Is the Universe Electric?
Gravity drives the cosmos. Black holes are out there devouring all that stray within reach. The redshift of starlight is an indicator of distance and quasars are unbelievably bright objects seen at the beginnings of the universe. Dark matter and dark energy have a mysterious effect on the way that the universe holds together. The Sun is consuming itself from within in a gigantic ongoing nuclear holocaust. Impact craters and the results of geological processes dominate planetary bodies and moons.
Now, I’m no astronomer. Nor am I any form of mathematician. In terms of work, I was in the engineering field – fabrication, welding and stuff like that. I was a software developer for a while and now I’ve been a teacher since 2003. In terms of interests, I’ve always been a reader/viewer of primarily SF and fantasy, and I’ve had a layman’s lifelong interest in thing to do with space (maybe those two things are related…). I enjoyed reading Scientific American and publications of that ilk. I enjoy following the ongoing adventures on Mars. I was a daily visitor to APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day). My hobbies are photography and (as you well know) collecting first edition SF. I have four wonderful kids and happily resident in Korea. I’m just a regular guy with an open mind and some life experience. I was secure with facts I presented in the opening paragraph…
…until I discovered that they aren’t facts at all. In fact they are theories based on outdated observations and blindingly complex mathematical abstractions that have no relevance to, nor can be empirically tested in the real world.
Gravity is irrelevant in the cosmos. Electromagnetism is many orders of magnitude more powerful. You can pick up a nail with a small magnet against the gravitational force of this entire planet. Electromagnetism is also much more effectual over longer distances.
Black holes don’t exist. They are an invention to explain effects that are otherwise unexplainable via the gravitational dogma. Effects which can be otherwise explained without recourse to mathematical abstraction and the invention of things that can’t be seen. Likewise dark matter and dark energy. Likewise neutron stars. They are fabrications. Fudge-factors to make gravitationally based equations make sense when the observational data falsifies them.
Redshift is intrinsic to the object and not an indicator of distance. Quasars are supposed to be incredibly bright and distant objects due to the redshift of their light. The observational data (yet again) says otherwise. Supposed quasars are observed to be physically connected to or in front of much nearer galaxies. Impossible if you cling to conventional and now outdated ideology.
What is a Quasar doing in front of a galaxy?? Click the image.
The sun is a giant electric arc lamp, plugged into a galactic power grid. If the sun is powered from within and radiating it’s energy outward via convection and heat transfer, why is the visible surface of the sun a relatively cool 4400 degrees or so Kelvin, yet jump to about 2 million degrees a little more than 2000km from the surface? Again, established theories have no satisfactory explanation for many aspects of the sun’s behaviour, yet another holds strong and does satisfy the requirements of the observational data.
click the image for some illumination regarding the Sun
Craters are the results of interplanetary lightning strikes and electrical machining. Many peculiar features of craters cannot be reproduced by mechanical impact models, or are vanishingly unlikely with recourse to probability. Hexagonal shapes, central peaks, crater chains, the unusual propensity to have small craters on the rims of other craters, terraced walls, smooth floors, ejecta obviously not emanating from the center of the ‘impact’. All anomalous features are explained (yet again) by a different model of formation.
click the image for a sensible deconstruction of the crater Tycho
Look, I could go on and on. The point is, as we develop new ways of seeing the universe – new and more powerful ways – ways that were unavailable to astronomers when these gravitational and mechanical theories were proposed and then hardened in to dogma, we are discovering that the facts – the observational realities – are incompatible with and indeed falsify much what we thought we knew. Too much credence is given to mathematical fantasy and not to empirical, reproducible and hard science. Hard science that can accommodate many of these new observations. Hard science that makes accurate predictions about what we will observe. Hard science that isn’t constantly surprised by new discoveries and doesn’t have to invent unobservable, unmeasurable fantasy to hold itself together. Science that doesn’t more and more resemble a Rube Goldberg machine as time goes on.
What about magnetic fields in space?? Astronomers talk about them, they are accepted, but the gigantic elephant in the room is the fact that you absolutely cannot have a magnetic field without an electric current. Yet apparently space is electrically inert. Sorry guys, you can’t have interstellar magnetic fields without interstellar electric currents!! See?? This is the common sense I’m talking about.
He’s a rather controversial figure for several reasons, but science fiction author James P. Hogan has written a very informative introduction to the Electric Universe. I recommend reading it.
I have decided to include a weekly summary of the Thunderbolts Pictures of the Day on this site. The word deserves to be spread.
The hexagonal crater on Mimas.
Most of the links I’ve presented here do go back to the Thunderbolts website which I discovered about 6 or 7 years ago. As I mentioned, I’m just an ordinary guy who knows common sense when he sees it, and I saw more common sense on that site that I’d seen in a long, long time. The Queen of Sciences really doesn’t have any clothes at the moment.
The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey 
July 8, 2009 at 9:57 am
Have you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology
It seems these alternative ideas have had their chance with science, but were shot down. There is always a chance that the standard model is wrong, but to invalidate it will require a lot of experimental validity. Note, at the end of the article, it says most scientists gave up on plasma cosmology after the results of the COBE spacecraft were studied. The new Planck spacecraft should expand the standard model with more direct data.
July 8, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Hi James…
It’s always prudent to be careful when reading things such as the wikipedia article. Nowhere does it say that the EU theory has been ‘shot down’. All that article does is say the mainstream sees it ‘this way’, therefore this must be wrong.
What you point out at the end of the article is interesting, what is says is “No proposal based on plasma cosmology trying to explain the cosmic microwave background radiation has been published since COBE results were announced.” The key word here is ‘published.’ It gives the impression the EU community has been silenced, but what they really mean is nothing has reached a peer-reviewed journal. More likely a peer-reviewed astrophysical journal. EU says a lot about many things, CMBR included, if you want to go and find it.
It also doesn’t address anything that the EU model addresses more satisfactorily that the mainstream, and uses outmoded terms such as ‘ambiplasma’ and factually incorrect terms such as ‘plasma current’
Furthermore, check out this on the Thunderbolts forum regarding that particular article:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1461
So, I hope your reading went a bit further afield than wikipedia… 🙂
If you want to repair your car, you don’t call a plumber. If you wanted to know about heliocentrism in the 17th century, you didn’t ask the church. If you want to know about EU theory, you don’t ask an astrophysicist. By accepted standards, EU is radical, it’s fringe, it’s unusual. But whatever you like to call it, it is science, and in many ways more of a science than modern cosmology.
I recommend checking out some of the articles here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/index.htm
Kind Regards
Aaron
July 14, 2009 at 9:02 am
I’ve dipped into those links at Thunderbolts and Holoscience, but it will take a lot of time to digest what they are saying. However, I get a suspicious vibe from them. Science is always under attack, but it only works if the attacks come from within the system. If you stand outside of science and throw rocks at it, it will do no good. To get beyond crank science you have to submit papers that challenge specific points made by others and work through the whole process in the standard journals.
Science has gone through many upheavels and radical theories coming out of left field have taken root and gone on to become conservative belief. But all radical ideas had to make their case officially, and often it took a great deal of time. The Big Bang model has a tremendous momentum behind it, but if it’s not true, it can be proven wrong.
July 17, 2009 at 8:11 am
I agree with you James. I get suspicious vibes too, but I get them from a branch of science that introduces unobservables (eg. dark matter), unmeasurables (eg. dark energy) and objects that violate established physical laws (eg. neutron stars) to prop up failing theories, rather than honestly evaluate what appear to be viable, workable alternatives that DON’T require them.
I disagree with however, you on the point of change from within. Any paradigm-changing (and that’s what we’re talking here) ‘scientific’ revolutions in history have come from independent natural philosophers or ordinary people working out in the shed. Since the institutionalization of science as we know it today (a period of about 100 years give or take), change has been practically non-existent. What we have seen is the constant massaging of established paradigms by filtered products of the system to accommodate new observations. There is too much money and prestige at stake to allow otherwise. To suggest that this isn’t true (and I’m not saying you do) is naive. Are the people supporting the obscene amounts of money being invested in things like LIGO going to support serious investigation of an alternative that may prove LIGO to be a giant white elephant?? I don’t think so. And I don’t think you do either.
The EU theory isn’t crank science. Not from what I can see anyway. It’s just grounded in a different area of scientific pursuit. From this point of view, it’s definitely on the ‘outside’ relative to cosmology/astronomy/planetary science. But to suggest (as I think you did) that the EU theory sits outside science as a whole is incorrect.
The Big Bang model indeed has momentum, but momentum doesn’t (or rather shouldn’t) determine what must be looked at seriously if it appears to provide a serious alternative.
I see nothing suspicious from the idea of electricity having a major role in the universe when it can explain many things much more simply and elegantly, as well as explain many things that are otherwise unexplainable. I do get suspicious when so-called ‘real scientists’ prefer the violation of established physical laws, fantasy and white-rabbit mathematics rather than entertain other possibilities.
July 17, 2009 at 8:51 am
When I get time I’m going to read more on EU, and I might even make a blog post about it. However, if EU offers elegant alternatives to existing complex theories today, why aren’t they being tested in mainstream science?
There have been very radical ideas that have come out of left field and eventually succeeded in science. Plate tectonics is a great example. Before the discovery of cosmic background radiation, the big bang model only was accepted by half the cosmologists. The other half considered the steady state model a better idea. At the time, I preferred the steady state model too. Quantum mechanics was another wild idea that many scientists hated.
Dark matter and energy are far from proved. They are only theories. They are where the big bang model was in the 1940s.
And I agree it is possible that the foundation of the big bang model might get knocked down in the future. But think about this. In 1920 our concept of the universe was very different than it is today, even though we had some very large telescopes and were seeing many of the same objects. In 1929, with Hubble, the unverse got a whole lot bigger, but so did our telescopes, the range of the EM spectrum we explored, and the number of scientists working on the job.
The EU theory is demanding we throw out that 80 years of work. But that’s also 80 years that EU ideas could have been pitched. It’s really hard to believe that an elegant idea would have been missed.
Jim
July 17, 2009 at 6:45 pm
The points you raise James, are briefly addressed here:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050610arptest.htm
I guess we should knock off this discourse for the time being. I’m starting to feel like a cheerleader for the EU theory, and I don’t see myself that way and I’m not comfortable with it. I should perhaps write a small page sometime about exactly how I came to see things from a different point of view – what led to the fall of modern cosmology in my eyes.
I enjoyed your recent post about blogging. You should just do whatever it is you want, or feel you need to do on your blog. I’m going over there now to post something to that effect.
Aaron