VOL V, No 6 May 31, 2001 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS TOOL TIME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mel Acheson POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT. . . . . .Dave Talbott PARADIGM PORTRAITS X: MAPPING THE UNIVERSE. . . . . .Amy Acheson TWO SPACECRAFT WATCH AN ARC WELDER ON IO . . . . . .Wal Thornhill KINKS IN SOLAR WAVES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< TOOL TIME B By Mel Acheson Have you ever seen a carpenter try to cut a 2x4 with a hammer? Probably not. Carpenters usually carry a saw as well as a hammer in their toolboxes, and they know to use the proper tool for the task at hand. If they didn't have a saw, they likely could flail away with the hammer and eventually produce a splintered length of wood that more or less fit their need. But it wouldn't be pretty. Astrophysicists have only one tool in their kit--the hammer of gravitational theory. When called upon to build an explanation for the phenomena of a universe filled with plasma, they can't cut it. They're forced to flail: An oscillation in a plasma discharge that produces a thousand pulses of electromagnetic radiation per second--a pulsar--will be splintered into ad hoc kindling by the hammer of gravity. Several stars' worth of matter must be pounded into a tiny volume and spun around at a thousand r.p.s. Then a hot spot must be tacked on to produce the pulses of radiation. The self-constraining filaments of plasma spiraling out from the poles of active galaxies--galactic jets--require even more gravitational hammering. An astronomical quantity of matter must be pounded into such a tiny volume that it loses most of its recognizable properties and becomes a black hole. The black hole then pulls in all the surrounding matter and squeezes it. Next, gravity has to poke tiny holes in the squeezed matter to squirt it back out. Finally, emergency aid from magnetic forces has to be called in to keep the streams of hot gas from evaporating into the empty space around them. The spiraling filaments of a plasma "rope" can pinch down into a small "hot spot". If the current density is high enough, the pinch and the tubular or conical volume around it can glow, revealing the filamentary structure in visible light. To explain these planetary nebulae with gravity, a catastrophic imbalance between radiation and gravitational pressures must be generated in the core of a star. The resulting explosion blows off a spherical shell of hot gas. That shell must then be molded into the observed bipolar shapes (the tubes and the cones) by way of asymmetric interactions with previous gaseous emissions and interstellar gas. Sometimes a little help from (currentless) magnetic fields is thrown in. (As far as is known, with the possible exception of bar magnets, an electric current is the only way to produce a magnetic field. But "electric current" is an alias for a plasma.) These examples of gravitational flailing illustrate a fundamental incommensurability in viewpoint. A carpenter chooses a saw or a hammer according to whether he's working with wood or with steel. Identifying the material at hand is one of those cognitive activities that's so basic it's taken for granted. It's often unconscious. It surprises us when it's forced into our awareness by being mistaken, when what we assumed was a nail turns out to be a splinter of wood. In the case of the universe, this fundamental identification is whether it's composed of masses or of plasmas. A carpenter has many sources of information about his materials--sight, touch, smell, and a history of experience. Physicists are severely limited: They have only the readings of a few instruments exposed to a thin stream of photons from the sky. This vacuum of sensory deprivation tends to suck in material from the nearest source of cognitive substance, which is preconceived ideas. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And to a physicist with a theory of gravity, everything looks like mass. When the mass he imputes to the source of the thin stream of photons doesn't nail down the explanation he needs, he imagines more mass, invisible mass, mass compressed into black holes and expanded into dark halos, until his universe is 90% imaginary. A physicist with a theory of plasma is much better off. At least she can perform laboratory experiments on her alternatives to black holes and dark matter. She has more sources of information about her material than the thin stream of photons from the sky. She can test the ideas she imagines with the sparks she can manipulate. She can hammer on the wood; she can saw on the nail; she can see that doesn't work and go back to try the reverse. She can be scientific, can use concepts as tools, and can avoid transubstantiating them into pseudo-religious icons. Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ******************************************************* POLAR CONFIGURATION AND COSMIC THUNDERBOLT By David Talbott To see the divine thunderbolt's true role in world mythology, the sense of context provided by a physical model will prove crucial. What we've called the "Saturn theory" or "Saturn model" provides a unified reference, enabling us to interpret and account for the extraordinary commemorative activity of ancient cultures. It offers a coherent explanation of global patterns, and does so at a level of extraordinary and highly specific detail. Moreover, we claim that a fundamentally incorrect theory could never achieve this explanatory power. The model rests upon a verifiable substratum of human memories and traditions. Beneath the surface of world mythology and symbolism, certain points of agreement shine through. In fact, scholars as a whole have never acknowledged the great volume of broadly distributed themes. The reason for this is that the experts themselves lack the necessary references; they cannot distinguish the underpinnings of the original human experience from the flood of random and contradictory details added by the various cultures as they localized, interpreted, and elaborated aspects of the universal experience. In fact, the most significant motifs, the ones that reflect the archetypes most directly, are often the most likely to go unnoticed or to be swiftly dismissed. That's because these motifs arose from unfamiliar phenomena, events that do not occur in our time, whereas later elaborations of the motifs sought to ADAPT them to familiar phenomena. The archetypes, the root patterns, are neither random nor contradictory. All archetypes belong to a coherent substructure, and all are inseparably connected to each other. Hence, a logical and consistent explanation must be possible, even if all prior attempts at a unified theory immediately collapse when critically investigated. MEMORIES OF DOOMSDAY Of course, certain official tenets of science will obstruct the historian's ability to recognize patterns. Over the past two centuries, suppositions cultivated within the sciences placed rigid boundaries on historical investigation. How many archaeologists, anthropologists, or ethnologists, for example, have paused to notice the underlying agreement of the first sky-worshippers on the Doomsday memory? Every ancient culture insisted that a "world-destroying" catastrophe occurred in former times. For the Greeks this was the KATAKLYSMOS, when the world ended in flood and a cosmic winter, or EKPYROSIS, the destruction of the world by fire. We call the Doomsday memory an archetype because no culture failed to recall such an event, marked by great prodigies in the sky and a violent shift in the celestial order. On this vital point, Immanuel Velikovsky's presentation of global evidence still stands. But just consider how severely our scientific assumptions will limit the historian's imagination, as he confronts this recurring memory. Without a second thought, he already "knows" that the sky remained fundamentally unchanged across all of human history. So he can only appeal to unconstrained imagination for his explanations. And his "explanations" will invariably discourage attention to detail and cross-cultural patterns. In almost thirty years of investigation, for example, I never found a mainstream scholar wondering why, on every habitable continent, the Doomsday accounts recall a biologically absurd serpent or dragon thrashing about in the sky. One would think that such an obvious enigma would capture the attention of the experts! Eventually, it became clear to me that unproven scientific assumptions, stated as fact, have fostered an intellectual trance, closing off the possibility of discovery. MEMORIES OF PLANETARY DISORDER As we descend to specifics, the observed rigidity becomes even more severe. What about the evidence for changes in the motions of planets only a few thousand years ago? With the birth of empirical astronomy in the first millennium BC, every priest astronomer knew that the planets, then seen as distant points of light, were once towering forms in the sky. The astronomers knew that, in a remote age of gods and wonders, the planets ruled the heavens, determining the fate of kings and kingdoms, and indeed the destiny of the world. Planets brandished weapons of thunder, fire, and stone. In their earliest-remembered appearance, they inspired awe and reverence, but in the end their behavior was both capricious and violent, leading directly to the Doomsday catastrophe. The testimony is indisputable in the case of the Babylonian astronomer priest, Berossus, as cited by Seneca, and the same memory is echoed by Lucan, citing Nigidius. Plato, in the Timaeus, noted the change in the movements of celestial bodies in connection with world-destroying disaster. And he ascribed the great conflagration of Phaeton's fall to a shift in the motions of celestial bodies. More than one source reports the transformation of Phaeton into a planet (the "Morning Star") in our now-orderly solar system. Similarly, ancient Persian, Taoist, Chinese, Mesoamerican and other sources, gathered by Velikovsky, declare PLANETARY motions to be the source of the great cataclysms that punctuated world history, causing the collapse of world ages or the displacement of former "suns" prior to the re-birth of the world. So it's no wonder that, even with the arrival of planetary stability and predictable orbits, a deep anxiety hung over all of the early cultures. We see this anxiety most vividly in the rise of astronomy and the systematic study of planetary motions. For thousand of years after the myth-making epoch, the astronomer-priests were still oppressed by the primeval fear, incessantly scanning the heavens, meticulously recording diaries of planetary motions, seeking out the signs of the one thing they feared the most - the return of Doomsday. But how will modern historians, under the spell of a clock-like solar system, comprehend this Doomsday anxiety? Is it possible that ancient testimony, by the power of its consistency, could actually CORRECT science at a level so fundamental as to invite an intellectual revolution? For myself, I believe that this correction is inevitable and when it occurs, it will not reduce our interest in scientific fact, but re-direct our attention, infusing scientific investigation with a profound sense of discovery and new possibilities. THE SATURN MODEL The strongest advantage of the Saturn model is specificity. It connects hundreds of verifiable patterns to tangible and highly unusual forms in the sky, all vitally linked to equally tangible and unusual sequences of events. It further demonstrates that the archetypal figures of myth - most fundamentally the universal sovereign, mother goddess, and warrior-hero - can be fully comprehended. It is only necessary that we see these archetypes in their root identity, as planets and aspects of planets close to the earth, in defined spatial and dynamic relationships to each other, and in a celestial environment dominated by ELECTRICITY. In prior installments of this newsletter we've introduced several dozen themes, some of these appearing as integrated complexes, such as the following themes relating to the earliest remembered time. ARCHETYPES CONCERNING THE GOD OF BEGINNINGS o a universal sovereign or central luminary of the sky, the father of kings, and founder of a lost Golden Age; o displacement of that former sovereign in overwhelming, world altering catastrophe; o a primeval sun, superior sun, best sun, or motionless sun in former times, before the appearance of the present sun; o a great luminary or chief of the sky at the celestial pole; o ancient language and symbolism of the pole as the motionless spot, the place of rest; or the cosmic center; o the holiest day of the week (Sabbath) as a commemoration of the primeval epoch, the day or time of the "resting god." Generally, these closely-related traditions occur in contexts and locations far more widespread than the limited influence of empirical astronomy. Consequently, in the majority of instances, no direct information will give us the planetary identifications of the mythical personalities. But Babylonian astronomical diaries of the first millennium BC give motions of planets extremely close to their present orbits, thus allowing us to identify the references. And this, in turn, enables us to document the extraordinary and unexplained associations of the planets as mythical gods throughout the Near East and beyond. For the planet Saturn, we find these unusual associations, as we've noted in prior THOTH articles- o Saturn as universal sovereign and father of kings, ruling at the beginning of time; o Saturn as founder of the lost Golden Age; o Saturn as an ancient ruler displaced by overwhelming catastrophe; o Saturn as the archaic "sun god"; o Saturn as motionless or resting god; o Saturn ruling from the celestial pole; o Saturn's day of the week as the holy day, the Sabbath, or day of rest. We find, therefore, that while the first list includes separate fragments and nuances of a general tradition preserved around the world, the second list integrates all of the components by reference to a single planet. It thus substantiates a sense of underlying integrity. But it does more. It puts an exclamation point to the huge gap separating ancient memories from observed phenomena today. All "Saturnian" attributes directly contradict the actual behavior of the planet. This extraordinary situation surely does not permit the skeptic to merely claim that myth is foolishness and make believe. The situation requires the skeptic to explain how countless cultures, dispersed around the earth, could have relentlessly denied everything actually experienced, yet produced a universal accord on such unusual details. Moreover, to note the Saturn connection is only to place the first surface scratch on the unified substratum. Once we take up the themes of the mother goddess and warrior hero, the universal motifs grow explosively, for these are, beyond question, the most fully documented figures of myth. And in both cases a gigantic library of global themes will converge on two planets - Venus and Mars. Since we could quickly become lost in the great volume of material relating to the goddess and hero archetypes, I'll let the following list suffice for now. GODDESS THEMES o goddess as central eye of the primeval sun or universal sovereign; o goddess as luminous heart of the sovereign god; o goddess as animating soul of the sovereign god; o goddess as radiant "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs; p goddess as inner glory, power, strength of the universal sovereign; o goddess as hub and radiating spokes of a great wheel turning in the heavens; o goddess as omphalos or navel; o goddess as departing eye, heart, or soul, raging in the sky at the time of world-threatening catastrophe; o goddess taking the form of a chaos-serpent or dragon at the time of world threatening catastrophe; o goddess as Great Comet presiding over the end of a world age. These goddess themes, all of which we've discussed previously, are extremely widespread, and are most clearly expressed by the earliest cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But it is the links to the planet Venus that give the definitive clues. With the birth of empirical astronomy, every listed theme was connected to the planet Venus. Indeed, Venus is the ONLY planet identified as a goddess by astronomer priests of the first millennium BC. WARRIOR-HERO THEMES o hero born from the womb of the mother goddess o hero appearing as pupil of the eye, or born from the eye o hero conceived in the heart or soul of the sovereign god o hero leaping from the "star" depicted in the center of archaic "sun" pictographs o hero wearing the inner glory, power, or strength of the universal sovereign as a radiate crown o hero as axle of a great wheel turning in the heavens o hero as "navel-born" god o hero pacifying the raging eye goddess o hero vanquishing the cosmic serpent or dragon o hero wielding symbols of the Great Comet to restore the world after a great catastrophe Here, too, the respective themes are far more widely distributed than any astronomical identification, though the clear and undisputed planetary associations that ARE available will lead to one conclusion only. The warrior-hero was the planet Mars. A SNAPSHOT OF GATHERED PLANETS It should go without saying that none of the common mythical themes, nor any of the associations with planets noted above, will find explanation in familiar natural events. But can this disparity justify an entirely new vantage point? To answer this question, we do not propose to take the reader on all of the sinuous paths of the original investigation. Rather, we shall simply offer a model which, we claim, WILL make sense of the global traditions, integrating and accounting for the field of evidence more completely than any prior theory. The underlying principles of the model are these: o The planetary system we observe today is new. Only a few thousand years ago planets followed vastly different courses, in an unstable solar system. o Our Earth formerly moved with several planets in close congregation, through a rich, electrically active plasma environment. The planets included (among others) Earth, Mars, and Venus, in a close dynamic relationship to the gas giant Saturn. o In periods of relative "stability," the dominant planets in the system moved in COLLINEAR equilibrium. That is, the primary bodies remained in line as they moved through space. o At an early phase of the configuration, the planet Saturn - prior to acquisition of its present ring system - appeared as a stationary, towering form at the celestial pole. This means that the axis of the earth was pointed directly to the aligned planets. o Both Mars and Venus played highly prominent roles in the configuration, these two bodies appearing one in front of the other in the center of Saturn, positions confirming the collinear equilibrium of the system. o It is tentatively assumed that the planet Jupiter was also part of the ancient assembly, though Jupiter was apparently hidden behind Saturn until a period of profound instability. o Evolution of the configuration was marked by continuous electrical discharging, profoundly affecting the visual appearance of the celestial forms - and presumably the dynamics of collinear equilibrium as well. o It was the highly unusual configurations taken by the discharge phenomena that inspired the ancient symbolism of the divine thunderbolt. Hence, the entire range of thunderbolt images in antiquity will add a vital layer for testing our hypothesis as a whole. I'm attaching to this newsletter a slide from an upcoming presentation at the INTERSECT 2001 world conference. (For most email readers, the image should appear at the end of the newsletter.) This will be my first reference slide for the articles to follow. The slide depicts an early phase in the hypothesized configuration as seen from Earth, together with a few prehistoric rock art images from Ireland and California. The pictographs, inscribed on stone, illustrate the relationship we intend to document, between planetary forms seen in the sky, the patterns of world mythology, and verifiable formations of plasma activity in the laboratory. It was the dynamic evolution of this planetary assembly, we shall contend, that inspired the mythical histories of the gods. Dave Talbott EDITOR'S NOTE: The Intersect 2001 conference -- "Electricity, Cosmology, and Human History" -- will include the first public presentation of this story, with new animation and other visual support. NEXT: DIVINE THUNDERBOLT, GREAT CONJUNCTION, AND POLAR CONFIGURATION ******************************************************** PARADIGM PORTRAITS X: MAPPING THE UNIVERSE by Amy Acheson [excerpt from May 16th NYT article by JAMES GLANZ] Scientists Detect the Traces of the Seeds of Cosmic Structures A telescope in eastern Australia has seen what appear to be the faint imprint of waves, much like sound waves, that may have rippled through the gases of the young universe. Scientists have long theorized such waves were the seeds for all structures glittering in the heavens today. The imprints were revealed within the clumps and filamentary patterns formed by tens of thousands of galaxies that the telescope observed in Earth's cosmic neighborhood. Using the 12-foot-wide Anglo-Australian Telescope near Coonabarabran, Australia, the project -- involving scientists at a dozen institutions in Australia, Britain and the United States -- has mapped the positions of nearly 170,000 galaxies. The map not only revealed great clusters and filigree patterns made by the galaxies, which earlier surveys had seen, but also let project scientists analyze the data for more subtle features. When they did so, the scientists found that hidden in the irregular clumps and filaments were imprints of waves of particular sizes, or wavelengths, that cosmologists believe were generated in the explosive birth of the universe. The waves are thought to have seeded the primordial gases with slight irregularities that later grew into galaxies and clusters. AMY COMMENTS: What they are measuring is redshift. What they are seeing, and interpreting as waves of galactic structure, is quantization of redshift. What they are not seeing is that high and low redshift objects are connected. There is no way they will be able to "map" the universe accurately as long as they continue to believe that redshift distance. In my article on Don Scott's website, I reproduced Halton Arp's pie-chart diagram of how a mixed-redshift galaxy cluster will be distorted by applying a redshift-distance ruler to it. http://www.users.qwest.net/~dascott/Amy.htm (the chart appears in the second article). These maps of galaxies arranged by redshift distances are as unrealistic a picture of the universe as Ptolemy's epicycles were of the solar system. It took ancient astronomers 1000 years to "unlearn" Ptolemy. The big bang and expanding universe distortions have reigned supreme for over half a century. How long until their misinterpretation is unraveled? Today's "Galileo", Halton Arp, is alive and working full-time (with neither telescope time nor paycheck) to turn the extragalactic paradigm around. His most recent project involves the newly released HST Cepheid distances and Hubble constant info. He says that the data is full of inconsistencies that shed new light on old mistakes and reinforce the new "age but not distance" interpretation of redshift. All that remains is to watch the old paradigm fall apart. See also: http://www.dragonscience.com/arpteaser.html Amy Acheson ******************************************************** TWO SPACECRAFT WATCH AN ARC WELDER ON IO by Wal Thornhill MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION March 29, 2001 FROM THE PRESS RELEASE: A plume near Io's equator comes from the volcano Pele. It has been active for at least four years, and has been far larger than any other plume seen on Io, until now. The other, nearer to Io's north pole, is a Pele-sized plume that had never been seen before, a fresh eruption from the Tvashtar Catena volcanic area. The observations were made during joint studies of the Jupiter system while Cassini was passing Jupiter on its way to Saturn. The two craft offered complementary advantages for observing Io, the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Galileo passed closer to Io for higher-resolution images, and Cassini acquired images at ultraviolet wavelengths, better for detecting active volcanic plumes. The Cassini ultraviolet images, upper right, reveal two gigantic, actively erupting plumes of gas and dust. Near the equator, just the top of Pele's plume is visible where it projects into sunlight. None of it would be illuminated if it were less than 240 kilometers (150 miles) high. These images indicate a total height for Pele of 390 kilometers (242 miles). The Cassini image at far right shows a bright spot over Pele's vent. Although the Pele hot spot has a high temperature, silicate lava cannot be hot enough to explain a bright spot in the ultraviolet, so the origin of this bright spot is a mystery, but it may indicate that Pele was unusually active. COMMENT BY WAL THORNHILL: In the Holoscience news report of 22 December 1999, NASA's Xmas Coloring Book, an alternative explanation was offered: "The Galileo camera was looking at a number of arc-lights in the form of cathode spots." It is definitely unusual activity for a volcano to produce UV light. However an electric arc is a copious source of UV light. This is further confirmation of the electrical sculpting of Io's surface. What we are witnessing are not volcanos but planetary surface sculpting by cosmic electric arcs. It is a process that has left characteristic circular craters and fretted terrain on all solid bodies in the solar system. It calls into question everything we think we know about the history of the solar system. THE NASA REPORT CONTINUES: Also visible is a plume near Io's north pole. Although 15 active plumes over Io's equatorial regions have been detected in hundreds of images from NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, this is the first image ever acquired of an active plume over a polar region of Io. The plume projects about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) over the limb, the edge of the globe. If it were erupting from a point on the limb, it would be only slightly larger than a typical Ionian plume, but the image does not reveal whether the source is actually at the limb or beyond it, out of view. A distinctive feature in Galileo images since 1997 has been a giant red ring of Pele plume deposits about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) in diameter. The Pele ring is seen again in one of the new Galileo images, lower left. When the new Galileo images were returned this month, scientists were astonished to see a second giant red ring on Io, centered around Tvashtar Catena at 63 degrees north latitude. (To see a comparison from before the ring was deposited, see PIA-01604 or PIA- 02309.) Tvashtar was the site of an active curtain of high-temperature silicate lava imaged by Galileo in November 1999 and February 2000 (image PIA-02584). The new ring shows that Tvashtar must be the vent for the north polar plume imaged by Cassini from the other side of Io! This means the plume is actually about 385 kilometers (239 miles) high, just like Pele. The uncertainty in estimating the height is about 30 kilometers (19 miles), so the plume could be anywhere from 355 to 415 kilometers (221 to 259 miles) high. COMMENT: The ring of deposits does not make any sense whatever for a volcanic outburst. However, the shape and size of the plumes and the trajectory of the particles to form a ring have been explained by plasma physicists in terms of an electrical discharge. The result is rather like that of a giant natural mass spectrograph. THE NASA REPORT CONTINUES: If this new plume deposit is just one millimeter (four one-hundredths of an inch) thick, then the eruption produced more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. NASA recently approved a third extension of the Galileo mission, including a pass over Io's north pole in August 2001. The spacecraft's trajectory will pass directly over Tvashtar at an altitude of 200 kilometers (124 miles). Will Galileo fly through an active plume? That depends on whether this eruption is long-lived, like Pele, or brief, and it also depends on how high the plume is next August. Two Pele-sized plumes are inferred to have erupted in 1979 during the four months between Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flybys, as indicated by new Pele-sized rings in Voyager 2 images. Those eruptions, both from high-latitude locations, were shorter-lived than Pele, but their actual durations are unknown. Before its August flyby, Galileo will get another more-distant look at Tvashtar in May. It has been said that Io is the heartbeat of the Jovian magnetosphere. The two giant plumes evidenced in these images may have had significant effects on the types, density and distribution of neutral and charged particles in the Jupiter system during the joint observations of the system by Galileo and Cassini from November 2000 to March 2001. See full article and photos at: http://www.holoscience.com/news/inferno.htm More information about the Cassini and Galileo joint observations of the Jupiter system is available online at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby ~Wal Thornhill See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ********************************************************* KINKS IN SOLAR WAVES by Wal Thornhill NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE Posted: March 29, 2001 Scientists unravel the kinks in solar waves Kinks in the Sun's magnetic field have puzzled scientists since they first started studying the solar wind, and now researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., have found the reason: they are caused by the evolution of a type of magnetic wave called Alfven waves. Scientists measured sudden changes in the Sun's magnetic field with the magnetometer instrument on the Ulysses spacecraft, which is orbiting the Sun's poles at a distance between Jupiter and Mars. Ulysses has been studying the Sun since 1990 and has just finished studying the south pole of the Sun at solar maximum, a time of great activity. "Over the poles of the Sun, we saw abrupt decreases in the magnetic field," said JPL's Dr. Bruce Tsurutani, a co-investigator on the magnetometer instrument on Ulysses. "We did not know what they were, because we had never seen anything like it before. Now we know that the disturbance is caused by Alfven waves." Scientists expected to find that either the field magnitude remained the same, though the angle changed, or that the magnitude changed, with no fields threading across the structure, said Tsurutani. Instead, they found that the ends of Alfven waves always have both rotational and tangential characteristics. Like the movements of a plucked guitar string, Alfven waves travel down the magnetic fields that emanate from the Sun. Disturbances in the Sun's magnetic field, which is embedded in the solar wind, travel through space to eventually cause auroras on Earth. The high-energy particles from the solar wind become trapped in the Earth's magnetic field and come down into the atmosphere near the Earth's north and south magnetic poles. The highly-charged particles then collide with oxygen and nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere and emit light, forming the aurora. Tsurutani also studied polar plumes, long trails from the base of the Sun. The plumes form in the Sun's polar regions, the upper and lower 30-degree latitude regions, and where these plumes occur, the magnetic field isn't kinked, but instead forms long, thin, straight tubes. This means that the Alfven waves don't operate in these regions, though scientists don't yet know why. "Ulysses was able to find that the Sun's polar plumes stretch out past the orbit of Mars and maybe farther," said Tsurutani. "What's fascinating is how these plumes can be so thin and so long at the same time." A plume could be 100 times wider than it is long (sic). The European Space Agency's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) noted these polar plumes in 1996. COMMENT BY WAL THORNHILL: What is fascinating is that astrophysicists cannot "see" what they are looking at because of the dogma that electric currents cannot flow in space and the Sun cannot be electrically charged. The thin, straight tubes are diagnostic of Birkeland currents. Birkeland currents also have an outer twisted filament or rope-like form taken by electric current flowing in plasma. The Alfven waves are therefore more likely to be the structure of the magnetic field associated with Birkeland currents. Otherwise there is some unspecified activity required beneath the Sun's surface to excite the Alfven waves, or "pluck the guitar string" as it is colorfully described. Unfortunately this "explanation" follows a well-established tradition of ascribing every weird feature of the Sun to poorly defined activity hidden from view inside the Sun. It is what is known as "pathological science" - a term coined by a pioneer of plasma physics and Nobel Laureate, Irving Langmuir. THE REPORT GOES ON: Alfven waves are named for Hannes Alfven, a Swede who in 1942 discovered the waves, for which he was later awarded the Nobel Prize. COMMENT: Alfven must be spinning in his grave to see the continued misuse of his work by astrophysicists. In 1970 he used the occasion of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in unprecedented fashion to admonish them for treating plasma in a way he had subsequently shown to be mistaken. He said, "The cosmical plasma physics ...is to some extent the playground of theoreticians who have never seen a plasma in a laboratory. Many of them still believe in formulas we know from laboratory experiments to be wrong. The astrophysical ...crisis has not yet come." We are still waiting...