A NEW PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT - THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE Article 2 : QUESTIONING THE RECENT COURSE TAKEN BY PHYSICS - by Rev Nicholas Sykes In my last article there were two statements on the topic of areas of the existing mainstream paradigms of science coming under increasingly critical analysis. These are 1. That there are groups of scientists who have developed serious and substantial positions against the overall correctness of Albert Einstein's work on Special Relativity and General Relativity, and 2. That the data from NASA are far easier to explain in the context of a universe being powered by electric forces rather than gravitational force, and that the phenomena of space being investigated are even demonstrable in a scaled down way in the electric discharge laboratory. Albert Einstein was a dominant figure of the 20th century and his Relativity Theory is generally thought to be beyond question. Oddly enough, however, the pillar of Relativity upon which mainstream modern Physics is erected is resistant to being incorporated into one cohesive theory with another pillar of mainstream modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, which for a long time Einstein refused to accept in its entirety. Therefore, though many may be unwilling to admit it, it is clear that there is something seriously awry with the mainstream modern understanding of Physics, on this ground alone that it is founded upon two theories that cannot cohere. Both quantum mechanics and relativity theory were twentieth century developments, and if anybody has come to the point of questioning whether Physics has developed along reasonable lines under the influence of these theories, he has to take a look at what researchers were doing and finding before these theories became accepted. So this is what I will attempt first to do here. Sir Isaac Newton of the seventeenth century was one of the greatest "giants" of science, who, perhaps surprisingly for a man who some believe was rather opinionated, did admit that he reached his great height by standing on the shoulders of those who went before him. He called his greatest published work "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy". About this work it has been said that "a science had emerged that, at least in certain respects, so far exceeded anything that had ever gone before that it stood alone as the ultimate exemplar of science generally." (G E Smith) For the purpose of this article I intend to make certain brief points on Newton's work: First, it was mathematical in focus: phenomena were understood to be explained by their adherence to mathematical relationships. Secondly, physical experiments were carried out, such as the famous pendulum experiments and the planetary and lunar observations, to induce or confirm mathematical relationships. Thirdly, the dynamic cause of observed motions was not openly speculated upon. Newton wrote that it was enough that the phenomena implied gravitational attraction, as they did; but the phenomena did not so far indicate the cause of this gravity. We know that Newton privately speculated on the cause of gravity, its relationship to (what we call) electric force and to the structure of matter itself, but apparently he was not at all keen to open his mind about these matters to inspection. Responding to the criticism he met on his presentation of gravitational force as an invisible force able to act over vast distances, he declared, "I frame no hypotheses." Michael Faraday of the nineteenth century was the scientist who amongst many other achievements brought electricity into mainstream science, famously experimenting with electric motors and generators, and publishing papers on their principles of operation. The astronomer Sir John Herschel wrote to Michael Faraday in 1850 of the recent discovery of a link between sunspots and magnetic storms on earth because of Faraday's investigations into the links between electricity and magnetism. In this letter, Herschel wondered if the sun could not owe its brightness to "Cosmical electric currents traversing space". "If all this be not premature we stand on the verge of a vast cosmical discovery such as nothing hitherto imagined can compare with. Consider what I have said about the exciting cause of the Solar light - referring it to Cosmical electric currents traversing space and finding in the upper regions of the Suns atmosphere matter in a fit state of tenuity to be auroralized by them ..." It is a shame that Herschel's insight remains 160 years later "on the verge". This is because of the path taken by the mainstream Physics of the twentieth century (about which I hope to write further). Michael Faraday invented a device he called a "homopolar motor" - which is essentially the rotating disk type of electric meter we all "love to hate" in our homes. Going against the grain of mainstream physics, "the Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven in 1986 posited both an electrical galactic model and an electric solar model. Recently physicist Wal Thornhill has pointed out that Alfven's circuits are really scaled up versions of the familiar homopolar motor that serves as the watt-hour meter on each of our homes. The simple application of the Lorentz force equation ('crossing' the direction, v, of the current into the direction, B, of the magnetic field) yields a rotational force. Not only does this effect explain the mysterious tangential velocities of the outer stars in galaxies, but also (in scaled down version) the observed fact that our Sun rotates faster at its equator than at higher (solar) latitudes." (Don Scott)