Braving the Electric Universe hypothesis
Key references Venus postscript

To avoid climate skeptics jumping to unscientific conclusions and switching off even reading my journey of discovery and analysis of, and short introduction to, the Electric Universe hypothesis, I am not only starting from comfortable Climate Skeptic ground (retelling my story); I am also forewarned by Leif and others as to what criticisms I need to address. I am including pictures throughout because to me their electrical qualities register very visually. Here's a selection of auroras.

When I did a U-turn from climate alarmist to climate skeptic, it took me six weeks' hard labour to be sure that my U-turn was scientifically valid in all the major climate science issues. I had followed, therefore had to de-debunk, each of the myriad warmist "debunks" of common climate skeptic arguments (or warmists' inaccurate and misleading versions of "skeptics issues") as seen at Skeptical Science, etc. After six weeks I never looked back, but continued to be amazed, horrified and despairing, at the emotional intransigence and ignorance of warmists, and the blight they were bringing not just to our economies but also to the very fabric of Science. Since I took weeks hunting down evidence, counter-evidence and counter-counter-evidence, I wrote it all up to save others the chore and make accessible all the key issues in Climate Science, both scientific and human / political. Here's my Climate Skeptics' Science Primer: updated 12/02/11.

Watts Up With That and Climate Audit were my lifelines for openness, intelligence, imagination, courtesy - and essential cross-references. And with all that, I could begin to discern the good science for myself and recognize WUWT had much good stuff as well as some questionable stuff. Here I discovered real scientific giants and practitioners with integrity like John Daly. Yet I would periodically notice that some contributors who were excellent climate sceptics appeared to be simply parroting orthodox dogma in other "fringe sciences". But for a long time I was busy enough with investigating fringe issues where even climate skeptics disagree. My lack of higher science or statistics training made me feel vulnerable if not useless when experts weighed in to tell me what tosh I was spouting and I couldn't answer them because I couldn't even understand their arguments. So I simply learned to avoid difficult issues that were non-essential to the work of flushing out the truly harmful bad climate science.

Electric Universe theory was just such an issue to avoid: loudly dissed by solar expert Leif Svalgaard and others I respect. Yet I was intrigued by the petulant nature of the dismissals, juxtaposed with loud not-always-very-scientific-looking enthusiasm from others, and personal baiting skirmishes in both directions. But I left well alone and refused to hold an opinion until I had time to investigate properly.

   

Then I set to work. I explored Amazon.com - the US Amazon reviews are an excellent though not foolproof way to explore current issues and start to discern where the quality arguments lie. It emerged that at present there are 2 classic books on the Electric Universe (EU) hypothesis: The Electric Universe, by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott; and The Electric Sky, by Donald E Scott. My first moment of excitement came when I realized Donald E Scott was a retired professor of electrical engineering. Retired, therefore no political careering, much more likely to be trustworthy. And if Scott himself had done a U-turn, written a well-reviewed book about EU, and could write, regarding TEU:

then I had to take the EU hypothesis seriously.

I visited Donald Scott's website, and there I hit gold. There was a lucid account of the whole subject, written for the intelligent amateur scientist in a series of pages that I could comfortably read on screen. I enlarged the print size and used Firefox in full-screen mode. http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm

Scott got better and better. I started to recognize the same battles that climate skeptics have with scientific orthodoxy, the same issues of peer-review corruption and refusal to publish, the same passion for true science and true scientific method, the same sorrow over corruption. Just unfamiliar names. He had answers for the "debunkers" that were laid on my own doorstep, over time. Here was the equivalent of Monckton answering Schmidt, answering Abrahams, or Svensmark answering Damon and Laut. A sadly familiar pattern that occurs right across Science. Read here (short) and then here (great video) for just such another Cinderella experience.

There was even more. The new science seems to fit so much astronomical evidence perfectly, like Cinderella's shoe, opening up a whole new magical world, just as magical, varied, and satisfying as what the telescope showed Galileo. Plasma functioning as electrical currents seems to fit all the evidence from the Sun, interstellar space, galaxies, all kinds of stars, the lot - and quietly erases all the need for funny extra new concepts such as Dark Matter, WIMPs and MACHOs. It answers insoluble problems that orthodoxy sweeps under the rug; it answers unresolved problems in Red Shift, neutrino population, and lots more. Coming from a retired professor of electrical engineering, it all seems so obvious, so lucid, so simple. Why has astrophysics been so dogmatic and ignorant regarding (1) the nature of electric plasma - this is thoroughly lab-tested and well-known to electricians, and (2) its powerful similarity to dozens of known phenomena in astronomy? Why have astronomers not taken Maxwell more seriously? But then, why should climate skeptics be surprised? We've seen everything.

 

The most important fact of science to consider is that magnetic field strength is inversely proportional to distance, not to the square of distance as are gravity and light. Don't ask me why, but it is clear that the lack of the inverse square law will multiply effects hugely at cosmic distances. Why has this simple feature of electromagnetic theory not been noticed by astronomers? Guess. It has. But increasingly, recently, those who notice and consider the implications get sidelined and join the EU group instead - if they continue thinking for themselves. The prominent astronomer Halton Arp was actually banned from using telescopes IIRC.

There are many EU features that simple perusal of pictures from the NASA astronomical collection shows over and over again. One feature is the striking preponderance of curiously regular, circular craters. Yet gravitational origin would suggest a preponderance of more irregular, more elliptical craters. Such circularity has all the hallmarks of electrical discharges, which choose to strike perpendicularly AFAICT. Another feature of electrical discharge strikes is the repetition of circular mini-craters to form a "string of pearls". Look at this video about Mars.

Above (1) a picture thought to hint at "Dark Matter" but why not simply electrical? (2) filaments, above all the signature of electric currents and electromagnetism causing the plasma of space to radiate (3) latest findings regarding our own Solar System - note the "electric motor" appearance is magnified (4) the "magnetic" Sun - such incredibly precise mathematics can only be the imprint of a strong electromagnetic field, nothing gravitational.

Click most pics here to enlarge. Mercury (black/white pictures) has an amazingly detailed enlargement if you click the zoom, showing many examples of filaments, circular craters (effectively 100%), "string-of-pearl" lines of craters, and other phenomena associated with plasma electrics.

Below (1) Europa (a moon of Saturn) shows remarkable filament-like surface markings; (2,3) Mercury, ditto, also crater formation; (4) Mars, various electrically-resonant formations. Gravity simply fails to explain the sheer length of radiating filaments on Mercury.

This page gets edited as my initial flux of enthusiasm gets tempered with more information. I find more and more evidence that the central hypothesis is correct, namely that for galactic scales, we have to put electromagnetic forces as dominant forces, that can outweigh gravity, in order to explain the physics of the universe. However, I still have to look at the links to global mythologies and Velikovsky. My intuition says, there is important material here, but I wonder if the timeline is far too recent. For inistance, it appears that humankind has a collective unconscious (? genetic) memory of dinosaurs called "dragons" yet the timescale is far longer than Saint George seems to indicate. Anyway, without fair inspection, I refuse to either accept or reject.

My animation of the Crab Nebula, starting with the shortest wavelengths (x-rays - blue)
and progressing through the visible spectrum (green) to radio frequencies (beyond infrared).
The driving power here obviously looks like an electric motor.

Maybe "experts" will throw the book at me, and I will not understand them. Yet I know how paradigm-shifters get crucified, and there are others in the climate skeptics community who have both the scientific knowledge and the openness to look at the detailed arguments here, and separate the good science here from the fanciful floss and bad science on the one hand, and the unwarranted attacks of "pseudoskeptics" on the other hand. I think, on balance, that there is some very important material here; moreover it affects Climate Science particularly as we consider how little we understand about sensitive interactions within the solar system that affect solar cycles and magnetic fields and cosmic ray flux, all of which affects, or at least strongly correlates with, climate and weather. And after years of battling with purblind, obstinate pseudoskeptics in Climate Science, I know the psychological feel of them. Scott himself includes some more technical papers and some excellent Monckton-like rebuttals of astrophysics orthodoxy's "rebuttals".

Curiously, in my reluctance to learn the nitpicking details of the science I would need to know, if I am to answer Leif Svalgaard et al, I am watching myself moving to a position rather closer to that of Geoff Sharp. Yet I don't ever want to lose the enthusiastic and careful collection of details that Leif does at his best, plus Leif is a maverick himself in his own community, who also suffers lack of recognition of his particular excellence in consequence. What I do plead for is care to stay with the Socrates-like dialectic of true Scientific Method: (1) a person proposes a Thesis (2) a critic answers with an Antithesis that points out things the Thesis does not answer satisfactorily (3) everyone is now under pressure to look for Synthesis - a new Thesis which accounts for all the details of both Thesis and Antithesis. Never either-or. Always both-and. Thus the Electric Universe does not disregard the workings of gravity, it merely shows how they can, in many astronomical instances, be eclipsed by the powers of electricity, which can explain phenomena with elegance and simplicity, without recourse to strange dark matter or any other strange baggage.

All I want to do here is make this tremendous hypothesis accessible to climate skeptics generally. Donald Scott's web pages answer that need as fully as anyone could wish. Scott was a professor in electrical engineering with plasma physics, and author of textbooks. On retirement from the University of Massachusetts, he moved to Arizona to develop his longstanding interest in astronomy.

Introduction http://www.electric-cosmos.org/indexOLD.htm

Presentation to NASA Goddard Space Center http://www.thunderbolts.info/mmarchives/090608_gsfcdsp.htm

"Debunking misconceptions" http://www.thunderbolts.info/online_videos_interview.htm

Lightning-scarred Planet Mars, Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_T6__JDeyw
Part 2 http://www.thunderbolts.info/online_videos_scarred_mars_two.htm

 

 

Postscript on Venus. I've linked, below, to serious evidence that (1) Venus emits more heat than she absorbs from the Sun, and must therefore have a very hot core, which nullifies all proof that her heat is caused by a runaway GHG effect; (2) NASA scientists and others have closed ranks in fudging the data and evidence, claiming inaccurate readings despite a large number of readings taken from several probes, and despite the many excellent visual and radar readings now used to construct a topographical map of the whole planet. Read the evidence and make up your own mind. It took me a while to elicit on the EU forum, though I was certain the evidence was there, unlike what EU detractors frequently maintain. See:- (1) Google Books for "venus radiates more heat than receives" : (a) New Scientist 13 November 1980, "Monitor" (b) New Scientist 10 April 1980, "Joking Aside: Fools Rush In" by John Gribbin (2) Charles Ginenthal effectively demolishes the Venus-runaway-warming notion, esp. from halfway through Part 4 on. See U-tubes: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 and the text. (3) Ted Holden states crucial points, this page gives important information and clues, IMHO - even though I may not particularly agree with other pages on this website. Judge the message, not the messenger.