A NEW PARADIGM OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT - THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE

   Article 10 : Are some ideas in today's science ready for retirement? -
   Part 1

   by Rev Nicholas Sykes

   In previous articles I have pointed to certain ideas which, having
   gained currency and respectability in current physics, are now
   severely challenged by new perspectives. Here are additional points
   about some of these in turn.

   Einstein's theories of relativity.

   The great fashionable certainty that Einstein's theories have reached
   the status of "fact" is overturned by the new paradigm. The Special
   Theory is overturned by the understanding of the new paradigm about
   the nature of gravitational action. Gravity is indeed not an
   unfathomable influence that one object distant from a second object
   has upon it without a connection between them. The idea that it was
   "action at a distance" was actually a criticism that Sir Isaac Newton
   received over his work. Newton himself said that the idea that one
   body could act upon another at a distance without some intermediary
   action was wholly unacceptable. However he did not publish any
   developed ideas he may ever have had about the nature of the
   intermediary action. In a famous phrase, he said "I frame no
   hypotheses." Nevertheless, Newton's mathematics was directly
   applicable to a model of the apparently instantaneous action of
   gravity between two bodies separated from one another. In its
   revolutions around the Sun, the Earth conforms to a Newtonian model
   very well: the fact that it is not thrown out of orbit progressively
   by every revolution must mean that the gravitation between the Sun and
   the Earth operates so fast that it could be considered to be
   instantaneous. The Electric Universe paradigm maintains that the
   gravitational influence of the Sun upon the Earth does act upon it by
   a discoverable process through the intermediary of what older
   philosophers referred to as the "aether", but that the speed with
   which this happens is vastly greater than the speed of light waves.
   This can be compared to mechanical wave motion, in which the speed of
   sound is vastly greater than the speed with which the ripples on a
   pond travel. The new paradigm's proposal for understanding the nature
   of gravitation will be left to further articles. But the fact
   (established by the observation of solar planetary orbits) that
   gravitation operates at a speed greater than light waves wholly
   undermines the Theory of Relativity, which requires light to be the
   "fastest conceivable messenger".

   It is widely believed that Einsteinian relativity is confirmed by the
   Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, but the chief experimenter
   Michelson never considered this to be the case, nor did Ernst Mach,
   Lorentz or Poincaré. In our time a growing number of scientists have
   made studies and maintain also that it is not so. Other widespread
   beliefs are that relativity calculations give correct results for the
   atomic clock adjustments that must be made for GPS satellites and for
   the bending of the light from a distant object as it passes near the
   Sun. These and other results that were thought to be firm proofs of
   relativity are all now being questioned. A useful search of these
   matters can be made through the website www.thunderbolts.info.

   Magnetic Reconnection.

   This concept is set to become one of the biggest embarrassments of
   cosmologists today. It displays perhaps the most blatant example of
   runaway mathematics, when a physical process can be said to be
   confirmed by equations, while the process itself is described by the
   supposed behaviour of mental constructs - in this case, lines of
   magnetic force. Lines of force, like contours and isobars, are only
   visualised, forming a conceptual aid for the human mind, and they have
   no physical existence. "Magnetic reconnection" requires some of the
   lines of magnetic force associated with a body such as a meteor or a
   comet travelling in a planetary or solar magnetic field to break and
   reconnect in a new configuration of lines, with an attendant release
   of energy. What is not stated, is what reality "broken" lines of force
   could possibly represent. By the very nature of the force field that
   they represent, lines of force are continuous and have no ending.

   A positive thing that can be said about this fairly recent concept is
   that it forms a halting stumble towards the concept of active
   electricity being involved in the running of the universe. This is
   because, as all students should know, and as electromagnetism
   demonstrates, magnetic fields are caused by electric currents. It
   should be a short conceptual step to realise that the release of
   energy considered to be caused by magnetic reconnection is much more
   plausibly seen to be the fruits of an electrical discharge across
   layers of plasma, caused by electrical stress breaking through the
   insulation that separates them.

   In the last article, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Black Holes, the Oort
   Cloud, and the Big Bang too were cited as candidates for retirement,
   along with Einsteinian relativity and magnetic reconnection that had
   been thought about in earlier articles. Dark Matter and Dark Energy
   are seen to be mathematically necessary in a Gravitational Universe.
   Can they survive in an Electric Universe? I hope to move on to this
   issue next time.

   For more information on the new paradigm, see www.holoscience.com

   With thanks for feedback from Scott Wall.