IV:14 THOTH A Catastrophics Newsletter VOL IV, No 14 Sept 30, 2000 EDITOR: Amy Acheson PUBLISHER: Michael Armstrong LIST MANAGER: Brian Stewart CONTENTS A RHINOCEROS SHAPED HOLE . . . . . . . . . . . .by Amy Acheson SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT . . . . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO. . . . . . . . by Dave Talbott NON-VELOCITY REDSHIFTS . . . . . . . . . . . .by Anthony Peratt ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS . . . . . . . . . . by Wal Thornhill >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>-----<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< A RHINOCEROS SHAPED HOLE By Amy Acheson "Typically, the greatest difficulties in communication will occur when one is questioning something already "known" to be true." ~Wal Thornhill Fenton and Fenton's The Fossil Book describes an unusual fossil found in a Late Oligocene or Early Miocene Columbia River Basalt in Washington State, USA. Several rhinoceros bones were found preserved in a cavity in the basalt. Much later, someone stood back far enough to realize that the cavity itself was shaped like a bloated rhinoceros. It was, in fact, a cast made when the rhinoceros was engulfed in the lava flow. This an interesting phenomenon in itself, but it also serves as an analogy for the theory-making process. Every new discovery, every new theory, every new paradigm, spreads a fresh layer of conceptual basalt across the plains of old knowledge. Ideally, everything we know should be re-examined in the light of new data, but practically, the conceptual basalt engulfs old knowledge and buries it, leaving a rhinoceros sized holes in new ideas. Take, for instance, Ted Holden's impossible dinosaurs. Ted's delightful "world-class weight-lifter" approach may be new, but the problem is as old as the discovery of dinosaurs. Early paleontologists knew that dinosaurs were too big to survive on land. They solved the problem by assuming that the biggest dinosaurs spent most of their lives foraging in the shallow seas, where the buoyancy of water would compensate for their tremendous weight. Then more evidence was found, proof that they walked on land and were ill-adapted for aquatic existence. So they became the grazing herds that we see today on TV documentaries, and somehow it's been ignored that this, too, is impossible. There's a dinosaur sized hole in this theory. Halton Arp's discovery, that high-redshift quasars are associated with low-redshift galaxies is the kind of conceptual basalt that overruns entire herds of theoretical rhinoceroses. So much of modern cosmology is governed by the faulty relationship between redshift, velocity and distance that almost everything needs to be re-examined. A recent example: In the October issue of Astrophysics Journal, University of Maryland astronomer Stacy McGaugh announced that his predictions concerning the cosmic microwave background radiation were confirmed by findings of the Boomerang project (information gathered on the background radiation by an extended hot-air balloon mission over Antarctica). His predictions were based on a modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), which he had borrowed from another astronomer, Moti Milgrom, to explain the awkward data of a project involving the rotational curves of low surface brightness galaxies. MOND, McCaugh assures us, disproves the currently accepted theory of cold dark matter. Now the problem, in McGaugh's own words, is this: "MOND introduces a new fundamental constant in a way that seems ad hoc, and which is aesthetically displeasing to most cosmologists. On the other hand, cold dark matter postulates new and so far unobserved particles . . . " Arp's theory neatly removes both horns of this dilemma. When Arp strips galaxies of the distortion caused by "redshift distance" and relocates them adjacent to their galactic parents and offspring, neither their rotational curves and their surface brightness needs an ad hoc explanation. Cold dark matter is revealed for what it is: a sorry crutch invented to prop up the fantasy of an expanding universe. Both concepts -- MOND and dark matter -- are not only unnecessary, but, if accepted, would be confusing and irrelevant in terms of Arp's theory. They fill the theory with rhinoceros sized holes. Arp's discoveries have spread a layer of conceptual basalt across the entire universe as we know it (or perhaps as we don't know it yet.) Talbott (et al)'s comparative mythology and Thornhill's electric universe, rooted in Velikovsky's reconstruction, go even farther. If plasma constitutes 90 percent of everything; if Heraclitus was right when he said that the thunderbolt steers the universe; if Peratt's Instabilities are recorded in petroglyphs all over the world; then every discipline must change at a fundamental level. If any "old" theory is retained or salvaged, sooner or later the new theory will spread out to it, engulf it. Then, like the rhino engulfed in lava, the old theory will leave holes in the new. This isn't a plea for a puritanistic approach. I'm not advocating the wholesale dumping of old theories whenever a new concept appears. Sometimes the cavities can be filled. What I am advocating is a careful re-examination of all old data in the light of new ideas -- taking care to "unlearn" old truths. It's as simple (and impossible) as that. Amy Acheson thoth at whidbey.com ********************************************************* SATURN'S REVOLVING CRESCENT by Dave Talbott [ed. note: this is an experiment, hoping to find a way to add illustrations to THOTH. The attached photo belongs with this article. Please let me know if you are able to receive it.] The attached illustration depicts four distinctive phases in the daily cycle of the polar configuration: UPPER LEFT. Here the Sun has set and the crescent is descending to the left. The sky is darkening and the configuration is growing bright. This is the beginning of the archaic "day," which continued to be celebrated at sunset for many centuries after the disappearance of the planetary configuration. Of course echoes of the original timekeeping language occur even into modern times. Archaic words for the brightening of Saturn will usually be translated as the "rising" of the sun, though the literal meanings will be "to grow bright," to "come to life," "to grow strong," etc. UPPER RIGHT. Now the crescent is directly below, in its midnight position. In the archaic language of the daily cycle, this is the supreme moment of the "day," the moment of greatest brilliance. LOWER LEFT. The crescent rises to the right as the sky lightens and the splendor of the configuration begins to diminish. Archaic words for this phase in the daily cycle will usually be translated as "evening," which can only foster more confusion. LOWER RIGHT. At noon, the crescent is directly above, in its weakest phase. Archaic words which are typically translated as "night" refer to this phase in the daily cycle, representing the waning of the sun god's "life," "strength," or "brightness." To make sense of the comments I intend to submit over the next several days, it will be imperative that readers understand this aspect of the model. If Saturn was at the pole, as required by the global traditions, and the Sun cast a bright crescent on Saturn, no other motion of the crescent is possible. Therefore, the tests of the model can only emphasize the profound contrast between the predictions of the model and the language of the daily cycle expected under the common solar interpretations. Michel Tavir wants to know: Excuse if I ask, . . . how can the Sun cast a light on Saturn and still be invisible for Earthlings? And: can this be made to match Wal's idea of the whole series of planet being _inside_ the Sun star's sheath? Dave responds: The brief answer: The arrival of the crescent on Saturn is a distinct mythical event. It is the beginning of a well-defined daily cycle, following the earlier, "timeless" epoch. That requires half of a rotating Earth to be illuminated by light of the Sun. I always assumed, though tentatively, that this event related to a diffuse gas-cloud of some sort, from which the planets gradually emerged. Even after the appearance of the crescent and a more sharply defined daily cycle, my general sense is that the Sun was not seen as a distinct form in the sky. There was a direction from which illumination arrived at the Earth, but not a clearly visible source. Wal's concept of a Saturnian glow-discharge "womb" came as an interesting variant, and quite promising, I believe. But, no matter how one chooses to explain what was going on physically, the Sun is not a named player in the original myths, though its effects are definite with the arrival of the crescent. This event finds its way into the myths as "the separation of heaven and earth," though that translation of the ancient words can only mislead. Walter Radtke reported: In Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra) in Syria, an ancient tablet was discovered in the 1950s dating back to 1400 BC. The oldest known musical score, it takes the form of interval names and number signs, and even has lyrics. The text is identified as a hymn to the moon goddess Nikkal. Walter asked Dave: I was wondering what your take on Nikkal was. I don't recall mention of this deity in your work. Is this another case of erroneous reference to the crescent as being lunar? Dave replied: Walter, Nikkal is the Ugaritic form of the Sumerian goddess Ningal, clearly a Venus figure. Ningal in the WIFE of Nanna, the so-called Sumerian moon god (Saturn in his crescent-form). Similarly, the Ugaritic Nikkal is married to the "moon" god Yarih. Therefore, the idea that either the Ugaritic or the earlier Sumerian goddess is herself the moon will not stand up. In both she is the SPOUSE of the "moon." Of course people will not accept that the so-called "moon" god is Saturn without a lot of evidence. But in fact, more than one scholar has already noticed that, in the Babylonian astronomical traditions, the crescent god Sin (Sumerian Nanna) WAS identified with the planet Saturn. One of the great pioneers in the study of Babylonian astronomy, Alfred Jeremias, stated the equation of Sin and Saturn unequivocally. Earlier, Rawlinson had already observed that the crescent of Sin was an aspect of Saturn. Peter Jensen similarly confirmed the identity of Sin and Anu, which leads to the same conclusion. The spouse of the crescent god is the far- famed queen of heaven, the planet Venus, depicted both as a radiant star in the center of Saturn and as a radiant star inside the horns of a crescent. Since the crescent was on Saturn, these two most common representations stand in perfect accord with each other. Most popular treatments of the crescent-gods in Mesopotamia show no awareness of this enigmatic relationship to Saturn. Nowhere in the world is the crescent more prominent pictographically than ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of astronomy. Moreover, the two most frequent contexts of the crescent defy any identification with the moon in our sky. The crescent is most commonly wrapped around the wheel of the "sun" god Shamash, whom the texts identify as Saturn. We thus recall Rawlinson's original observation that the crescent was an aspect of Saturn. The same crescent, enigmatically, appears atop a cosmic pillar. . . . (T)hese two attributes are core principles of the Saturn model and lead to some of the most persuasive tests of our reconstruction. Dave Talbott ********************************************************* LOCALIZATION OF THE WARRIOR-HERO by Dave Talbott By way of background, the following are notes on the evolution of the warrior-hero myth. They are based on a section of my article, "Mother Goddess and Warrior Hero," in AEON I:5. ~Dave In the natural evolution of myth, no tendency was more common than that by which originally cosmic figures were brought down to earth and their attributes, habitations, and life events affixed to a local landscape. Every temple, sacred city, and kingdom, built as a representation of a cosmic dwelling, soon came to be remembered as the place where creation began. In the same way, every local prominence became a figure of the cosmic mountain, every river, fount or spring a symbol of the ethereal stream. It was through this universal process that the crucial distinction between symbol and thing symbolized eventually broke down. For it was in the nature of ancient representations that the symbol bore the name and shared in the numen of the archetype. The myths take us back to the age of "beginnings," and the symbol eventually becomes a vital part of the collective memory: soon it is as if the localized emblem had itself emerged in the creation. In Egypt, every city preserved a myth identifying itself with the place where the primeval sun stood in the beginning, when the god produced his own "resting place" or luminous habitation in the sky, "giving birth to himself" through the first activity of the goddess and hero. By the progressive merging of emblem and archetype, the god's worshippers, in effect, altered the location of the primeval events, and once-cosmic powers devolved into the "ancestors" of the local tribe or city. (Clearly, the gods became "ancestors" because, with the blending of archetype and symbol, their home could no longer be distinguished from the terrestrial habitation; once such a process had begun, it was inevitable that the primeval companions or children of the sun would become "ancestors" of the nations telling the stories. Assimilation can only lead to pervasive confusion. While the hand- formed symbol, the city built by men, comes to enjoy an elevated stature and cosmic significance in the eyes of its inhabitants, the gods themselves are profoundly diminished as later chroniclers, seeking to preserve the local traditions, are compelled to adapt them to a familiar landscape. This ambiguity will be found, in varying degrees, in all religious and mythological systems. At one turn the gods rule the heavens, and at the next they live as men, occupying identifiable places and leaving identifiable "monuments" to their lives and activities. And the singular principle that can be counted on in all cases is this: the processes of localization and assimilation continue to advance with time so that the confusion grows increasingly severe. Wherever these processes have operated freely, given sufficient time, the warrior hero and mother goddess will have lost their cosmic character altogether. The vast majority of the heroic figures to which the modern researcher has access (such as the Greek Heracles, Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus and Oedipus), though still bigger than life, appear as extraordinary "humans" accomplishing their marvelous feats on earth, usually in identifiable locations, with an abundance of local "testaments" to their activity. The symbols have, in effect, redefined the archetype, creating massive contradictions between the different accounts. What does a Heracles, or a Helen of Troy, have in common with the archetypal male and female powers identified in the Egyptian creation legend? The answer is, in the most radical sense, everything. While local geography, culture and history have profoundly altered the portrait, there would simply be no subject without the prototype. The best efforts of modern scholars have failed to explain such figures because these miracle-working "humans" are the folk-tale and literary echoes of a wholly alien celestial order. Taking the most obvious distinction between earlier and later versions, there is the matter of scale. While the archetypal warrior-hero bears aloft the central sun and the all-encompassing land of the gods, it is obviously not possible for such an idea to be retained in the localized traditions, where the central sun has become an ancestral king, and the cosmic dwelling a terrestrial temple, palace or city. Yet the theme is not obliterated in the later chronicles, but re-focused. For the warrior-hero will still be found "supporting" the king, often as a slave, servant or priest (a theme endlessly repeated in the tales of Heracles, for example). What is not generally recognized, however, is the generic link to the older tradition of the heaven-sustaining hero as the servant or priest of the sun god Saturn, the celestial prototype of kings. In the archaic tradition the three meanings-- upholder, servant and priest--are synonymous. Similarly, one notes the repeated associations of the folk-tale warrior-hero with channels or flows of water, either irrigating or flooding an ancestral land or dwelling, or draining off enclosed floodwaters or swamps. In virtually all later instances, the chroniclers will point to a particular place in which the feat of the hero was accomplished. Due to the re-focusing involved in such localization, few modern commentators will recognize that the prototype was the heaven-supporting giant--in Egypt, the god Shu-- who personifies the ethereal fount and celestial waterway. Yet the proof of the connection is readily at hand. For in the instance of the Egyptian Shu we possess at once the vivid cosmic portrait set forth in the world's oldest ritual texts, and later localized portraits of Greek, Roman and Christian times. Here we can observe in the clearest of terms the transition from the original cosmic power Shu to the Heracles-like hero of later times. At the Qes sanctuary of the XXth nome of Lower Egypt a black granite shrine from the Ptolemaic period (later transported to Al- 'Arish) recorded the story of "Shu and Geb when they reigned as kings upon earth." In this late tale, it is the god Shu who, in the style of Heracles, "excavated" the lake of the sanctuary and in the time of Ra (often recalled as a terrestrial ruler in later accounts) constructed the king's palace that it might endure "like the Mountain of Fire-Light." It is said that Shu, as a great warrior, rose to the throne of Atum or Ra and (apparently single- handedly, in Heracles fashion) slaughtered "all the enemies of his father" and destroyed "the sons of rebellion." He then became a builder in the service of his father, for there were "hundreds of thousands of sanctuaries which the Majesty of Ra had called into being in all the names, and which the majesty of Shu had built." Thus, it was Shu who, according to this late chronicle, "irrigated the towns, and the settlements and the names, and he erected the walls of Egypt and built temples in the Land of the South and the Land of the North." Could anyone familiar with the myth of Heracles deny the similarity? Localization and assimilation have led to rampant duplications of the story of creation, so that a later chronicler, traveling from city to city in Egypt, might indeed have pieced together a story of countless "labors" of Shu, creating a fabulous pastiche of local myth. It is not surprising, therefore, that Greek "histories" declare that Heracles himself sojourned in Egypt, serving as "general" under Osiris and achieving feats virtually identical to those of Shu. Though Shu and Heracles are in fact the same figure, we have the advantage in Shu's case of very ancient testimony illuminating the original cosmic personality (to which the later echoes can be systematically traced). And of course Shu is not the only instance of the warrior-hero in Egypt, so additional ground will have to be covered if we are to establish the clearest possible profile of the prehistoric god. Similarly, the mother goddess must be followed from a set of originally unified concepts to the fragmented expressions of later times, in which the goddess appears alternately as mother, daughter or spouse of a great god or king, an enchanting maiden or fairy goddess, a harlot, hag or witch. In all of this we will find that what have long been viewed as separate and irreconcilable threads of ancient lore acquire entirely new meanings when viewed under the illumination of the polar configuration. FROM THE FOOTNOTES: Through assimilation, as noted above, every local symbolic sanctuary shared in the history of the celestial prototype, which was shouted into existence by the sun god and given form by Shu. Of course the connection of Shu and Heracles has already been noted by others. See K. H. Brugsch, Dictionnaire Geographique de l 'ancienne Egypte (Leipzig, 1880), p. 851. Dave Talbott ********************************************************** NON-VELOCITY REDSHIFTS By Anthony Peratt Mel's question for Anthony Peratt at the September Seminar, "Our Violent Solar System" was the one all of us who want to see plasma physics combined with intrinsic redshift were yearning to ask. "Can you get a redshift from plasma ?" Anthony answered by displaying the following article from his WebPages. ~Amy Look here for the diagram to go with the article: http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/redshifts.html Redshifts The Wolf Effect and Gravitational Redshifts Spectral lines can be redshifted toward longer wavelengths or blueshifted toward shorter ones. The Doppler effect explains how these shifts occur because of relative motions of the source and the observer along the line of sight. Approach causes a blueward shift and recessional a redward one. Scientists have long believed that only the Doppler effect or Gravity as described by Einstein could account for wavelength shifts in the spectrum of light as it travels through space. Where neither factor applies, scientists have always assumed spectral invariance-the spectrum remains the same no matter how far the light travels. This is the case with ordinary sources-called "Lambertian" after Johann Heinrich Lambert-such as the blackbody radiation from stellar surfaces. In the past few years, however, experiments have shown that there is a third way to shift spectral lines. This mechanism involves non-Lambertian sources that emit beamed energy, such as lasers and devices producing synchrotron light. The discoverer of this new effect is physicist Emil Wolf, who, along with Max Born, wrote the definitive textbook Principles of Optics. A mechanic analog to Wolf's discovery is a pair of tuning forks with nearly identical resonant frequencies (pitches). If these forks are connected together mechanically by, say, a sounding board, the coupling is strong and the resonant frequencies tend to get "dragged down" to lower ones. In other words, the wavelength is lengthened, or redshifted. This phenomenon has been verified experimentally with light waves and for sound waves from coupled speakers. The actual frequency shift due to the Wolf effect depends on the geometry. As the illustration above shows, whether an observer sees a redshift or a blue shift depends on his or her locations with respect to the source. The mechanism can be extended from the case of two radiating point sources to that of a whole collection of such objects, for example a plasma cloud. Wolf and his colleagues have shown that such a cloud can produce shifts that closely mimic the Doppler effect. The figure shows an example. Thus the assumption that quasars-beamed electromagnetic radiators with large redshifts-are part of the "Hubble flow" of an expanding universe could be wrong. This effect should also apply to normal galaxies, most of whose matter is in the plasma state. Left: Due to the Wolf effect beamed emission from two separate sources can interact and shift the wavelengths of the lines in their spectra. The change can be redward or blueward by different amounts depending on the observer's point of view, but from "head- on" the shift is to the red. This is a distinctly different process than the Doppler effect. Right: Here the two mechanisms are compared for the case of oxygen lines with a redshift of 0.07. However, the light sources involved in the Wolf effect are stationary, not fleeing the observer at 84 kilometers per second. Anthony Peratt ********************************************************** ELECTRIC UNIVERSE SNIPPETS by Wal Thornhill "The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality... That we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." - H. P. Lovecraft In a broadly interdisciplinary inquiry such as this, communication itself can pose quite a challenge. Typically, the greatest difficulties in communication will occur when one is questioning something already "known" to be true. On matters of underlying principle, the confidence behind established ideas can be so high that discussion itself may seem quite senseless. This difficulty is aggravated by fragmentation of the process by which information is gathered and evaluated. The specialization of intellectual inquiry carries with it certain risks when assumptions within one discipline rest upon prior assumptions in other disciplines. No one can be an expert on everything, and when considering possibilities outside one's personal expertise, it is only natural to defer to what specialists in other studies claim to know. But what are the consequences of this when theoretical suppositions, though perceived as fact, cannot account for compelling new fields of data? Given the extreme fragmentation of established science today it's difficult to imagine that the enterprise as a whole could ever "correlate all its contents." Yet extraordinary strides toward that "someday" envisioned by Lovecraft may now be possible through a new approach -- one in which electrical phenomena receive the full attention they deserve, and all appropriate fields of evidence are included. To some, the prospects may appear every bit as disturbing as Lovecraft imagined. But for those who instinctively seek out unifying principles, the new horizons will be at once breathtaking and hopeful. This introduction will present a new "deep focus lens" for viewing the physical universe, from sub-atomic particles to galactic realms unknown before the Hubble telescope. The Electric Universe is a holistic answer to myopia -- that narrowing of vision which naturally accompanies the fragmentation of knowledge and learning. For those with the courage to see clearly, the required "unlearning" of fashionable ideas carries no real cost whatsoever. The terror Lovecraft envisioned is only the first rush of uncertainty, when ideas long taken for granted are thrown into question by facts and simple reasoning previously ignored. The "piecing together of dissociated knowledge" will only require us to confront the deep contradictions in things experts have long claimed to know. With the courage to see clearly, the adventure itself could well be "the most merciful thing in the world," adding new insights into the greatest dramas of early human history and vital perspective to humanity's situation in the cosmos. Lovecraft did not realize that the "terrifying vistas" are but a mirage seen through an open door. The truth is always unified, and as such it can only be friendly to those who seek the truth first. As we pass through the door, it is not fear that goes with us, but the exhilaration of discovery. WHAT BIG BANG? The Big Bang is already dead! The unheralded "Galileo of the 20th century", Halton Arp, has proven that the universe is not expanding. The Big Bang theory is based on a misinterpretation of redshift. The redshift of a distant galaxy is measured in the light coming from that galaxy. Lines in the spectrum of that galaxy show a shift toward the red compared with the same lines from our Sun. Arp discovered that high and low redshift objects are sometimes connected by a bridge or jet of matter. So redshift cannot be a measure of distance. Most of the redshift is intrinsic to the object. But there is more: Arp found that the intrinsic redshift of a quasar or galaxy took discrete values, which decreased with distance from a central active galaxy. In Arp's new view of the cosmos, active galaxies "give birth" to high redshift quasars and companion galaxies. Redshift becomes a measure of the relative ages of nearby quasars and galaxies, not their distance. As a quasar or galaxy ages, the redshift decreases in discrete steps, or quanta. The huge puzzle for astrophysicists is why a galaxy should exhibit an atomic phenomenon. So we turn to particle physics. This difficulty highlights the fact that quantum "mechanics" applied to atoms is a theory without physical reality. The weirdness of quantum theory has been attributed to the subatomic scale to which it applies. But now that we have quantum effects in something the size of a galaxy, this convenient nonsense is exposed. If Arp is right many experts are going to look very silly. His discovery sounded the alarm in some halls of Academe and since nobody likes a loud noise - particularly if they are asleep - the knee-jerk response was to attack the guy with his finger on the alarm button. Arp's telescope time was denied, papers rejected, and he was forced to leave the US to pursue his work. ELECTRIC GALAXIES For more than 10 years plasma physicists have had an electrical model of galaxies. It works with real-world physics. The model is able to successfully account for the observed shapes and dynamics of galaxies without recourse to invisible dark matter and central black holes. It explains simply the powerful electric jets seen issuing along the spin axis from the cores of active galaxies. Recent results from mapping the magnetic field of a spiral galaxy confirm the electric model. On the other hand, cosmologists cannot explain why spiral shapes are so common and they have only ad-hoc explanations for galactic magnetic fields. More recently, inter-galactic magnetic fields have been discovered which is the final straw to break the camel's back. Incredible gravitational models involving invisible "black holes" have had to be invented in a desperate attempt to explain how the attractive force of gravity can result in matter being ejected in a narrow jet at relativistic speeds. Why do we accept such science fiction as fact when an Electric Universe predicts spiral shapes, magnetic fields and jets? The cosmic magnetic fields simply delineate the electric currents that create, move and light the galaxies. ELECTRIC STARS Plasma physicists argue that stars are formed by an electromagnetic "pinch" effect on widely dispersed gas and dust. The "pinch" is created by the magnetic force between parallel current filaments that are part of the huge electric currents flowing inside a galaxy. It is far more effective than gravity in concentrating matter and, unlike gravity, it can remove excess angular momentum that tends to prevent collapse. Stars will form like beads on a wire until gravity takes over. The late Ralph Juergens, an engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona, in the 1970's took the next mental leap to suggest that the electrical input doesn't stop there and that stars are not thermonuclear engines! This is obvious when the Sun is looked at from an electrical discharge perspective. The galactic currents that create the stars persist to power them. Stars behave as electrodes in a galactic glow discharge. Bright stars like our Sun are great concentrated balls of lightning! The matter inside stars becomes positively charged as electrons drift toward the surface. The resulting internal electrostatic forces prevent stars from collapsing gravitationally and occasionally cause them to "give birth" by electrical fissioning to form companion stars and gas giant planets. Sudden brightening, or a nova outburst marks such an event. That elucidates why stars commonly have partners and why most of the giant planets so far detected closely orbit their parent star. Stellar evolution theory and the age of stars is an elaborate fiction. The appearance of a star is determined largely by its electrical environment and can change suddenly. Plasma physicists and electrical engineers are best able to recognize plasma discharge phenomena. Stellar physics is in the wrong hands. (c)Wal Thornhill 2000 See the home of The Electric Universe at http://www.holoscience.com ********************************************************** PLEASE VISIT THE KRONIA COMMUNICATIONS 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/html/sales.html Other suggested Web site URL's for more information about Catastrophics: 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.users.uswest.net/~dascott/Cosmology.htm http://www.catastrophism.com/cdrom/index.htm http://www.science-frontiers.com Immanuel Velikovsky Reconsidered, 10 Pensée Journals may be ordered at the I-net address below: http://www.e-z.net/~mikamar/default.html A collection of used and out-of-print books on the subject of catastrophics is now available from Mikamar Publishing. E-mail the website directly, or write to THOTH to request a list of available titles. 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 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. Go to the free newsletter page and double click on the image of Thoth, the Egyptian God of Knowledge, to access the back issues.