Dark Fantasies Vs. Plasma Reality

Thunderbolts Picture of the Day: Dark Matter-Dark Currents.

In his now-famous 1962 essay, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn proposed that the common idea of scientific progress as a continuous, albeit bumpy, approach toward the truth or toward reality failed to explain particular historical episodes that were discontinuous.

Kuhn wrote, "[S]cience has included bodies of belief quite incompatible with the ones we hold today." These beliefs were "produced by the same sorts of methods and held for the same sorts of reasons" as are today's beliefs. And this "makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion."

He goes on to describe "revolutions" in science, and he notes that theories on opposite sides of a revolution are "incommensurable." Because the worldview of a theory colors the facts, selects the problems to be solved, and defines the acceptability of solutions, there are no scientific criteria to justify judging one theory to be closer to the truth than another.

Nevertheless, scientists do judge one theory to be "more true" than another. At times of revolution, this judgment is transferred from an accepted theory to a novel theory, and pieces of the old theory are reinterpreted in the light of the new worldview to be precursors to the new more true theory.

What are overlooked are non-scientific criteria for choosing one theory to be more apt or useful with respect to evolving goals and cultural conditions. While theories cannot legitimately be judged by the standards of another theory, they can be compared with respect to the problems, performance, and promise of each one judged by its own standards.

This is the same kind of judgment that a cook uses in the produce department when deciding whether to buy turnips or asparagus. The facts, the problems, and the potential solutions are incommensurable among theories, but scientists' interest and curiosity, shaped by the surrounding conditions of life in a particular time and place, lead them to decide among the offerings.

Recourse, then, is not to facts or to compatibility with some "already known" but to differences in vision and promise. This series of Pictures of the Day will contrast such differences between presently accepted theories and Electric Universe theories.

The image above is of the nearby spiral galaxy in Andromeda. From the viewpoint of gravity theories, what you don't see is more important than what you do. A black hole at the center of the galaxy pulls in matter and squeezes it until it explodes with a superabundance of radiation. A halo of dark matter surrounds the galaxy and causes the stars in the spiral arms to revolve at the same velocity. The quasars, small galaxies, and gas clouds that stretch out along the rotation axis far from the galaxy are coincidental alignments of background objects. The blue shift of the galaxy indicates that it is moving toward us.

From the viewpoint of an Electric Universe, what you don't see also is important. A plasma focus mechanism at the center pulls in current and squeezes it until it explodes in a superabundance of radiation. The pinch effect in plasma currents causes filaments to form, and these you can see. A persistent current can only exist in a circuit, so the spiral arms are "feeder" currents that complete the circuit to the center.

These currents are in "dark mode" and therefore are invisible, like dark matter. But unlike dark matter, dark mode currents can be investigated in a lab. Lab dark currents are a source of copious microwave radiation; so, the cosmic microwave background radiation, which the Big Bang theory identifies as a distant remnant of its secular "Genesis story," is likely a microwave "fog" generated locally by the web of currents in our own galaxy's spiral arms.

Because these currents are also subject to the pinch effect and to concomitant instabilities, stars (cosmic ball lightning) form along them. Since electrical forces, not gravity, drive them, they all have the same velocity. The plasma focus at the center repeatedly discharges its accumulating charge by ejecting blobs and streams of plasma along its spin axis.

Because the electrical stress among these blobs varies in a resonant, step-wise manner, their radiation shows a quantized variation of redshifts. The blueshift of the galaxy, one quantum step from the sequence of redshifts that ends with the Milky Way at zero, indicates that the Milky Way may be one of the first objects ejected from the Andromeda galaxy.

Saturn's Rings: A Magnetic Phenomenon

Saturn's Rings cannot be described in terms of gravity. Since gravity acts in all directions, the rings should be a sphere. But that's not what we observe. What we observe are rings in a flat plane perpendicular to the lines of force of Saturn's magnetic field.

Merry Christmas

It's raining in San Diego.

Apparently rainfall is correlated to the Sun's magnetic activity: Blame the Sun for a Cloudy Day?

An Australian researcher has linked the sun's magnetic activity to rainfall patterns in his country over the past century. The connection is solid enough that meteorologists might be able to use it to make better long-term weather predictions. But experts remain cautious about the wider implications of the findings.

Scientists have long known that the sun plays a key role in Earth's weather patterns. For example, the number of sunspots on its surface--dark zones of intense magnetic activity--peaks about every 11 years, followed by a period of dormancy. The cycle causes swings in sea-surface temperatures--more sunspots mean warmer oceans, and fewer mean chillier waters--but the effect is small. There's also a 22-year cycle, in which the sun changes the polarity of its magnetic field, but it's unclear how that phenomenon affects Earth.

Now geographer Robert Baker of the University of New England, Armidale, in Australia, has linked solar magnetic activity to Earth's climate--at least regionally. Using sunspot counts and Australian meteorological data, as well as NASA satellite data for more recent years, he tracked sunspots and rainfall in Australia from 1876 to 2006. In this month's issue of Geographical Research, Baker reports that the amount of rainfall in most regions of the country tracked the 22-year magnetic cycle almost exactly. "It was unbelievable," Baker says. At the height of magnetic activity, rainfall across most of the country was plentiful. At the other end of the cycle, many of those same regions experienced severe droughts. The findings are particularly compelling, Baker says, because even though the lengths of the magnetic cycles are not precise and can vary by several years, the rainfall patterns followed them.

So what's behind the connection? Baker thinks it has to do with the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation hitting Earth. When the reversing of polarity approaches, he explains, the sun's magnetic field weakens, allowing more UV energy to reach our planet. More UV radiation kills off some of the oceans' plankton, which produce dimethyl sulfide, one of the primary atmospheric chemicals involved in cloud formation, and fewer clouds mean less rainfall.

Based on the 130 years of data, Baker predicts that the current solar cycle, which reached a minimum in 2007, will continue a bit longer. In fact, he says, "there could be a 100-year minimum in solar activity," meaning much of Australia could experience a prolonged drought.

"This could be an important paper," says climatologist John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He explains that current climate models don't give the solar effect much weight in general, because scientists think it is overwhelmed by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But if there's a mechanism by which the sun's variations are tied directly to weather patterns, such as the effect of UV radiation on cloud formation, he says, the sun may have a greater impact than the models are showing. As a result, the models might not be creating an accurate picture for the future.

Cold Christmas Eve

No Matter What Happens, Someone Will Blame Global Warming.

Global warming was blamed for everything from beasts gone wild to anorexic whales to the complete breakdown of human society this year -- showing that no matter what it is and where it happens, scientists, explorers, politicians and those who track the Loch Ness Monster are comfortable scapegoating the weather.

FOXNews.com takes a look back at 10 things that global warming allegedly caused — or will no doubt soon be responsible for — as reported in the news around the world in 2008.

1. Cannibalism

In April, media mogul Ted Turner told PBS's Charlie Rose that global warming would make the world 8 degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years. "Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state, like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable," he said.

Turner blamed global warming on overpopulation, saying "too many people are using too much stuff."

Crops won't grow and "most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals," Turner said.

2. The Death of the Loch Ness Monster

In February, Scotland's Daily Mirror reported that 85-year-old American Robert Rines would be giving up his quest for Scotland's most famous underwater denizen.

A World War II veteran, Rines has spent 37 years hunting for Nessie with sonar equipment. In 2008, "despite having hundreds of sonar contacts over the years, the trail has since gone cold and Rines believes that Nessie may be dead, a victim of global warming."

Oil's Origin Revisted

Robert Matthews: Oil’s origins revisited.

Once upon a time, clever people scared themselves by trying to predict the end of the world. Sir Isaac Newton’s best estimate, for example – recently uncovered in archived manuscripts – was some time in the year 2060 [Yet more Newtonian idiocy].

Today smart people seem intent on scaring all of us by trying to predict an event no less apocalyptic for modern economies: the arrival of “peak oil”, after which output of crude oil falls into terminal decline.

Last week it was the turn of Fatih Birol, chief economist to the International Energy Agency (IEA), who argued that conventional crude output could plateau in 2020. How seriously we should take this is anyone’s guess. Only last month, the IEA itself was claiming the turning point would be 2030 – 10 years later than its current estimate. With Opec having just imposed its largest-ever cut in oil production, the IEA may well have to issue another estimate next month.

Like predictions of the Final Trump, attempts to guess when oil will run out have a long and sorry history. In 1874, the chief geologist of Pennsylvania, then America’s leading oil-producing state, estimated the nation only had enough of the stuff to last around four years. Nowadays, there seem to be almost as many views as experts, with some claiming peak oil may have been passed some years ago and others – as this newspaper reported recently – insisting it lies far in the future.

In the end, all the arguments centre on simple supply and demand: is there enough exploitable oil in the ground to meet projected needs? So far the ingenuity of petroleum engineers has kept the black gold flowing through advances in the technology of finding and extracting oil. But it seems obvious that it must run out eventually; after all, there’s no more of the stuff being made deep underground. Or is there?

According to the textbooks, oil is the product of 150 to 200 million- year-old fossilised remains of marine organisms being transformed by the combined effect of bacterial action, heat and pressure. But according to some scientists, there may be other sources of oil, created by different means, which remain undiscovered simply because no one expects to find them.

During the 1950s, a team led by the Soviet geologist Dr Nikolai Kudryavtsev of the All-Union Geological Research Institute pointed out that crude oil is sometimes found at sites with no obvious connection to fossilised organisms – such as the Siljan Ring structure of central Sweden, where tar and oil seep out of pure crystalline granite.

According to Dr Kudryavtsev and his colleagues, these puzzling discoveries suggest that oil can also be formed in the absence of living organisms – for example, from hydrocarbons trapped inside the Earth during its formation around 4.5 billion years ago.

Sun Causes Growing Earth To Breathe

Science Daily: Breathing Cycles In Earth's Upper Atmosphere Tied To Solar Wind Disturbances.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 20, 2008) — A new University of Colorado at Boulder study shows the periodic "breathing" of Earth's upper atmosphere that has long puzzled scientists is due in part to cyclic solar wind disturbances [and not gravity], a finding that should help engineers track satellites more accurately and improve forecasts for electronic communication disruptions.

Aerospace engineering sciences department Associate Professor Jeff Thayer said the outer, gaseous shell of the atmosphere, known as the thermosphere, is known to expand and contract as it exchanges energy with the space environment, causing changes in thermosphere density [so much for gravity]. Changes in thermosphere density can alter the atmospheric drag [aka inertia] of satellites, causing them to deviate from their predicted paths and complicating tracking and orbital adjustment maneuvers, he said. [LOL @ Newtonian prediction]

While extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun is the dominant mechanism [i.e. electromagnetism not gravity] that causes the thermosphere to "breathe," the new CU-Boulder study indicates high-speed wind from the sun triggers independent breathing episodes by creating geomagnetic disturbances, heating the thermosphere and altering its density. The wind streams are generated by relatively cool pockets on the sun's surface known as solar coronal holes that periodically rotate around the sun's surface, said Thayer.

"We were surprised to find the density changes were so consistent in our observations," [something Newton and Einstein were unfamiliar with since they died before the Space Age began in 1957] said Thayer, lead study author. "Because of the huge increase in satellite activity in recent years, finding this new thermosphere breathing mechanism should help improve our models and increase the accuracy satellite tracking and collision avoidance."

A paper on the subject was presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union held Dec. 15 to Dec. 19 in San Francisco. Co-authors included Research Associate Jiuhou Lei, Professor Jeffrey Forbes, Research Associate Eric Sutton and Professor Steve Nerem of CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering sciences department.

The thermosphere begins at about 60 miles above Earth and extends to about 300 miles in altitude. The thermosphere gas is known to expand and contract on a 27-day solar rotation period due to changes in extreme UV radiation, said Thayer. The new findings indicate the thermosphere also has periodic oscillations occur at four-to-five days, six-to-seven days and nine-to-11 days caused by the violent effect of the high-speed solar winds interacting with Earth and transferring energy through auroras and enhanced electric currents.

Petrobras Oil Hunter Fights To Keep Finds For Brazil

Bloomberg: Petrobras Oil Hunter Fights to Keep Finds for Brazil.

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Guilherme Estrella found an undersea lake of oil that may transform Brazil’s economy forever. Now, the exploration chief for Petroleo Brasileiro SA is at the center of a debate over who will profit from it.

At stake is how much of Brazil’s newfound riches will be controlled by the state and how much will end up in the pockets of Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other oil companies hungry for new sources of crude. Estrella wants to make Western oil companies little more than hired help for government-controlled Petrobras, as his company is known.

“Petrobras is our space program,” ...

Few people have been involved in the discovery of more oil than Estrella, said Gerrard Demaison, a former Chevron Corp. geologist who is president of Capitola, California-based Petroscience2000.

“This guy’s work was prophetic and essential for finding the oil Brazil has today and making Petrobras what it is,” Demaison, 76, said in a telephone interview. “I would put him alongside the great petroleum geologists of the last century.” ...

“If he’d stick to geology, he’d be fine, but I’m afraid his political ideas and those of his allies are going to damage the industry and put the country’s energy future at risk,” said Amaral, now a senator. “We need investment.”