A NEW PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT - THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE - Article
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   - by Rev Nicholas Sykes


   It was a great experience for me to attend a four day science
   conference in early July on the University of Maryland campus. This
   was the most recent conference of the Natural Philosophy Alliance,
   attended by some 200 independent scientists, each one fired with
   strong conviction and most with convincing scientific credentials. It
   was especially interesting to me to see that the great majority of the
   participants were physicists, that many of them had strong
   mathematical arguments in their papers and also that the majority by
   far were extremely concerned that "big science" as it has developed
   over the twentieth century had taken some egregiously wrong paths -
   paths which unhappily are being reflected in the science teaching
   within our schools today. Nearly all of these independent scientists
   concerned about "big science" had developed serious and substantial
   positions against the overall correctness of Albert Einstein's work on
   Special Relativity and General Relativity, for example. The Chairman
   of the Natural Philosophy Alliance is Greg Volk, who also prepared a
   paper entitled "The Convergence of New Physics Paradigms: Unity in
   Diversity", whose inspiring leadership has clearly brought the
   Alliance to fresh heights in its 18-year life as an organisation.


   My own recent prophecies from the pulpit notwithstanding - that the
   scientific schools are heading for a "meltdown" quite as devastating
   as the recent worldwide economic meltdown (the effects of which
   continue) that surfaced in 2008 - I write here not theologically but
   as a scientist. Readers of mine in the Cayman Islands may not be in a
   position to recognise me in that capacity, because the platforms upon
   which I have made public expression here have not been those of
   physics (my first intellectual love). Nevertheless I have taught
   physics and mathematics at high school level for many years,
   functioned as the Chairman of a regional association of science
   teachers in Jamaica for several years and was elected Chairman of the
   Association of Science Teachers of Jamaica in 1979. I have also
   published a groundbreaking article on radioactive decay constancy in
   an international  magazine. The scientists of the Natural Philosophy
   Alliance seem to be mostly in agreement that either some kind of an
   academic meltdown is inevitable or that "big science" will continue to
   be propped up possibly for many years by a closed "old boy" network of
   financial grants which shuts out promising interpretations of data
   from being considered because they upset the status quo by showing the
   current paradigm to be deeply and indeed outrageously flawed.
   Proponents of the "Electric Universe", for example, who joined forces
   with the Natural Philosophy Alliance in preparing for this conference,
   interpret the data of NASA in the context of a universe being powered
   by electric forces rather than gravitational force, and show how in
   this context the data make good sense and demonstrable in a scaled
   down way in the electric discharge laboratory, rather than being an
   unexplainable puzzle after puzzle, as the frequent expression "We have
   to go back to the drawing board" so often testifies.


   The first three days of the conference were packed with some 135
   presentations of half-hour lengths, most of them occurring in tandem
   in two separate rooms, so it was important to try to map out in
   advance which room to be in at any given time to hear the lecture one
   preferred. As well as the schedule giving the title of the talk, the
   organisers had the Proceedings of the whole Conference produced in
   advance - a rather weighty tome of some 730 pages - so it was possible
   to get a good idea of what one wanted to hear. Some of those giving
   presentations were fortunate to be given a time of day in which only
   one room was being used, and for my own presentation of "The Paradigm
   of an Electric Universe" I was one of those fortunate enough not to
   have a competing lecture. I had given an earlier version of this
   presentation at the UCCI conference here in March, to a small audience
   with several competing lectures being held simultaneously, and I think
   the presentation benefited from this earlier run, as it was well
   received, and I felt very honoured to be presented at the end of my
   talk by one of the scientists present with a mathematically
   illustrated book written several years ago on the general topic of
   "the electromagnetic nature of things", which fits on the whole well
   with the much more newly expressed Electric Universe paradigm.


   This part of the conference was climaxed with the 2011 John Chappell
   Memorial lecture presented  by the Australian physicist Wal Thornhill
   on "Stars in an Electric Universe", which is soon to be produced on a
   DVD, some of which can be viewed on YouTube at

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFcNHHxSFl4


   In addition to the lectures themselves there was some time over lunch
   and supper and during breaks to interact with and get to know one
   another, and to get a feel for that person's point of view and to form
   friendships. For three nights I slept for about 4 hours each night,
   and returned home much stimulated but very exhausted.


   The conference continued (after I had to depart) with a Public Day in
   which several experiments were demonstrated by some of the independent
   scientists.


   I hope to produce further articles in this paper from time to time
   that will describe aspects of the fresh scientific paradigm of the
   electric universe.