Home    Contact    Links Bookmark this site   
 
 

   Plasma

   The Electric Universe
        It's Electric
        Electric Weather
        EDM
        EU Geology
        Further

   Science and Philosophy

   Ancient Testimony

   Cutting Edge

   The Way Forward

   Latest News

   Video

 
Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.  Richard Feynman    
     
The Electric Universe    
     
PC vis-à-vis EU    
     

The Electric Universe is a variant of Plasma Cosmology, and it is necessary to differentiate between the two. While they share more similarities than differences, it should be noted that EU ideas tend to go a step further than the generally more conservative approach of Plasma Cosmology.

While both viewpoints permit many ideas previously excluded by Big Bang cosmology, the Electric Universe looks at the bigger picture and promotes more radical ideas about the role of electricity in the universe, from ancient mythology to the mind-body connection.

Both PC and EU proponents acknowledge that space is NOT electrically neutral, a fact largely denied in conventional astronomy.

The following is quoted from www.thunderbolts.info

"The cosmic theatre has outgrown the Newtonian stage, and we need a larger setting to understand the broader cosmic drama. Instead of a vision of isolated bodies turning gear-like in a vacuum, we need a vision of electrical circuits embedded in a conducting medium whose components drive each other and may be in resonance. We have left the familiar world of solids, liquids and gasses. We have entered a world of plasma, where the rules are different and more complex. We now live in an Electric Universe."

Predictions of the Electric Universe. A remarkable track record.

 
"It is the Thunderbolt that steers the universe." Heraclitus, ca. 500BC
 
Wal Thornhill

 

     
A Brief History of The Electric Universe    
     

The term 'Electric Universe' has been used before, but never in the same broad, holistic sense. Australian Physicist, Wal Thornhill, is regarded as the founder of the synthesis and interdisciplinary approach that is the Electric Universe today. In July 2013 he was awarded the prestigious Sagnac award for lifetime achievement at the 20th annual conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance. 

Previously, Charles Bruce used the term in 1960 in: "An All-Electric Universe". Electrical Review, 162, pp. 1070-1075, 23 Dec. 1960.

Also, in 1901, in another context, George Woodward Warder said:

"There is no loss of energy, as well as no loss of atoms, in this vast Electric Universe. The nebular hypothesis and gravitation explain nothing."

As The Electric Universe grows ever more popular we are likely to see the terms bandied around more loosely. Let's hope the true pioneers receive the credit they deserve. See the Way Forward.

Debunking the debunkers

As interest in the Electric Universe continues to grow, some individuals calling themselves 'debunkers' seem hell bent on attacking and misrepresenting it, and are quick to resort to ad hominem attacks. What do they have to fear? In one recent YouTube video, a certain detractor dismissed all interested parties as a "gullible corner of the internet". Contrary to this unfounded generalisation, Quantcast provided the following analysis of Thunderbolts.info visitors not so long back. A comparison was made with Badastronomy.com run by Dr Phil Plait, and Universe Today, the most popular mainstream astronomy web sites and forums at the time. Thunderbolts also out ranked Scientific American and Space.com. This is not to say non-academics are any less intelligent but, well, you get the picture...

Thunderbolts.info visitor analysis

Electromagnetic Gravity?

An examination of the Electromagnetic Gravity hypothesis from principia-scientific.org

An interesting and balanced analysis from a mainstream source. All too often the idea of gravity being of EM origin is dismissed out of hand. Because electromagnetism can be shielded and gravity can't, it is generally assumed that the two forces must be irreconcilable. Such a view is clearly too simplistic, however. This article is therefore strongly recommended.

 

"However, astronomers have little to celebrate in 2009. They have usurped the role of the church and cast out a modern-day Galileo!"

Wal Thornhill refers to Halton Arp as the modern-day Gallileo in an attack on the supposed year of astronomy, 2009.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I always felt that science as the domain of people from Oxbridge or Ivy League universities and not for mere mortals was a very bad idea." Benoit Mandelbrot

 

 

 

 

 

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." Richard Feynman

     
The Book    
     
The Electric Universe by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill can be ordered here.    
     
Electric Stars    
     

Are stars powered from within, or does the power come from elsewhere? This was the question asked by Sir Arthur Eddington in the 1920s. He settled for the former, and this laid the foundation for current mainstream models. Ralph Juergens asked the question again in the 1970s, and opted for the latter. According to Juergens, stars shine because they are connected to electric circuitry within galaxies. An electric star's brightness thus depends on the power of the electric current feeding it, not on the amount of nuclear fuel available to burn.

Stars thus behave as anodes in a galactic glow discharge. The many surface phenomena that can be seen on the Sun hot corona, sunspots, prominences, flares, et al can all be explained by an electric Sun, but are more difficult to understand from a nuclear point of view. Nuclear reactions take place on the surface, not in the core, perhaps explaining why neutrino numbers vary with sunspot cycles, and these reactions are almost certainly produced in the same way that we produce them in the lab by accelerating particles in an electric field.

Stars, galaxies, nebulae, and planets are all affected by electric currents in the plasma through which they move. If the appearance of a star is determined largely by its electrical environment, it follows that it can change relatively quickly!

"The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the sun's energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the solar interior is contradicted by nearly every observable aspect of the sun."
Ralph E. Juergens (1980)

See also Juergens' commentary on Velikovsky and the Electric Sun model.

 

The Sun

Ralph Juergens/

 

"What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean." Isaac Newton

     

This paper from 2017 by Jamal S. Shrair of Budapest University also explores the possibility of an external power supply for our local star. pdf link

"The external energy supply to the sun is overwhelmingly obvious even before space probes (Voyagers and IBEX) have detected it. The sunspot cycle, the surface temperature, the reverse temperature gradient and the existence of the corona in itself, are some of the outstanding evidence that point to the external energy supply that disagreements (or in direct contradictions) with the concepts of the Standard Solar Model (SSM)."

Walter Gekelman, quoted below, is a professor of plasma physics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and an elected fellow of the American Physical Society. He has developed and constructed numerous meter-long devices to study fundamental plasma processes under laboratory conditions, the largest of which is the Large Plasma Device.

"Magnetic flux ropes are due to helical currents and form a dense carpet of arches on the surface of the sun. Occasionally, one tears loose as a coronal mass ejection and its rope structure is detected by satellites close to the earth. Current sheets can tear into filaments, and these are nothing other than flux ropes. Ropes are not static; they exert mutual electromagnetic (JxB) forces causing them to twist about each other and merge."
Walter Gekelman

   

NB. It should be noted that Plasma and Electric Universe views are at variance in respect of Stars. For example, while plasma scientists recognise most of the surface phenomena of our local star, the Sun, as essentially electrical in nature, the EU view goes a step further, arguing that the Sun is electrically powered via galactic Birkeland currents.

The EU approach may well begin to explain the continuing surprises. From the European Space Agency, ESA.int: Giant flare from a tiny star!

"A star of about eight percent the Sun s mass has been caught emitting an enormous super flare of X-rays a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small. The culprit, known by its catalogue number J0331-27, is an L dwarf. This is a star with so little mass that it is only just above the boundary of actually being a star. If it had any less mass, it would not possess the internal conditions necessary to generate its own energy."

   
Supernova 1987A    
     
The plasma Z-pinch morphology of supernova 1987A and the implications for supernova remnants. From the paper:

   
"Supernova 1987A is the closest supernova event since the invention of the telescope. It was first seen in February 1987 in the nearby Magellanic cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way, and only 169,000 light years from Earth. The Hubble images of the rings of SN 1987A are spectacular and unexpected. Conventional theory did not predict the presence of the three rings nor the pattern of bright "beads" in the equatorial ring of SN 1987A. The pattern of brightening is not explained by an expanding shock front into an earlier stellar "wind". The axial shape of SN 1987A is that of a planetary nebula. It seems that new concepts are required to explain supernovae and planetary nebulae. The new discipline of plasma cosmology provides a precise analog in the form of a Z-pinch plasma discharge. The phenomena match so accurately that the number of bright beads can be accounted for and their behavior predicted. If supernovae are a plasma discharge phenomenon, the theoretical conditions for forming neutron stars and other "super-condensed" objects is not fulfilled and plasma concepts must be introduced to explain pulsar remnants of supernovae."
  SN1987A
The Safire Project (2018 update)    
     

Taking its lead from the Electric Universe, this unique and independently funded project is producing some startling and remarkable results. According to the web site https://safireproject.com/

The SAFIRE reactor generates energy densities analogous to the Sun's ... in a laboratory on Earth

A number of the Sun's surface features, from anode tufting to its temperature variations and stable double layers, have been reproduced in the laboratory. It has made major discoveries that contemporary science cannot explain at this time! The Safire Plasma Engine is the only one of its kind on the planet. The implications are far reaching, and progress is regularly reported at EU conferences.

The philosophy that electricity plays a leading role in the universe is the driving force. Two things define Safire: this unique premise combined with a powerful methodology.

  Safire
     
Progress Report    
     

  "We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress." Richard P. Feynman
     
Aureon Energy / Safire Project (2021 update)    
     

The Safire Project has already made remarkable progress, including the transmutation of elements! Aureon.ca is now the web site for this revolutionary project. From the web site:

SAFIRE can create, control, contain, sustain, and repeat-at-will any number of plasma regimes. No other technology in the world can do this.

Seven years of empirical testing has resulted in a unique patented stable spherical "SAFIRE" plasma reactor.  AUREON ENERGY LTD. will commercialize the SAFIRE technology into three key markets:

> clean energy production
> heating
> remediation of nuclear waste

Each market in itself represents a trillion dollar industry over the next ten years. AUREON ENERGY is currently engaging investors to commercialize the technology.

   
Binary Stars    
     
There is a problem with binary stars. To begin with, why are there so many of them? In the plasma lab, of course, currents tend to run in braided pairs, but conventional astronomy has a more tricky problem explaining this doubleness.

Sirius, the nearest and brightest star, has a partner, Sirius B, a tiny white-dwarf. The trouble is, when we look at Sirius B through Chandra, an X-ray telescope, it appears much brighter. How could this be?

Astronomers try to explain this in terms of gravity, claiming that particles fall into Sirius B so fast that the collisions emit X-rays. But charged particles don't care about gravity, so the real answer is probably more simple. Nature abhors inefficiency, so she uses electric currents to produce X-rays, just as the medical profession does.

The paradigm is shifting, slowly but surely. Check out this paper.

From the paper: "We propose a model for stellar binary systems consisting of a magnetic and a non-magnetic white-dwarf pair which is powered principally by electrical energy..."

(Alfvén's seminal book, Cosmical Electrodynamics, is credited.)

  "There are those who think that few discoveries remain to be made. Others think that we have only just begun." Anon
     
Sun spot 'mysteries'    
     
In January 2005 our Sun produced a few more surprises. On 20th Jan, in particular, it produced a coronal mass ejection (CME) that achieved velocities incomparably greater than anything astronomers had seen before. It normally takes more than 24 hours for the charged particles of a solar outburst to reach the Earth, but this CME achieved it in just thirty minutes. Earth (some 96 million miles from the Sun) was immersed in what NASA scientists called 'the most intense proton storm in decades'. Proton storms get their name from the 'rain' of positively charged particles that can hit the Earth.

"Any student of physics who has heard of electric charge and electric fields knows that the easiest way to get electrically charged particles to accelerate is to apply an electric field to them."
Don Scott

A NASA headline article concluded, "How they were accelerated, however, remains a mystery". From a plasma perspective, of course, this phenomenon is less mysterious. Retired professor of electrical engineering, Donald Scott, was not impressed and did not mince his words, above.

  CME 720, Jan 2005
     
Saturn's Hot Poles    
     
In a recent press release, NASA scientists admitted their surprise at finding a hot north pole on Saturn. The northern latitudes have been hidden from the sun since 1995, and yet the temperatures are equivalent to those at the south pole, which also surprised initially. According to Glenn Orton, one of the scientists monitoring the infrared spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft:

"We had speculated that the south pole hot spot was connected to the southern, sunlit conditions. Since the north pole has been deprived of sunlight since the arrival of winter in 1995, we didn't expect to find a similar feature there.

"The hot spots are the result of air moving polewards and being compressed as it descends over the poles into the depths of Saturn. The driving forces behind the motion, and indeed the global motion of Saturn's atmosphere, still need to be understood."

In an Electric Universe, of course, there is a simple explanation

 
     
Comets    
     

Comets are little more than dirty snowballs according to conventional astronomy. Recent findings, however, challenge this assumption.

In 2000, as comet Linear (named after the telescope that discovered it) approached perihelion, strange things began to happen. It brightened by more than 50% in less than fours hours, and threw off large quantities of 'dust', much more than was expected from ice and other volatiles. Then, to cap it all, the Chandra telescope discovered that the 'dirty snowball' was emitting X-rays!

NASA cited a befuddled process called 'charge exchange reaction', which it claimed was first proposed in 1997. As a matter of fact, however, the electric comet theory has been around for more than a century, and it received clarity from Ralph Juergens in the early 1970s. He proposed the Electric Sun model, with the corollary that cometary comas and tails are produced by an electrical exchange between the sun and a comet. The Electric Comet video from Thunderbolts can be viewed here.

  Comet
     
Rock and Roll    
     

The ancients believed stones falling from the sky originated from beyond our planet. This was regarded as superstitious nonsense by the scientific community up until the 1800s, and martian meteorites were not officially confirmed until the late 20th century. The expression 'Modern Science catches up with Ancient Knowledge' is much reviled by the scientific community, but it seems appropriate here.

Such stones are sometimes called thunderstones as they have been associated with thunder and lightning. This is of particular interest to EU theorists, who note that electrical phenomena frequently accompany stone or meteor falls. See the witness diagram from 1751, right.

The light shows pose unanswered questions. Many witnesses describe electrical crackling and brightness equivalent to a full moon! Comas are also visible in the picture of the famous Peekskill meteor, right, from October, 1992. One witness stated: "When I saw it, it was still in one piece. It was an electric lime green with tendril-like extensions. It did not look like it was burning up so much as undergoing an electrical interaction."

These features are consistent with Electric Universe ideas. First we might expect to see a glow discharge which, as it approachs 'arc-mode' intensity, begins to ablate material in addition to velocity-driven air friction.

An interesting paper: Electrophonic sounds from large meteor fireballs

From the paper: "Anomalous sounds from large meteor fireballs, anomalous because they are audible simultaneously with the sighting, have been a matter for debate for over two centuries..."

 
Witness diagram, 1751
 
Peekskill meteor, 1992
The Russian Meteor    
     
Another 'Shock to the system', and no impact site on earth! An EU perspective on this remarkably well documented event.