http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file
For complete access to all the files of this collection
	see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php 
==========================================================
thunderbolts.info

A schematic diagram of the Sun-Earth magnetospheric connection.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

*
Feb 15, 2008
* A String Theory for the Sun

*Filamentary Birkeland currents transport electrical energy
from the Sun to Earth and the rest of the Solar System.
Could ancient human beings have seen this phenomenon visible
in their skies?*

The auroras are caused by an intermittent bombardment of
charged particles, which travel from the sun to the earth’s
ionosphere in a stream called the solar wind. This was first
proposed in the early 20th century by the Norwegian plasma
physicist, Kristian Birkeland, and is now universally
accepted. In honour of this pioneer, the exact conduits
through which ions reach the earth are called Birkeland
currents.

The existence of these twisted filamentary bundles of
magnetic fields that transport ions through space along
their length was only empirically confirmed in 2007, when
NASA’s fleet of THEMIS
<http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11dec_themis.htm>
spacecraft announced to have detected “giant magnetic ropes
that connect Earth’s upper atmosphere to the Sun” in the
earth’s magnetopause. Solar wind particles are believed to
flow in along these ropes, “providing energy for geomagnetic
storms and auroras.”

To put it bluntly, modern scientists have found that the sun
has an electrical plasma connection that tapers towards the
earth's magnetic poles and causes electromagnetic storms.

Curiously, ancient mythical and cosmological traditions have
long anticipated the discovery of the solar wind and its
Birkeland currents when they spoke about “ropes” and
“strings” tying the earth to the sun. In the mystical
tradition of India, the three worlds – earth, air, and sky –
are attached to the sun by means of a string “by which the
Devas first strode up and down these worlds, using the
‘Universal Lights’ as their stepping stones”.

In a remarkable analogy to the modern comparison of this
stream to a “wind”, Hind? sages affirmed: “By the Gale,
indeed, O Gautama, as by a thread, are this and yonder world
and all beings strung together. Even as the thread of a gem
might be threaded through a gem, even so is all this strung
thereupon… to wit, Gandharvas, Apsarases, beasts, and men”,
causing Deity itself to declare: “All this is strung on Me,
like rows of gems upon a thread”.

The sun does “string these worlds to Himself by the thread
of the Gale of the Spirit”. The identification of this “sun
pillar” running through the three worlds with the polar axis
of the universe makes good sense considering that the sun’s
charged particles stream into the earth’s ionosphere at the
auroral ovals around the poles.

If it may be granted that the Indian concept of this sun
rope rooted in knowledge of the solar wind, the latter must
at some point have revealed itself in an unmistakable,
visible form. Is it conceivable that – at some time during
the early Holocene – extreme solar weather produced such
excitation that the plasma in the solar wind entered a
visible glow mode, if not arc mode? If so, a substantial
segment of ancient sky lore that was hitherto obscure
receives some much-needed illumination.

Many corners of the world bear witness to the theme of a
hero’s “noosing” of the sun. “When the sun had formed in the
sky”, say the Bella Coola people of British Columbia,
Canada, the creator “connected it with the earth by means of
a long rope, which kept the two at a measured distance from
each other and prevented that the earth would sink into the
ocean”.

While an early commentator, Richard Andrée, deemed this
notion "Bemerkenswert" ["remarkable"], he would never have
imagined that such age-old folklore motifs could conceal
some ephemeral observations of space that scientists are
only now beginning to rediscover.

Contributed by Rens Van der Sluijs