THOTH -A Catastrophics Newsletter- VOL II, No. 6 March 31, 1998 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS SHAMELESS PROMOTION OF PET PARADIGMS. . . . . . . Mel Acheson Letter to the Editor ON THE RELIABILITY OF HUMAN WITNESSES. . . . . . Dave Talbott FALLACIES OF GRAVITATION. . . . . . . . . . . . Wal Thornhill GEOMAGNETIC FIELD AND DAY¹S LENGTH . . . . . . . Wal Thornhill Questions and Comments by Dwight Christensen Postscript from NASA ---------------------------------------------- SHAMELESS PROMOTION OF PET PARADIGMS By Mel Acheson The orthodox paradigms are not just shifting, they're falling off their pedestals. The faithful worshippers are headed for a crisis of belief of astronomical proportions. The big concepts of modern science are failing to explain the flood of new observations they have generated‹as big as they are, they are proving to be too small. A switch to a new way of seeing is needed: not just a new paradigm for certain disciplines, but an interdisciplinary unifying paradigm. Like the "gestalt switch", where you see a duck in the lines you previously saw as a rabbit, a paradigm shift changes perception. But this time the requisite switch will result in the mass extinction of the big conceptual populations of the present universe and a re-population with entirely new species. For example, the domain of validity of the familiar universal gravitation (F=GMmr^-2) has shrunk to the confines of the solar system. Stars in the Milky Way more nearly obey F=GMmr^-1. And with the discovery of intrinsic redshifts, galaxies in clusters obey F=0. Gravity is going extinct! The universe is losing its "essential vertigo": Instead of falling apart in a Hubble recession, galaxies simply hang in space like some analogue of ball lightning. A truly universal theory is needed to replace the provincial and fundamentally occult idea of gravity. Perception, contrary to popular opinion, is not the opposite of conception, but a unity of concept and sensation. Without a concept, sensory impressions are meaningless, a stimulation of nerve cells. Together, concept and sensation form a meaningful perception. But change the concept and the meaning changes. The perception is different. Enlarge the concept, and the perceived universe gets bigger. The perceptual universe of modern science is both small and fragmented. We're becoming aware of a lot of sensations that are excluded from perception because existing paradigms provide no meaningful framework for understanding. Mythology has long been a morass, written off as superstition and fiction. Electric phenomena have simply gone unseen. The Saturn model provides the conceptual framework in which to perceive a global intelligibility. Myth becomes admissible as evidence. Our ancestors were not superstitious idiots but another generation of a species that has always used its intellectual capabilities to perceive order in the universe. Ancient and modern people become united in their common humanity under a sometimes-catastrophic sky. Compared to the ad hoc tumors bloating the body of established science, the electric universe model provides a simple framework in which to perceive order in physical phenomena from the atomic scale to the cosmological. The large-scale structure of the universe becomes intelligible. The dearth of neutrinos from the sun makes sense. The highly non-uniform features of planets and satellites are expected. And the two models intersect. Expected features of the electric universe become the objects of mythic descriptions otherwise lacking referents. Together, the two models enable the perception of a scheme of order that encompasses atoms, galaxies, and an enlarged history. It's the Electric Saturn Super Model! Mel Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ---------------------------------------------- ON THE RELIABILITY OF HUMAN WITNESSES By David Talbott (dtalbott at teleport.com) In THOTH II:5, Amy Acheson wrote: "But will we cultivate the necessary discipline to find the EVENT which first gave meaning to the symbols?" Finding the event behind archaic symbols is indeed the challenge. Could any lines of reasoning be dependable, when the "evidence" includes such enigmatic sources as myth, magical rites, and cultic symbols? Many specialists in the hard sciences will find abhorrent our claim that myth points to unusual natural events. And particularly objectionable to them will be our insistence that, under certain circumstances, human memories can give us considerable detail about events unknown to science (Of course the limitations of scientific knowledge come into the equation as well.) When reports by more than one person imply a shared experience, issues of logic and probability arise. We deal with such issues all the time in judicial proceedings--and in fact we do not hesitate to send someone to the electric chair based on the memories of three people. But the principles for assessing testimony are generally ignored when it comes to the patterns of ancient memory. Rules of evidence need to be clarified, and perhaps we can work upward from a couple of simple examples. The first question is whether the occurrence of contradictory versions of an underlying story excludes the possibility of a reliable reconstruction. On this issue, common opinion is almost never correct. There are rules for finding reliable testimony in a sea of contradictions. Imagine an experiment involving a dozen groups with a dozen members in each group and no communication permitted between the groups. From each group, one individual is allowed to witness a newly-written play, then asked to convey the story verbally to another individual in his group, recalling as much detail as possible. The second individual then reports to the third, and so on until the story reaches the last person in each group, who will then report the story to you. >From this exercise you would likely receive many different ways of telling the story, with many contradictions between versions. But to come as close to the original as possible you would give greatest weight to those story elements retained in several accounts. And despite horrendous errors in transmission within various groups, if you follow this simple principle, your reconstruction will be generally reliable. Even if it lacks the full texture of the original, you can be confident in the basic structure. To see why comparison of accounts can produce a reliable reconstruction, you only have to recognize what a mistake in transmission will do to a remembered event or story It will introduce a contradiction to the way the story is told by others. It is typically much easier to make mistakes than to make the SAME mistakes others have made. So in the cross-referencing of stories, the first key is to follow the points of agreement. More significantly, there is a common paradox which even the experts in comparative study frequently ignore. One might think that when two groups share an improbable story element, it becomes more likely that the two groups made the same error of transmission. But actually the reverse is true. The more unusual or bizarre the points of agreement, the more likely it is that they speak for the original story. Here's why: it's much easier to make a mistake on matters of routine background, than on unexpected or startling detail. How many chairs were in the room when the protagonist died? Well, there were five, but who was counting? Here, not just mistakes, but similar mistakes would be predictable. Consider, however, that when the protagonist died, a dove leapt from his chest and flew away. The recurrence of that particular element in just three of the accounts will create a virtual certainty that the motif was part of the original story, even in the unlikely event that the nine other accounts failed to mention it. Short of cross contamination of our storytelling groups, it is simply too dramatic and too unusual to have been injected into the story by more than one storyteller, either through a mistake or through deliberate deception. Now these principles are extremely relevant to the cross-cultural comparison of human memories. But there is still much more to consider here. It is often noted that human witnesses are notoriously unreliable. In judicial proceedings this unreliability is properly noted--and demonstrated--all the time. But commonly overlooked is a further consideration. In certain circumstances the accounts of UNRELIABLE witness can produce ABSOLUTELY RELIABLE conclusions. To make this point I have concocted an episode called "The Unfortunate Peter Smith"-- On Tuesday morning, a man robbed the bank down the street, escaping with about $12,000. When the police arrived they faced a dilemma. The man was seen rushing from the bank toward a blue Honda, jumping in, and speeding off. But the car was too far away for anyone to catch the license plate. Inside the bank, the police found only three witnesses, and as it turned out all were highly unreliable. One had a history of lying relentlessly. Another was a schizophrenic, often hallucinating. And the third was dyslexic. Immediately on their arrival, the police had separated the witnesses and interviewed them. There seemed to be general agreement that the robber was wearing a ski mask, a black leather jacket, and blue jeans. But there were more discrepancies than points of agreement. This was partly because the known liar freely made up details as he answered police questions, the schizophrenic described things seen by no one else, and the dyslexic could not even get the name of the bank right. Nevertheless, when the police compared notes they immediately sent out a bulletin, and it wasn't long before a fellow officer stopped a blue Honda, driven by a man named Peter Smith. When the officer looked inside the car, he did not see a ski mask, and he did not see any money. But the moment he observed the driver, he made an arrest. And he was certain he had nabbed the robber. How did he know? His confidence came from certain details the police had noted in their interviews with the witnesses. While much of what the congenital liar reported was self-serving and almost certainly invented, one thing he had said was most unusual, and was remembered by the police interviewer. He had laughed about the robber wearing two different running shoes. On his left foot he was wearing a Nike, and on his right foot he was wearing an Adidas, the man said. The second witness said nothing about the shoes, and seems to have heard strange voices and seen things reported by no one else. But he did mention that when the robber started to leave the bank, several bills fell from the paper bag, which the robber bent down to pick up. That was when the witness noticed that the tag on his tee-shirt was on the outside; his shirt was inside out. He could even read the label. The third witness, the dyslexic, also had noticed the tag up close, but said he couldn't read it. Additionally, he reported the robber wearing two different running shoes--a Kine and a Daddies. So the police drew a conclusion--formulated a "prediction," if you will--that the bank robber was driving a blue Honda, wearing two different running shoes and a shirt inside out. And when they found Peter Smith, they had every reason to be confident. Short of a conspiracy to deceive them, this WAS the robber, beyond a shadow of a doubt. THE WITNESSES DO NOT EVEN HAVE TO BE DEPENDABLE! In this example the confidence of the police relates directly to THINGS OUT OF PLACE. A liar, a schizophrenic, and a dyslexic may create havoc in their contradictory accounts, and yet the force of agreement on highly unusual details is far greater than the burden of contradictions. In fact, the convergence of testimony on the two cited details is simply inconceivable--astronomically improbable--unless Peter Smith was the robber. The police would not need DNA tests, lie detector tests, fingerprints, or any other wonders of modern science and technology to draw a reliable conclusion. So the moral of this story is that in certain situations a simple comparison of human testimony can achieve exceptional reliability, even though the witnesses are not inherently trustworthy. And how does all of this apply to the patterns of more ancient human memory--those distinctive, archetypal complexes referring us back to the mythical age of the gods? In this series of explorations we will illustrate the following principles-- 1) Cultures around the world, using quite different words and symbols, describe remarkably similar experiences; 2) These points of agreement consistently include unique, but well-defined forms in the sky; 3) The recurring forms have no relationship to things seen in our sky, or to any natural experience today; 4) Granting the presence of these extraordinary forms will make possible a unified explanation of myth, removing hundreds of contradictions and anomalies left unexplained by prior theories of myth. In seeking to reconstruct ancient memories through cross-cultural comparison, we will discover a substructure of remarkable depth and coherence. The power of human memory is incomparably greater than scholars have typically assumed. ---------------------------------------------- FALLACIES OF GRAVITATION By Wal Thornhill DEDavis asks Wal Thornhill: Here's some of Velikovsky¹s' "empiric evidences of the fallacy of the law of gravitation"...Any thoughts on how these stand up today? " No.12: Because of its swift rotation, the gaseous sun should have a latitudinal axis greater than the longitudinal, but it does not have it. The sun is 10^6 times greater than the Earth, and its day is 26 times longer than the terrestrial day; the swiftness of its rotation at its equator is over 125km per minute; at the poles its velocity approaches zero. Yet the solar disk is not oval but round: the majority of researchers even find a small excess in the longitudinal axis of the sun [ Comp.Ch.L.Poor, Gravitation versus Relativity, 1922, p98] The planets act in the same manner as the rotation of the sun, imposing a latitudinal pull on the luminary. ³Gravitation that acts in all directions equally leaves unexplained the spherical shape of the Sun. As we saw in the preceding section, the gases of the solar atmosphere are not under a very strong pressure, but under a very weak one. Therefore, the computation, according to which the ellipsoidity of the sun, that is lacking, should be slight, is not correct either. Since the gases are under a very low gravitational pressure, the centrifugal force of rotation must have formed quite a flat sun. ³Near the polar regions of the sun, streamers of the corona are observed, which prolong still more the axial length of the sun.² ... [WT] This fact remains a mystery for astronomers. If the Sun weren't spherical we would not be able to have total solar eclipses. However, if the Sun is defined in all of its important attributes by its electrical charge and electrical environment, then that includes its apparent mass and "gravitational" field. So, calculations about the degree of oblateness to be expected from Newton's laws and a universal constant, G, are meaningless. Importantly, the discovery that the Sun's magnetic field lines are not crowded together at the poles like a normal dipole magnet, but spaced out evenly, suggests that the Sun is the focus of a spherically symmetrical discharge (also to be expected from its appearance). In that case, the shape of the photosphere of the Sun will be defined and dominated by electrical forces far more powerful than gravity. No.20: ³Unaccounted for fluctuations in the lunar mean motion were calculated from the records of lunar eclipses of many centuries and from modern observations. These fluctuations were studied by S.Newcomb, who wrote: ŒI regard these fluctuations as the most enigmatic phenomenon presented by the celestial motions, being so difficult to account for by the action of any known causes, that we cannot but suspect them to arise from some action in nature hitherto unknown¹ [S.Newcomb, Monthly Notices, R.A.S., January 1909] ³They are not explainable by the forces of gravitation which emanate from the sun and the planets.² [WT] The last statement is only true if the assumption that G is constant, is true. In the electric universe model it is not. Anything that transfers charge to or from the Moon or Earth, such as coronal mass ejections or the brushing past of the plasma tail of Venus, will change G from its mean value. In a fixed G cosmology, all such fluctuations will appear inexplicable. No.22 ³The tails of comets do not obey the principle of gravitation and are repelled by the sun. ŒThere is beyond question some profound secret and mystery of nature concerned in the phenomenon of their tails¹;¹enormous sweep which it [the tail] makes round the sun in perihelion, in the manner of a straight and rigid rod, is in defiance of the law of gravitation, nay, even of the recorded laws of motion¹ [J.Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, p406] ŒWhat has puzzled astronomers since the time of Newton, is the fact that while other bodies in the sidereal universe, as far as we are aware, obey the law of gravitation, comets' tails are clearly subject to some strong repulsive force, which drives them away from the matter composing them away from the sun with enormously high velocities¹ [W.H.Pickering].² [WT] Cometary phenomena are subject to the laws of plasma physics associated with electrical discharge. It is the last four words of that sentence that cause astrophysicists to choke on their self-congratulatory cigars and result in their inability to sensibly explain the non-gravitational forces plainly evident in the behavior of cometary tails. Sunward pointing ion tails have been seen and explained away as being an illusion (rather in the manner required to explain superluminal motion associated with some quasars). Not only the tails but also the nuclei of comets fail to obey Newton's laws. In that case we see some priceless ad-hocery where the jets emanating from the comet are called upon to act like rocket engines in any way necessary to save appearances. But the jets themselves are not explained by boiling away of surface material through ad-hoc vents. They are simply plasma beams which machine ions from the surface indiscriminately - as discovered recently when the ice required to blow off the dust seemed to be missing. As Prof. Emeritus R A Lyttleton so aptly described the state of play with respect to accepted comet theory: "It is not realised by these would-be theorists that the need for special assumption after special assumption in order to 'save' the theory is simply nothing more than indication after indication that the original hypothesis is incorrect, whereas the long list of assumptions are perversely and proudly regarded by them as 'discoveries' of actual properties of comets. The resulting fairy-story theory provides a typical example of what [Irving] Langmuir has termed Pathological Science, or 'The science of things that aren't so'. (Speculations in Science & Technology, Vol 8, No 5, p. 346). Wal Thornhill ---------------------------------------------- GEOMAGNETIC FIELD AND DAY¹S LENGTH By Wal Thornhill Questions and comments by Dwight Christensen While I was searching for the references to Gentry's work on radiohalos, I came across an old news item from New Scientist of 31st March, 1977, titled "How the geomagnetic field mimics the day's length". It relates to an earlier thread on the subject of changes in the number of days in a year, which I proposed could be explained by a change in the electrical environment of the Earth. I have also proposed in The Electric Universe that the solar activity cycle is driven externally by the Sun's galactic environment. More specifically, it traces the Sun's passage across the giant Birkeland current threads which energise and define the arms of our spiral galaxy. This interesting report seems to support all of these inter-connections: "Two American workers have recently demonstrated that there is indeed a very remarkable link between the fluctuations in the length of the day taken from a sample over the years 1865 to 1961, and the small variations in the strength of the Earth's dipole between 1901 and 1960 (Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 32, no 5, p.828)." The fluctuations show the usual 11 and 22 year periodicities associated with solar activity. In fact the full spectrum shows harmonics stretching up to 66 years. "Surprisingly these exact values (of the harmonics) appear in the power spectral analysis for the variations in the length of the day. The two Florida researchers say that their result indicates that, '... either the cause of both phenomena is the same, or one is the cause of the other." It is hard to imagine how orthodox theories could tie these observations together. I would suggest that the cause of both phenomena is the same - a cyclic change in the electrical plasma environment of the solar system. It causes the sunspot cycle on the Sun, and by altering the charge on the Earth it changes both the geomagnetic field strength and day length in concert. I also predict that the value of the gravitational "constant", G, would be found to change in sync too, if sensitive enough measurements were taken over an extended period. Wal Thornhill >To Wal: > >Wow!!! Amazing information! This is something which I had been >thinking about, and bingo--you send this email! So, it does >appear logical that the intensity of the charge of the space >plasma (Birkland Currents) does exhibit variations, and that >these variations possibly cause solar flares and the actual spin >velocity of Earth! As a result, earth's magnetic field strength >and gravity would also be affected --- amazing! > >What do you think is the cause of this variation of intensity? >Do you think the Gravity Probe B upcoming experiment by NASA >($600,000,000+) will be able to measure fluctuations in earth's >magnetic field along with space plasma charge - it would be good >if a solar flare just happens to occur while they are doing >their "frame dragging/Lense-Thirring effect" measurements. >(I suppose they will not extend another long t(eth)ered wire >this time, right?!) >Bye...Dwight Dwight, The change in the plasma environment of the solar system could come about because of the cross-sectional variation in plasma density and the helical magnetic field of each giant Birkeland current "thread" along the axis of our arm of the Milky Way. If you imagine that the solar system cuts across a "thread", the current density will rise as you near the centre of the circle and the magnetic field will switch direction as you pass by the centre, or from one thread to another. The complexity of the Sun's plasma interactions at the heliopause with galactic currents is unknown. We are also ignorant of possible mechanisms for a stellar plasmoid doughnut to drive the photosphere rotation, the sunspot cycle, and provide the stored energy source for coronal mass ejections (CME's). It will take considerable laboratory experimentation to help unravel that. When that is done, the solar cycle and those of nearby stars, when combined with their relative motions, should help define the structure of the neighbourhood galactic Birkeland currents. I don't think any satellite is able to measure the "space plasma charge", as you put it. We have no means of detecting one more proton or electron (on average) per cubic metre. That's the kind of capability you would need. It would certainly be very interesting to see the results of gravity measurements if those figures encompassed a CME event which struck the Earth. Wal Thornhill Postscript: more orbital variations EL NINO SLOWS EARTH DOWN WASHINGTON (Reuters) - El Nino, the phenomenon disrupting the weather in the Pacific and the Americas, has made the days longer than usual, the U.S. space agency said Wednesday. Feb. 5 was the longest day of all, about 0.6 milliseconds above normal, and the cumulative increase since El Nino began late last year amounts to about a tenth of a second -- the time it takes to blink. The extra day length has since slipped back to about 0.4 milliseconds and the Earth will eventually speed up again as El Nino dissipates, said a statement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. ---------------------------------------------- PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS WEBSITE-- http://www.kronia.com/~kronia/ Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: Subscriptions to AEON, a journal of myth and science, may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.ames.net/aeon/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/sis/ http://www.flash.net/~cjransom/ http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/velikovskian/ http://www.access.digex.net/~medved/Catastrophism.html http://www.grazian-archive.com/ http://www.tcel.com/~mike/paper.html Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html ----------------------------------------------- The THOTH electronic newsletter is an outgrowth of scientific and scholarly discussions in the emerging field of astral catastrophics. Our initial focus will be 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. New readers are referred to earlier installments in issues of THOTH posted on the Kronia website listed above. Go to the THOTH page and click on the image titled "Thoth: the Egyptian God of Knowledge" to access the back issues.