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*Thunderbolts of the Gods*

*The Case for an Electric Universe*

by
Amy and Nel Acheson

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*W*ho would have guessed that the myths of ancient cultures could
throw new light on the mysterious surface features of planets and moons?
Or give new meaning to current work in artificial-lightning
laboratories? If mythologist David Talbott of Portland, Oregon, and
physicist Wallace Thornhill of Canberra, Australia, are correct, then
ancient myths and symbols are a key to an expanded and holistic
understanding of both history and the physical universe.

Yet in our age, world mythology seems a most unlikely source of
discovery. Until recently, mythologists sought to explain the ancient
stories with references to events in everyday life-to the seasons, to
the power of a storm, to phases of the Moon, or to movements of the Sun.
But their efforts have produced a morass of contradictions, reinforcing
the popular belief that myth is fiction pure and simple-anything but a
dependable guide to the past.

*COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY*

In contrast, David Talbott, inspired by Immanuel Velikovsky's theory of
interplanetary upheaval, developed a method for comparing the myths of
far-flung cultures. His objective was to discover whether reliable
memories are embedded in the different stories. This method is similar
to the reasoning of lawyers in a court of law, questioning witnesses who
may be lying, or incompetent, or remembering incorrectly. When
statements from independent witnesses converge on unique details, they
tend to corroborate each other, even if the witnesses are not reliable
in other things they say. Similarly, according to Talbott, there are
hundreds of common themes in world mythology, where different words and
different symbols point to the same remembered events. The more peculiar
the points of convergence, the more unreasonable it is to dismiss them.

When allowed to speak for themselves, these universal memories
tell a coherent and detailed story, Talbott claims. But it is a story
that seems preposterous from today's worldview:

According to Talbott, what the ancients worshipped and feared as
powerful gods were planets positioned extremely close to the Earth. This
close congregation of planets appeared as huge powers in the sky. Their
instabilities and unpredictable movements gave rise to one of the most
common themes of myth-the wars of the gods. In these dramatic stories,
the gods pound each other with cosmic lightning while fire and stone
descend on the Earth.

*THE WEAPON OF THE GODS*

In ancient traditions, few images are more vividly presented than the
thunderbolts of the planetary gods, Talbott notes. Consider the
gas-giant Jupiter, whom the Greeks remembered as the ruler Zeus, the
victor in the celestial clash of the Titans. "Jupiter is just a little
speck of light in our sky, but ancient peoples recalled the god Jupiter
as a towering form in the heavens, wielding lightning as his weapon of
choice. What does this mean? If the gods were planets, then the
thunderbolts of the gods were nothing less than interplanetary lightning
discharges."

In Hesiod's Theogony, we read of Zeus, "From Heaven and from
Olympus he came immediately, hurling his lightning: the bolts flew thick
and fast from his strong hand together with thunder and lightning,
whirling an awesome flame...."

When the dragon Typhon attacked the world, there was "thunder and
lightning, and ... fire from the monster, and the scorching winds and
blazing thunderbolt." Destroyed by a lightning bolt from Zeus, the
world-threatening dragon came to be known as the 'thunderstricken'.
Indeed, it is remarkable how many mythical figures are struck down by
lightning. In classical myth alone, you would have to include Enceladus,
Mimas, Menoetius, Aristodemus and Capaneus, Idas, Iasion, Asclepius and
others. "The biggest mistake a scholar can make," Talbott says, "is to
look for terrestrial explanations. The earliest forms of these stories
are cosmic. The gods, the great heroes, and the thunderbolts which fly
between them are celestial through and through."

Hebrew tradition has remembered well the lightning of the gods.
Psalm 77 proclaims: "The voice of thy thunder was in the heaven: the
lightnings lightened the world: the earth trembled and shook." From
India, the Mahabharata and Ramayana relate that lightning of the gods
filled the heavens like a rain of fiery arrows. From ancient Egypt,
Babylon, Scandinavia, China, and the Americas, myths and legends
describe conflagrations attributed to thunderbolts from the gods.

These stories of cosmic battles provided much of the content of the
myths we know today. Talbott writes: "If we've failed to recognize the
celestial players, it's because the planets which inspired these stories
have receded to pinpoints of light. In modern times, we see no
interplanetary lightning arcing between them."

But Talbott reminds us that if there is anything to these global
memories, the physical evidence should be massive. This amounts to a
call for objective investigation of the surface features of planets and
moons, to see if the tell-tale markers of interplanetary discharges
might be present.

*ELECTRICITY AND ASTRONOMY*

Unbeknown to Talbott, Australian physicist Wallace Thornhill had been
pursuing just such an investigation. Thornhill had discovered
Velikovsky's books shortly before starting his university career. "I was
the only physics undergraduate to haunt the anthropology shelves of the
university library," he says. "The result was a strong conviction that
Velikovsky had presented a case which required further study." But his
next discovery was the reluctance, even hostility, of scientists to
question the assumptions underlying their theories.

One of those assumptions which Thornhill questioned was the
insignificance of electrical phenomena on astronomical scales.
Nobel-laureate Hannes Alfven, a pioneering investigator of the
properties of plasmas in electrical discharges such as lightning, had
admonished theoretical physicists that their models were wrong. Real
plasmas didn't behave the way mathematical deductions predicted. They
are not superconductors, Thornhill explains, nor can they be treated as
a gas, as is implicit, for example, in the term 'solar wind'. Electrical
currents flow in them, pinching into long filaments and then braiding
themselves into rope-like structures. These long, twisted filaments are
visible in solar prominences, galactic jets, and comet tails. They were
detected as 'stringy things' in the 45 million kilometer long tail of
Venus last year.

Following the suggestion of Ralph Juergens, an electrical engineer
who studied Alfven's work, Thornhill began to amass evidence that most
features now being photographed on planets, satellites, and asteroids
are scars of plasma discharges: interplanetary lightning.

"By scaling up electrical effects seen on Earth and in the
laboratory, I can provide stunning support for the ancient imagery of a
different sky and hence the likelihood that planets and moons did move
in close proximity in the recent past," he claims. "An electrical model
provides a simple mechanism for re-ordering a chaotic planetary system
in a very short time and maintaining that stability."

One of the laboratory effects is produced by moving a high-voltage
pointed rod just above the surface of a powder-covered insulator placed
on a grounded metal plate. The spark forms characteristic patterns in
the powder. A long, narrow main channel of fairly uniform width will
have a narrower, more sinuous channel engraved along its center.
Tributary channels run parallel to the main channel for a distance, then
they rejoin it almost perpendicularly.

Thornhill points out that these same features are seen on a larger
scale in lightning strikes to earth, such as on golf courses. Trenches
of constant width are created, with narrower furrows snaking down their
centers. The soil blasted from the trench is deposited along both sides.
Secondary channels may run parallel to the main channel, and tributary
channels join at right angles.

*PLANETARY PLASMA EFFECTS*

Thornhill describes how the same effects are repeated on a planetary
scale in the features called sinuous rilles. Long, uniformly-narrow
channels snake across the surface, often with levees of material
deposited along each side. The more sinuous inner channels often have
chains of small, circular craters precisely centered along their axes,
or the craters overlap to produce fluted walls. There is generally no
sign of rubble from collapsed roofs as would be expected if the
conventional 'lava tube' explanation for rilles on the Moon were
correct. Nor is there evidence of the outwash that would result if the
channels had been formed by water, as has been proposed for rilles on Mars.

Furthermore, the rilles run uphill and down, Thornhill points out,
following an electrical potential rather than following the
gravitational potential as water and lava do. Where rilles intersect,
the younger channel and its levees continue uninterrupted across the
older as though the older channel weren't there. This is especially
obvious on Europa, where the levees are often darker than the
surrounding terrain. They are also darker than the central channel,
which creates a problem for the accepted explanation that they are
darker material welling up through cracks in the ice. Thornhill surmises
the electrical forces of the arc altered the chemical or, possibly, the
nuclear composition of the debris.

Particularly remarkable is the series of looping rilles on Europa:
Ice cracking in loops is unheard of, but the characteristic 'corkscrew'
form of a plasma filament arcing across the surface easily explains it.

Thornhill also notes the similarities of craters on the planets
and moons to those created in the laboratory. Both tend to be perfectly
circular because an electrical arc always strikes perpendicular to a
surface. Walls are nearly vertical and floors are nearly flat as the
circular motion of the arc machines out the crater. Impact and explosion
craters, by contrast, tend to have a bowl shape: Instead of being lifted
from the surface, excavated material undergoes shock displacement,
shattering and flowing similar to a fluid for the duration of the shock.

Another common feature of electrically generated craters,
Thornhill explains, is terracing along the sides, sometimes
'corkscrewing' down to the floor, following the rotary motion of the
arc. The Moon and Mars both provide many examples of terraced and
corkscrew craters.

Central peaks tend to be symmetrical and steep-sided, similar to
the central 'nipple' left by plasma machining as the rotary
'corkscrewing' motion of the arc cuts out the material around it.
Thornhill contrasts this with the irregular mass of the so-called
"rebound peak" in a lab-produced impact or explosion crater. In a number
of craters on the Moon, the central peak connects to the surrounding
terrain with an 'isthmus', just as in a plasma-machined crater when the
arc is quenched before completing a full rotation.

A telling characteristic of electrical origin, Thornhill asserts,
is a crater centered on the rim of another crater. This is a common
sight on the Moon and other planets. It's an expected effect of the arc
jumping to or striking the highest elevations.

Finally, many volcanoes are more likely scaled-up versions of
fulgamites, Thornhill claims. Fulgamites are blisters of material raised
on lightning arrestors during a strike. Typically, the fulgamite has a
steep, fluted outer edge and a crater at the top, formed as the
more-diffuse discharge that raised the fulgamite pinches down to a
narrow arc. The most impressive example is Olympus Mons on Mars, 600
kilometers across and 24 kilometers high. A six-stroke crater was
machined into the top as the arc narrowed and jumped to high spots on
each successive rim.

*THE LIGHTNING-SCARRED GOD*

The possibility that human memories could explain some of the great
surprises of the space age does not come as a surprise to Talbott. As an
example, he describes the ancient "Scarface Motif".

A theme that occurs in many cultures is the warrior-god who, at a
time of upheaval, receives a gaping wound or scar on his forehead, face,
or thigh. At first sight, this is hardly surprising, because warriors
and wounds do go together. However, this is not just the story of "a
warrior", but of the celestial archetype of warriors-the god whom human
warriors celebrated as their inspiration on the battlefield. In early
astronomies this warrior archetype is identified with a specific
planet-Mars.

It was said of the Greek Mars, named Ares, that this celestial
warrior received a deep gash, as in his encounter with Diomedes; then
the god lets loose the howl of a thousand warriors and rushes to Zeus to
bemoan his gaping wound. An alternative Greek name for Mars was
Heracles, and this god too suffers a harsh wound on his thigh.

The Blackfoot Indians do not appear to have preserved any
astronomical associations with their legendary warrior "Scarface". Nor
do the Aztecs appear to have remembered any planetary connection for
their famous scarred god Tlaloc. But Talbott insists that a comparative
approach can demonstrate the common roots of such mythical themes.

Is it possible, then, that the "wounding" of Mars might refer to
an actual event? "I remember looking at one of the first Mariner
photographs of Mars," Talbott recalls. "It displayed a stupendous chasm
cutting across the face of the planet. Even from a considerable
distance, the chasm looked like a scar." Astronomers christened it
"Valles Marineris"-and it would swallow a thousand Grand Canyons and
more. "At that moment I realized that of all the planets and moons in
our solar system, Mars alone bore the likeness of the warrior-god's wound."

The comparative method can also account for numerous details that
the experts have missed. Most dramatic is the connection between the
Scarface theme and the lightning of the gods. Talbott gives as an
example the god Enceladus, struck down by a thunderbolt of Zeus. The god
was remembered as "the lightning-scarred god". Enceladus appears to be a
counterpart of the monster Typhon, the "thunderstruck" god. Both can be
identified as the terrible aspect of the celestial warrior, according to
Talbott, for it was in his "man-slaying" rampage that Ares received his
wound.

Talbott was the first to connect the highly visible scarring of
the Aztec Tlaloc to lightning. "That's entirely due to the fact that the
experts have not looked at the worldwide theme," he assures us. Tlaloc
was in fact directly linked to lightning, and it was through lightning
that he dispatched souls to the Aztec heaven. In Aztec mythology there
is a special afterlife world reserved for people who are killed by
lightning. It's ruled by Tlaloc and is called Tlalocan.

"Could something as massive as Valles Marineris have been carved by
interplanetary lightning?" Talbott wondered.

As it turned out, he had the opportunity to pose that very
question to Wal Thornhill.

*THE LIGHTNING-SCARRED PLANET*

Thornhill and Talbott met nearly a decade after the first images of
Valles Marineris were returned. Talbott summarized his investigation of
the lightning-scarred god theme. "Could Valles Marineris have been
caused by a thunderbolt?" he asked.

Thornhill replied, "It couldn't have been anything else."

At 4000 kilometers long, 700 kilometers across in places, and up
to 6 kilometers deep, it's comparable to scaling up the Grand Canyon to
stretch from New York to Los Angeles. Approximately 2 million cubic
kilometers of the Martian surface was removed with no comparable debris
field apparent.

"Valles Marineris was created within minutes by a giant electric
arc sweeping across the surface of Mars," Thornhill claims. "The rock
and soil were lifted into space. Some of it fell back around the planet
to create the great, strewn fields of boulders seen by both Viking
Landers and Pathfinder."

He points to the steep, scalloped walls of the canyon and the
central ridges as typical of plasma machining. The side gullies often
terminate in circular alcoves and are left hanging with no debris apron
in the main channel. They tend to join at right angles. Smaller channels
and crater chains run parallel to the main channels. "The arc probably
began in the east in the region of chaotic terrain," Thornhill
speculates. "It then swept westward forming the great parallel canyons.
It finally terminated in the huge rilles of Noctis Labyrinthus."

Thornhill has published a CD (The Electric Universe, available
from WholeMind, 8350 S.W. Greenway, #24, Beaverton, OR 97008,
1-800-230-9347) describing these and other electrical phenomena on an
astronomical scale. He cites the research of Talbott demonstrating that
ancient peoples witnessed an age when these now-quiescent energies were
dominant.

All the planets associated with the deities of myth are covered
with scars that are explained best as plasma-discharge features. The
craters, volcanoes, and canyons, when examined in detail, show essential
differences from terrestrial counterparts. Yet those anomalous features
do correspond with the features of lightning scars. Talbott's prediction
that the reconstructed themes of myth should be verified in massive
physical evidence on the planets gains support with every image returned
by space probes.

Valles Marineris bears the most striking correspondence with the
mythical warrior-god's wound. This mighty chasm represents the
confluence of two worldviews: the dramatic, historical worldview of
mythology and the objective, physical worldview of science. If Talbott
and Thornhill are correct, the accepted understanding of both myth and
science must be rebuilt on a new foundation that will support both the
historical past and the electrical future.

Amy and Nel Acheson