Mar 02,
2007
Plasma in the Lab and in Rock Art
The ancients were not
just doodling when they spent millions of man-hours carving
rock art forms around the world. They were reproducing
dramatic plasma discharge forms seen in their spectacular
sky.
At high
energy levels, the current within a
plasma circuit will develop
instabilities that can be studied in the laboratory. The
flow of charged particles generates electromagnetic forces
that in turn affect the flow of particles. This feedback
effect produces plasma behavior that is not linear and is
often unexpected. Theoretical predictions must be frequently
checked against laboratory observations. The non-linear
behavior at low energies, such as the alternating light and
dark segments in a gas-discharge tube, becomes even more
complex. High energy discharges in plasma laboratories
exhibit intricate structures, and these evolve through a
sequence of quasi-stable forms with intermediate stages of
violent transformation.
Anthony
Peratt, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has
studied the evolution of these instabilities for several
decades. One evolutionary sequence is the development of the
“warped disk” form, which can involve many variations on the
underlying pattern. (See
Thunderbolts of the Gods,
Chapter One, pages 21ff.) A continuous discharge channel
will break up into a string of spherical cells, usually 7 to
9 in number. These cells contract further into toroids
(donut-shaped rings) stacked along the axial channel. The
toroids flatten into disks, and then the edges of the disks
warp upward or downward. When viewed from the side
(perpendicular to the axis), the greater thickness of plasma
along the axis and in the plane of the disks appears as a
glowing line figure—a vertical line with cross bars.
Peratt described
this sequence at an interdisciplinary conference on plasma
in the solar system in September of 2000. David Talbott,
another presenter at the conference, remarked on the
similarity of the line form to images seen in ancient rock
art. The pictograph on the left above, from Kayenta,
Arizona, illustrates a late stage in this sequence. Peratt
remarked that the detailed correspondence with the
laboratory discharge sequence is precise. This Kayenta image
was, in fact, the first pictograph that Talbott sent to
Peratt, and it inspired Peratt to investigate the
correspondence further. (The identification of the discharge
components comes from Peratt’s later paper on the subject.
According to Peratt, the configuration is about to undergo
an intensely energetic transformation that could be deadly
for humans exposed to its radiation.)
In the
transitional phase, the top disks fold over each other to
form a bulb shape; the next disk bends into a cup shape; the
middle disks often merge; and the lower disk bends down into
the shape of an inverted cup. The bottom of the axial
current often develops a trident shape. When viewed from the
side, the line figure takes on the appearance of a squatting
stick person with his arms in the air. The central toroid
appears as two dots or, if bright enough, as a bar under the
“stick man’s” arms. The trifurcated bottom end of the axial
current is commonly interpreted in rock-art lore as the
“stick man’s” genitalia. Peratt calls this a
“basic” form taken by
discharge instabilities, and significantly it is an image
common to rock art around the world. (See image on the
right.)
Peratt’s
investigation of rock art led him to collect hundreds of
thousands of digital photographs of petroglyphs (images
scratched or pecked into rock) and pictographs (images
painted on rock). He has classified them into 84 categories
that correspond with the quasi-stable forms of the
laboratory plasma discharges.
“Many
petroglyphs, apparently recorded several millennia ago, have
a plasma discharge or instability counterpart, some on a
one-to-one or overlay basis. More striking is that the
images recorded on rock are the only images found in extreme
energy density experiments; no other morphology types or
patterns are observed,”
Peratt writes,
“The inward rise on axis along with the upward folding of
the outer edges of the carved lines and transition to edge
curling, a phenomena [sic] recorded in intense electrical
discharge radiographs, could not have been known to
prehistoric man unless he witnessed the same event in the
sky.”
Peratt and his
assistants and collaborators also recorded the fields of
view of the ancient artists and the locations of the images
with GPS instruments. By plotting this data on computerized
topographical maps, he can calculate where the various forms
occurred in the Earth’s ancient plasmasphere (what
astronomers call the magnetosphere).
Peratt
surmised that a surge of power in the currents driving the
auroras had set off the sequence of
instabilities. The entire pre-historical sky around the
globe would have appeared to come alive with a shimmering,
shining “enhanced aurora” that stretched from pole to pole.
It would have featured exactly those abstract figures and
stick men and strange animal-like shapes that appear only in
rock art and in high-energy plasma discharges. He contends
that the ancient artists were witnesses to this “enhanced
aurora” and that they recorded what they saw on the most
durable “recording
device” available—rock surfaces.
From the
difference in scale between a laboratory spark and an
auroral discharge, Peratt estimates that the ancient
displays would have lasted “for at least a few centuries if
not millennia.” Radiocarbon dating of material overlying
some buried petroglyphs provides a time for the occurrence
of the displays at 4 000 to 12 000 years ago.
The
curious phenomena
that our space-age sensors are detecting in space, phenomena
that can be explained directly in terms of the electrical
behavior of plasma, are now reflected in the forms of
ancient rock art. The new universe of plasma requires not
only a new vision of the present but also a new vision of
the ancient past. Discoveries in space, ancient drawings of
the sky, and controlled laboratory experiments converge to
revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. Plasma and
electricity make possible a unified perspective, a goal that
is fundamental to the scientific quest.
_______________________
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