothesis:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050704predictions.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050630deepimpact.htm
Interestingly, the predictions were Slashdotted:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/03/1246254
It certainly does. Read "The Electric Sky" by Don Scott. When stars undergo extreme electrical stress, they will reduce their charge density by fissioning into two bodies, or expelling a smaller object. How the charge density subsequently balances out determines if the two new bodies are stars, planets or a mixture of the two. This process is inherently understandable within the laboratory. It explains the HR diagram without the concept of stellar ageing. It explains pulsars and many energetic stellar events.
You bought your computer, right? Semiconductor and computer manufacturers must make working products in order to sell them. Our astrophysical theories can be wrong, and the astrophysicists will not receive any immediate feedback that it is so. In fact, by your own logic, you should be a bit concerned with the entertainment value that people derive from the mainstream astrophysical theories (wormholes, brane worlds, black holes, etc) as it represents a form of purchase by the public. If the public is demonstrating a clear preference for a particular theory based upon something other than its accuracy in making predictions, then they are possibly not judging the theory on the basis of its truthfulness -- but rather how much it stimulates them to imagine that space is strange. One would have to expect in such a scenario that more mundane, yet correct, explanations would receive less attention. I believe strongly that the public has developed emotional attachments to many objects in astrophysics that are highly speculative and probably do not even exist.
I'm not dismissing anything. I accept all evidence that is compelling. I started out with an identical philosophy as yourself. Then, I decided to look a little bit further. I found out that the history of science is filled with these situations where dogma (somebody's belief system) superceded observations -- and it continues to this day. So long as you refuse to look into the situation any further and so long as you refuse to read materials outside of mainstream science, you will not be aware of it. We all define our own realities, and we tend to subconsciously reinforce our belief systems by our reading selection.
You know, comets are believed to be sublimating snow-balls because of the molecules they release as they move. Scientists observe large amounts of OH coming off of them. The thing is, oxygen is one of the most common elements in the universe. It is certainly present within the silicates contained within comets. And hydrogen is being sent towards
This seems like a bit of revisionist history here ...
Revercombe and Suomi et. al. thought the upward IR flux was anomalous enough to warrant writing up a highly complex mathematical description of the manner in which all of those sensors had "failed".
If there was no problem, as you seem to suggest, then why bother?
I talk about mythology *all* of the time in my postings. There is no trick here. The Slashdot article in question though had little to do with mythology, so it was not the focus of my posting.
I'm not bitter, btw. I'm trying to get people to respond to the arguments of the Electric Universe Theorists, which I've educated myself in, for the purpose of seeing if there are any legitimate arguments that cast doubt upon their theories. Most of the responses I get though tend to be ad hominem attacks, and claims that I am "misleading" people. Most people argue that I am not worth their time. People don't understand that they need to get their licks in now before I go public with my documentary on the subject.
When I find an argument that seems solid, I forward it to the theorists, and they respond in kind. I will typically repost their responses here. What I've found after 1.5 years of doing this is that people are not actually reading what their theory says, and are in fact dismissing the evidence they point to in a piecemeal fashion, unaware that there is a fabric that connects all of these pieces together. What needs to be done is that people need to understand what they are saying -- the entire theory -- so that observations can be evaluated on the basis of both paradigms. But nobody's doing this because there is this general sense that science is heading in the right direction. I feel that, in light of the arguments of the heretics, this is a big mistake.
It's as simple as that, and there's nothing unethical about what I'm doing. In fact, I'm quite sure that people will eventually thank me for my work.
You are judging a discipline of research which you've clearly read nothing about. The ironic thing, to be perfectly clear, is that it is commonly believed that mythology is largely devoid of information for the sole reason that the mythologists of old have been using the dominant astrophysical theories within their interpretations with little successes to date. However, when documents are translated without this extraneous influence, they tend to make a lot more sense. They also tend to point directly to plasma-based cosmologies. So, the irony of somebody like yourself claiming that the field of comparative mythology is like the x-files makes for a great show! Their failure to generate results was in fact a direct function of listening to the mainstream astrophysicists.
Um, no, not really. Unlike yourself, I've read what the Electric Universe Theorists are saying. Due to this exposure, and unlike yourself, I'm qualified to speak about their claims. Unfortunate for yourself, you will actually have to read what they are saying before you can be sure that they are wrong. If you ever do decide to read about them, you may be dismayed by what they are saying, for they are the ones arguing that laboratory plasma physics can teach us about space. They are the ones arguing that mainstream astrophysicists should have to follow Maxwell's Equations. I'm not so sure that you realize this at the moment, or you might not go so far out of your way to ridicule them.
Velikovsky was unfortunately wrong about Jupiter. Venus was expelled from Saturn. Dwardu Cardona demonstrates as much in "God Star", which if you ever get a desire to seriously challenge the dogma that you've come to blindly accept, I would recommend that you read.
We see large-scale comet-like bodies all over the universe, buddy. You should try reading more recent materials if you're not aware of it. Mira was observed to be emitting a comet-like tail in infrared just a couple of months ago. There was also this article
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12622-did-our-galaxys-black-hole-eat-its-baby-brother.html
Maybe you should ask your questions to the people who made *those* observations.
Actually, it's hardly wacky to develop a cosmology based upon the behavior of laboratory plasmas. As you may already know, plasmas constitute 99.999% of all visible matter within the universe. Furthermore, gases can become plasmas with less than 1% ionization. Laboratory plasma physics clearly indicates that these plasmas can continue to conduct current while in their dark mode, which offers an elegant explanation for dark matter. It is commonly argued that quasi-neutrality precludes large-scale charge separation in space, but quasi-neutrality is an *assumption*. Arguing that space must be charge neutral on some scale is tantamount to declaring that we've reached a conclusion on a metaphysical question. But it is also in violation of our laboratory experiences, which indicate that plasmas can and do form double layers, Birkeland Currents and z-pinches. Don't be deceived into believing that the Electric Universe Theory is "mystical". Sure, it's different than standard cosmology and it correlates perfectly with human mythology and ancient documents (which should be an advantage, IMHO), but the theory that space plasmas are electrical can be explained completely separately from all of that. Hannes Alfven, Ralph Juergens, Wallace Thornhill and Anthony Perratt are not at all "mystics". Religion is in fact strictly forbidden as a topic amongst the theorists.
I completely agree! People act as if I'm some sort of dogmatic rebel around here, but that's only because they are reading different evidence than I am. I would have to think that if Venus was emitting heat from its surface that this simple fact would appear on the lander's sensors. I am concerned by the hostility though towards the idea that Venus may not be in thermal equilibrium. I've yet to receive much in the way of technical criticism for my interpretation of Taylor's arguments. Most of the attacks upon my posting have been ad hominem attacks, or uninformed attacks upon the discipline of ancient document interpretation. This concerns me because it indicates that if we do clearly observe heat originating from Venus' surface, I do not see any indication that people would accept it for what it is.
What I recommend to you though is to not make the same assumption of others around here. Do not accept as fact this notion that there is no useful information within the field of comparative mythology without first trying to understand the strength of the evidence that is emerging within the field. Dwardu Cardona's "God Star" (published in 2006) presents a compelling case that there was in fact an event within the past 10,000 years that all cultures record in surprising detail. The problem up until now has been that mythologists have been using the popular cosmology to perform their translations. When they run into a translation regarding a star that is called "Saturn", they have up until now normalized the translation to "the sun". This has caused all sorts of problems for the discipline. What I find exceptionally arrogant though is that the mainstream astrophysicists subsequently blame the entire field of mythology for not being able to make sense of ancient writings and stories using their own favored cosmology, without ever considering that the ancient testimony is actually a test of their own theories' validity. These problems vanish once you drop the force-fitting and allow for the possibility of a plasma-based cosmology. Once you just interpret the documents as they stand, the story of what happened becomes quite clear and convincing and points directly to a plasma-based cosmology.
My goal is not to spread *belief*. I only advocate that people learn and judge for themselves what is being said. If somebody reads the evidence and subsequently disagrees wit
You seem to be quite intent to portray me as anti-science. Is it not possible that I believe in the scientific method, but just disagree with mainstream science? You appear to confuse the two ...
Comparative mythology is structured similar to the way in which we evaluate court testimony. You analyze the testimony of multiple cultures for similarities on specific themes. People like yourself add significant confusion to the matter because you've never given it a chance. Like others, you incorrectly believe that the Garden of Eden is a *religious* concept even though both the historical and fossil records indicate quite clearly that the phenomenon was physical and occurred for the entire world. You are aware that alligator fossils and coral reef fossils have been found at all latitudes, right?
Perhaps we'd save some time if people actually just read the materials themselves, eh? After all, that appears to be the real problem -- the outright dismissal of data that is enigmatic to numerous disciplines.
I'm sorry you think that I'm a crackpot. I'm really quite a normal person who was not dissuaded from reading materials that I subsequently found compelling. Why does everybody who disagrees with mainstream astrophysics have to be so loony? I mean, you act as if astrophysics is some sort of laboratory science, and that so long as the mathematical equation exist to make the theory work, then the mathematical equations must be true. Few degreed astrophysicists ever even attempted to develop the ability to compare and contrast cosmological models; most are satisfied to accept the theories they were taught in school as fact. You're so hostile to alternative physical models for the universe that you never allowed your brain to even witness them in any depth. You and others here put far more effort into learning the math than you do the philosophy and history of science. I've taken plenty of math in my life, but it is not a substitute for a rounded education. You appear to be completely unaware that many of the strongest adherents to the Electric Universe Theory are the laboratory plasma physicists. Even the guy who invented magnetohydrodynamics pleaded with the scientific community during his Nobel Physics acceptance speech to drop the frozen-in-place magnetic field concept. I mean, every week that goes by, more and more peer-reviewed papers are being published that indicate filaments surrounded by helical magnetic fields (do a Harvard Abstracts paper search on "elephant trunk"). Sure, there are ways to create such things without the filaments being electrical currents, but it is complete nonsense
If one assumes that Venus is the sister planet to Earth, formed out of swirling stellar material billions of years ago along with the Earth, then Venus should be about 20 degrees warmer at any given latitude than Earth is. And, in fact, that is what was taught 50 years ago before we had sent any probes to peer beneath Venus' dense cloud cover. When the 900 degree F surface temperatures of Venus were discovered in 1970 by the USSR's Venera 7 probe, Carl Sagan devised his "super greenhouse" theory, which instantly became the standard theory for explaining the extreme surface temperatures on Venus. Sagan's claim was that the less than 2% of solar energy which somehow finds its way through the thick carbon dioxide clouds of Venus to the surface is forever trapped there and cannot re-radiate as infra-red flux, and thus escape (flux is a measurement of an amount of something that flows through a unit area per unit time).
The only competing theory at the time was posited by Immanuel Velikovsky, who pointed to evidence supporting the notion that the planet Venus was a new planet that was still in the process of cooling down. Although Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" was so popular with the public that it once held the title of bestseller, the mainstream astrophysical community scoffed at the notion that an outsider whose expertise was in linguistics could offer any value whatsoever to a discussion about Venus' hot temperatures.
Carl Sagan's theory would require that Venus' atmosphere be in something called thermal balance. In other words, in order to rule out the possibility that Venus' heat originates from the planet itself, scientists must establish that the heat absorbed by Venus from the Sun must equal the heat emitted by Venus back into space. If Venus' surface was emitting more infrared light than the sunlight it was receiving, then Sagan's greenhouse theory would be ruled out and scientists would have to consider the possibility that Venus was probably cooling down from some past catastrophic event --a finding that could lend credence to Velikovsky's assertion that Venus was a new planet.
The November 13, 1980, issue of New Scientist contained an article titled, "The mystery of Venus' internal heat". It reads as follows: