Could it really be that we live in an Electric Universe? That claim challenges
some of the most popular and long held ideas in the sciences and it's provoked
a lot of banter amongst journalists and internet bloggers. As public interest
grows, so do the reflexes on behalf of more traditional, more acceptable ideas.
Earlier this year, we invited the popular skeptic Michael Shermer to our EU2015
Conference Paths of Discovery. The event was held in Phoenix, Arizona in late June.
Shermer spoke at the event and participated in a panel discussion on
the ground rules for evaluating extraordinary challenges to long held
theoretical assumptions. We envisioned the adventure as a cautious experiment - is it
possible to communicate, even if imperfectly, across a gap that has never
been bridged since the birth of the Electric Universe movement some
15-20 years ago? I participated on the panel as well, along with Dr. Gary
Schwartz of the University of Arizona and Wal Thornhill, chief science
adviser to the Thunderbolts Project. Expectations were mixed. In fact, we
received some advanced criticism for inviting Shermer, "letting the fox into
the hen-house" as some put it. Others said it was our best strategic move ever, but that
response came largely from those who saw the event.
You can see it for yourself through the link provided below. About 3 months after
the event, as we had expected, Shermer's response appeared in Scientific American.
Shermer's opening words set up his premise: that the electrical theorists argue
against science that is already settled. Newton was wrong.
Einstein was wrong. Black holes do not exist.
The Big Bang never happened. Dark energy and dark matter are unsubstantiated conjectures.
Stars are electrically charged plasma masses. Venus was once a comet.
The massive Valles Marineris canyon on Mars was carved out in a few
minutes by a giant electric arc sweeping across the red planet. The 'thunderbolt'
icons found in ancient art and petroglyphs are not the iconography of
imagined gods but realistic representation of spectacular
electrical activity in space. These are just a few of the things I learned at
the Electric Universe conference EU2015. With these words Shermer opened
the door to a highly dismissive review of the Electric Universe themes all written
with no personal awareness of the subject matter. It seems that dismissive quips
come quite easily when one is fending-off challenges to a belief system - just
remind your congregation of things they already know, the challenges can then
become a subject of ridicule, no actual science needed. For many years, the EU
community has warned about the dangers of self-perpetuating dogma. Yes, modern
technological advances are impressive but it seems that theoretical
foundations are frozen at levels prior to the Space Age. Add the growing
centralization of funding and the cost of institutionalized but mistaken ideas
could be catastrophic. As one can see in Shermer's review, he has little or no
concerns of this sort. All is well within the sciences! This state of good
health, he assures us, is confirmed by thousands of scientists sharing in an
underlying consensus, the big questions such as relativity, and the Big Bang, and
of course, many others are reliably settled. A much different understanding
drives the Electric Universe movement. Electrical theorists have paid close
attention to the roles of electric fields, electric currents and high energy
electric discharge in space plasma. Plasma is the medium of charged particles that fill the vacuum of space.
Space is not empty and the sciences cannot afford to ignore the sea of plasma
across the cosmos. That's why the experts in our group have raised an alarm. They
recognize that leading institutions responsible for guiding the vision
management and funding of research may well have wasted hundreds of billions of
dollars asking the wrong questions. In his response, Shermer reverses the role
of skepticism - he assumes the mantle of a true believer - one who already knows, the
guide for the faithful is already in hand and shared by thousands of trusting
followers. Read his response for yourself and you'll see exactly what this means.
The Electric Universe movement is inspired by interdisciplinary research, from new
data delivered by the space program to volumes of historical evidence. Anyone
who wants to know can compare Shermer's review to the actual situation. The EU
movement throws a spotlight on a steady stream of new facts that have caught
standard theorist by surprise. In one instance after another, the great
surprises of the space age are the inherent predictions of the Electric Universe.
Simply follow the surprises and the picture of space changes as surely as night and day.
In Shermer's published dismissal of the Electric Universe,
his treatment of mathematician Stephen Crothers was perhaps the lowest
of low points - just dismissive with no science. Crothers is recognized as
amongst the most capable critics of relativity theory and his criticism can,
indeed, send orthodox theorists into a frenzy. But Shermer's own words are telling. First,
he acknowledges that he wasn't up to understanding Crothers, but then he adds
a priceless confession. He writes, "I am confident he's wrong by the fact that
for a century thousands of physicists have challenged Einstein, and still he
stands as Time's Person of the Century". It's a bit astonishing to see someone cite a
celebrity rating as an argument in Scientific American. For an exclamation
point on this curiosity, viewers need only consider Shermer's comment in the
light of Crothers actual conference presentation. (which you can access through the
link given below)
Shermer's Scientific American article merely stacks some EU claims on top of
each other without any reference to substantiating data, so it's only
appropriate here to review the scale of erroneous perception that follows.
EU proponents do not claim that Newton was wrong, but for good reason, the electrical
view emphasizes that gravity alone could never complete our understanding of
celestial mechanics. There's no problem with gravity until or unless a gravity
centric dogma takes over allowing theorists to overlook the effective
charge and charged particle movement at cosmic scales. Across the vastness of
space, even the most minuscule and immeasurable electric field, at any
particular place, can add up to a stupendous potential across the volume
of interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic distances. In fact,
Newtonian explanations fall short all the time. And we provided hundreds of
examples based on original research and published contributions from the world's
leading experts on space plasma. Plasma is defined by the presence of charged
particles, even in an immeasurably weak electric field, charged particles easily
override Newtonian gravity. In fact, we're all living in the presence of charged
particles exploding from the Sun. These particles care very little about gravity
and continue to accelerate across the vacuum of interplanetary space before
crashing into the Earth's magnetosphere to provoke the auroras.
For decades, we overlooked the evidence of this until the 1970's
when instruments in space confirmed an electrical connection of the Earth and
Sun, first stated by the experimentalist Kristian Birkeland, almost a hundred
years ago. Yes, we live in a rather quiet corner of the universe today, though it's
not always been this way, and gravity is not the only force doing real work across the cosmos.
Earth's auroras pale by comparison with the higher energy events we see in space.
Explosive events and exotic electrical structures in space mean
that gravity does not singularly dominate the macrocosm. The phrase Electric Universe
comes from observations of electrical phenomena, in both the laboratory and
across the vacuum of space. The work of Nobel laureates and other pioneers of
plasma science has for too long been kept in the back room. The highest
energy events in the cosmos exhibit every predictable signature of
electrical events, including synchrotron radiation pointing to the
highest energy plasma instabilities, it's signature showing up across the entire
electromagnetic spectrum.
Well before it's confirmation synchrotron radiation from the cores and along the
polar axis of galaxies, was predicted by the father of modern plasma science
Nobel laureate, Hannes Alfven.
Yes, the stars and our Sun, in particular, offer excellent tests of the electrical perspective.
Well before our space probes and advanced telescopes began to more deeply explore
the mysteries of the Sun, astronomers had already settled on the idea of a
thermonuclear core driving solar activity. But almost immediately, a
mystery arose as our satellites in space probes detected a continuing
acceleration of charged particles away from the Sun across interplanetary space.
How does it happen that the great attractor, holding planets in their orbits,
cannot hold onto charged particles as they race away from the Sun, continuing
to accelerate up to speeds of millions of miles per hour. This is not a question
to be downplayed and much less to be ignored.
So, the EU researchers offered a science-based possibility never
considered in 60 years of solar physics - the acceleration of the solar wind is
the confirmation of the Sun's electric field. Electric fields
accelerate charged particles.
This is a well-known fact, not something to be denied or ignored. This confirmed
electric field exposes one of the greatest challenges facing modern
astronomy and cosmology - literally the collapse of the longstanding official
dogma. The central tenet of the dogma has been the imagined cosmic
pre-eminence of gravity alone across electrically neutral space. That
dogma left the Sun as an isolated island where all of it's dynamic activity
could only be explained by events occurring inside the island. That means
no causative link between it's primary features and it's larger environment - no
external electrical influence on the Sun at all, just the trivial
gravitational effects exerted on the massive body of the Sun by the remote
circling planets.
The archaic, but worldwide idea that the planet Venus formerly appeared as a
comet is fully documented and will forever remain a mystery, until that
global tradition is given the attention it deserves. In every major culture, the
regional language of a comet is the regional language of Venus and there's
just no escaping the implications. When cultures the world over give the same
details in different languages, and different symbols, it's just not rational
to ignore the converging testimony. The story of the comet Venus has a long
history tracing back to ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources. The theme
continuing through Greek and Roman times, into the medieval period. As the Egyptian
goddess Sekhmet, Venus was the great flame instilling overwhelming terror.
As the Sumerian goddess, Inanna, she was the Great Dragon raining fire down upon
the land. For the Greeks, Venus was Aphrodite Comaetho. In the language of
classical astronomy, the words mean "the long-haired Venus", the comet Venus, the
goddess's cometary train seen mythically as a horde of wild beasts.
And even in Galileo's time, it is known that popular traditions retained the idea
that Venus was a comet. The most striking fact is that the same mystery
occurs in Meso-America, where the planet Venus wears the symbolic dress of the comet -
the smoking star, a flaming ember envisioned as a luminous soul rising in
the sky. The language and symbolism of Venus is the language and symbolism of the comet.
It's ironic that Shermer's litany of EU themes culminates with two statements
about the cosmic thunderbolt, perhaps the greatest of all ancient mysteries left
untouched by modern investigations. What was the earth shaking heaven altering
weapon of the ancient gods?
While the theme is far too broad for adequate coverage here, the subject must be considered by anyone
hoping to make sense of things that were once remembered around the world.
The cosmic Thunderbolt never looks like lightning, and yet, it's recorded forms
are remarkably similar to high energy electric discharge configurations in
laboratory vacuum chambers, with surprising parallels to formations seen
in space, as well. Until this cross cultural memory is fully comprehended,
astronomers and planetary scientists will labor under the spell of a profound
misunderstanding, assuming that planets have moved on their present courses for
billions of years. For those ready to hear the ancient witnesses, the cosmic
thunderbolt will explain what has been left unexplained across the centuries.
For the Electric Universe community, this remarkable weapon of ancient gods
provides a critical interdisciplinary bridge that connects the space sciences
to a deeper understanding of the human past. Multiple phenomena speaking to us
in a hundred different ways, all perplexing, but only until we see the
electric force at work.
Ignore that force and you are left with a fragmented universe, each fragment
calling for a different explanation - dark matter and dark energy, black holes and
neutron stars, hidden thermonuclear furnaces and much more. In remote space,
impossible galactic jets held in place across a hundred thousand light years
and more ...
Closer to home, intensely energized planetary nebulae revealing exotic structure beyond any reasonable
gravitational explanation. And in our own cosmic neighborhood, countless mysteries
of comets; their forms make no sense, they often explode for no acceptable reason,
and their nuclei do not exhibit the water that theories require. And also
nearby, in overwhelming abundance, the pervasive scars on planets and moons
boldly defying theoretical attempts at explanations. At our website,
thunderbolts.info you'll discover large libraries of evidence reconnecting
observed phenomena to their electrical cause. Consider this research and you'll
discover for yourself that we do, indeed, live in an Electric Universe. 198 00:18:14,599 --> 00:15:23,599