Sep 06,
2006
The Comet and the Future
of Science
Though NASA officials
have said nothing on the subject, astronomy today is on the
edge of a critical shift in perception—a revolution that
could redefine our view of the heavens.
Proponents of
the “Electric Universe” say that a revolution in the
sciences is inescapable, and they believe the failure of
modern comet theory could be the tipping point. The
high-energy events exhibited by comets require a new
understanding of what makes a comet work, and the answer to
the mystery of comets will invariably affect all of the
space sciences. For starters, a list of the enigmas would
have to include these surprises: comet x-rays, a coma
several times the size of the Sun glowing in ultraviolet
light, strong electrical and turbulent magnetic fields,
million degree coma “temperatures”, supersonic jets,
collimation of these jets over great distances, coherent and
filamentary comet tails spanning up to a hundred million
miles and more, explosive outbursts of dust hundreds of
millions of miles from the Sun, the “inexplicable” break up
and complete disintegration of comet nuclei far from the
Sun, sharply etched surface relief, bright surface patches
(camera saturation, most obvious in the case of Tempel 1),
and “impossibly” fine comet dust. Intense energetic activity
has, one discovery at a time, shocked astronomers. But in
fact every surprise points in the same direction.
For several
years the electrical theorists have predicted that the fatal
blow to modern comet mythology will come from the absence of
sufficient water ice or other ices on a comet nucleus to
produce the jets and coma. This prediction has already been
fulfilled, but the message has yet to register. After
repeated failures to find any water on comet
surfaces, NASA spokesmen celebrated the “success” of the
Deep Impact mission when they thought they had found, on the
surface of Comet Tempel 1, a minuscule .005 of the water
required by theory to explain the signals associated with
water in the coma.
When findings
repeatedly discredit an accepted model in the sciences, it’s
time to consider the findings from a different vantage point
–to look for a pattern that has been missed. For the
electrical theorists, the pattern is too obvious to be
missed. The unexplained features are predictable effects of
an electric discharge, and nothing that an electrical
expert would look for is missing from NASA’s discoveries.
It is also
inconceivable that the collapse of comet theory could stand
as an isolated event in astronomy. The physical universe is
not a bundle of contradictions, even if modern
“explanations” are. A comet discharging electrically
as it approaches the Sun means simply that the Sun is the
focus of electrical activity strong enough to produce the
observed cometary phenomena. That includes the visible
flare-up of comets while in “deep freeze” beyond the orbit
of Saturn. The implication, according to Electric Universe
advocates, is that sufficient electrical energy is available
from the galaxy to power the Sun. A tiny charged comet
occasionally taps into that solar circuit to produce a
visible display.
But in the past
75 years, most astronomers never entertained electricity as
a source of energy in the cosmos – despite its usefulness to
mankind. A Sun energized electrically will be much more of a
“shock to the system” than an electric comet. For decades
we’ve been assured that the science of the Sun is well
established—a few i’s to dot, a few t’s to cross, and little
to fret about. But those expressing this confidence had no
training in electrical discharges in thin plasma. Instead
they treated the solar wind merely as a wind, with a weak
magnetic field thrown in. They did not see that the magnetic
field and the reaction of a comet to the solar wind, when
interpreted as electrical phenomena, answer the greatest
mysteries of the Sun.
Why, for
example, do the charged particles of the solar wind defy
gravity and continue to accelerate as they move away
from the Sun, out past the planets? And how is it that the
temperature of the Sun leaps from a few thousand degrees at
the surface to a million degrees above the surface,
at the corona?
These questions
are easy to explain if the energy is coming from outside
the Sun. In the electrical model, the Sun (like all stars)
is an anode, or positively charged focus within a galactic
discharge. The Sun's electrical influence extends out to a
plasma sheath, incorrectly called the heliopause, far beyond
the orbit of Pluto. The electrical acceleration of the solar
wind and the ion tail of a comet, therefore, is exactly what
should happen, and there is no other credible
explanation of this phenomenon.
Those who are
not trained in plasma discharge behavior are unaware that
throughout almost the entire volume of space within the
Sun's plasma sheath, the electric field remains weak but
constant in strength, representing an immense electric
potential across the vast distance to the boundary of the
Sun’s electrical domain. It is not until charged particles
are very close to the Sun that they experience strong
electric fields in 'double layers' that heat the solar
corona and form the global electrical storm we call a star.
The electrical
theorists Wallace Thornhill and Don Scott have enumerated at
least two dozen enigmas of solar behavior that immediately
disappear when you grant the same electric field that is
implied by the electric comet.
And what of
planetary science? From an electrical vantage point, the
electric arcs that have carved the surfaces of comets can be
compared to those that, in an earlier phase of solar system
history, etched the surfaces of planets and moons. The
astronomer's bafflement at recent close-up images of comets
is just like their response to enigmatic surface features of
larger rocky bodies in the solar system—from the tortured
surfaces of Venus and Mars to the alien worlds of Jupiter
and Saturn. The sharply sculpted nuclei of comets reveal the
same features we see on rocky planets and moons—craters,
rilles, spires, mountains, ridges, mesas rising from flat
valley floors and etched relief—just the opposite of what
astronomers had expected. Of course, the prevailing model of
comets, envisioning a sublimating chunk of dirty ice, does
not allow that similar features could have similar causes,
though that is precisely the message of the electric
theorists.
To see planetary
history in the terms implied by the electrical
interpretation, it will be essential that science free
itself from the modern fable of the “uneventful solar
system”—planets moving on unchanging orbits for billions of
years. The fable originated as a theoretical conjecture long
before the space age began. Geological models of the 1950's
did not envision the pictures of planetary violence returned
from space, because they imagined isolated bodies moving
like undisturbed clockwork for aeons. More than any other
discovery of the space age, the electric comet will force a
reconsideration of solar system evolution, with a new
appreciation for the role of planetary instability and
global catastrophe. What happens to comets happened in the
past on a planetary scale. The present stable order
of the solar system is new.
The picture of
the macrocosm will change as well. If the electric force was
active in solar system evolution, our little enclave in the
Milky Way could hardly be an exception to a rule. Electric
events evident in our neighborhood must have countless
analogs in deep space. How, then, could popular cosmological
theories based on a gravity-driven universe retain their
hold on scientific imagination? By following the evidence,
one will confront the single most costly theoretical mistake
of the twentieth century: the belief that we live in an
electrically sterile universe. When that mistake is
corrected, the universe will no longer resemble the “big
picture” that dominates popular science. And the
disappearance of the big bang, black holes, dark matter,
dark energy, and neutron stars from the lexicon of astronomy
will be a mere beginning.
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