Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™ at Thunderbolts.info
For the last five years on this series, Thunderbolts colleague Andy Hall has
presented an extraordinary reconstruction of catastrophic events on Earth,
exploring the tell-tale clues these events imprinted on our planet's surface.
As Andy has described, many of the fractal patterns we see on Earth cannot
be explained through any traditional geological process.
However, these geological features find intriguing analogs in some of the
highest energy atmospheric phenomena seen in our solar system today.
In part one of this two-part presentation, Andy continues his Eye of
the Storm series with an examination of the remarkable
filamentary and dendritic patterns seen on planet Earth.
Patterns whose explanation may be found in ancient events
that created the cultural memory of a mythical creature,
the dragon. Dragons are real, folks. This chapter may be hard to get your
head around because we've been taught dragons are myth, but they are not
figments of imagination. They come from the laws of physics.
They also come from the bowels of the earth.
You see, rivers flow where dragons once crawled.
As told in countless tales, they are said to come from the sea
in the underworld labyrinth. There are so many examples,
I don't think I need to quote more than one. But I’ll save that
for later. Go discover for yourself. After this article, you will recognize
the physics of dragons in the stories of myth.
Our ancestors were doing their best to warn us.
And yes, dragons are still around; they're just sleeping. This is a concept
some may struggle with even in the EU, because so much of our
theories focus on celestial chaos and the electrical havoc
wrought by planets in close proximity. We imagine sparks flying,
drilling craters into the surface of planets and moons.
And there is overwhelming evidence of that.
But that is what happens to rocky planets without an active magnetosphere.
Mars, Mercury and many pockmarked moons display significant magnetism,
but it is mostly remanent. A static artifact of the past electrical activity
that scarred them with craters. Planets with dynamic magnetospheres,
atmospheres and weather like Earth in the gas giants,
and even some of the moons, have internal electric circuitry.
Stars and planets are circuits; three-dimensional standing waves of
current and magnetism living in the winds of their parent stars and galaxies.
They are a product of inductance and capacitance, potentials and currents,
and the magnetic fields current generates.
The matter trapped in these 3D whirlwinds, gas
liquid and dust and yes that includes us, is 100 percent organized by the circuitry.
Circuits are cyclic processes. They produce resonant frequencies where
signals are amplified and dampened in patterns of constructive and destructive interference.
The atmosphere and crust of the planet are essential parts of the circuitry
because they provide capacitance, energy storage, and regulated energy flow.
What follows comes from simply understanding that the circuit flows
inside the planet, as well as in the atmosphere, plasmasphere and magnetosphere.
But it is all one circuit and that is why things are so
interconnected. There are feedback loops, oscillations and high order harmonic responses
that bring order out of chaos, concentrating
energy into identifiable coherent forms. The forms appear all over the place in
geology and weather, due to the role capacitance plays in the circuit.
In the situation that Earth's potential is raised or lowered in response to some
significant celestial event, the crust of the earth can become
saturated with charge. And based on applied science, the most
violent discharges in a circuit can be expected through the capacitor.
That is because a capacitor builds charge and a voltage across
it that is the maximum of the circuit. And when a capacitor blows,
it's the biggest bang of them all. Hence we have dragons.
A dragon is a type of discharge event from inside the earth.
It's a short circuit around the continental plates, generated by ground
currents beneath the plate boundaries. The discharge is reaching for the other side of the plate -
the top of the continental mound that is forming around the eye of the storm,
where it's raining rock, dust and water in a positive ionic mix relative to the
current beneath the continental shelf. Once again, rinse and repeat, this is due to capacitance.
In nature capacitors aren't insulated the way we make capacitors.
When we make capacitors for electric circuits, we want their actions to be
predictable. The last thing we want is a short circuit.
So we insulate the edges of capacitor plates
to prevent short circuits from plate to play around the dielectric medium.
Nature doesn't do this; in fact nature builds a continental plate as a big dielectric
that is thicker in the middle and thinnest at the edge, sandwiched between
a deep ground charge and an opposing surface charge. The edge
effect at the periphery of the capacitor plate is called the fringing field. Think of it
as a leakage of charge around the edges. It makes it the most
likely place to have a discharge, and if current leakage occurs, it will
make its way directly to the opposite plate and short-circuit the capacitor. Man-made
capacitors are insulated around the edges specifically to prevent short circuits in the
fringing field. The continental plates aren't insulated. In fact the earth's crust at the
continental boundary, the sea floor, is much thinner and it
lies over the ground current paths. Telluric currents beneath the
crust are rivers of current that create the plate boundaries, and
their magnetic fields create high stress. So, the continental plates are structured,
not to mitigate the fringing effect, but to encourage short circuits, like a
relief valve for the energy building below. Dragons are short-circuit discharges
from the fringing field of the continental plates, discharging through magnetically
stressed regions of the sea floor, fracture zones and volcanoes. There you go.
That is what a dragon is. No magic puff, but a ground-to-ground lightning discharge.
Energy building beneath the crust tries to release through volcanoes belching hot molten matter,
heat, lightning and clouds of ash. But every lava flow adds layers of matter to
the capacitor plate. The plate gets wider and thicker and is
dancing with surface charge from falling ash, rock, rain and cooling lava. It's chemical soup.
Every charged cloud of ash and water vapor forms another chemical soup,
rising to a stratosphere already charged with plasma.
The reaction is plasma storms of higher ion content today than today's little tabascos.
These storms build surface charge beneath them on a surface,
already dancing with energy released from the cooling lava.
And so it goes. Charge keeps building across the plate until it short circuits
in the fringing field. Essentially the same thing happens in a cloud-to-cloud discharge,
where the lightning streaks across the surface of the clouds,
rather than jumping to ground. Just think about it. The electric field of the storm is
between ground and clouds. It's a potential of hundreds of megavolts.
Yet much more lightning goes sideways from cloud to cloud than from cloud to ground.
There is a local voltage difference between clouds that is stronger than the
prevailing electric field of the storm between cloud and ground.
Of course, it's all one field, but the direction of its potential shifts.
The field becomes stronger between clouds due to phasing.
As clouds discharge lightning, they discharge energy and then rebuild it
from the inflowing winds. This sets up cycles with hysteresis
and two parts of the cloud or two storm cells get out of phase with each other,
which creates a huge potential. The arc closes this voltage gap. The path the arc
takes predominantly follows a surface conductive path at the cloud's edge,
where the condensate boundary forms a layer of charged particles where droplets form.
The same thing happens in ground-to- ground discharge.
The subsurface and surface potential difference is oscillating.
This especially occurs if the normal path of conductance is blocked,
as volcanoes evolve gas chambers of vapor that choke current flow. These oscillations
can spike voltage between subsurface and surface, amplifying ground-to-ground potential
and draw short-circuiting arcs from one side of the continental plate to the other,
just like any capacitor would if you strip the insulation from its edges.
How can we know this is true? Because charge diffusion and discharge
take fractal form and we can identify fractal forms and understand what patterns them:
electricity and magnetism. There is no question rivers take fractal form,
perhaps not every stream of water. But you'll notice, if you pour water downhill, it generally
flows straight down whenever it can and rarely produces a lightning bolt- shaped fractal,
unless you place rocks strategically in the path of the water the way
hydrologists do. Examine a man-made mountain, where natural water erosion is allowed to occur,
like the mine tailings pictured. The water erodes straight channels,
but natural rivers like the Amazon, the Congo and the Colorado river
take on the same class of fractal form called Lichtenberg figures,
after George Christophe Lichtenberg who first studied them. It is the form that arcing electric
discharge takes during dielectric breakdown. Dielectric breakdown is another way of
saying ‘short circuit’ in a capacitor. Dielectric breakdown occurs as current paths form and
continuously branch in self-similar filaments in a process called ‘diffusion limited
aggregation’. Brownian motion in the diffusing plasma results in a random walk,
where charged particles cluster and grow in dendrite trees called ‘Brownian trees’.
And rivers in fine and large structure, from headwater to delta,
consistently match the variety of branching, dendrite forms seen with electric arcs,
branching in multiple self-similar repetition. The process is self-
similar over time scales, as well as dimensions. A dielectric breakdown may occur over
years or nanoseconds and produce the same dendrite form.
Lightning bolts occur in seconds, flashing several times through a channel
created by a cascade of electrons, reaching for positive ion tendrils
growing from the ground. But filaments of discharge in a high voltage insulator
grow over months, in a manner of crystal growth. The dendrites expand from a point in
ever smaller self-similarities, spread out in ever greater area or volume over time.
They grow in pulses, lightning bolt flashes as energy pumps into the filament again
and again, until it breaks through and establishes continuous current flow.
Charge advances by combining with, and drawing electrons from, its surroundings.
Which alters the surroundings thermally and chemically, creating channels. Each new pulse
follows the channels, wave-guided to the old paths and extending them forward in
self-similar steps until it breaks through. So, a dragon may repeat its route over and over again,
in pulses that may be separated by moments, or millennia. In these select images of
the Colorado River, note how much the river follows long, straight
segments. Most people are led to believe that rivers are the result of water,
simply flowing downhill to the ocean, following the path of least resistance. But it is accepted
scientific consensus that rivers follow faults, and these straight-line segments are the
visual evidence of it. So water doesn't just go downhill, it follows faults.
The obvious question is what causes faults. Faults are the dragon's footprint. Faults
are the path of a ground-to-ground discharge. The solid bedrock below is the fused
earth from its heat, shock, pressure, diffusing charge and magnetic field.
Its false valleys and canyons are what I call the ‘arc-blasted zone’.
Arc blast is a term from applied science whereas ’dragon’ sounds a bit whimsical. But they
are one and the same thing. The path of the water meanders, but the
channel it travels in defines the fault line. Water flows flood and recede, build sandbars,
islands and can change course within the channel. A magnetic footprint accompanies the
dragon, as countless magnetic dipole measurements surveyed on rivers around the world attest.
River channels have a magnetic signature transverse to the direction of the channel.
Which is what one should expect from a lightning arc. Shores blackened with magnetite is another
testament to a past event, when electric current flowed in that channel,
wrapped in a magnetic sheath. Its path is the jagged step-leader shape of a
lightning bolt, jumping in straight lines and arcs from
point to point, like connecting dots. The path often splits to form tributaries.
The angle between the channels provides hints of their cause.
[Music]