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Celestial Bodies On Their Guard
Jun 10, 2009
Long
before western scientists formulated
the laws of gravity and
electromagnetism, skywatchers
grappled with the question how the
planets were able to move
independently from the fixed stars.
In ancient Greek cosmology, the
definition of these ‘wandering’
planets usually included the sun and
the moon. Interestingly, some of the
speculative answers provided by
early thinkers ring curiously true
from the perspective of current
scientific knowledge.
As the planets seemed to have a will
of their own, it was easy to assume
that they possessed a divine ‘soul’
which guided them on their course.
This was the opinion expressed by
the anonymous ‘Athenian Stranger’ in
Plato’s dialogue The Laws: “The
sun’s body is seen by everyone, its
soul by no one. And the same is true
of the soul of any other body … This
soul … every man is bound to regard
as a god.” But where was the
invisible ‘soul’, which apparently
“drives round the sun”, located with
respect to the visible body? The
Stranger could think of only three
possibilities:
"That either it exists everywhere
inside of this apparent globular
body and directs it, such as it is,
just as the soul in us moves us
about in all ways; or, having
procured itself a body of fire or
air (as some argue), it in the form
of body pushes forcibly on the body
from outside; or, thirdly, being
itself void of body, but endowed
with other surpassingly marvellous
potencies, it conducts the body."
In other words: the ‘soul’ pervades
the entire body, steers it
externally by means of a physical
force such as “fire or air”, or
controls it by some other,
immaterial means.
More than two thousand years anon,
the search for the driving force of
planets as well as the sun is still
on and the fundamental questions
remain the same as the ones posed by
Plato’s mouthpiece. As far as the
sun is concerned, its apparent
motion is no longer a problem on the
heliocentric model, but the source
of the power that sustains its
brilliance remains to be
established.
The prevailing paradigm holds that
the sun is powered through nuclear
fusion reactions taking place in its
interior. In postulating a
self-sustaining mechanism that
“exists everywhere inside of this
apparent globular body”, this
approach conforms to the first of
the solutions offered by the
Stranger. Theorists familiar with
the role of plasma and
electromagnetism in space point at
the many weaknesses of this model
and propose that the sun may be
externally powered through
current-conducting cables known as
‘Birkeland currents’. This type of
model rather fits the Stranger’s
third option – that of an extraneous
force, “itself void of body”, that
nonetheless exercises control.
No ‘soul’ is required to account for
the orbiting movement of the planets
either. Nevertheless, planetary
scientists have discovered that
almost every planet in the solar
system does have an invisible
‘companion’ – a protective
surrounding ‘bubble’ that shields
the body from external electric
fields. This ‘bubble’ is known as a
plasmasheath or a magnetosphere. A
magnetosphere deflects the onslaught
of the ‘solar wind’, which is a
stream of plasma radiating out from
the sun.
The understanding that a violent
solar wind causes temporary
distortions in the shape of the
magnetosphere, leading to aurorae
and other effects in the ionosphere,
reminds of the Stranger’s notion of
the ‘soul’ as “a body of fire or
air” that “pushes forcibly on the
body from outside”. While the
impinging force of the solar wind is
not responsible for the motion of
planets across the ecliptic, one
might say that the fate of a planet,
including the earth, is controlled
to a large extent by the external
action of the “body of fire or air”
that is the solar wind.
In hypothesising that each planet
has an invisible ‘guardian spirit’,
the Athenian Stranger anticipated –
perhaps by chance – the modern
discovery of protective, invisible
magnetospheres surrounding planets.
Indeed, the solar wind produces its
own bubble around the sun, the
heliosphere, which encapsulates all
of the planets and protects the
entire solar system from damaging
influences from the ‘winds’ of
interstellar space.
Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs
http://mythopedia.info
Books by Rens Van der Sluijs:
The Mythology of the World Axis
http://www.lulu.com/content/1085275
The World Axis as an Atmospheric
Phenomenon
http://www.lulu.com/content/1305081
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