Welcome to Space News from the Electric Universe,
brought to you by The Thunderbolts Project™ at Thunderbolts. info
In part one of this presentation, our guest Andrew Hall began the seventh
installment of his Eye of the Storm series.
A series devoted to exploring some of the most dramatic and puzzling geological features on planet Earth.
As Andrew has explained, the lifelike emanations of electrified plasma tell us much about mysterious dendritic
and filamentary geological patterns. Nor is it coincidental that plasma
filaments find a stunning analog in a global mythical archetype, that is the sinuous form
and fiery breath of the cosmic dragon. There are several junctions and other
features along the Colorado and its tributaries highlighted in the next image.
We're going to explain each feature. But first, some explanation of what kind of current flows in the earth.
It's alternating current and direct current both. Alternating current is super-positioned
on a direct current carrier wave. Voltage difference is relative, with no absolute positive or negative.
This is true of the mineral water, plasma, and solid-state matter that conducts electricity
throughout the system, too. It's important to understand because Nature doesn't
work with the kind of tidy insulated circuitry and constant voltage, battery-operated
predictability that your cell phone uses. AC circuits oscillate in voltage, current and
impedance as frequency changes. Everything is dynamic, with feedback and noise adding complexity.
But Nature manages to make order from the chaos. The reason is resonance. The beauty of Nature
is that it allows malleability in its shape to find the path of least resistance
and therefore balance itself out, like water filling a lake. When balance is reached there is resonance.
So dragons have rules. They have to play their part in the circuit
and the type of circuit they are part of is what defines the rules.
The type of circuit the Colorado River follows is called an RLC circuit. An RLC circuit combines the
fundamental elements of resistor, inductor and capacitor connected across a voltage supply. Nature
has to comply with physics. So, logic leads to choosing an RLC circuit model
since Nature has all three fundamental elements in its makeup. There are parallel and series RLC
circuits, and hybrid combinations of those. In the case of the dragon that carved the Colorado River,
a parallel circuit is required. The full explanation for why that is will take us
into another chapter in Eye of the Storm, but we'll start with discussing the
geometry of junctions. The image below highlights nine junctions in green where the Colorado
joins its major tributaries. You'll note they all have a distinctive shape.
Power in an RLC is not consumed by line resistance alone, but impedance
which has reactive, vector components. The inductor and capacitor elements of
the circuit have reactance, which opposes current flow like a resistor, but occurs
90 degrees out of phase with resistance. Inductive current is at a vector rotated 90 degrees
counterclockwise to the supply line current. Capacitive current is at a 90 degree
rotation clockwise to the line current. The resultant current is not the arithmetic sum of
currents, but the vector sum, which produces current at a resultant angle from the original
line current. In a parallel RLC circuit, the voltage across each element remains the same
and current gets divided. Current shifts vector in a parallel RLC
circuit, which is what we see: the river channel splits in two directions
at, or near 180 degrees apart. Keep in mind, rivers flow downhill, but the dragon travels upstream,
so a junction is a bifurcation, not a confluence. This indicates the currents bifurcated
because line current went to zero, while capacitive and inductive currents--
the reactive currents-- initiated current flow along the new vectors.
The new vectors are at 180 degrees opposed to each other, with the inductive current angle 90
degrees counter-clockwise from the supply line current, and the capacitive current at 90 degrees
clockwise from the supply line current, creating a junction that looks like a “T”.
This is precisely what happens when a parallel RLC circuit achieves resonant frequency.
Supply line resistance goes up with frequency. As resistance goes up, line current is
restricted in reactive current increases. You can visualize reactive current
as leakage from a perforated pipe, where more and more fluid or current escapes through the
perforations, shooting out perpendicular to the direction of supply flow if the
pressure is allowed to build with resistance inside the pipe. Resonant frequency causes line
resistance to go to infinity. Well, it doesn't actually go to infinity,
but it goes just as high as it needs to stop the line current. When line current goes to zero,
reactive current shoots out like fluid under pressure, perpendicular to the conductor.
This is because of Kirchhoff's current law that says the sum of all currents
entering a junction is equal to the sum of all currents leaving that junction.
Therefore, when resonant frequency is reached, line current cannot overcome resistance
and goes to zero. All the current then shoots out as reactive current at vectors 90 degrees
from the line current. That is what causes the river to bifurcate
in a “T” shape. Reactive power is commonly considered to be stored power
in transmission systems. Inductive reactance stores in a magnetic field
and capacitive reactance stores in an electric field. On power grids, we use capacitors and
generators to provide these fields to capture the energy and return it to the system.
Nature doesn't have ready-made devices to store energy, so reactive power simply squirts out
at new current vectors, it's energy consumed by impedance. Of course reactive power is much more
complex than water in a pipe. The comparison is meant to illustrate
for those who aren't familiar with the concept. This isn't the place to review equations,
but the basics of RLC circuits and the geometry of reactive power can be found in any
circuit fundamentals textbook. There are a couple of other things to
note about the shapes of these junctions. First they rarely make perfect “T” junctions.
Most reactive discharge appears at less than 90 degree rotation from the line voltage, producing a “Y”
shape instead of a “T”. This is most likely due to the DC bias in the current. Resonance causes
AC line current to go to zero, but not DC. So the resultant current vectors are the
vector sum of the total reactive current with the remaining DC line voltage, producing
a “Y” instead of a “T”. The second thing to note is that the inductive current path (the branch rotated
counterclockwise, or north in the case of the Colorado River)
continues in that direction more or less straight to the next junction, following the north pointing
magnetic field. The capacitive current does something completely different, however, and it does
this consistently at every “T” junction: it shoots south a short distance and abruptly curls east,
back to the original supply line vector. Capacitive current discharges clockwise,
to the south of the line current in a direction 90 degrees from the prevailing electric field
in response to a far-field charge buildup. The far-field charge builds in a
capacitance response reactance to the charge building in the supply line as frequency rises and
chokes off supply line current. But once it discharges, it equalizes charge differentials
and the far-field voltage it is responding to, disappears. The current immediately
turns back to align with the prevailing electric field - the original supply line
current vector. That is why the southern branch always makes an immediate sharp turn
eastward and realigns, at least briefly, with the supply line current.
This is really important because Nature following precisely a form expected from
electrical discharge and repeating it over and over again, is hard to call coincidence.
If we look at the big picture and we draw lines to represent the prevailing
electric field aligned with the supply line current, it's easy to see that the Colorado River
and its tributaries, or more precisely, the dragon that carved the river,
is a discharge that follows the electric field in a stepwise manner, with resonant reactive surges that
bifurcate into inductive current branches that moves the discharge
north into the strongest voltage lane which aims it to the Eye of the Storm in the four corners region
of Northern Arizona and Utah. The electric field is between the accumulating material on the Colorado
Plateau, and the San Andreas Fault, marked in red in the image. Why this is will be discussed in the
next few chapters, but it's the reason the Colorado is a parallel RLC circuit. The capacitive current
branches all make a brief step to the south and turn abruptly back east to realign with
the prevailing electric field, first producing the Gila tributary, which I mark in A,
and then the Bill Williams tributary in B and when it reaches the resonant
RLC discharge at lake Mead, it finally found the lane of maximum electric field potential mark C,
and thereafter shoots east to the Eye of the Storm centered at Monument Valley,
carving some amazing canyons and other features along its way.
In the next chapter of Eye of the Storm we'll discuss these canyons,
other types of branching, other features and their likely causes. But before we close this chapter, let's
consider what a dragon looks like. In myth, references to dragons can
be confusing, because sometimes they boil the sea, sometimes they ravage the land and
sometimes they take wing. The discharge that scraped the land in surface conductive arcing,
also created its own weather and induced following jet stream winds.
Depending on perspective, one might describe a dragon as a submarine,
serpent, or flying demon. Following jet stream winds choked with dust, swirling
from cyclone to cyclone, had to look like animate serpent bodies glowing with internal lightning.
In its early path it scraped the earth's surface, following surface water laid down by
storm and tsunami. Water is its conductor. Just as in the atmosphere,
water is the conductor. Like it is in our bodies, and plants and pretty much all of Nature.
Water is dipolar, and in the field of a strong electric potential, the polarity
of its molecules align coherently and facilitate current. It is liquid, so flows through pores and
rocks and soil, providing electrical continuity across vast stretches of Earth. Earth's crust
is saturated with water, even deserts, but for the very shallow top layer of sand and mountain.
Water provides the “surface conductance” for the ground-to-ground discharge.
So that's another rule, the dragon to follow water. But it doesn't always follow surface
water. The storm that drew forth the Colorado, the storm over the Colorado plateau was
laying down layer upon layer of dry sediments, burying lakes,
inland seas in their drainage. The dragon burrowed into the ground beneath these
dry deposits and followed the water like a tree root. All along its jagged path, on either side
the land was pummeled. A dense magnetic field surrounded the current as it pulsed and sparked.
And this drew lightning from the raging plasma clouds above, inducing a following storm system of
winds, whirlwinds, and mesocyclones that conflicted with the ambient winds, creating
shockwaves all around. On the ground, whirlwinds at the maw of the beast sucked tons
of billowing dust to wrap around the plasma at the core of the arc,
filling its body within the confines of a magnetic sheath. It formed a lion's mane or
feathered appearance at its head as it drew in streamers of dust. The arc advanced in
explosive, staccato bangs, jumping from node to node, connecting dots across the landscape. But
heavy ionic matter moved more slowly, being either pulled with, or drawn
against the current, as dictated by charge polarity. These horizontal
whirlwinds might have looked like ultra- high-speed trains racing across the land.
It likely wore an inner vest of elemental conductors, and molten silica around a super-heated
plasma core. An outer coat of ragged dust, drawn to its maw as it advanced,
wrapped tight to its body by ferrous material caught in the magnetic field.
Shock waves patterned this cloak into diamond-shaped scales that pulsed with light
and X-rays. It spit lightning and flames in 70-mile arcs, while shockwaves boomed
from its flanks. Sounds just like a dragon, huh? But why take my word for it?
Listen to an eyewitness account: “I will not conceal his limbs,
his mighty power as graceful proportions. Who can remove his outer coat? Who can
approach him with a double bridle? Who can open the doors of his face, with
his terrible teeth all around? His rows of scales are his pride; shut up tightly as with a seal;
one is so near another that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another. They
stick together and cannot be parted. His sneezings flash forth light;
and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning lights;
sparks of fire shoot out. Smoke goes out of his nostrils; as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes out of his mouth.
His undersides are like sharp potshards. He spreads pointed marks in the mire,
he makes the deep boil like a pot. He makes the sea like a pot of ointment.
He leaves a shining wake behind him; one would think the deep had white hair.
On Earth there is nothing like him, which is made without fear. He beholds everything high. He is king
over all the children of pride. That's Job 41 in the bible folks. And it's not
talking about a fish or a whale. Leviathan in the bible is a dragon, much
like the other demigods from the sea in every ancient tradition.
So I committed to Thunderbolts ten chapters for the Eye of the Storm series.
This is chapter Seven. Chapter Eight will discuss more about dragons and the rules
they live by. Chapter Nine will delve under the crust of the earth to see what's there,
and Chapter Ten will summarize all that we have discussed
and conclude this examination of the Colorado Plateau. In the end, if you read and comprehend
all ten chapters and study up on circuit theory, you will have the tool, wisdom that is, to
evaluate your part of the world on your own. Come join the club. Thank you.
[Music]