By Michael Goodspeed - 15 August 2006
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” --Max Planck, German Theoretical Physicist
“Credibility is currency.” One day, this phrase popped into my mind, and thinking myself quite clever, I “Googled” it, hoping I might have originated it. Well, I had not. An author whose name I cannot find wrote, “Credibility is currency; it’s hard to get, and easier to lose.”
This statement applies to virtually every human endeavor, perhaps none more so than theoretical science -- an inherently idealistic endeavor to advance human understanding. A “credible” scientist can have the whole world’s ear, and nothing says “credibility” better than those three little letters -- PhD.
The work of scientists has an enormous impact on everyday life. We do not just rely on scientists to help us understand the natural world. We rely on their viewpoints to guide us in critical personal decisions, including health and lifestyle (remember the short-lived fervor around the Atkins’ Diet?) The respectable, bespectacled scientist whom the media cites as an “expert” has the power to change the way we think, and thus to change the world.
But credibility is a complex tapestry. In addition to the tangible requirements that any “credible” scientist must possess, there are intangibles such as honesty, integrity, and openness to new possibilities. On an individual level, most accredited scientists may indeed possess those traits. But one cannot judge the validity of a scientific opinion based on an individual’s “accreditation.”
I suspect that most people find little reason to question the scientific Establishment. Most of us just assume that the expert knows what he’s talking about and that he has no reason to deceive us. But few who are removed from the leading edge of science know that beneath the noble exterior of many institutions lie many tendencies toward political maneuvering and manipulation, often with highly destructive consequences. This state of things should not surprise us. Money, reputations, limited fields of view, and the momentum of earlier beliefs have always had the power to corrupt free inquiry and to subtly dissuade individuals from challenging institutionalized ideas.
But the more severe problem today is unique to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and it is inseparably tied to the centralized funding of scientific investigations. There are those who believe that science is not just mistaken on some interesting theoretical possibilities, but IRREDEEMIBLY wrong on the most fundamental questions science can ask. But to whom should we listen in order to sort all of this out? If the critics are correct, billions of tax dollars have been misdirected and/or completely wasted chasing chimeras. Your response might be, “OK...but who the heck are you?” The answer is, I’m a layperson who has followed discovery with a particular interest in the work of independent researchers who are skeptical of the current scientific consensus. But the term “skeptic” has been so debased and misused over the years that some interpret the word to mean an opposition to anything unconventional (i.e. “skepticism” of the paranormal, UFO’s, conspiracies, etc.). In reality, the word “skeptic,” has the precise OPPOSITE meaning. As defined by the American Heritage Dictionary, it means “One who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.”
In science today, the “generally accepted conclusions” are routinely presented as inarguable “facts”. From the Big Bang, to the evolution of planets, from the nature of comets, to highly speculative and hidden phenomena such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy, the big cosmological picture is presented with such confidence that media in this country have almost never questioned it. But the picture may be much less clear than we have been led to believe. Far removed from the spotlight of scientific media, critics have suggested that a single, fundamental error has infected the theoretical sciences.
This error is the notion that the Universe is electrically neutral -- that electricity does not “do anything” in space. It is a perverse stance given the overwhelming importance of electricity in our lives.
The most dramatic recent discoveries have consistently challenged the interpretations of conventional theorists on this point. At the same time, they have fostered considerable interest in an alternative hypothesis -- the Electric Universe.
In the study of comets, for instance, researchers have been so confounded by unexpected discoveries that conventional comet theory no longer exists! Yet comets are touted as "Rosetta Stones" allowing us to decipher the formation of the solar system. The “dirty snowball” hypothesis, considered theoretical bedrock for decades, has failed resoundingly at predicting comet behavior and, more recently, comet composition. The most dramatic surprises began in 1986, with the discovery of negatively charged ions in the coma of Comet Halley, the signatures of energetic electrical activity, and the absence of any proof of water on the nucleus. In subsequent years, comets have produced a steady stream of “mysteries” that have had astronomers heading back to the drawing boards. These include:
• Highly energetic supersonic jets exploding from comets’ nuclei.
• Narrowly confined, filamentary comet jets spanning distances that defy the expected behavior of neutral gases in a vacuum.
• Comet surfaces with sharply carved relief – the exact opposite of what astronomers expected under the “dirty snowball” model.
• Unexpectedly high temperatures and x-ray emissions from comets’ comas.
• A short supply or complete absence of water and other volatiles on comets’ nuclei.
• Mineral particles that can only be formed under extremely high temperatures.
• Comets flaring up while in "deep freeze", beyond the orbit of Saturn.
• Comets disintegrating many millions of miles from the Sun.
• Comet dust particles more finely and evenly divided than is expected for sublimating “dirty ices”.
• Ejection of larger particles and “gravel” that was never anticipated under the idea that comets accreted from primordial clouds of ice, gas, and dust.
• Minerals that can only be created at high temperatures.
All the above findings pose enormous difficulties for the “dirty snowball” model; all are predictable features of the electric model.
Nevertheless, the odds are pretty good that you have never even HEARD of the electric comet hypothesis! (But if you had lived at the end of the 19th century you could have). This is because the space sciences have been constructed throughout the 20th century on the theoretical assumption that bodies in space are electrically neutral. An electric comet would strike at the foundations of the theoretical sciences today.
If a foundational assumption is incorrect, the ramifications would reach far beyond comet theory. According to Wallace Thornhill and other proponents of the Electric Universe, the electric comet is inextricably linked to the electrical model of the Sun, a model with sweeping implications:
Dr. Charles E. R Bruce of the Electrical Research Association in England set the stage for a scientific model of an “electric sun” in 1944. According to Bruce, the Sun’s "photosphere has the appearance, the temperature and the spectrum of an electric arc; it has arc characteristics because it is an electric arc, or a large number of arcs in parallel." This discharge characteristic, he claimed, "accounts for the observed granulation of the solar surface." Bruce’s model, however, was based on a conventional understanding of atmospheric lightning, allowing him to envision the “electric” Sun without reference to external electric fields.
Years later, a brilliant engineer, Ralph Juergens, inspired by Bruce’s work, added a revolutionary possibility. In a series of articles beginning in 1972, Juergens suggested that the Sun is not an electrically isolated body in space, but lies within a larger galactic field. With this hypothesis, Juergens became the first to make the theoretical leap to an external power source for the Sun.
Juergens proposed that the Sun is the most positively charged object in the solar system, the center of a weak radial electric field and the focus of a "coronal glow discharge" fed by galactic currents. This is why a comet, moving rapidly through the strengthening electric field as it approaches the Sun, begins to discharge under the electric stresses.
To avoid misunderstanding of this concept, it is essential that we distinguish the complex, electrodynamic glow discharge model of the Sun from a simple electrostatic model that can be easily dismissed.
Throughout most of the volume of a glow discharge the plasma is "quasi" neutral, with almost equal numbers of protons and electrons. A similar situation exists inside a fluorescent light tube. The current is carried primarily by a drift of electrons in a weak electric field toward the positive electrode (the Sun). It is only beneath the corona, close to the Sun, that the electric field becomes strong enough to generate all of the brilliant and energetic phenomena we observe on the Sun.
In the electric model, the Sun’s external energy source is the reason why temperatures rise SPECTACULARLY with distance from the surface of the Sun -- precisely the reverse of what one would expect if heat were radiating from the Sun’s core. From about 4400 degrees K at 500 kilometers (300 miles) above the photosphere, the temperature rises steadily to about 20,000 degrees K at the top of the chromosphere, some 2200 kilometers (1200 miles) above the Sun’s surface. At this point an abrupt increase occurs, eventually reaching 2 million degrees in the corona. And even farther from the Sun, the energetic activity of ionized oxygen atoms reaches an astonishing 200 million degrees! This is the last thing one would expect of a nuclear furnace hidden in the core of the Sun. But it is the observed nature of a corona discharge.
Electrical theorists point out some two dozen or more defining features of the Sun that pose problems for standard theory, ranging from “difficult” to “impossible” to explain. In each case, the observed feature follows logically from the glow discharge model. Perhaps the most telling illustration of this contrast is the issue of the solar wind. The Sun continually emits a stream of positively charged particles, but these particles are not only unaffected by the Sun’s gravity, they continue to accelerate away from the Sun. Since the discovery of this mysterious behavior decades ago, solar theorists have never set forth an explanation that could withstand scrutiny. They thought they had a partial explanation when they claimed that solar radiation (the light from the Sun) continued to push the charged particles outward. To the electrical theorists, this was not only a feeble explanation but also one that lacked any support in experimentation, which should be the first resort.
Electrical theorists are, in fact, disturbed by the inability of the scientific mainstream to see what they regard as obvious. All electrical engineers know that there is a simple way to accelerate charged particles -- they do it regularly with electric fields. If the Sun is a charged body at the center of an electric field, the acceleration of charged particles by this field is a given.
The most compelling example of this principle occurred between January 15th and 19th of 2005, when four powerful solar flares erupted from “sunspot 720.” Then on January 20th, the fifth explosion produced a coronal mass ejection (CME) with velocities well beyond the ability of any conventional model to account for. As summarized on the Thunderbolts Picture of the Day, “While it often takes more than 24 hours for the charged particles of a solar outburst to reach the Earth, this one was a profound exception. Just thirty minutes after the explosion, Earth (some 96 million miles from the Sun) was immersed in what NASA scientists called “the most intense proton storm in decades.”
It is particularly telling that it is almost impossible to find, in any mainstream attempt to explain the solar wind, any memory of this event.
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