THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL VII, No 2 March 15, 2003 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS RHINOMORPHIC LACUNAE . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Acheson COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . Amy Acheson COLUMBIA: QUESTIONS OF SOME GRAVITY . . . . Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< RHINOMORPHIC LACUNAE Mel Acheson Long ago, a flood of molten basalt spread over eastern Washington State and down the Columbia River valley to the sea. Later, the river cut a new channel (or flowed into a new channel), resulting in today's Columbia River Gorge, with high lava cliffs on each side. In one of those cliffs, a group of geologists discovered a cavity with bones at the bottom. The bones, they found, were those of an extinct species of rhinoceros. It was then they realized the cavity bore the shape of that rhino. The flooding basalt had overrun the rhino and had solidified around its body. The body had decayed, leaving the bones, and erosion later had exposed the cavity. The moral of this story is that you shouldn't leave the rhinoceroses of assumption to graze in the meadow of the unconscious when the flood of molten imagination lays down a new theory. When the new ideas crystallize, they will encase the old assumptions, which will leave rhinoceros-shaped voids of explanation in the new theory. Not so long ago, astronomers assumed the craters on the Moon were extinct volcanoes. This assumption led naturally to the conclusion that the river-like channels, called rilles, often extending away from craters, were lava tubes whose roofs had collapsed. Later, Gene Shoemaker studied crater-like features on Earth and showed that they couldn't be volcanic; they must therefore be the result of impacts. Astronomers immediately adopted this impact theory of crater formation. But they retained the lava-tube theory of rilles, creating an ideational landscape in which impact craters were the source of rhinoceros-shaped lava tubes. Another long-standing assumption in astronomy is that the redshift observed in the spectra of galaxies arises from a velocity of recession proportional to the galaxies' distances. This assumption, called the cosmological redshift distance, lies at the heart of the Big Bang cosmology. When quasars were discovered and it was found their spectra were redshifted much more than most galaxies', the quasars were thought to be situated in the outback of the universe and therefore unrelated to the foreground galaxies. Then Halton Arp discovered statistical and physical connections between quasars and galaxies. The assumption that redshift was an indicator of distance was undermined. But proponents of a non-cosmological redshift sometimes continued to place the galaxies and their connected quasars at the galaxies' cosmological redshift distances, exposing a cosmological-sized cavity of consonance, with quasars and their parent galaxies at the bottom. Geologists since the time of Lyell have strung together rocks and fossils on a thread of assumptions about the constancy and uniformity of tectonic and erosional forces. The resulting bracelet of explanatory charms has been put on display as the Chronology of the Earth. Each stratum is tied to a particular date with a knot of radioisotope dating, which in turn assumes constancy of decay rates and uniformity of isotope ratios. But when various theories of catastrophic change were accepted by several schools of geological theorists, such assumptions of constancy and uniformity were discarded. Nevertheless, the Chronology of the Earth continued to be used to date the catastrophes which disrupted that chronology, creating a catastrophic timeline punctuated by rhinoceros-shaped cavities of continuity. These stories are meant to illustrate three imperatives of speculative thought: First, we need not only to seek the novel experiences and ideas that lie before us in our own time, but we need to see our own seeking. We must not only pay attention to the answers which the universe gives to our questions, we must also pay attention to the limits, to the blind spots, to the rhinoceros-shaped cavities inherent in the questions. The internal tyrannies of assumptions can ossify imagination. The dead hand of continuity with past knowledge can choke the spontaneous speculations of present vitality, curiosity, and insight. Sensation-sensibility coordination is disrupted. We need to wake ourselves to the rituals of words and to the catechisms of terminology that have alienated us from the immediacy and the intimacy of experience with mystified and reified concepts which are mistaken for facts. Second, we need to recognize that knowledge is not a destination but the footprints we leave behind during our journey of learning. Knowledge is not an end in itself but a by-product of human learning activity, just as a nest is a by-product of avian reproductive activity. We produce knowledge as needed in learning to co-adapt with new and changing environments, physical, social, and cognitive. The knowledge of the past deserves our respect: It's how we got here. And the knowledge of the present is not some Final Truth that justifies spurning the past or blockading the future. Third, we need to reevaluate all our fondest theories in the face of the present transition in learning environments. Most currently accepted theories were produced in an electrically inactive environment of solids, liquids, and gasses, with mental machinery geared to mechanical metaphors. Now we have stepped off the Earth with technologically enhanced senses and out of our previous geocentric and anthropocentric context. We recognize the realms both of space and of the mythic gods are environments of electrically active plasma, with properties unlike those of familiar matter. The metaphors with which we understand it must be non-mechanistic and non-local, organic and emergent, adaptive and innovative. Cognitive knowledge must be reconceived and reborn in forms appropriate to our new domain of sensation and sensibility. Failing to chase away the rhinoceroses of "secure knowledge" will trap us in cavities of undiscerningness as the Age of Plasma floods over us. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com www.dragonscience.com ******************************************************** COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND A Discussion with Amy Acheson Hi Amy and all, I'm giving a series of lectures to our physics class about general relativity and cosmology. In the last lecture, I'll describe the electric universe theory as an alternative to the standard big-bang model. Can someone tell me how the electric universe theorists interpret the 3 Kelvin microwave radiation? Before Monday, please? Thanks! Mark Korsky Mark, As it happens, I recently discussed this with another amateur astronomer, and I can clean up the discussion we had for your benefit. At this time, it1s more arguments against the mainstream interpretation than counter proposals. Did you read _Aeon Vol. VI #3_? My "Intersect 2001" article is printed there. I devoted a brief section to the CMB. Jason Goodman (the most active poster on the young people's catastrophism list) offers some great CMB arguments against Big Bang Theory on his web site here: http://www.geocities.com/kingvegeta80/BBT.html The claim that the CMB proves the Big Bang is a logical fallacy, and intellectually dishonest, as well. A correct prediction is NOT proof of a theory, ever! [Although an incorrect prediction, if the prediction is true to the theory, can disprove it.] All a correct prediction can offer is verification, which is "evidence in favor of", not proof. Now let's look at the specifics of the CMB. If the "prize" goes to the first theory to correctly predict it, then it will have to go to the 3Heating by Starlight2 theory. Birkeland's colleague, Charles Edouard Guillaume calculated the temperature of space from starlight at 5.6 degrees Kelvin in 1896. You can see his article here (it's in French) Go to Tony Peratt's page of downloadable papers and scroll down to Guillaume's article "The Temperature of Space": http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/papers.html (There are several other articles on the same page about CMB, all dated 1990 or earlier, before they finally discovered irregularities in the CMB, so the articles mostly focus on the lack of predicted irregularities. When they "finally found" irregularities, they were 100 times smaller than those predicted by the Big Bang theory -- but that doesn't stop them from counting the irregularities as another proof of the Big Bang.) If the "prize" goes to the most prestigious astronomer to predict the CMB, then you'll have to give it to Eddington, who calculated the CMB at 3 degrees K (for an infinite steady-state universe) as early as 1926 (this came from Halton Arp's article "Fitting Theory to Observation" in _Progress in New Cosmologies_ 1993, pg 25. MORE CMB TIDBITS FROM ARP's ARTICLE: [Amy says: I find #2 a very important point that is seldom mentioned.] 1) "In April 1992, enormous publicity was given to the announcement that a satellite observing in the microwave region ... had detected irregularities in the sky. ... said to have proved (once again) the correctness of Big Bang theory. 2) " ... there was never any discussion of how the evidence is very difficult to reconcile with the Big Bang model. The point is that in a universe expanding faster at each further distance observed, the 2.7 K black body energy curve would be smeared out unrecognizably by Doppler recession velocities. 3) " ... In the nonexpanding universe an obvious, and much simpler, explanation of the observation is that we are simply seeing the temperature of the underlying intergalactic medium." AMY AGAIN: If the prize goes to the first one to see and report the CMB, then once again the steady-state wins. It was observed in the late 1930's and early 1940's. McKellar published a paper identifying the background radiation in 1941. But it was war-time and the observatory publication was a minor one -- the Dominican Observatory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The discovery was ignored by the astronomical community. (reference for this story: Hoyle Burbidge and Narlikar's _A Different Approach to Cosmology_) If the prize goes to the theory that predicted the CMB last and was farthest off the exact calculation, then the CMB proves the Big Bang. The Big Bang prediction started about the same temperature as the others in the late 1940's, but they (i.e., primarily George Gamow) kept "upping" the energy level of their prediction until, just before the actual discovery, they were predicting a background temperature of 50 K. After the discovery, they immediately reverted to their earliest predictions, then obnoxiously claimed they were the only ones to get it right. Which doesn't disprove their theory -- it only shows what incredible poor sports they are. The CMB doesn't prove our theory, either. Both theories need closer investigation and less political haggles. Joy Perry noted a recent press release about the CMB: >From the press release: "Scientists using a radio telescope atop the 10,000-foot-high Antarctic ice sheet have detected a 14-billion-year-old pattern from the Big Bang. The findings, announced in September by researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley, support the leading theory of how the universe came to be.... "Large-scale flows in the early universe should have polarized the last round of scattered radiation, causing the waves preferentially to line up. That radiation, now seen as microwaves, should still show traces of alignment in some spots of the sky. Pryke searched for polarized waves with the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, a microwave telescope near the South Pole. He and his team examined two patches of sky, each about seven times as wide as the full moon. They found a faint but unmistakable signal. "The discovery came as a relief to cosmologists, whose theories increasingly incorporate such speculative elements as invisible matter and energy. 'Even though we don't know what dark matter and dark energy are, we've made assumptions about the way they behave and put that into our model,' says Pryke. 'So measuring the polarization we expected from the model says we know what we are talking about. Had we not found it, cosmology would have been thrown into chaos.' " AMY COMMENTS: They are still playing the same old game. They make a prediction that fits better in plasma cosmology and call it their own. Then when it's found, Violé! their theory has been verified again. Polarized is certainly what's expected with magnetic fields and electric currents. Another press release that came out recently about the CMB. It was picked up by APOD Feb 12: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030212.html EXERPTS FROM THE APOD CAPTION: WMAP Resolves the Universe Explanation: ... present analyses of above WMAP all-sky image indicate that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (accurate to 1 percent), composed of 73 percent dark energy, 23 percent cold dark matter, and only 4 percent atoms, is currently expanding at the rate of 71 km/sec/Mpc (accurate to 5 percent), underwent episodes of rapid expansion called inflation, and will expand forever. AMY COMMENTS: As far as I'm concerned, this is the most intellectually dishonest report I have ever seen about the CMB. The photo referred to is data from the new WMAP satellite which is in orbit at the Lagrange 2 point (the point beyond the earth's orbit where the earth's and sun's gravity are balanced.) From this orbit, they are always near enough to return data to earth, while not actually going around the earth. Why do I think the press release is dishonest? See for yourself. The data shows variations in background temperature at 380,000 years after the Big Bang (the variations are 100 times weaker than they first predicted, but nobody mentions that.) And from this photo, without bothering us by telling us anything about the observations, they make a whole bunch of outrageous claims. That the BB theory is right, that they know the exact Hubble constant and age of the universe, that stars formed by 200,000 years after the BB. In short, they have completely nailed down the universe. Time to close up astronomy and go home. We have it solved. Of course, only 4% of what they think they are seeing is "real atoms". 23% is dark matter, and 73% mysterious dark energy. They neglect to mention that both of these concepts were invented to patch up inconsistencies that would simply vanish if they rejected the recessional velocity and redshift/distance yardstick. Neither have actually been observed. The 1 and 5 percent errors that they calculate come AFTER the 96% fudge-factor they use to explain away discrepancies. One of the reference links shows the flaw in their argument (click on the phrase "above WMAP all-sky image" at the APOD website and scroll down to "Cosmic History."). This diagram is an artist's conception of the Big Bang universe at 4 different epochs. First, the Big Bang. Second, inflation, which happened in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang and changed what the Big Bang universe was "predicted to look like" into "what it actually looks like." [Or, as one famous scientist put it ... "Here's where the frog jumps in the pond." or "Here a miracle occurs."] Third, we see the universe as observed by WMAP, and fourth, the universe evolves into what we see today. It doesn't really matter what happened "in the beginning". That second magic step can be adjusted to fix any discrepancy between observation and prediction, especially if you have dark matter and dark energy to patch up the chinks. Caption on reference page diagram: "Cosmic History WMAP observer the first light to break free in the infant Universe, the afterglow of the Big Bang. This light emerged 380,000 years after the Big Bang. Patterns imprinted on this light reflect the conditions set in motion a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. In turn, the patterns are the seeds of the development of the structures of galaxies we now see billions of years after the Big Bang." AMY AGAIN: As Arp pointed out above, the very thing they are claiming as proof of their interpretation (the clarity of the observations) is itself evidence against an expanding universe and the Big Bang. So what does the CMB mean in an electric universe? According to Arp, the simplest explanation is background starlight. The calculations work. But there is another mystery that needs explanation. The spectral shift of the CMB is anomalous. It appears as if "we" (the observers) are moving through the CMB at a rate 3 times as fast as the sun is orbiting the Milky Way. The blank-check mainstream explanation is that somewhere between us and the Virgo Cluster there is an enormous "great attractor" made of undetectable dark matter pulling both "us" (Milky Way, Local Group? Solar System? Earth?) and the Virgo Cluster in. Here's an all-sky view of the anomaly: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030209.html What do I think it is? I don1t know. Perhaps it's the glow of the Milky Way's jets, or the connection between the Local Group and its parent (Virgo Cluster? One of the active galaxies or quasars in the Virgo Cluster?) Or the orbital motion of our Local Group of galaxies around the Virgo Supercluster. That's a mystery that Arp and his colleagues should be paid well to investigate. The rest of astronomy lost a valuable sanity check when they elbowed him out. ~Amy Acheson thoth at Whidbey.com ******************************************************** COLUMBIA: QUESTIONS OF SOME GRAVITY Wal Thornhill [ed note: this full article, with pictures, can be found on Wal Thornhill's website at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/columbia.html On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle, Columbia, met its fiery end in the dangerous manoeuvre of supersonic re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Sadly, the crew of seven was lost. U.S. President Bush said, "In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth." This is a prime example of the difficulties we must endure while technology far outpaces science. In fact a faulty understanding of the electrical nature of the cosmos may have been responsible for the tragedy. In that context, a report, published on the west coast in the San Francisco Chronicle, makes interesting reading: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/05/MN192153.DTL&typ e=science FROM THE CHRONICLE ARTICLE: "Top investigators of the Columbia space shuttle disaster are analyzing a startling photograph -- snapped by an amateur astronomer from a San Francisco hillside -- that appears to show a purplish electrical bolt striking the craft as it streaked across the California sky. "The digital image is one of five snapped by the shuttle buff at roughly 5: 53 a.m. Saturday as sensors on the doomed orbiter began showing the first indications of trouble. Seven minutes later, the craft broke up in flames over Texas." "In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades." WAL THORNHILL COMMENTS: It is not a surprise in an electric universe to have lightning from space follow the ionised trail of Columbia. The Earth is enveloped in a cosmic discharge, centered on the Sun. [See more in Thornhill's newsbreak at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/balloon.html ] Further evidence about discharges from space was actually provided by the ill-fated astronauts when they photographed a huge arc of light above thunderstorms in Africa. It is quite possible that conditions in the ionosphere led to a lightning discharge to Columbia, which may have damaged a critical component or surface of the space shuttle. The lightning would be silent and burn like a plasma torch. I agree with NASA experts who discount the possibility of damage to the wing upon takeoff from a piece of lightweight foam. ________________________________________________________ The Columbia disaster seems to have prompted an opportunistic article in _WIRED_ magazine. The article highlights a new technology that is said to make possible a science-fiction idea publicized by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1978 novel, _Fountains of Paradise_ ? the space elevator. Theoretically, it could provide a far cheaper method of reaching space. But is this technology too far ahead of the science? FROM THE _WIRED_ ARTICLE: TO THE MOON IN A SPACE ELEVATOR? By Steve Kettmann Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57536,00.html 02:00 AM Feb. 04, 2003 PT The COLUMBIA disaster could spur faster development of a radically different approach to reaching outer space: the space elevator. More information about the space elevator at: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm ] Long imagined by science-fiction writers but seen by others as hopelessly far-fetched, the space-elevator concept has advanced dramatically in recent years along with leaps forward in the design of carbon nanotubes. Using the lightweight, strong carbon material, it's feasible to talk of building a meter-wide "ribbon" that would start on a mobile ocean platform at the equator, west of Ecuador, and extend 62,000 miles up into space. An elevator could be attached to this ribbon to ferry materials such as satellites and replacement parts for space stations -- or even people -- up into space. The project could become a reality as soon as 15 years from now, experts say. "Technically it's feasible," said Robert Cassanova, director of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts. "There's nothing wrong with the physics." THORNHILL COMMENTS: Here we have another example where technology has outstripped science. So, when Robert Cassanova says "There's nothing wrong with the physics" we may be sure that he means the old, electrically sterile physics applied to the cosmos. The continual cosmic discharge, which powers the storms on Earth, must be considered when placing long conductors radial to the Earth. Some years ago, the tethered satellite experiment suffered a plasma discharge that severed the tether cable as it was being reeled out from the space shuttle. That phenomenon will be repeated on a grand scale in any attempt to stretch a conducting elevator cable from Earth into space. The power that drives regional thunderstorms will be concentrated into a single cataclysmic thunderbolt, destroying the elevator cable like a thin fuse wire. In the worst scenario, the 50km high ground station will be replaced by a neat, circular crater, like those seen elsewhere in the solar system and attributed, erroneously, to meteoric impacts. ________________________________________________________ GRAVITY IS THE PROBLEM: UNDERSTANDING IT IS THE SOLUTION. The space shuttle is a technological marvel that must harness brute chemical and aerodynamic forces in order to overcome the weak force of gravity. The reason for such an approach is that we do not understand gravity. When we finally understand it, it is likely that we will find much gentler means of leaving the Earth and returning. Until that time, manned space travel will remain ridiculously expensive and hazardous. But wait a minute, didn't Einstein give us our understanding of gravity? No. The physicist, Herman Bondi, put it most succinctly: "Wherever gravitation can be seen in action, it is well described by the theory, but its logical contact with the rest of physics is dubious." Bondi also asked a crucial question, "if it [gravitation] is something so fundamental to matter, one might hope that one day it will throw light on the constitution of matter and on the nature of the elementary particles and forces from which it is composed. However, no relevant experiments are possible because the gravitational forces due to minute particles are so utterly minute." That is a curious insight, given that Einstein's theory of gravitation makes the gravitational field a property of space, rather than matter. It is little wonder that after close to a century of concentrated effort, including that of Einstein himself, no connection has been possible between gravity and the quantum behavior of matter or between gravity and the electromagnetic atomic forces. Einstein's view dismisses the idea that anti-gravity is possible and has powerfully discouraged serious investigation of the subject. I believe Bondi was both right and wrong. He was right in that we should look to a fundamental property of matter for the origin of the gravitational force. He was wrong when he wrote that no relevant experiments are possible. The famous Millikan oil drop experiment was one in which the gravitational force of the entire Earth upon a tiny oil drop was balanced by the electrical force on a single electron. Sensitive gravitational experiments on atomic particles are possible when we use the entire mass of the Earth as the source of the test gravitational field. This is essentially what is done in anti-gravity experiments. Einstein published his theory of gravitation, or general theory of relativity, in 1916. And so a new paradigm, or set of beliefs, was established. It was not until 1930 that Fritz London explained the weak, attractive dipolar electric bonding force (known as Van der Waals' dispersion force or the "London force") that causes gas molecules to condense and form liquids and solids. Like gravity, the London force is always attractive and operates between electrically neutral molecules. And that precise property has been the most puzzling distinction between gravity and the powerful electromagnetic forces, which may repel as well as attract. So it seems the clue about the true nature of gravity has been available to chemists ? who are not interested in gravity ? and unavailable to physicists ? who are not interested in physical chemistry (and view the world through Einstein's distorting spectacles). Look at any average general physics textbook and you will find no reference to Van der Waals' or London forces. What a different story might have been told if London's insight had come a few decades earlier? Physics could, by now, have advanced by a century instead of being bogged in a mire of metaphysics. An excellent illustrated lesson on the London force, or Van der Waals' dispersion force is given at: http://www.chemguide.co.uk/atoms/bonding/vdw.html The London force originates in fluctuating electric dipoles caused by slight distortion of otherwise electrically neutral atoms and molecules. The tiny electric dipoles arise because the orbiting electrons, at any given instant, cannot shield the positive charge of the nucleus equally in all directions. The result, amongst a group of similar atoms or molecules is that the electric dipoles tend to resonate and line up so that they attract each other. Obviously, gravity is distinct from the London force. It is much, much weaker. That should be a clue. What if we are looking at gravity being due to a similar electrostatic distortion effect in the far smaller constituents of each atom? Of course, this is heresy because the electron is supposed to be a fundamental particle, with no smaller constituent particles. However, there are experiments that challenge this belief. What is more, this model of an electron offers a simple mechanism to explain quantum theory and the relationship between magnetism and the electric force. This explains the puzzling observation that electrons don't simply radiate their orbital energy away and crash into the nucleus. It is because electrons in an atom store and release internal energy during each orbit in the form of varying electric dipole distortion. So a stable orbit is achieved simply when the energy exchange between the electron and the nucleus sums to zero over each orbit. It is the resonant electron orbits that determine the quantum nature of atomic interactions. The same resonances apply within the compound atomic nucleus. If we apply the London force model, both protons and neutrons form resonant structures of electrostatic dipoles that are powerfully attractive because of their closeness, unlike a simple Coulomb electrostatic model that would have the positively charged nucleus fly apart. It explains the need for neutrons to give stability to a compound nucleus. And in the process, it allows the normally unstable neutron to adopt a stable resonant configuration. Such a model suggests that a neutron star is a theoretical figment of overzealous mathematicians. If gravity is an electrostatic induced dipole-dipole force between the fundamental particles of normal matter, then it cannot be shielded because all matter, whether charged or not, will participate. And herein lies the difficulty for antigravity devices. How to modify the strength of those fundamental particle dipoles, or better, to invert them? I have discussed some attempts that seem to have succeeded in offsetting the dipoles slightly from the Earth's radius. See "Antigravity?" at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/antigravity.html There is another important consequence of taking into account atomic electric dipole effects. A ponderous body will introduce an additional dipole effect, that of the gravitational offset of the heavy nucleus from the centre of the atom. This effect can set up a radial electric field that may lead to charge separation and stratification in the conducting interior of a body, particularly stars and gas giants. In that case, electrostatic repulsion between similar charges will serve to offset compression due to gravity. The usual determination of density will therefore tell us nothing about the internal structure and composition of such a body. Certainly, such powerful electrical forces will prevent gravitational collapse and the formation of mythical neutron stars and black holes. The evidence presented for the existence of such objects is already explained by cosmic electric discharge activity. A new technology based on the obvious electrical nature of matter will look quite different from our Victorian vintage science. As Arthur C. Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We are long overdue for some magic! (c) Wal Thornhill 2002 author of The Electric Universe: A Holistic Science for the New Millennium See www.electric-universe.org ******************************************************** PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA GROUP WEBSITE http://www.kronia.com Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, now with regular features on the Saturn theory and electric universe, may be ordered from this page: http://www.kronia.com/library/aeon.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: http://www.aeonjournal.com/index.html http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/velikovskian/ http://www.bearfabrique.org http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.holoscience.com http://www.electric-cosmos.org/ http://www.electric-universe.org http://www.science-frontiers.com http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm http://www.dragonscience.com ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our focus is on a reconstruction of ancient astral myths and symbols in relation to a new theory of planetary history. Serious readers must allow some time for these radically different ideas to be fleshed out and for the relevant background to be developed. The general tenor of the ideas and information presented in THOTH is supported by the editor and publisher, but there will always be plenty of room for differences of interpretation. We welcome your comments and responses. thoth at Whidbey.com New readers are referred to earlier issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above.