This is the first of a two-part presentation on some of my thoughts of the cosmology of the Electric Universe.
Like bad margarine or cheap white bread, the cosmology offered by current physics
is a harmful imitation of something that used to be wonderful.
Cosmology is supposed to be a framework in which everything we experience has
its own place, as well as its relation to everything else. However, in current cosmology,
you and I are meaningless accidents, which means that everything most real to
you, your thoughts and feelings and sensations, they are henceforth declared meaningless
and accidental. This is an act of violence, perpetrated upon us by astrophysics and
it must be called out for what it is, and replaced by a framework that includes you and me,
and all of humanity, and furthermore includes aspirations and yearnings and those
anticipations we feel when we are in touch with deeper parts of ourselves. I first
encountered the Electric Universe collective while I was preparing
lectures on supernova in 2012 in my hometown of Boston. It
took me a while to adjust to what I was reading. Electricity? In space? In my first education
the presence of electricity in astrophysics was dismissed in about 10 minutes.
I kid you not, and it was never brought up again. So during that year, 2012
I was chewing on the idea that electricity might actually play a part.
And I came to see that, well, not only does electricity do a better job of explaining supernova,
but that just about every branch of science would benefit immensely
by reconsidering the role of electricity. Consider the following diagram.
The student of science these days meets many such diagrams. On the top, you see I have a line, a
distance scale. And on the left we have very small sizes, the size of nuclei of atoms
and then moving to the right, we go to very, the largest distances that we know,
the distances of galactic superclusters. On the bottom is another line.
This time with frequencies, and very low frequencies on the left, very slow oscillations,
and then moving up to the right, all the way to the highest, fastest frequencies that we know of, the
cosmic rays. Now one thing you'll note about this diagram is that everything
is on the same line. Well, what an assumption to think that the length of an
atom is the same kind of length as the length of a man, or the length of a galaxy. In our
current cosmology we are justified in putting everything on one line, because we believe
that the only difference is magnitude. Or with energy; we put the intense
gamma ray of a supernova on the same line as the infrared warmth
that you and I feel when we embrace each other. There's an assumption in these diagrams,
that the frequencies are not different kinds of energy.
They're only different amounts of energy and different rates of oscillation. Now consider this
second diagram. This is a very different cosmological statement.
Inhabitants of this cosmology are not primarily known by a number,
but they are known by what they fit inside of and what is inside of them.
This is not a new idea. I did not make this up. This is a very old idea.
In fact it is only in the last few centuries that western science came up with the notion
that we can put everything on one line, or that we would even want to.
It is only in the past few centuries that scientists abandoned the idea that we live in a
living universe and that everything lives inside of some larger world. Take some time. Put
these two diagrams next to each other. Ponder them and what they say.
The cosmology of the Electric Universe is more like the second diagram. If you talk to people who are
studying in the EU community, whether in geology, or biology or planetary science,
I think you'll find that all of them are seeing that we live in a connected universe. A universe
that is worlds within worlds. Hierarchy is a real idea. A cell within your body is not at the
same level as your entire body. A star within a galaxy is not at the same level
as the entire galaxy. These differences in scale matter; they are real and they give a complexity
and a beauty to science that cannot be found when you place everything on the same line.
Let us look at the relationship between stars and planets. Take our Sun and Earth. When you read
about the solar wind in mainstream media, the solar wind is something to be feared.
Oh the poor Earth. It is in danger, according to the mainstream narrative.
It is a lucky accident that there just happens to be a magnetic field on the Earth,
that just happens to be strong enough to protect the Earth. This narrative is harmful and it needs
to be resisted. I can assure you that the Earth is in no more danger from the Sun
than your liver is in danger from your heart. The solar system is a living being.
All parts connect and work together. This connection between stars and planets,
it is just as complex as the connection between the heart and the various organs of our bodies.
And this is part of what I am studying. If we simplify the picture, and include connections,
we can have a very different view of the Sun and the Earth. The previous, antagonistic image is
replaced by one of connection. The Sun, on the left, sends out electromagnetic flux
which both enwraps the Earth and is transformed by the Earth.
This modified flux then returns to the Sun. Schematically, we are looking at an electrical
transformer. Already this is a completely different idea than of a dead rock, silently circling a
lonely fusion bomb of a star. This is a new picture of an Earth intimately connected to the
Sun. It might even evoke ideas of the Earth playing the role of some sort of
transformation of solar energy. This is a cosmology I
can take seriously. Let us look more at this electrical connection between the Sun and the Earth,
starting on the surface of the Earth and working our way out.
On a sunny day, there is an approximately 100 volts per meter potential on the surface of the Earth,
pointing straight up into our atmosphere. This is shocking; no pun intended. Our electrical outlets
in our homes are about 100 volts and are you saying that between my head
and my feet is just that amount of voltage? Yes, that is the truth.
Let us zoom out. On the Earth there's always hundreds of lightning storms producing about
100 lightning strikes per second and each strike, a million volts,
10,000 amperes. The textbooks tell us that this electrical activity is only local to the Earth.
That this electrical activity has nothing to do with any connection, to the Sun or other planets. This is
completely false. The electrical phenomena on Earth make no sense,
unless we see them connected to the larger body of the solar system. Zooming out more,
we can see this electrical connection beyond the Earth was brought out by recent studies
into what are called jets, sprites and elves that reach out from the Earth
into space. Electric Universe people have been predicting this for decades,
that we should see electrical activity shooting off the Earth and going out into space.
This prediction was met with ridicule and any publication of such nonsense was
completely forbidden, except for those pesky commercial airline pilots.
They kept seeing beautiful shots of red and blue lightning,
shooting up above the tops of thunder- clouds, shooting up into space. And believe it or
not, for 20 years the reports of the pilots were ignored, because according to existing theories,
this was impossible. If ever you need an example of the absurdity
of the human condition, remember this case where thousands of reports by hundreds of pilots were
ignored, because such things were considered not possible.
I don't know what tipped the balance. Someone in power must have died.
Luckily the journals started publishing the findings. Let us zoom out a little more and see
what larger environment these sprites and jets are communicating with.
Pulling further out, we see the Earth and all its lightning and its sprites and its jets
are just a very small part of a much larger electrical system. Here I've drawn two
rings around the Earth. They are called the Van Allen belts. The inside ring is high-energy protons.
The outer ring is high-energy electrons. You should know that these were a complete surprise
to our current batch of planetary scientists. But someone who was awake to the fact
that all worlds live within larger worlds, which live within
larger worlds, well this sort of thing is not a surprise. Electrical systems create layers of
alternating positive and negative charge. We see this in biology
and geology, so why should we not see it in astronomy? The function
of these belts is yet unknown but we can say with certainty that they are part
of the electrical body of the planet and that they are essential for the assimilation
of solar energies into the planetary level. We can step back more and we can see our Earth
in the same picture as our Sun. I've drawn the Sun and the first three planets with a third
dimension. On my drawing there is a hill, leading up to the Sun.
This hill represents electrical activity. The Sun is the highest electrical activity in our system;
the highest electrical potential. All planets in our system live within
the electrical body of the Sun. As we move out from the Sun, the
electrical potential decreases. Mercury is at a higher electrical
potential than Venus. Venus is at a higher electrical potential than the Earth.
Try, if you can, to remember all the electrical activity around the Earth.
The lightning strikes, the sprites and the jets, the Van Allen belts.
All this exists in the larger electrical body of the Sun.
In Part 2 of the Cosmology of the Electric Universe,
we will explore how the body of the Sun lives in the larger body of the galaxy.