Feb
14,
2007
Something New
in the Wind
Until
scientists witnessed the unexpected behavior of colossal
whirlwinds on Mars, they did not think to ask if electricity
might be an important aspect of terrestrial dust devils or
even of small whirlwinds.
American
philosopher Richard Rorty argued that cognitive revolutions
aren’t about better ways to do the same old things but about
ways to do something new. The assertion that a phenomenon
has already been explained misses the point. New ideas make
new phenomena; new visions see new worlds.
Take the case of
a whirlwind of dust that spins up in the lee of a building
when the wind blows. It’s already been explained that
varying speeds in airflows around the building generate
eddies. The phenomenon can be described with a mathematical
exactitude that enables engineers to predict the speeds and
forces involved, and those predictions have been verified
over and over. That the whirlwind is a mechanical event is
obvious.
This being so,
it is impertinent to ask if electrical forces could be
involved. Or is it? Have the experts actually considered the
entire picture? Epistemology—the branch of philosophy that
studies how we “know” things—matters a lot when it comes to
new ideas, even if we pay little attention to epistemology
in our practical activities. An examination of how we
can be sure a whirlwind is really mechanical quickly reduces
to a question of how sure we really can be.
The mechanical
explanation ignores many of the conditions from which
whirlwinds arise. In fair weather, with no clouds in the
sky, an electric field can be measured. It amounts to about
100 volts per meter. This field is coupled to a complex of
“double layers” (plasma cells), currents, and circuits that
reach through the atmosphere into the magnetosphere and even
into interplanetary space. Water molecules, comprising up to
4 percent of the atmosphere, have the two hydrogen atoms
toward one side of each molecule and the oxygen atom toward
the other. This makes each molecule a tiny electrical
dipole—a pair of oppositely charged poles—subject to
electrical forces. Such polar molecules will tend to line up
and stick together. In a cloud they will form a leaky
dielectric, storing charge and responding to the vertical
atmospheric electric field.
Are these
considerations important? Has anybody checked? The answer to
both questions is “yes,” but the mob of scientists, who
should know better, conforms to a consensus that ignores the
questions.
In response to
some enigmatic observations of dust devils—giant whirlwinds—on
Mars, some NASA scientists began taking
electrical measurements around dust devils on Earth. They
found large electrical fields with strengths 40 times that
of the fair weather field. They assumed that the mechanical
spinning of dusty air rubbed electrons off the dust grains
and then somehow pulled the electrons to one end of the
devil and the positive grains to the other.
Are the
mechanical forces in a whirlwind strong enough to overcome
the strength of an electrical force in a field of thousands
of volts per meter? A report in the Geophysical Review
Letters of 17 November 2003 by Joseph Dwyer of the Florida
Institute of Technology calculates that mechanical forces in
a thundercloud are far too weak to generate the electric
fields that produce lightning. See the commentary on this
question at:
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=9eq6g3aj
If the winds of a thunderstorm can’t separate charges, then
the trivial breezes of a whirlwind certainly can’t!
What if the
electric field produces the whirlwind? We know the Earth is
surrounded and interpenetrated by large and complex electric
currents. We know currents in plasma—any substance that
contains charged particles—form filaments that spiral around
each other: Another word for “spiral around” is “whirl.” For
most of the time we ignore those currents. But being
attentive to them could generate the new ideas that enable
us to see a new world.
___________________________________
Please check out Professor Don Scott's
new book The Electric Sky.
NOTE TO
READERS: Wallace Thornhill, David Talbott, and Anthony
Peratt will share the stage with other investigators of
planetary catastrophe at the British Society for
Interdisciplinary Studies “Conference 2007” August
31-September 2.
GET INFO