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20 March 2002

A Mystery Solved - Welcome to the Electric Universe!

"We simply do not have a truly unified view of the world, one that
paints an unambiguous picture of some overall scheme. ...one
invariably confronts a deep fissure that can be overcome only with
revolutionary new ideas."

Etienne Klein & Marc Lachièze-Rey, THE QUEST FOR UNITY - The Adventure
of Physics.

NASA has confirmed a "deep fissure" in our understanding of the
universe. The answer, though revolutionary, is simple. But it implies
that the real nature of the universe is nothing like the fanciful
stories we are being told. So who will have the courage to listen?
Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph filed
this report:

Mysterious force holds back NASA probe in deep space
A SPACE probe launched 30 years ago has come under the influence of a
force that has baffled scientists and could rewrite the laws of
physics.

Researchers say Pioneer 10, which took the first close-up pictures of
Jupiter before leaving our solar system in 1983, is being pulled back
to the sun by an unknown force. The effect shows no sign of getting
weaker as the spacecraft travels deeper into space, and scientists are
considering the possibility that the probe has revealed a new force of
nature. Dr Philip Laing, a member of the research team tracking the
craft, said: "We have examined every mechanism and theory we can think
of and so far nothing works." "If the effect is real, it will have a
big impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation," said Dr Laing, of
the Aerospace Corporation of California.

Pioneer 10 was launched by NASA on March 2 1972, and with Pioneer 11,
its twin, revolutionised astronomy with detailed images of Jupiter and
Saturn. In June 1983, Pioneer 10 passed Pluto, the most distant planet
in our solar system. Both probes are now travelling at 27,000mph
towards stars that they will encounter several million years from now.
Scientists are continuing to monitor signals from Pioneer 10, which is
more than seven billion miles from Earth.

Research to be published shortly in The Physical Review, a leading
physics journal, will show that the speed of the two probes is being
changed by about 6 mph per century - a barely-perceptible effect about
10 billion times weaker than gravity. Scientists initially suspected
that gas escaping from tiny rocket motors aboard the probes, or heat
leaking from their nuclear power plants might be responsible. Both
have now been ruled out. The team says no current theories explain why
the force stays constant: all the most plausible forces, from gravity
to the effect of solar radiation, decrease rapidly with distance.

The bizarre behaviour has also eliminated the possibility that the two
probes are being affected by the gravitational pull of unknown planets
beyond the solar system. Assertions by some scientists that the force
is due to a quirk in the Pioneer probes have also been discounted by
the discovery that the effect seems to be affecting Galileo and
Ulysses, two other space probes still in the solar system. Data from
these two probes suggests the force is of the same strength as that
found for the Pioneers.
Dr Duncan Steel, a space scientist at Salford University, says even
such a weak force could have huge effects on a cosmic scale. "It might
alter the number of comets that come towards us over millions of
years, which would have consequences for life on Earth. It also raises
the question of whether we know enough about the law of gravity."

Until 1988, Pioneer 10 was the most remote object made by man - a
distinction now held by Voyager 1.

© Text copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
>> Go to original article.
_________________________________________________________________

Solution of the mystery:
Common sense suggests that it is unlikely that the laws of physics
will need to be rewritten, simply that we should understand better
those we have. We need not trouble ourselves with arguments about the
nature of gravity in this instance because the mystery can be solved
if the electrical nature of the universe is acknowledged. The mystery
only arises because astrophysics is taught incorrectly. Students are
taught that any separation of charge in space is quickly neutralized
as electrons rush to neutralize the charge imbalance. As a result,
electricity in space is almost never mentioned, except as a transient
effect. So no astrophysicist would think to ask the question of
whether there is a steady interplanetary electric field. They have not
"examined every mechanism and theory."

It is always assumed that there is a source of electrons to meet any
deficiency and that they can be supplied faster than the charging
process. However, space is a far better vacuum than any we can achieve
on Earth, so the assumption that there are sufficient electrons
available may not be true. And where there are sufficient electrons,
in their rush to neutralize the electric field they may undergo the
magnetic "Z pinch" effect that cuts off the current at some maximum
value before recovering and beginning the cycle once more. In fact,
observations of energetic activity in space on all scales show this
kind of "bursty" behavior. The most recent example came from Jupiter
and was reported by Scientific American on March 4 as "a mysterious
X-ray `hot spot' that flares up like a beacon every 45 minutes." We
produce X-rays every day in industry and medicine by using electrical
discharges. Why would Nature do it any other way?

In our electric universe the forces between charged objects is of the
same form as Newton's equation, with charge replacing mass. The BIG
difference is that the electrical force is about 10^39 times stronger
than gravity. So if there is an electric field in space, it will have
a measurable effect on a charged spacecraft.

Ralph Juergens, 1949.

An electric field in space can give rise to electric discharge
phenomena like those seen in a low-pressure gas. The most familiar
example is the neon tube, and for some lucky people-the wonderful
natural spectacle of an aurora. Extensive research was done on gas
discharges early in the 20th century but its application to solar
physics, pioneered briefly in the 1970's by an engineer from
Flagstaff, Arizona, Ralph Juergens, was perforce published in an
obscure journal and permitted to sink without trace.

This is a diagram showing a discharge tube with all of the important
features annotated above the tube. [D.S. = dark space]. Note that in
the Sun's huge environment, the only bright regions are very close to
the Sun because the energy density is too low to excite a glow. Below
the tube are graphs showing the variation of important variables along
the tube length. The simple discharge tube demonstrates some of the
complexity of electric discharges in near vacuum and surprisingly it
holds the key to the mystery of spacecraft deceleration.

Diagram from Gaseous Conductors, by James D. Cobine, Dover
Publications.

As Juergens argued, within our solar system the Sun bears all of the
hallmarks of a small spherical anode in a galactic discharge. The
planets occupy a vast region within the heliosphere, known in gas
discharge theory as the positive column, which has a weak electric
field centered on the Sun. Unlike the thin neon tube, the Sun occupies
a vast sphere more than 16 billion miles across, so the positive
column disappears and the current is carried throughout that volume by
a low density of ionization. It requires only that the Sun's electric
field has sufficient strength to cause a drift of electrons toward the
Sun, superimposed on their random thermal motion. In other words, it
is immeasurably small. Notice that the net charge density in the
positive column is zero. In other words, there are an equal number of
negative and positive charges in interplanetary space. That is what
spacecraft have generally found.

The regions of high electric field are close to the anode and cathode.
In the Sun's case, being the anode, it is in the corona, where
electrons are accelerated toward the Sun, causing the apparent
million-degree temperatures there, and the protons are accelerated
away from the Sun-to form the solar "wind." The continued acceleration
of the positive particles in the solar wind beyond the orbits of
Mercury and Venus is a natural consequence of the same weak electric
field that slows down the negatively charged spacecraft. The cool
photosphere beneath a "hot" corona is, for the first time,
understandable if the Sun's energy is delivered externally.

Of course, the Sun does not have an identifiable cathode in space like
the metal cathode in the glow discharge tube. Instead, the plasma in
space forms a bubble, known as a "virtual cathode." Effectively it is
the heliopause. In plasma terms, the heliopause is not a result of
mechanical shock but is a Langmuir plasma sheath that forms between
two plasmas of different charge densities and energies. In this case
it forms the boundary between the Sun's plasma and that of the galaxy.
Such "bubbles" are seen at all scales, from the comas of comets to the
`magnetospheres' of planets and stars. To the plasma engineer they
show that the central body is electrically charged relative to its
surroundings.

After launch, a spacecraft accepts electrons from the surrounding
space plasma until the craft's voltage is sufficient to repel further
electrons. Near Earth it is known that a spacecraft may attain a
negative potential of several tens of thousands of volts relative to
its surroundings. So, in interplanetary space, the spacecraft becomes
a charged object moving in the Sun's weak electric field. Being
negatively charged, it will experience an infinitesimal "tug" toward
the positively charged Sun. Of most significance is the fact that the
voltage gradient, that is the electric field, throughout
interplanetary space remains constant. In other words, the retarding
force on the spacecraft will not diminish with distance from the Sun.
This effect distinguishes the electrical model from all others because
all known force laws diminish with distance. The effect is real and it
will have a fundamental impact on cosmology and spacecraft navigation
because...

Pioneer 10 has confirmed the electrical model of Stars!

Pioneer 10 is now 7.4 billion miles from Earth, maybe 90 percent of
the way to the heliopause. The electrical model of the solar system
predicts that additional anomalies will be found if a distant
spacecraft encounters the heliopause while still in contact with
Earth. For the heliopause is the "cathode drop" region of the Sun's
electrical influence. It is a region of strong radial electric field,
which will tend to decelerate the spacecraft more strongly. Almost the
full difference between the Sun's voltage and that of the local arm of
the galaxy is present across the heliopause boundary. As a result, it
is the region where so-called "anomalous" cosmic rays are generated by
the strong field. It has nothing to do with a shock front and some
poorly defined acceleration mechanism. Some measure of the driving
electrical potential of the Sun may be gained from the study of
"anomalous" cosmic rays. Also we can deduce the driving potential of
other stars by the study of normal cosmic rays.

The implications of an electrical dimension to stars are profound.
Obviously, if we do not understand our closest star, all speculation
about more distant stars and their histories are misguided. Of course,
it begs the question of the power source that maintains the galactic
charge differentials to power stars. It is here that the electric star
hypothesis merges seamlessly with plasma cosmology, which also had its
origin in electrical engineering. Plasma cosmology, which is now
recognized by the IEEE, is practically unknown amongst astronomers and
astrophysicists. The latter have been content to ignore the warnings
of Hannes Alfvén, the "father" of plasma physics and plasma cosmology,
that their use of plasma theory is outdated and wrong.

For example, the spiral arms of a galaxy must carry the electric
current that lights the stars. The force between parallel currents
varies inversely with distance, instead of the much more rapid
fall-off of gravity with the square of the distance. The result is
that the longest-range force law in the universe governs galactic
motions, and short-range repulsion maintains the integrity of the
spiral arms. In comparison, by using the puny force of gravity
astrophysicists must insist on the cranky notion that most of the mass
in the universe is invisible and distributed in arbitrary fashion.
Even so, they cannot explain the preferred spiral structure of
galaxies.

As a leading member of The Spaceguard Foundation, Duncan Steel's final
comment about comets is self-serving. Those who publicize the threat
of comet or asteroid impact with the Earth have a great deal to
"unlearn" and learn anew about the electrical nature and origin of
comets. What really happens when charged bodies are on a collision
course? Who has ever seen a single bolt of lightning in an artist's
depiction of cosmic impact? Spaceguard argues that an impact could
send us the way of the dinosaurs. But something far more dramatic than
a puny impact killed the megafauna, simply because they could not
function in Earth's present gravity. Our scientific beliefs must
change spectacularly once the electrical nature of the universe is
recognized.
_________________________________________________________________

Images courtesy of NASA.
Solution of the mystery © Wal Thornhill 2002.

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