I've certainly heard this view before, and I have to admit that I cannot discount it. There are increasingly ways around these bottlenecks though. We don't actually need wikipedia, and we only modestly need peer review publications. It's always been my impression that the requirement for peer review publication is an excuse that will be subsituted with another as quickly as the requirement is met. The real battle IMO is for peoples' belief systems.
We are making slow, albeit steady, progress. Laypeople are picking up copies of "The Electric Sky" and realizing the strength of the arguments. Things will get *really* interesting though once the public starts reading Dwardu Cardona. "God Star" remains an undiscovered gem that will eventually rock the foundations of science.
Your response is quite clever in that it strictly focuses on the successes of technology as a means of proving that space interpretations are correct. It's a very common fallicy, but it completely ignores the fact that we don't interpret our way to semiconductor chips. When a chip does not work, we learn from our mistakes. When an astrophysicist makes a bad interpretation based upon some incorrect mathematical modeling he learned within magnetohydrodynamics about the nature of plasmas, there are not necessarily any repercussions from that one individual mistake to guide his next interpretation to be any more accurate. I'm a computer engineer by trade, so I see where you're coming from. But I'm afraid that your over-simplification ignores the most important aspect of chip design: broken chips don't sell. In the end though, quantum mechanics has thus far failed to create a comprehensive explanation for our observations, and so we must continue to allow for the possibility that other explanations are possible.
As for Relativity guiding our space probes or satellites, that is yet another poorly-informed fallacy. Probes are designed to respond to their environment. They correct their courses when they go off course. Did you know that Relativity has no relevant bearing whatsoever on the synchronization of satellite clocks? In a personal conversation with David Thomson, who has studied these subjects his entire life in pursuit of an aether model that works...
I do strongly support General Relativity, but that does not mean I believe that any picture with four or five bright objects viewed through a fisheye lens are evidence for it. Although Eddington did selectively put forth data on the solar eclipse in 1919 there have been numerous confirmations later on for light bending around the Sun. Also, Mercury's precession is well documented. The nonsense about GPS systems is a bunch of crap. We are told that GPS systems wouldn't work if it weren't for GR, SR, Sagnac, and other corrections. Although the Sagnac and GR corrections have been systematically verified through numerous experiments, the correction factor is extremely small compared to the constant empirically derived ionospheric interference adjustment. The ionospheric adjustment is on the order of 1000 times greater than the various Relativity, Sagnac, and other adjustments thrown in for ceremonial purposes only. It's like calculating the distance between a ship and helicopter in rough seas, and even though the ship is bouncing up and down by three meters a tiny adjustment of three millimeters is incorporated to account for the stretching of the metal. It's meaningless from a scientific point of view.
So, you just learned something new. Now, the real test is how do you react to this new information? Will you adhere to your prior belief in spite of all such new observations that disconfirm your prior belief system? Or will you begin to apply skepticism *equally* to all theories if you start to realize that the superficial, popular view of science is not always the most accurate?
You state that...
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof: don't expect to be considered until you've gathered such proof.
In other words, you are *more* skeptical of anything that is not popular or commonly believed. This is a common issue within science today. Many space advocates cling to this philosophy, and yet they assume that the peer review system -- the professional astrophysicists -- are, or at least at some point *were*, somehow above it long enough to scientifically rule out everything that is not currently popular in astrophysics. This is where you err in your logic. Mainstream science is *also* and for many years has been pseudo-skeptical when it comes to electricity in space. This dates back to the days when Sidney Chapman refused to even look at Kristian Birkeland's terrella experiment, and it has led mainstream science
And I suppose you are a big fan of Carl Sagan? Have you read "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky" by Ginenthal? Not that I'm a big fan of the big V, but at least I realize that he was given a truly *raw* and unfair treatment by Sagan.
Thank you for your comments. I consider my role as a liason between Slashdot and the Electric Universe Theorists. This effectively creates a filter whereby I handle the easier challenges (basically bringing people up to speed on the publications) and the more intelligent, difficult responses are forwarded directly to them. What you must understand is that although the names you may recognize as EU Theorists are limited in number, there is in fact a much larger number of sympathetic professionals who agree in principle with the theorists from all relevant disciplines, networking together to understand what the true role that electricity plays in space is. Collectively, the group is eager to receive intelligent challenges to EU theories and ideas. Yet, the group maintains its cohesiveness purely by the strength of the areas of agreement (after all, there is no research money in it!). For that reason, we find it very important to confront any serious problems with the EU model. And as more occasions arise to challenge the EU model, I encourage you to point out the problems that you may notice with my postings. Ultimately, my hope is that you will recognize that there is enough of a reasoned argument present to warrant a more public and meaningful discussion of electrical space plasmas.
Within that context, I've forwarded your comments. One of the members has done some detailed study of the solar neutrino deficit. In your last two sentences, you state:
However, this is far from shocking, as very few stars have a perfectly stable radiant (photon) flux, including our own, and of course are quite a number of much more strongly variable stars. The anticorrelation is mainly suggestive of changes in p-p fusion rates producing visible effects at the surface.
It appears in your response as though you suggest that a significant part of the neutrino oscillations are due to the variable magnetic fields near the surface, but you don't go into detail on this. But it seems to us that the real question remains. We're interested how exactly the fusion rates produce visible effects at the surface, and it appears as though this response does not directly address that enigma.
The theorists and advocates are interested in clarification on this point if you have the time to respond.
First of all, it has never conclusively been determined that there exists no aether. There is no shortage of papers on the Internet that reason through the experiments that have been conducted to date, and many conclude that an aether was never rigorously excluded. You may not be aware that David Thomson, originator of the Aether Physics Model, claims to have generated an aether model that accurately predicts the electron binding energies of *every* single element within the periodic table. But more than that, it appears that evidence for an aether is ironically getting in the way of validating the more acceptable theories...
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 major source of beam losses (particles exiting from the usable beam) for heavy-ion collisions is expected to be a class of event in which the counter-moving ions pass each other and don*t interact except to spawn a pair of particles---an electron and positron---one of which (the positron) goes off to oblivion while the other (the electron) latches onto one of the ions. This ion, bearing an extra electric charge, will now behave slightly differently as it races through the chain of powerful magnets that normally steer the particles around the accelerator. Going a certain distance, the modified ion will leave its fellows and smash into the beam pipe carrying the beams, thus heating up the pipe and surrounding magnet coils.
Fearing these future beam losses, accelerator physicists have sought to observe this effect at an existing machine, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven Lab on Long Island. And they found what they were looking for, a tiny splash of energy amounting to about.0002 watts, or about what a firefly puts out. The RHIC beam for these tests consisted of copper ions each carrying 6.3 TeV of energy (about 100 GeV per nucleon). According to CERN scientist John Jowett (john.jowett@cern.ch, 41-22-7676-643) this troublesome class of events, referred to as bound-free-pair production (or BFPP, the bound referring to the electron and the free to the positron), will be much more formidable at LHC than at RHIC. First of all, the pair production scales as the atomic number of the nucleus (or the charge of the nucleus, denoted by the letter Z) raised to the seventh power. The LHC heavy-ion collisions will use beams composed of lead ions. The more highly charged nucleus and the larger energies (574 TeV per lead nucleus) mean the BFPP process should be some 100,000 times more prominent than in the test at RHIC. This would amount to about 25 watts, the equivalent of a reading lamp. That doesn't sound like much but, when deposited in the ultra-cold (1.9 K) magnets of the LHC, it could bring them to the brink of "quenching" out of their superconducting state, interrupting the operation of the huge machine. (Bruce et al., Physical Review Letters, 5 October 2007; journalists can obtain the text from www.aip.org/physnews/select; other background material at arxiv.org/abs/0706.3356v2), http://cern.ch/AccelConf/e04/PAPERS/MOPLT020.PDF, Vol. I, Chapter 21 of the LHC Design Report, available at http://
If you've ever seen a novelty plasma globe, then you know what I'm getting at. If the term "flux tube" confuses you, then feel free to substitute in the concept of a current-carrying wire...;)
The problem is that many of the people who believe that space plasmas are electrical have very impressive credentials. Don Scott is merely one of many. Hannes Alfven was convinced enough of it that he postulated a mechanism for how charge separation could occur in space -- his critical ionization velocity -- which was subsequently validated within the laboratory.
When you erroneously call somebody a crackpot as a result of limiting your reading selection so much that you are unaware of the full history, you do a disservice to others who are trying to understand whether or not there is a real debate here. You basically help to convince others that there is no reason to hold such a discussion about electricity in space, and what's amazing is that you do it in spite of increasing evidence that a debate is warranted. You appear to be just completely oblivious that observations are confirming the statements of these people. If solar neutrinos, for instance, are anti-correlating with sunspot numbers, then that would clearly imply that the neutrinos are being generated near the surface of the Sun as opposed to inside of it. Within the standard solar model, there is a requirement that the neutrinos be generated something like 100,000 years *before* any surface effects could be observed. Don Scott's Electric Sun Hypothesis explains this enigmatic observation, and would furthermore explain why the corona is 100x hotter than the Sun's surface and why the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets.
You appear to believe that he is a crackpot on the sole basis of your own belief system rather than the evidence. It appears as though you are treating science as if it is a religion, or perhaps more appropriately, a cult. You have fallen prey to the field of public relations, which has convinced you that everything in astrophysics has already been figured out.
My understanding actually is that number of neutrinos emitted by the Sun are inversely correlated with sunspot frequency. If that is true, then that would tend to pose a serious problem for the standard solar model as that would suggest a correlation between neutrino generation and activity on the Sun's surface, which are supposed to be separated by a significant duration of time. Is this not true?
I was pointing our the crackpottery of the first paragraph of your link, and saying that the rest of what he has to say should be ignored based on that
But magnetic reconnection is *extremely* important as it attempts to explain why the Sun's atmosphere is 100x hotter than its surface. We see a similar inverse temperature situation with the Earth's atmosphere, but it is generally agreed that this is a result of an external energy source. If Don Scott is right about magnetic reconnection, then the most popular theory for how the Sun's core can heat up its atmosphere without heating up its surface is bunk. It is an important issue that people should attempt to understand. If you just set it aside, then you are actually refusing to consider the meat of his argument. That's not very helpful for evaluating whether or not he's right. We might as well judge his theory on what his hair looks like or the fact that he's not in a wheelchair or hasn't been on TV.
Quantifying EU Theory is not as simple as you seem to imply in the absence of agreement on several important questions that remain. For instance, there is still no aether theory that everybody can agree on. It has nothing to do with ego, and your comments border on slanderous. There is legitimate disagreement amongst the theorists on how to replace quantum mechanics, to what degree to believe the various pieces of evidence that supports Relativity (gravitational lensing, for instance, appears to be quite bunk, as does the 1919 eclipse, but Mercury's precession appears to be a valid prediction) and there remains quite a bit of disagreement between adherents on how the Sun operates (Is it a Neutron Star? Is there validity to the Iron Sun Theories?). These are all legitimate questions that can only be resolved through additional observation. Quantification will simply not help in narrowing these things down.
You've certainly hit all of the buzz-words that people on Slashdot attempt to use to describe EU Theory, but is there really any substance to your allegation that delicate egos are the cause of a lack of quantification? No, it appears that you just made this up.
Does it matter that Wallace Thornhill was able to predict nearly all of the results of the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1?
Are you aware of what helioseismology is and what the implications of the oxygen ratio crisis are? Helioseismology was created to model activity on the Sun based upon observations and theories regarding the Sun's composition. Everybody claimed that it "proved" that we understood the Sun's inner workings. Then, one day, it was discovered that the theories regarding the Sun's composition were in fact somehow wrong.
Are you aware that jets are being discovered on a nearly weekly basis now that are tens and even hundreds of thousands of light years? These jets emit x-rays, which means that the energy for them must be actively replenished in order for the full length of the jet to remain illuminated all at once.
Are you aware that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it leaves the Sun, and even as it passes the planets? Are you aware that mainstream stellar theories lack a convincing theory for how this is possible?
Are you aware that lightning has been observed to be traveling to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, 40 miles above its surface to the edge of space? Why would it be doing that?
Are you aware that stars have been observed to bounce all over the HR diagram?
Are you aware that Halton Arp's statistics have been validated by a third party recently?
What is it about space plasmas that would make them different from laboratory plasmas? In the laboratory, plasmas exhibit three distinct operating modes (dark, glow and arc) and electrical resistance based upon charge density, and a gas becomes a plasma with less than 1% ionization.
Are you aware that we see rilles on all sorts of planets within our solar system that move both up and down with the terrain, in apparent defiance of gravity?
Did you know that all sorts of strange human-created objects and even human bones have been found over the years inside of coal mines, hundreds of feet below the ground's surface, and even inside of rocks?
Did you know that we sent four probes to investigate Venus' anomalous temperature, and all four probes determined that Venus was emitting around 15% more heat than it was absorbing?
Are you aware that there is an inordinate amount of fossil evidence that supports the notion that the Earth used to have a uniform temperature over its entire surface?
Are you aware that the field of comparative mythology (which covers ancient astronomical recordings and historical documents too) has been in a crisis for at least 20 years now, and that there have been recent breakthroughs that reveal that there is information within ancient documents that indicate that the universe operates according to a plasma-based cosmology? Have you read "God Star" by Dwardu Cardona?
Are you aware that solar neutrinos appear to negatively correlate with sunspot frequency? Do understand what this means?
My guess is that you have been restricting your reading materials in a pseudo-skeptical manner. I recommend that you read what is being said before discounting it. That would certainly reduce the amount of garbage that people have to wade through on these forums to get to actual discussion.
Science is not a democracy, by the way. We do not vote on ideas based upon who is saying them, contrary to the increasing belief that this is how it works. Instead, we should attempt to understand the arguments that are being made and discuss the logic behind both sides in the argument.
There have been plenty of intelligent people who believed that space plasmas are electrical. You just have not read about them. Hannes Alfven, Ralph Juergens, Kristian Birkeland, Anthony Peratt, to name a few. Hannes Alfven received the Noble Physics Prize for his creation of magnetohydrodynamics, which is the mathematics used to model space plasmas. You may be surprised to learn that in his acceptance speech, he disagreed with the idea of modeling space plasmas with frozen-in-place magnetic fields -- a technique which he originated and that persists to this day. He was completely ignored.
If you have not read the story of Halton Arp, then you are limiting your exposure to observations to those which you agree with. In truth, there is no good reason for why Arp's observations are not correct. Arp has been obstructed from sharing his findings at every step of the way, oftentimes by the very people whose research is threatened by his observations.
There is a person on wikipedia called ScienceApologist, who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia on the basis that there are no published papers which support EU Theory. Well, Anthony Peratt, Wallace Thornhill and a handful of other EU theorists did in fact get published in September in an IEEE publication. ScienceApologist decided to actually send a letter to the IEEE editor, objecting that the papers were pseudo-scientific (and yet in the absence of any evidence supporting his statements). Apparently, his requirement that EU Theorists be published is in fact not sufficient at all. There appears to be no burden that can be met by the EU Theorists that would satisfy him, and the ethical problems associated with his being both a wikipedia referee and a player involved in influencing the publication of the theory appears to escape him.
Not being popular is not an excuse to avoid reading about something, especially when there are such over-zealous censors who believe it is their duty to prevent the public from understanding the debate about electricity in space. If a theory appears to be logically coherent and supported by observational evidence, then it stands a chance of being true regardless of how many adherents it possesses (nature does not care what people prefer to believe), and it deserves investigation and even attempts to quantify it. Evaluating theories purely on the basis of who looks or sounds the smartest is a downward spiral. I recommend that you think twice before suggesting that others follow your lead. You very well could be redirecting people away from fruitful lines of research and investigation. Despite your good intentions, you may in fact be causing harm. You can't possibly know until you *read* what the theory says and talk to people about it, right?
What's actually really interesting is the *other* comet-related article that came out today regarding findings related to the Ulysses probe traveling through the tail of Comet McNaught. Particularly (from http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/071001_comet_surprises.html)...
The study, detailed in the Oct. 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal, also found the comet tail acted as a source of electrons for the solar wind.
The solar wind consists of charged atoms that are missing most of their electrons, but Ulysses found that solar wind particles passing through the comet's atmosphere could regain some of those electrons. The particles exhibit a different charge when they do this, which SWICS can detect.
Both findings are a surprise to scientists. Thomas Zurbuchen, a study team member at the University of Michigan (U-M), likened Ulysses' pass through the comet tail to putting your hand in the waters of Lake Michigan and pulling out a fish.
The Electric Comet theory is covered in good detail here:
I'm sure that Wallace Thornhill will have something to say about this eventually, but this appears to confirm the Electric Universe hypothesis that comets are not sublimating dirty snowballs, but rather electrical phenomenon. The OH that's being observed in cometary tails appears to be the result of electric machining of oxygen from silicates in the comet, which then combine with hydrogen protons from the solar wind to create OH. In other words, the OH is not necessarily an indication of sublimation.
I realize that many people here on Slashdot do not *like* EU Theory and its general lack of quantification, but when our observations appear to be supporting a particular theory, it makes sense that people should temporarily suspend their disbelief and read up on what the theory says. Keep in mind that there is a difference between saying that a theory is not properly quantified and a theory *cannot* be quantified. People have been arguing for sometime now that simple calculations can "prove" that there are not enough charged particles within interstellar space to power the Sun, but these calculations are based upon some rather dramatic assumptions that are not supported by the evolving big picture of the Sun. For instance, of particular importance is the recent paper demonstrating that the solar wind possesses "flux tubes"...
In other words, the solar wind appears to bear some resemblance to a novelty plasma ball. My impression is that there is likely very little difference between a "flux tube" and a Birkeland Current.
All signs, including your extra long post to a yes or no question, lead me to the conclusion that this theory is either completely wrong, or its proponents have done it a great disservice by not perusing it in the correct academic forums.
It will start as a trickle and end as a flood. Several of the papers in this recent IEEE journal are written by EU Theorists...
But everybody should expect that the resistance will be staggering. These people are basically alleging that the past 100 years of interpreting space observations has been a giant, somewhat useless thought experiment. People have an expectation of receiving all of the answers all at once when you tell them that there are major problems with how we interpret space observations. And simultaneously, many people these days have a very limited attention span for this kind of thing. They want to be told everything within three hours, and no more.
We're still in the phase of educating people that this isn't a crackpot theory. There will have to be a subsequent debate phase too. All the while, these guys will be competing against the incredible NASA PR engine and library of documentaries that are playing out on cable channels 24/7. The cable channels tend to ask for second opinions on all of the shows they consider doing, and you can guess how that always goes. This is nowhere even near being played out.
The good news is that there are new technologies at the end. If it turns out that space-time is not warped after all, and people jumped the gun on the aether question, then that means that anti-gravitation is not as absurd as once thought.
If space plasmas are electrical, then that would almost necessarily mean that it is relevant to almost all of cosmology because plasma represents nearly all of the matter of space.
I think that some people find it refreshing. Not everybody buys into the notion that the universe consists of only 5% visible matter. To a lot of people, that is just completely absurd, and they appreciate the idea that our observations can be explained by phenomenon that we can understand within a laboratory.
The anti-EU sentiment precedes my arrival here though, for sure. It dates back to the Tim Thompson days. There was a lot of cheerleading of Tim Thompson even though (a) most enthusiasts did not understand the citations he presented in defiance of Don Scott's Electric Sun Hypothesis, and (b) Tim Thompson's goal was never to have a discussion, but rather to present excuses for not considering EU Theory. In fact, if you go back to the whole Ted Holden Venus albedo predicament when four Venus probes confirmed our terrestrial observations that Venus is emitting 20% more heat than it receives, you will see Tim Thompson suggest that the lander probe data should be averaged with terrestrial values (one of which was from the late 1800's) because the final value generated was more in line with expectations of thermal equilibrium (which was the impetus for the landers in the first place!). Rather than think about what he was saying, Tim Thompson was subsequently lauded for, "serving Ted Holden his head on a platter" (in the words of a recent wikipedia censor). It was never important that the lander probes possessed two types of instruments that could identify the direction of infrared heat at the surface of the planet (IR flux meters) -- and that these instruments unanimously indicated (and even agreed on the final albedo value) that the surface of the planet was emitting heat. In other words, nobody was even paying any real attention to what Tim Thompson was saying. People were just rooting for their side, as if it was a football game.
And this phenomenon even dates back to the Carl Sagan days when Sagan would contradict his own writings in an attempt to discredit Velikovsky. The hipocrisy mattered little to Sagan. All that mattered was discrediting the big bad Velikovsky, and people went along with it because Sagan had been on TV (!). Since then, a huge book has been released called "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky" that disects their debates in excruciating detail, and demonstrates that Sagan was a lot more like Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla.
The current attitudes of Slashdottians is really just a product of those past abuses, and their beliefs are a product of limiting their information to sources that support their own current world view. Nobody here knows anything about any of this history though. Not even the professional astrophysicists are aware of many of these stories because they've also restricted the sources they've been reading. The thing is, knowing the history of a theory is almost as important as knowing the theory itself. And as I like to say, it's very important to listen to the heretics. Even if you do not agree with them, it's important to understand that there even *is* disagreement, and their behavior during the disagreement. We like to think that science is a war of ideas, but in fact, personalities and politics can mean a lot.
What you need to realize is that there is information that the public is not aware of yet that corroborates the *fact* that the universe operates according to a plasma cosmology. Major developments are occurring right now with decoding ancient documents, and the level of agreement between all of the cultures of the world is so much that it is impossible that this can be by chance. For that reason, it makes *complete* sense that a comparative mythologist should be involved. In fact, one would expect that as you narrow in on the truth of the universe that all disciplines would begin to reveal evidence that supports your theory. Similarly, we should eventually expect to see formulas based upon our cosmology that explain the periodic table of elements, and geologic evidence that supports whatever cosmology is correct, etc etc etc. That mainstream astrophysicists don't believe that there is any information in ancient documents is their own fault. They're so arrogant as to believe that since the documents don't make sense within the context of their own cosmology that the documents must not contain any information. That's juvenile. The field of mythology has been in a state of crisis (just like mainstream astrophysics actually) for many years now, but this is changing very rapidly. The most interesting things happening in science are not always in the news.
If you have doubts, then read "God Star" by Dwardu Cardona. It was published in 2006, so people can be forgiven for not having heard of it yet. It's a paradigm-shifting book.
Oh, and by the way, Dave Talbott (the mythologist you reference) can hold his ground in a debate with any mainstream astrophysicist. And that's the way that it should be!
Ok, I think I understand where you are coming from let me summarize:
Some craters are obviously created by impacts with meteors, comments or any other solid body.
There are some unusual features to some craters that can not be explained by our current theory of solid body impacts
Electrical phenomenon could explain these features
Is this what we are talking about? Do you agree with these points?
Yeah, that's pretty close. Within certain filters, the rays that emanate from Aristarchus look like a Lichtenberg pattern -- which is the pattern that currents make when traveling through solids. The human eye can intuitively recognize this pattern as electrical. Compare these images of electrical Lichtenberg patterns...
These images are not proof of anything, but we can certainly be excused for using them as motivation for further investigation.
But Electric Universe Theory is not just about using the senses. There is very good reason to believe that electricity can flow through space. It is now accepted within astrophysics that space is not a vacuum, but rather filled with charged particles called plasma. In fact, matter within the plasma state represents 99.999% of all visible matter in the universe, and a gas can become electrified within the laboratory such that it becomes a plasma with only 1% ionization. That's not a whole l
The "white-out" in the lower part of the image is casting a shadow on the surface beneath it (one part in fact looks like a cave) but also the white area itself is darkened in one area, suggesting that it is shadowed.
It is well established that electric arcing occurs between the two closest parts of any two surfaces. That's why lightning rods are generally effective at protecting buildings. In the case of the Moon, actually, the Tycho and Aristarchus craters just so happen to be two of the tallest features on the near side of the Moon. If the arcing theory is true, then we should expect that all of the "tallest" (perhaps closest is a better word) features of the Tempel 1 comet would be illuminated. That generally appears to be true, although it's not something that NASA really cares to look into so we lack the data to actually know for sure. This is unfortunately quite common -- that we could confirm or disqualify EU Theory if there was interest based on the data that already exists.
I do not actually see the black area inside of the white area you are referring to, but I do not find this to rule anything out even if it is true. It could just be a low area on the surface that did not experience any of the arc.
What you have to realize though is that this is just one small piece of a much larger body of evidence that supports the notion that comets are electrical phenomenon. You can observe the rest of the arguments within the document that follows. This is not an amateur attempt to explain comets. I've discussed this document on the Slashdot forums for close to a year now, and I've only found one potential problem with it that I could not resolve (related to the existence of water in the Levy-Shoemaker remnants)...
Of particular note is the idea that solar wind protons might be combining with oxygen embedded within silicates, creating streams of OH coming off of the comets. This offers a very simple explanation for why NASA sees what it thinks is evidence for water in the jets, but not on the actual surface. I personally find the idea that comets are hard shells surrounding icy cores to be somewhat of a joke.
The theorists themselves have no time for Slashdot. Many even wonder whether or not it is a waste of time for me to talk about this stuff here. I do it because I used to spend a lot of time on Slashdot as a computer engineer before I became aware of EU Theory, and so I realize that this is where most tech-oriented people hang out. If I help the theorists to sell books, that would be great. But, the real goal is to just raise awareness of what EU Theory is. Judging by the fact that people here have such negative opinions of EU Theory, I'm guessing that perhaps the people before me were not all that good at explaining themselves. You have to understand that there really is little tolerance for ideas of plasma-based cosmologies within the astrophysical institutions. You cannot go to school and major in "Plasma Cosmology". And even if you could, where would you do your research? Who would want to take you in so that you can disprove their own research? There are EU Theory advocates in prestigious organizations who are not capable of telling their bosses what they do in their free time for fear that they would lose their jobs.
For the record though, you should realize that EU Theory is nothing more than laboratory plasma physics applied to the interpretation of astrophysical observations. That is not an exactly unusual concept considering that we now know that plasma constitutes 99.999% of all matter within the universe. It actually makes a lot of sense that the universe's primary constituent might be responsible for our observations of the universe, right?
These are all good points, but I think the key to that sentence was the fact that the rays do not change in width over the course of 1500 kilometers. That is somewhat enigmatic. We see this sort of thing in space too: vortexes that are able to retain their shape over numerous light years. Although we can certainly postulate mechanical processes that could possibly explain this, it is not giving credit to what we know of electrodynamics to ignore that these are also the hallmarks of electrical activity.
EU Theorists can hold their ground quite well in a debate with professional astrophysicists when the rules are fair. The fair rules requirement pretty much rules out most discussions on the Bad Astronomy Forum. You can view a loose attempt at a debate here:
ScienceApologist is the person who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia. The discussion gets quite thick at times, but I recommend paying close attention to the way that ScienceApologist presents himself if you manage to skim through that. A more formal debate is supposedly in the works on that same forum area, although I have yet to see any action on it yet.
I've been looking into this stuff for about a year now, and it's quite apparent to me at least that there is value in this theory. The Slashdot crew likes to act as if we've already discovered everything there is to know about space, but they just don't see the bigger picture that every time you see an article on Space.com where a scientist is complaining that they don't understand what they are seeing (which happens on an almost weekly basis), that that means that the prior theory was wrong.
You won't understand what the assumptions are until you read what the heretics are saying. Mainstream astrophysicists have unilaterally decided that their burden is nothing more than to prove the mainstream theories. Stating their assumptions would tend to reveal that their theories are based upon a lot more assumptions than people realize, which would tend to cast doubt on the very papers that are being published. This is why we absolutely need heretics in science.
"What you see is something really surprising. First, there is a small flash, then there's a delay, then there's a big flash and the whole thing breaks loose".
How, then, will NASA respond? Will they wonder if anyone predicted such a thing? Or will they stay in their comfort zone--within the walls of prior ideology--and reach for the nearest fantasy? The "explanation" they initially offered is mathematically inconceivable. They proposed that the impactor moved through a deep layer of soft material before hitting hard material. But the delay would require the impactor to have penetrated something like a mile beneath the surface before causing the "serious" impact event. From such an answer you would think someone dreamt up a mile of fluff for a surface, never actually looking at the sharply-defined features of the nucleus. All of the features suggest a hard surface, and observations to this effect have already come in from the SWIFT satellite.
Slashdot Mirror
I've certainly heard this view before, and I have to admit that I cannot discount it. There are increasingly ways around these bottlenecks though. We don't actually need wikipedia, and we only modestly need peer review publications. It's always been my impression that the requirement for peer review publication is an excuse that will be subsituted with another as quickly as the requirement is met. The real battle IMO is for peoples' belief systems.
We are making slow, albeit steady, progress. Laypeople are picking up copies of "The Electric Sky" and realizing the strength of the arguments. Things will get *really* interesting though once the public starts reading Dwardu Cardona. "God Star" remains an undiscovered gem that will eventually rock the foundations of science.
As for Relativity guiding our space probes or satellites, that is yet another poorly-informed fallacy. Probes are designed to respond to their environment. They correct their courses when they go off course. Did you know that Relativity has no relevant bearing whatsoever on the synchronization of satellite clocks? In a personal conversation with David Thomson, who has studied these subjects his entire life in pursuit of an aether model that works
So, you just learned something new. Now, the real test is how do you react to this new information? Will you adhere to your prior belief in spite of all such new observations that disconfirm your prior belief system? Or will you begin to apply skepticism *equally* to all theories if you start to realize that the superficial, popular view of science is not always the most accurate?
...
You state that
In other words, you are *more* skeptical of anything that is not popular or commonly believed. This is a common issue within science today. Many space advocates cling to this philosophy, and yet they assume that the peer review system -- the professional astrophysicists -- are, or at least at some point *were*, somehow above it long enough to scientifically rule out everything that is not currently popular in astrophysics. This is where you err in your logic. Mainstream science is *also* and for many years has been pseudo-skeptical when it comes to electricity in space. This dates back to the days when Sidney Chapman refused to even look at Kristian Birkeland's terrella experiment, and it has led mainstream science
And I suppose you are a big fan of Carl Sagan? Have you read "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky" by Ginenthal? Not that I'm a big fan of the big V, but at least I realize that he was given a truly *raw* and unfair treatment by Sagan.
Within that context, I've forwarded your comments. One of the members has done some detailed study of the solar neutrino deficit. In your last two sentences, you state:
It appears in your response as though you suggest that a significant part of the neutrino oscillations are due to the variable magnetic fields near the surface, but you don't go into detail on this. But it seems to us that the real question remains. We're interested how exactly the fusion rates produce visible effects at the surface, and it appears as though this response does not directly address that enigma.
The theorists and advocates are interested in clarification on this point if you have the time to respond.
Actually, I would agree that the Sun does in fact look like a series of tubes
From http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000932000001000026000001:
If you've ever seen a novelty plasma globe, then you know what I'm getting at. If the term "flux tube" confuses you, then feel free to substitute in the concept of a current-carrying wire
The problem is that many of the people who believe that space plasmas are electrical have very impressive credentials. Don Scott is merely one of many. Hannes Alfven was convinced enough of it that he postulated a mechanism for how charge separation could occur in space -- his critical ionization velocity -- which was subsequently validated within the laboratory.
When you erroneously call somebody a crackpot as a result of limiting your reading selection so much that you are unaware of the full history, you do a disservice to others who are trying to understand whether or not there is a real debate here. You basically help to convince others that there is no reason to hold such a discussion about electricity in space, and what's amazing is that you do it in spite of increasing evidence that a debate is warranted. You appear to be just completely oblivious that observations are confirming the statements of these people. If solar neutrinos, for instance, are anti-correlating with sunspot numbers, then that would clearly imply that the neutrinos are being generated near the surface of the Sun as opposed to inside of it. Within the standard solar model, there is a requirement that the neutrinos be generated something like 100,000 years *before* any surface effects could be observed. Don Scott's Electric Sun Hypothesis explains this enigmatic observation, and would furthermore explain why the corona is 100x hotter than the Sun's surface and why the solar wind continues to accelerate as it passes the planets.
You appear to believe that he is a crackpot on the sole basis of your own belief system rather than the evidence. It appears as though you are treating science as if it is a religion, or perhaps more appropriately, a cult. You have fallen prey to the field of public relations, which has convinced you that everything in astrophysics has already been figured out.
My understanding actually is that number of neutrinos emitted by the Sun are inversely correlated with sunspot frequency. If that is true, then that would tend to pose a serious problem for the standard solar model as that would suggest a correlation between neutrino generation and activity on the Sun's surface, which are supposed to be separated by a significant duration of time. Is this not true?
But magnetic reconnection is *extremely* important as it attempts to explain why the Sun's atmosphere is 100x hotter than its surface. We see a similar inverse temperature situation with the Earth's atmosphere, but it is generally agreed that this is a result of an external energy source. If Don Scott is right about magnetic reconnection, then the most popular theory for how the Sun's core can heat up its atmosphere without heating up its surface is bunk. It is an important issue that people should attempt to understand. If you just set it aside, then you are actually refusing to consider the meat of his argument. That's not very helpful for evaluating whether or not he's right. We might as well judge his theory on what his hair looks like or the fact that he's not in a wheelchair or hasn't been on TV.
Quantifying EU Theory is not as simple as you seem to imply in the absence of agreement on several important questions that remain. For instance, there is still no aether theory that everybody can agree on. It has nothing to do with ego, and your comments border on slanderous. There is legitimate disagreement amongst the theorists on how to replace quantum mechanics, to what degree to believe the various pieces of evidence that supports Relativity (gravitational lensing, for instance, appears to be quite bunk, as does the 1919 eclipse, but Mercury's precession appears to be a valid prediction) and there remains quite a bit of disagreement between adherents on how the Sun operates (Is it a Neutron Star? Is there validity to the Iron Sun Theories?). These are all legitimate questions that can only be resolved through additional observation. Quantification will simply not help in narrowing these things down.
You've certainly hit all of the buzz-words that people on Slashdot attempt to use to describe EU Theory, but is there really any substance to your allegation that delicate egos are the cause of a lack of quantification? No, it appears that you just made this up.
Does it matter that Wallace Thornhill was able to predict nearly all of the results of the Deep Impact mission to comet Tempel 1?
Are you aware of what helioseismology is and what the implications of the oxygen ratio crisis are? Helioseismology was created to model activity on the Sun based upon observations and theories regarding the Sun's composition. Everybody claimed that it "proved" that we understood the Sun's inner workings. Then, one day, it was discovered that the theories regarding the Sun's composition were in fact somehow wrong.
Are you aware that jets are being discovered on a nearly weekly basis now that are tens and even hundreds of thousands of light years? These jets emit x-rays, which means that the energy for them must be actively replenished in order for the full length of the jet to remain illuminated all at once.
Are you aware that the solar wind continues to accelerate as it leaves the Sun, and even as it passes the planets? Are you aware that mainstream stellar theories lack a convincing theory for how this is possible?
Are you aware that lightning has been observed to be traveling to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, 40 miles above its surface to the edge of space? Why would it be doing that?
Are you aware that stars have been observed to bounce all over the HR diagram?
Are you aware that Halton Arp's statistics have been validated by a third party recently?
What is it about space plasmas that would make them different from laboratory plasmas? In the laboratory, plasmas exhibit three distinct operating modes (dark, glow and arc) and electrical resistance based upon charge density, and a gas becomes a plasma with less than 1% ionization.
Are you aware that we see rilles on all sorts of planets within our solar system that move both up and down with the terrain, in apparent defiance of gravity?
Did you know that all sorts of strange human-created objects and even human bones have been found over the years inside of coal mines, hundreds of feet below the ground's surface, and even inside of rocks?
Did you know that we sent four probes to investigate Venus' anomalous temperature, and all four probes determined that Venus was emitting around 15% more heat than it was absorbing?
Are you aware that there is an inordinate amount of fossil evidence that supports the notion that the Earth used to have a uniform temperature over its entire surface?
Are you aware that the field of comparative mythology (which covers ancient astronomical recordings and historical documents too) has been in a crisis for at least 20 years now, and that there have been recent breakthroughs that reveal that there is information within ancient documents that indicate that the universe operates according to a plasma-based cosmology? Have you read "God Star" by Dwardu Cardona?
Are you aware that solar neutrinos appear to negatively correlate with sunspot frequency? Do understand what this means?
My guess is that you have been restricting your reading materials in a pseudo-skeptical manner. I recommend that you read what is being said before discounting it. That would certainly reduce the amount of garbage that people have to wade through on these forums to get to actual discussion.
Science is not a democracy, by the way. We do not vote on ideas based upon who is saying them, contrary to the increasing belief that this is how it works. Instead, we should attempt to understand the arguments that are being made and discuss the logic behind both sides in the argument.
There have been plenty of intelligent people who believed that space plasmas are electrical. You just have not read about them. Hannes Alfven, Ralph Juergens, Kristian Birkeland, Anthony Peratt, to name a few. Hannes Alfven received the Noble Physics Prize for his creation of magnetohydrodynamics, which is the mathematics used to model space plasmas. You may be surprised to learn that in his acceptance speech, he disagreed with the idea of modeling space plasmas with frozen-in-place magnetic fields -- a technique which he originated and that persists to this day. He was completely ignored.
If you have not read the story of Halton Arp, then you are limiting your exposure to observations to those which you agree with. In truth, there is no good reason for why Arp's observations are not correct. Arp has been obstructed from sharing his findings at every step of the way, oftentimes by the very people whose research is threatened by his observations.
There is a person on wikipedia called ScienceApologist, who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia on the basis that there are no published papers which support EU Theory. Well, Anthony Peratt, Wallace Thornhill and a handful of other EU theorists did in fact get published in September in an IEEE publication. ScienceApologist decided to actually send a letter to the IEEE editor, objecting that the papers were pseudo-scientific (and yet in the absence of any evidence supporting his statements). Apparently, his requirement that EU Theorists be published is in fact not sufficient at all. There appears to be no burden that can be met by the EU Theorists that would satisfy him, and the ethical problems associated with his being both a wikipedia referee and a player involved in influencing the publication of the theory appears to escape him.
Not being popular is not an excuse to avoid reading about something, especially when there are such over-zealous censors who believe it is their duty to prevent the public from understanding the debate about electricity in space. If a theory appears to be logically coherent and supported by observational evidence, then it stands a chance of being true regardless of how many adherents it possesses (nature does not care what people prefer to believe), and it deserves investigation and even attempts to quantify it. Evaluating theories purely on the basis of who looks or sounds the smartest is a downward spiral. I recommend that you think twice before suggesting that others follow your lead. You very well could be redirecting people away from fruitful lines of research and investigation. Despite your good intentions, you may in fact be causing harm. You can't possibly know until you *read* what the theory says and talk to people about it, right?
The Electric Comet theory is covered in good detail here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pdf
I'm sure that Wallace Thornhill will have something to say about this eventually, but this appears to confirm the Electric Universe hypothesis that comets are not sublimating dirty snowballs, but rather electrical phenomenon. The OH that's being observed in cometary tails appears to be the result of electric machining of oxygen from silicates in the comet, which then combine with hydrogen protons from the solar wind to create OH. In other words, the OH is not necessarily an indication of sublimation.
I realize that many people here on Slashdot do not *like* EU Theory and its general lack of quantification, but when our observations appear to be supporting a particular theory, it makes sense that people should temporarily suspend their disbelief and read up on what the theory says. Keep in mind that there is a difference between saying that a theory is not properly quantified and a theory *cannot* be quantified. People have been arguing for sometime now that simple calculations can "prove" that there are not enough charged particles within interstellar space to power the Sun, but these calculations are based upon some rather dramatic assumptions that are not supported by the evolving big picture of the Sun. For instance, of particular importance is the recent paper demonstrating that the solar wind possesses "flux tubes"
From http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000932000001000026000001
In other words, the solar wind appears to bear some resemblance to a novelty plasma ball. My impression is that there is likely very little difference between a "flux tube" and a Birkeland Current.
For people wanting a more technical discussion of why magnetic reconnection is likely a farse, check this out ...
http://www.electric-cosmos.org/Rejoinder.htm
I hope this is a bluff. IMO, the plasma crystal experiments alone made the whole thing worthwhile ...
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permanent_Mission_in_Russia/SEMSBDYEM4E_0.html
It will start as a trickle and end as a flood. Several of the papers in this recent IEEE journal are written by EU Theorists
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isYe
But everybody should expect that the resistance will be staggering. These people are basically alleging that the past 100 years of interpreting space observations has been a giant, somewhat useless thought experiment. People have an expectation of receiving all of the answers all at once when you tell them that there are major problems with how we interpret space observations. And simultaneously, many people these days have a very limited attention span for this kind of thing. They want to be told everything within three hours, and no more.
We're still in the phase of educating people that this isn't a crackpot theory. There will have to be a subsequent debate phase too. All the while, these guys will be competing against the incredible NASA PR engine and library of documentaries that are playing out on cable channels 24/7. The cable channels tend to ask for second opinions on all of the shows they consider doing, and you can guess how that always goes. This is nowhere even near being played out.
The good news is that there are new technologies at the end. If it turns out that space-time is not warped after all, and people jumped the gun on the aether question, then that means that anti-gravitation is not as absurd as once thought.
If space plasmas are electrical, then that would almost necessarily mean that it is relevant to almost all of cosmology because plasma represents nearly all of the matter of space.
I think that some people find it refreshing. Not everybody buys into the notion that the universe consists of only 5% visible matter. To a lot of people, that is just completely absurd, and they appreciate the idea that our observations can be explained by phenomenon that we can understand within a laboratory.
The anti-EU sentiment precedes my arrival here though, for sure. It dates back to the Tim Thompson days. There was a lot of cheerleading of Tim Thompson even though (a) most enthusiasts did not understand the citations he presented in defiance of Don Scott's Electric Sun Hypothesis, and (b) Tim Thompson's goal was never to have a discussion, but rather to present excuses for not considering EU Theory. In fact, if you go back to the whole Ted Holden Venus albedo predicament when four Venus probes confirmed our terrestrial observations that Venus is emitting 20% more heat than it receives, you will see Tim Thompson suggest that the lander probe data should be averaged with terrestrial values (one of which was from the late 1800's) because the final value generated was more in line with expectations of thermal equilibrium (which was the impetus for the landers in the first place!). Rather than think about what he was saying, Tim Thompson was subsequently lauded for, "serving Ted Holden his head on a platter" (in the words of a recent wikipedia censor). It was never important that the lander probes possessed two types of instruments that could identify the direction of infrared heat at the surface of the planet (IR flux meters) -- and that these instruments unanimously indicated (and even agreed on the final albedo value) that the surface of the planet was emitting heat. In other words, nobody was even paying any real attention to what Tim Thompson was saying. People were just rooting for their side, as if it was a football game.
And this phenomenon even dates back to the Carl Sagan days when Sagan would contradict his own writings in an attempt to discredit Velikovsky. The hipocrisy mattered little to Sagan. All that mattered was discrediting the big bad Velikovsky, and people went along with it because Sagan had been on TV (!). Since then, a huge book has been released called "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky" that disects their debates in excruciating detail, and demonstrates that Sagan was a lot more like Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla.
The current attitudes of Slashdottians is really just a product of those past abuses, and their beliefs are a product of limiting their information to sources that support their own current world view. Nobody here knows anything about any of this history though. Not even the professional astrophysicists are aware of many of these stories because they've also restricted the sources they've been reading. The thing is, knowing the history of a theory is almost as important as knowing the theory itself. And as I like to say, it's very important to listen to the heretics. Even if you do not agree with them, it's important to understand that there even *is* disagreement, and their behavior during the disagreement. We like to think that science is a war of ideas, but in fact, personalities and politics can mean a lot.
And that's why I post.
The whiteouts *are* the arcs.
What you need to realize is that there is information that the public is not aware of yet that corroborates the *fact* that the universe operates according to a plasma cosmology. Major developments are occurring right now with decoding ancient documents, and the level of agreement between all of the cultures of the world is so much that it is impossible that this can be by chance. For that reason, it makes *complete* sense that a comparative mythologist should be involved. In fact, one would expect that as you narrow in on the truth of the universe that all disciplines would begin to reveal evidence that supports your theory. Similarly, we should eventually expect to see formulas based upon our cosmology that explain the periodic table of elements, and geologic evidence that supports whatever cosmology is correct, etc etc etc. That mainstream astrophysicists don't believe that there is any information in ancient documents is their own fault. They're so arrogant as to believe that since the documents don't make sense within the context of their own cosmology that the documents must not contain any information. That's juvenile. The field of mythology has been in a state of crisis (just like mainstream astrophysics actually) for many years now, but this is changing very rapidly. The most interesting things happening in science are not always in the news.
If you have doubts, then read "God Star" by Dwardu Cardona. It was published in 2006, so people can be forgiven for not having heard of it yet. It's a paradigm-shifting book.
Oh, and by the way, Dave Talbott (the mythologist you reference) can hold his ground in a debate with any mainstream astrophysicist. And that's the way that it should be!
Yeah, that's pretty close. Within certain filters, the rays that emanate from Aristarchus look like a Lichtenberg pattern -- which is the pattern that currents make when traveling through solids. The human eye can intuitively recognize this pattern as electrical. Compare these images of electrical Lichtenberg patterns ...
...
...
...
...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Plasma-filament s.jpg
http://205.243.100.155/frames/lichtenbergs.html
http://205.243.100.155/photos/For_Sale/June04/3Inc hDisk/CenterLED1b.jpg
http://picasaweb.google.com/mgmirkin/LightningScar s/photo#5075225945259278338
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/image06/060 309lightning.jpg
With Aristarchus
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/image06/060 309aristarchus.jpg
With the supposedly enigmatic Martian spiders
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/0607 26spiders2.htm
Titan
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/0506 29titan-rilles.htm
With these (on Earth)
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-24.395158&lon=114. 997495&z=13.1&r=0&src=yh
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-25.659683&lon=140. 387453&z=15.4&r=0&src=ggl
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-25.655156&lon=140. 386295&z=18.2&r=0&src=ggl
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-23.742312&lon=140. 982472&z=16.2&r=0&src=ggl
http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=-27.863467&lon=141. 872015&z=15.2&r=0&src=ggl
These images are not proof of anything, but we can certainly be excused for using them as motivation for further investigation.
But Electric Universe Theory is not just about using the senses. There is very good reason to believe that electricity can flow through space. It is now accepted within astrophysics that space is not a vacuum, but rather filled with charged particles called plasma. In fact, matter within the plasma state represents 99.999% of all visible matter in the universe, and a gas can become electrified within the laboratory such that it becomes a plasma with only 1% ionization. That's not a whole l
It is well established that electric arcing occurs between the two closest parts of any two surfaces. That's why lightning rods are generally effective at protecting buildings. In the case of the Moon, actually, the Tycho and Aristarchus craters just so happen to be two of the tallest features on the near side of the Moon. If the arcing theory is true, then we should expect that all of the "tallest" (perhaps closest is a better word) features of the Tempel 1 comet would be illuminated. That generally appears to be true, although it's not something that NASA really cares to look into so we lack the data to actually know for sure. This is unfortunately quite common -- that we could confirm or disqualify EU Theory if there was interest based on the data that already exists.
I do not actually see the black area inside of the white area you are referring to, but I do not find this to rule anything out even if it is true. It could just be a low area on the surface that did not experience any of the arc.
What you have to realize though is that this is just one small piece of a much larger body of evidence that supports the notion that comets are electrical phenomenon. You can observe the rest of the arguments within the document that follows. This is not an amateur attempt to explain comets. I've discussed this document on the Slashdot forums for close to a year now, and I've only found one potential problem with it that I could not resolve (related to the existence of water in the Levy-Shoemaker remnants)
http://www.thunderbolts.info/pdf/ElectricComet.pd
Of particular note is the idea that solar wind protons might be combining with oxygen embedded within silicates, creating streams of OH coming off of the comets. This offers a very simple explanation for why NASA sees what it thinks is evidence for water in the jets, but not on the actual surface. I personally find the idea that comets are hard shells surrounding icy cores to be somewhat of a joke.
The theorists themselves have no time for Slashdot. Many even wonder whether or not it is a waste of time for me to talk about this stuff here. I do it because I used to spend a lot of time on Slashdot as a computer engineer before I became aware of EU Theory, and so I realize that this is where most tech-oriented people hang out. If I help the theorists to sell books, that would be great. But, the real goal is to just raise awareness of what EU Theory is. Judging by the fact that people here have such negative opinions of EU Theory, I'm guessing that perhaps the people before me were not all that good at explaining themselves. You have to understand that there really is little tolerance for ideas of plasma-based cosmologies within the astrophysical institutions. You cannot go to school and major in "Plasma Cosmology". And even if you could, where would you do your research? Who would want to take you in so that you can disprove their own research? There are EU Theory advocates in prestigious organizations who are not capable of telling their bosses what they do in their free time for fear that they would lose their jobs.
For the record though, you should realize that EU Theory is nothing more than laboratory plasma physics applied to the interpretation of astrophysical observations. That is not an exactly unusual concept considering that we now know that plasma constitutes 99.999% of all matter within the universe. It actually makes a lot of sense that the universe's primary constituent might be responsible for our observations of the universe, right?
Where's the conspiracy?
These are all good points, but I think the key to that sentence was the fact that the rays do not change in width over the course of 1500 kilometers. That is somewhat enigmatic. We see this sort of thing in space too: vortexes that are able to retain their shape over numerous light years. Although we can certainly postulate mechanical processes that could possibly explain this, it is not giving credit to what we know of electrodynamics to ignore that these are also the hallmarks of electrical activity.
EU Theorists can hold their ground quite well in a debate with professional astrophysicists when the rules are fair. The fair rules requirement pretty much rules out most discussions on the Bad Astronomy Forum. You can view a loose attempt at a debate here:
i ewtopic.php?t=410
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB/phpBB2/v
ScienceApologist is the person who has been censoring EU Theory from wikipedia. The discussion gets quite thick at times, but I recommend paying close attention to the way that ScienceApologist presents himself if you manage to skim through that. A more formal debate is supposedly in the works on that same forum area, although I have yet to see any action on it yet.
I've been looking into this stuff for about a year now, and it's quite apparent to me at least that there is value in this theory. The Slashdot crew likes to act as if we've already discovered everything there is to know about space, but they just don't see the bigger picture that every time you see an article on Space.com where a scientist is complaining that they don't understand what they are seeing (which happens on an almost weekly basis), that that means that the prior theory was wrong.
You won't understand what the assumptions are until you read what the heretics are saying. Mainstream astrophysicists have unilaterally decided that their burden is nothing more than to prove the mainstream theories. Stating their assumptions would tend to reveal that their theories are based upon a lot more assumptions than people realize, which would tend to cast doubt on the very papers that are being published. This is why we absolutely need heretics in science.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050
It's also worth noting that the impact generated two ejecta centers visible in this image:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050
I'm unable to find anything in any of my materials about radio bursting. But I did find more useful analysis of the double-flash. From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050